A Model S from Tesla Motors Inc (NASDAQ:TSLA) reportedly crashed into a bus in Germany on Wednesday. The driver stated that the car was on Autopilot during the time of the incident.
The Model S accident took place on Wednesday in Ratzeburg town and Tesla claims that the bus was at fault because it swerved into the lane of the Model S. A spokeswoman from Tesla revealed that the driver’s statement was that the Autopilot feature was active at the time of the accident, though it was not the cause. The police had a different take on the incident.
“The car driver said he had used the car’s Autopilot. It now has to be investigated why this did not work,” stated the police.
Police convinced that the Tesla Model S was at fault
According to the police statement, the Model S driver, a 50 year old man, ended up crashing into the back of the Danish tour bus as it was returning to the inside lane after overtaking. Luckily, none of the 29 passengers in the bus sustained any injuries.
The reports about the crash might be unclear and the fact that another vehicle from Tesla has been involved in an accident while on Autopilot highlights the dark cloud above Tesla. The company has been facing a lot of scrutiny over the Autopilot feature following numerous accidents where the autonomous feature was said to be at fault. The Autopilot was introduced in October 2015 and has since then been a source of controversy for the company.
“We can only do so much to prevent an accident,” said the Tesla spokeswoman citing that the accident was unavoidable.
Tesla cars cannot float in mid-air to prevent a collision if there is nowhere else to go.
Tesla recently released an update for the Autopilot software so that it could fix some of its weaknesses. It is therefore surprising that a Tesla Model S was involved in an accident barely two weeks after the update release.
Tesla stock closed the recent trading session at $200.70, down by $5.57 or 2.7% compared to the value of the stock in the previous session. The trading volume for the stock was 2.73 million shares.
