Tesla has agreed to settle a lawsuit over a crash in 2018 where a man named Walter Huang died. He was an engineer at Apple. He was driving a Tesla Model X with Autopilot on when it hit a barrier on the highway. The case was brought by Mr. Huang’s family and was supposed to start this week in California court. If the trial had happened, it would have looked closely at Tesla’s Autopilot and Full Self-Driving technology.
The settlement details were not shared, and it still needs approval from a judge. Tesla didn’t say anything when asked by the BBC. Before the settlement, Tesla said Mr. Huang was using the system wrong because he was playing a video game before the crash.
Tesla has won similar cases before by saying drivers didn’t follow the rules to pay attention while using Autopilot. Tesla is facing many lawsuits over crashes linked to its driver-assistant technology. The US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is also looking into some crashes involving Autopilot.
Tesla has been saying for years that it will make a self-driving car, but it hasn’t happened yet. On Friday, the CEO, Mr. Musk, said Tesla plans to show a self-driving taxi in August. This settlement comes at a time when Tesla is having trouble selling cars.
In the first three months of this year, car deliveries went down a lot because of a fire at a factory in Europe, problems with shipping worldwide, and more competition. Tesla has lowered its prices many times because of competition from companies like BYD, but fewer people are buying cars in big markets like China. Tesla’s stock has dropped almost 30% since the beginning of the year.
