Tesla’s deployment of its Autopilot software — standard on every vehicle — has led to a litany of regulatory and legal problems for the company.
On the eve of a jury trial expected to delve deeply into Tesla’s controversial “Autopilot” technology, the company has settled a lawsuit filed by the family of an Apple engineer killed on Highway 101 in Mountain View, according to court filings Monday.
Walter Huang, a married father of two from Foster City, died in 2018 after Autopilot steered his Tesla Model X compact SUV into a freeway barrier while he played a video game on his phone, a federal investigation found.
His wife, Sevonne, sued Tesla in 2019 on behalf of herself and the couple’s two children, seeking unspecified damages. The lawsuit in Santa Clara County Superior Court claimed Huang’s 2017 Tesla “lacked a properly designed system for crash avoidance,” and “was a vehicle that could and would strike and collide with ordinary and foreseeable roadway features in Autopilot mode.”
The case was to go before a jury this week, but Tesla said in court filings that it had reached a deal with Huang’s wife and kids. According to a filing by the electric car maker led by CEO Elon Musk and a lawyer for the Huang family, the settlement amount is confidential. No other terms of the deal were disclosed in the filings. Tesla did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Tesla’s 2015 deployment of its Autopilot software — standard on every vehicle — has led to a litany of regulatory and legal problems for the company formerly headquartered in Palo Alto and now based in Texas. The basic version provides cruise control and steering assistance, while an enhanced version including navigation and automated lane changes and exiting.
Central to lawsuits and investigations are questions around whether Tesla’s marketing and the name of Autopilot encourage drivers to take their hands off the wheel and their attention off the road.
