A Palm Beach County judge in Florida said he found evidence that Tesla CEO Elon Musk and other executives knew the company’s cars’ semi-autonomous driving system was flawed but allowed their trading anyway. This evidence was presented as part of a ruling issued last week that allows the initiation of a lawsuit against Tesla for damages for willful misconduct and gross negligence.
The lawsuit concerns a fatal 2019 accident north of Miami in which Tesla Model 3 owner Stephen Banner died after his car, operating in semi-autonomous driving mode, ended up under the trailer of an 18-wheeler that veered onto the road Truck: The semi-autonomous driving system (called Autopilot at Tesla) is able to independently keep the car in lane or change, vary its speed and control parking and exiting.
Earlier this year, Tesla won two similar lawsuits in California. However, according to the judge, there was evidence that Tesla’s marketing strategy deliberately “portrayed” the products as autonomous, leading people to believe that the cars were capable of fully driving themselves, and that Musk’s public statements about the technology ” had a significant impact.” on the belief in the performance of the products”.
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