Last week another of Tesla’s self-driving cars was involved in a crash, fortunately this time the driver survived, but it did not help quell the deluge of negative headlines to hit the electric car company in recent weeks.
Back in May, Joshua Brown became the first known fatality caused by a self-driven car after colliding with a tractor trailer. It is believed the autopilot feature failed to detect the trailer due to bright sunlight. Brown was believed to have been watching a movie and did not notice the trailer in time to apply the emergency brakes.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is currently investigating the crash and Tesla’s autopilot feature.
Earlier this week, Fortune published an article which claimed Tesla had delayed revealing details of the fatal crash to the public, subsequently making a combined US$2bn by selling stocks just over a week later in a public offering.
"To put things baldly, Tesla and [Elon] Musk did not disclose the very material fact that a man had died while using an auto-pilot technology that Tesla had marketed vigorously as safe and important to its customers," wrote Carol Loomis, high-profile journalist and writer of the Fortune piece.
In a statement entitled “Misfortune” Tesla chief Elon Musk hit back at Fortune’s article and said the magazine had misrepresented the facts. Musk said the crash was never “material to Tesla” and that investors and shareholders knew better, as evidenced by the share price performance on the day the news broke (up 2% by the closing bell).
The statement said that the damage sustained by the crashed Model S made retrieving the data remotely difficult. It wasn’t until May 18, the date of the public offering, that a Tesla investigator was able to go to the crash site and inspect the car.
A second article released by Fortune on Wednesday challenged Musk’s assertion that the crash had “no material effect” on the company. Citing a Securities and Exchange Commission Form 10-Q filing that stated it could be subject to a product liability claim if the vehicle’s performance resulted in death, which, according to Fortune, showed that Tesla did in fact believe the crash to be material.
Tesla said there was no evidence to suggest that the autopilot wasn’t operating as designed.
Musk went on: “The bottom line is that Fortune jumped the gun on a story before they had the facts. They then sought wrongly to defend that position by plucking boilerplate language from SEC filings that have no bearing on what happened, while failing to correct or acknowledge their original omissions and errors.”
The group went on to outline the autopilot’s safety records compared with national statistics, akin to the heavily criticised response following the public acknowledgement of Brown’s crash.
Critics have accused Musk of hiding behind statistics and that his response following the crash was “cold”.
He was quick on the draw in an email to Fortune, revealed yesterday, where he again reiterated Tesla’s safety record.
“If anyone bothered to do the math (obviously, you did not) they would realize that of the over one million auto deaths per year worldwide, approximately half a million people would have been saved if the Tesla autopilot was universally available,” wrote Musk.
However even Tesla’s safety claims have come under fire. A report by the MIT Technology Review called into question the group’s autopilot safety stats and claimed they were misrepresentative.
“Tesla and Musk’s message is clear: the data proves Autopilot is much safer than human drivers. But experts say those comparisons are worthless, because the company is comparing apples and oranges.”
The article goes on to say that national safety statistics are incompatible with Tesla, as there are too many variables, such as the design of the car and the context of driving.
The findings could prove to be another blow to the group, which until now, was able to defend itself from criticism with hard facts and ground-breaking science.
Tesla could not yet confirm whether or not the car involved in last week’s collision was in autopilot mode, and they have tried contacting the driver a number of times.
Tesla was not available for comment.