After rejecting a 400 million yuan settlement, Tesla was found liable and ordered to pay 1.7 billion yuan in compensation.
This time, Tesla really got into trouble.
A jury in Florida, USA, ruled that Tesla should bear partial responsibility for a fatal car accident caused by a Model S equipped with an autopilot system in 2019. The jury also ordered Tesla to pay compensation to the family of a deceased woman and an injured person.
The total amount is $242.5 million.
What does this concept mean? It's equivalent to 1.7 billion RMB. It's no longer just about how many Model 3s. This figure is equivalent to half a quarter of Tesla's work for nothing.
This is not only the lawsuit with the largest compensation amount that Tesla has encountered so far, but also Tesla's first defeat in a lawsuit related to assisted driving.
Naturally, Tesla is not satisfied with this and has stated that it will continue to appeal.
However, after reviewing the entire case, although Tesla seems "innocent", it's more like the boast that Elon Musk made before has now come back to hit him in the head like a boomerang.
01 Compensation Equal to Half a Quarter's Profit
I wonder if Elon Musk will regret it. The settlement plan was just announced yesterday. Originally, $60 million (about 429 million RMB) could have solved the problem...
This sky - high compensation is divided into two parts. Tesla needs to pay $129 million (about 920 million RMB) in compensatory damages to the estate heirs of the deceased and her seriously injured boyfriend.
The other part is an additional $200 million (about 1.43 billion RMB) in punitive damages, which is of a punitive nature.
Actually, according to the liability division in the verdict, Tesla only needs to bear one - third of the responsibility, and the driver of the accident vehicle needs to bear two - thirds of the main responsibility. That is to say, Tesla may actually only need to bear more than $100 million in compensation. However, since the driver of the accident vehicle has reached a settlement with the plaintiff and cannot be selected as the target of punishment, the entire $200 million in punitive damages is counted on Tesla.
However, Tesla also stated that according to a pre - trial agreement, the punitive damages cannot exceed three times the compensatory damages it bears. Therefore, the final payment amount will be much lower than the $243 million awarded by the jury, and the actual amount should be $172 million.
But the plaintiff doesn't think so. The calculation basis of the compensation multiple stipulated in the agreement is "all compensatory damages" (not just the part borne by Tesla). Therefore, Tesla must pay the full $243 million awarded by the jury.
Moreover, in May this year, Tesla had a chance to reach a settlement with the plaintiff. It only needed to pay $60 million, but Tesla chose to refuse.
This amount of money is not a small sum even for Tesla. It's more than half of Tesla's net profit in the first quarter of this year.
The cause of this incident dates back to the accident in 2019.
At around 21:05 on the evening of April 25, 2019, Tesla owner McGee was driving a Model S with Autopilot enabled. When passing through a T - shaped intersection, the vehicle lost control and rushed out at a speed of nearly 100 kilometers per hour (60 miles per hour), hitting a Chevrolet Tahoe parked on the side of the road.
Unfortunately, there was a couple next to this SUV. As a result, 22 - year - old Naibel Benavides died on the spot. Her body was found 75 feet (23 meters) away from the impact point, indicating an extremely violent impact. Her boyfriend, Dillon Angulo, survived but suffered multiple fractures, traumatic brain injury, and severe psychological trauma.
After the accident, the family of the deceased and the injured person subsequently sued the driver and Tesla. The key lies in why Tesla was also sued.
Because the victim's family believes that Tesla is also responsible for the accident.
According to the statement of driver George McGee, his phone dropped while he was driving. Out of trust in Tesla's assisted driving system, he lowered his head to pick it up, thinking that the vehicle would automatically brake when it detected an obstacle. But unexpectedly, the vehicle lost control at that time and rushed into the intersection at a speed of more than 60 miles (96 kilometers) per hour, hitting a car parked on the side of the road and two people standing next to it.
It's not hard to see that driver McGee is mainly responsible, and in fact, the verdict also shows this. McGee has to bear 67% of the responsibility. However, before this lawsuit, McGee had reached an out - of - court settlement with the victims and their families in advance.
The victim's family accused Tesla's Autopilot system of having design flaws and being misleading in marketing. As a result, Tesla became the sole defendant in this case.
The controversy in this case lies precisely in the liability determination between the driver of the accident vehicle and Tesla in this accident. Although driver McGee admitted that he was lowering his head to pick up the dropped phone at the time of the incident, the reason he did so was out of trust in Tesla's system, insisting that Autopilot "would automatically brake in an emergency".
This is also the core accusation of the plaintiff's lawyer. Tesla knows that the system is only suitable for closed highways but allows it to be activated on urban roads. Elon Musk's public claim that "Autopilot is safer than humans" in marketing has blurred the boundaries of technical responsibility.
During the trial, the plaintiff's lawyer provided a large amount of evidence to prove that Tesla's autopilot system failed to correctly identify obstacles on the road and failed to take effective avoidance measures in an emergency.
Before the incident, the vehicle with Autopilot enabled had run a red light and misidentified a traffic sign. Obviously, it was not on a closed highway, and the assisted driving system did not disengage under unsuitable road conditions, which means the vehicle has technical defects.
In addition, at the beginning of Tesla's 2016 promotional video for Autopilot, the driver only sat in the driver's seat because of legal requirements and did not operate the car throughout. Tesla drove by itself and a series of such actions gave the public an illusion that the vehicle could drive by itself. This means that Tesla exaggerated its promotion and misled consumers in terms of functionality.
It's worth mentioning that this video is also the promotional video that was recently "exposed as fake" by its own autopilot director. He said that it was not only faked, but also that Elon Musk was personally involved in the forgery.
After a long - term confrontation and trial, the jury finally determined that both the perpetrator and Tesla were responsible, and thus gave a verdict of "holding both parties equally responsible".
02 Elon Musk Still Holds Firm
Facing such a verdict, Tesla's attitude is naturally one of "dissatisfaction". In fact, on the day the verdict was announced, Elon Musk said that Tesla would appeal against the Florida jury's ruling.
"Today's verdict is wrong and will only hinder vehicle safety and endanger Tesla's and the entire industry's efforts to develop and implement life - saving technologies," the company said. The plaintiff fabricated a story "to shift the blame to the car", while "the driver admitted and accepted his own responsibility from the very beginning".
Tesla insists that this accident was entirely due to the driver, mainly based on several details.
The driver was speeding on the road at that time, and when he lowered his head to pick up the phone, his foot was still on the accelerator pedal. Tesla used the defense that "the driver's action of stepping on the accelerator overrode the system's instructions".
Another point is that the driver completely failed to fulfill the responsibility of observing the road conditions. He was only focused on looking for his phone and didn't look at the road. Moreover, the system had prompted that it was not recommended to turn on Autopilot on that road, but the driver still chose to turn on the assisted driving function.
In short, in Tesla's view, this accident has nothing to do with Autopilot, and the owner should bear full responsibility.
Tesla's lawyer emphasized in the defense that McGee was the only person responsible for the accident, and he also admitted his responsibility. He had driven through that intersection dozens of times, and it was his action of lowering his head to pick up the phone that caused the accident. In 2019, no safety system could have prevented a similar accident. "The plaintiff's lawyer is fabricating lies and trying to shift the blame to the vehicle."
Although driver distraction is the main cause, Autopilot "failed at a critical moment" and failed to brake in time, so it can't escape blame either.
Of course, this is not the first time Tesla has been sued for car accidents related to Autopilot or FSD assisted driving systems. Since 2016, Tesla has been involved in more than 20 similar car accident incidents and has been sued by accident owners or the families of the deceased. However, Tesla has always insisted that it was because the owner failed to take over the vehicle in time and has nothing to do with the assisted driving system. Moreover, basically all these lawsuits have been resolved or dismissed without going to trial.
But this case is the first time Tesla has lost a related lawsuit and has been determined to bear partial responsibility for the accident. This is also the reason why Tesla insists on appealing.
This defeat is like opening a gap for Tesla, but Elon Musk still insists that FSD is safer than human driving.
Not long ago, Elon Musk revealed that the upcoming FSD V14 is about to be released. He said that the driving performance of V14 will be better than that of human drivers, calling it "feeling like it has perception".
The stubborn Elon Musk even negated lidar this time. He said that if a lidar and a radar sensor are installed on the vehicle at the same time, it may sometimes cause inconsistent recognition results and reduce the vehicle's safety.
It seems that this defeat doesn't mean much to Elon Musk. As for such a large - scale compensation, just take a look...
This article is from the WeChat public account "SuperEV - Lab" (ID: SuperEV - Lab), author: Wang Lei, published by 36Kr with authorization.