is set to defend itself for the first time at trial against allegations that failure of its Autopilot driver assistant feature led to death, in what will likely be a major test of Chief Executive Elon Musk's assertions about the technology.whose own reputation as an engineering leader is being challenged with allegations by plaintiffs in one of two lawsuits that he personally leads the group behind technology that failed.
Tesla and Musk did not respond to Reuters’ emailed questions for this article, but Musk has made no secret of his involvement in self-driving software engineering, often tweeting about his test-driving of a Tesla equipped with "Full Self-Driving" software. He has for years promised that Tesla would achieve self-driving capability only to miss his own targets.
On the other hand, "a big loss for Tesla - especially with a big damages award" could "dramatically shape the narrative going forward," said Bryant Walker Smith, a law professor at the University of South Carolina. In the Florida case, Banner's attorneys also filed a motion arguing punitive damages were warranted. The attorneys have deposed several Tesla executives and received internal documents from the company that they said show Musk and engineers were aware of, and did not fix, shortcomings.
The lawyers tried to blame the lack of change on Musk. "Elon Musk has acknowledged problems with the Tesla autopilot system not working properly," according to plaintiffs' documents. Former Autopilot engineer Richard Baverstock, who was also deposed, stated that "almost everything" he did at Tesla was done at the request of "Elon," according to the documents.