Toronto, Ontario – In this weekly electric and autonomous vehicle report, a Glasgow man reports being ‘kidnapped’ by his electric vehicle; and a Tesla engineer defends ‘Full Self-Driving’ name at crash trial.
An unexpected chase
Recently, a Glasgow man reported being ‘kidnapped’ by his newly purchased electric vehicle.
Brian Morrison, of Scotland, says his MG ZS EV started driving itself, forcing him to have police ram his car off of the road.
The incident took place when Morrison was driving home from work. He reports hearing gear grinding noises and seeing error messages on the vehicle’s dashboard when the car reportedly took over driving and disengaged brake functions.
Stuck driving at nearly 50 km down city streets in Scotland, Morrison says his vehicle suffered a “catastrophic malfunction.”
Even after forcing the car to a halt by having police ram him off of the road, Morrison says that the car still tried to keep moving even after being forced to a halt by police vehicles.
“I still have no idea what happened,” Morrison said, “but when the RAC got to me about three hours later he plugged in the car to do a diagnostic check and there were pages of faults,” he added.
“He said he had never seen anything like it, and decided he was not willing to turn the engine on to see what was wrong.”
Morrison’s insurance company says it is now investigating the incident which has left Brian questioning if he would drive another electric vehicle again.
“I don’t know if I’ll get another, frankly I’ve not even tried driving my wife’s car – it was a terrifying experience,” Morrison said.
Taken to trial
This past Wednesday, a Tesla engineer defended the ‘Full Self-Driving’ name of the automaker’s electric vehicles.
The engineer rejected a California state lawyer’s suggestion that the company named its driver-assistant feature as fully self-driving because it wanted customers to believe that its systems had more abilities than was really the case.
Specifically, the EV maker is defending itself in an ongoing U.S. trial over allegations that Tesla’s Autopilot feature led to a death in 2019.
The lawsuit, filed in a California state court, alleges the Autopilot system caused owner Micah Lee’s Model 3 to suddenly veer off a highway east of Los Angeles at 65 miles per hour (105 km/h), strike a palm tree and burst into flames, all in the span of seconds.
Tesla denies the claim, saying it’s not clear whether the Autopilot system was engaged at the moment Lee’s car crashed.
The 37-year-old Lee bought Tesla’s “full self-driving capability package” for $6,000 for his Model 3 in 2019. At that time, the FSD package performed functions such as maintaining distance from a vehicle in front and keeping the car within the lane, Tesla engineer Eloy Rubio Blanco testified in court on Wednesday. The automaker later added more advanced features to the system.
Tesla asked that Rubio’s testimony be kept private due to trade secrets. The judge ejected that request, though he shut down the court’s live audio feed during Rubio’s appearance.
