Tesla Trades Weaker After Crash Jolts Reputation of ‘Full Self-Driving’ Technology

© Reuters.

By Dhirendra Tripathi

Investing.com – Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) shares traded nearly 3% lower in Monday’s premarket after a fatal crash in Texas at the weekend involving the company’s 2019 Model S raised fresh questions about dented the EV maker’s ambition of successfully making a fully-autonomous vehicle.

Harris County police said two people died when the Tesla car left the road and crashed into a tree. Neither man was sitting in the driver’s seat, suggesting that they had relied on the car’s ‘full self-driving’ software to navigate.

Tesla has already told the National Highway Transportation Safety Authority that its FSD software, in its current state, cannot provide more than Level 2 autonomy.

The accident is not the first in the company’s short history. Tesla has repeatedly missed chief executive Elon Musk’s forecasts of when it will launch a fully autonomous vehicle. The company and founder Elon Musk admitted some months ago the company’s latest software iteration will not reach level-3.

The level-3 autonomous technology liberates drivers from constantly monitoring the system, although it requires them to take over when alerted by the machine.