tragic setback

Fatal Tesla crash reported to be using self-driving system

Chinese officials told Tesla that Beijing has tentatively approved the automaker's plan to launch its “Full Self-Driving,” or FSD, software feature in the country. Photo via tesla.com

Authorities in Washington have determined that a Tesla that hit and killed a motorcyclist near Seattle in April was operating on the company's “Full Self Driving” system at the time of the crash.

Investigators from the Washington State Patrol made the discovery after downloading information from the event-data recorder on the 2022 Tesla Model S, agency spokesman Capt. Deion Glover said Tuesday.

“The investigation is still ongoing in this case,” Glover said in an email to The Associated Press. The Snohomish County Prosecutor will determine if any charges are filed in the case, he said.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk said last week that “Full Self Driving” should be able to run without human supervision by the end of this year. He has been promising a fleet of robotaxis for several years. During the company’s earnings conference call, he acknowledged that his predictions on the issue “have been overly optimistic in the past.”

A message was left Tuesday seeking comment from Texas-based Tesla.

After the crash in a suburban area about 15 miles (24 kilometers) northeast of Seattle, the driver told a trooper that he was using Tesla's Autopilot system and looked at his cellphone while the Tesla was moving.

“The next thing he knew there was a bang and the vehicle lurched forward as it accelerated and collided with the motorcycle in front of him,” the trooper wrote in a probable-cause document.

The 56-year-old driver was arrested for investigation of vehicular homicide “based on the admitted inattention to driving, while on Autopilot mode, and the distraction of the cell phone while moving forward, putting trust in the machine to drive for him,” the affidavit said.

The motorcyclist, Jeffrey Nissen, 28, of Stanwood, Washington, was under the car and pronounced dead at the scene, authorities reported.

Nissen's death is at least the second in the U.S. involving Tesla's “Full Self-Driving” system. In investigative documents, the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said earlier it had found one fatality and 75 crashes while the system was being used. It wasn't clear whether the system was at fault in the fatality.

Tesla has two partially automated driving systems, “Full Self-Driving,” which can take on many driving tasks even on city streets, and Autopilot, which can keep a car in its lane and away from objects in front of it. Sometimes the names are confused by Tesla owners and the public.

Tesla says at present neither system can drive itself and that human drivers must be ready to take control at any time.

“Full Self-Driving” is being tested on public roads by selected Tesla owners. The company recently has been calling it FSD Supervised.

Musk said last week that he did not think approval by government regulators would be a limiting factor in deploying robotaxis. “If you’ve got billions of miles that show that in the future, unsupervised FSD is safer than humans, what regulator could really stand in the way of that?” he asked.

But Phil Koopman, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University who studies autonomous vehicle safety, said he doesn't see Tesla running robotaxis without human drivers on nearly all roads for another decade.

The safety record Musk cites is based on having a human driver supervise the automated system, he said. “Unless you have data showing that the driver never has to supervise the automation, then there's no basis for claiming they're going to be acceptably safe,” he said.

Musk has said Tesla will unveil a dedicated robotaxi vehicle at an event on Oct. 10. The event was delayed from Aug. 8 to make changes in the vehicle that Musk wanted.

Musk has been telling investors that Tesla is less of a car company and more of a robotics and artificial intelligence company. Many investors have put money into the company based on long-term prospects for robotics technology.

Musk has been touting self-driving vehicles as a growth catalyst for Tesla since “Full Self Driving” hardware went on sale late in 2015.

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A View From HETI

20-plus companies will pitch at Energy Tech Nexus' Pilotathon during Houston Energy & Climate Startup Week. Photo via Getty Images.

Energy Tech Nexus will host its Pilotathon and Showcase as part of Houston Energy & Climate Startup Week next Tuesday, Sept. 16, featuring insightful talks from industry leaders and pitches from an international group of companies in the clean energy space.

This year's event will center around the theme "Energy Access and Resilience." Attendees will hear pitches from nine Pilotathon pitch companies, as well as the 14 companies that were named to Energy Tech Nexus' COPILOT accelerator earlier this year.

COPILOT partners with Browning the Green Space, a nonprofit that promotes diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) in the clean energy and climatetech sectors. The Wells Fargo Innovation Incubator (IN²) at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory backs the COPILOT accelerator, where companies are tasked with developing pilot projects for their innovations.

The nine Pilotathon pitch companies include:

  • Ontario-based AlumaPower, which has developed a breakthrough technology that converts the aluminum-air battery into a "galvanic generator," a long-duration energy source that runs on aluminum as a fuel
  • Calgary-based BioOilSolv, a chemical manufacturing company that has developed cutting-edge biomass-derived solvents
  • Atlanta-based Cultiv8 Fuels, which creates high-quality renewable fuel products derived from hemp
  • Newfoundland-based eDNAtec Inc., a leader in environmental genomics that analyzes biodiversity and ecological health
  • Oregon-based Espiku Inc., which designs and develops water treatment and mineral extraction technologies that rely on low-pressure evaporative cycles
  • New York-based Fast Metals Inc., which has developed a chemical process to extract valuable metals from complex toxic mine tailings that is capable of producing iron, aluminum, scandium, titanium and other rare earth elements using industrial waste and waste CO2 as inputs
  • New Jersey-based Metal Light Inc., which is building a circular, solid metal fuel that will serve as a replacement for diesel fuel
  • Glasgow-based Novosound, which designs and manufactures innovative ultrasound sensors using a thin-film technique to address the limitations of traditional ultrasound with applications in industrial, medical and wearable markets
  • Calgary-based Serenity Power, which has developed a cutting-edge solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) technology

The COPILOT accelerator companies include:

  • Accelerate Wind
  • Aquora Biosystems Inc.
  • EarthEn
  • Electromaim
  • EnKoat
  • GeoFuels
  • Harber Coatings Inc.
  • Janta Power
  • NanoSieve
  • PolyQor Inc.
  • Popper Power
  • Siva Powers America
  • ThermoShade
  • V-Glass Inc.

Read more about them here.

The Pilotathon will also include a keynote from Taylor Chapman, investment manager at New Climate Ventures; Deanna Zhang, CEO at V1 Climate Solutions; and Jolene Gurevich, director of fellowship experience at Breakthrough Energy. The Texas Climate Tech Collective will present its latest study on the Houston climate tech and innovation ecosystem.

CEOs Moji Karimi of Cemvita, Laureen Meroueh of Hertha Metals and others will also participate in a panel on successful pilots. Investors from NetZero Ventures, Halliburton Labs, Chevron, Saudi Aramco, Prithvi VC and other organizations will also be on-site. Find registration information here.

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