Tesla under scrutiny in fatal China crash after autopilot failure

PanARMENIAN.Net - Tesla faces new scrutiny in China about its vehicle autopilot system after state television broadcast allegations that a man killed in a fatal crash had activated the driver-assist feature of his car, the Associated Press reports.

The state broadcaster CCTV aired a report Wednesday, September 14 about a January crash that killed 23-year-old Gao Yaning. The report included apparent dash cam footage of the car slamming into a slow-moving orange truck.

An official interviewed in the report said the car's autopilot feature was active at the time of the crash. CCTV reported Gao's family has sued Tesla in a Beijing court, though the lawsuit was not available in online court records. Officials at the court did not answer the phone on Thursday, a Chinese holiday.

Tesla said in a statement that the car was too damaged in the wreck to transmit data to company servers, and that Gao's family had not cooperated with the company's investigation, AP says.

"We have tried repeatedly to work with our customer to investigate the cause of the crash, but he has not provided us with any additional information that would allow us to do so," it said.

A spokeswoman for the company did not respond to questions about what the car had reported before the crash.