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WBTV, CBS television affiliate for Charlotte, NC reports
Tesla Motors says the Model S sedan involved in a fatal crash in the Netherlands wasn't operating in the company's semi-autonomous Autopilot mode and was going more than 96 miles per hour when it crashed.
The 53-year-old driver of the electric sedan died [September 6] when his car smashed into a tree in the central Dutch town of Baarn and burst into flames, police and firefighters said. Police are investigating the cause of the early morning accident in the town 40 kilometers (25 miles) southeast of Amsterdam.
Tesla said the car's logs show Autopilot wasn't engaged at any time during the man's trip, and that he was driving at more than 155 kilometers per hour, or 96 mph. The speed is consistent with the damage the car sustained from hitting the tree, the company said. Tesla sent representatives to the scene of the accident.
Electrek adds
The driver was reportedly dead by the time the firefighters were on the scene.
[...] The fire was difficult to extinguish according to the firefighters. They reportedly didn't know how to approach the vehicle without being electrocuted--leaving the body of the driver in the vehicle.
[...] Apparently, the problem wasn't due to a lack of knowledge on how to handle a crashed electric vehicle, but because of the state of the wreckage. [...] "This car is completely destroyed, hampering the recovery. In this situation, you never know what can happen."
Some of the battery modules reportedly fell out of the battery pack after the crash and subsequent fire.
[Eds Comment: The speed limit on the road was 90 kph / 56 mph. The vehicle is assessed to have been travelling at 154 kph/ 96 mph
See also: https://soylentnews.org/comments.pl?sid=15392&cid=398721]
(Score: 2) by meustrus on Thursday September 08 2016, @09:31PM
You make a good point, but that's not what I was trying to get across. Tesla is held accountable to a standard unreasonably above and beyond everyone else. The autopilot issues are just the latest thing. And I guarantee you they would not be getting the press they are (not to mention the jokes) if it wasn't Tesla. For some reason the idea of a more efficient, environmentally friendly vehicle that doesn't run on controlled explosions of an extremely volatile fluid rubs a lot of people the wrong way. My point was to mock such people.
As an aside: Good autonomous driving technology uses laser range-finding tech that puts the vehicle above $200,000 on its own (that's what the Google car uses and that's why we can't have one). Even if Tesla's autopilot were based on the good stuff, which it can't be given the retail price, it is still a statistical inevitability that somebody will be killed by it sooner or later. Nobody wants to be the first one to kill a customer with their autonomous driving technology and deal with the PR fallout (which is the real reason we can't have it). This should go double for Tesla given the irrational hatred directed toward it, but apparently they weren't that concerned. And no, I'm not lining up to have my car drive itself. As long as I need to be prepared to take the wheel, I don't need any invitation to not be.
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
(Score: 3, Informative) by PocketSizeSUn on Friday September 09 2016, @01:55AM
Good autonomous driving technology uses laser range-finding tech that puts the vehicle above $200,000 on its own ...
Just a quick nit. Lidar is expensive but it isn't that expensive. It's more in the neighborhood of $80,000 when google first started with their LIDAR and lower end LIDAR that would work is closer to $30,000. Since these LIDAR today are all pretty much low volume custom runs the price is high. The projected price for commercial production (say you decide to put it on 100k cars) is projected to be around $10,000 with full commercial acceptance driving the price down to the 1-2k range.
Hope this helps.
(Score: 2) by cubancigar11 on Friday September 09 2016, @03:29AM
I don't think that Tesla gets unconventional criticism because "some people" want to electric car to go away. I think it is because Tesla was marketed as the car-of-the-future in the beginning and the hype was very real around it being designed by Musk who was portrayed as next Steve Jobs. Musk invited attention, complete with "I was about to fail but then my rocket company succeeded and everyone was proved wrong and I am back" story line. Now that he has attention and publicity, Tesla is not doing anything totally new like it promised, so people are focusing on the shortcomings.
If Tesla came up with something entirely new tomorrow, you can forget this kind of news even existed. But Tesla can't, as it is burning money.
(Score: 2) by theluggage on Friday September 09 2016, @10:22AM
Tesla is held accountable to a standard unreasonably above and beyond everyone else. The autopilot issues are just the latest thing.
Tesla also make extraordinary claims for their vehicles - and probably benefit from "no such thing as bad publicity". Now, don't get me wrong, I have huge respect for what Tesla have achieved in terms of advancing the cause of EVs and would love to have one - if only I fitted the profile of people for whom they made sense. I don't - low annual mileage but with occasional (sometimes short notice) long trips - and yes, I have carefully looked into the logistics: they don't work for me, at least, not well enough to justify the premium cost of an EV. However, I can see that, for others, they hit the sweet spot.
So, yeah, Telsa have stuck their head up, and its going to get shot at. Welcome to Earth. However, they've got their work cut out solving the problems with EVs so I think they've been rather foolish opening up a second front with Autopilot. Sure, they should be researching autonomous cars, but actually rolling out "hands off" tech regular customers is way premature. Firstly, as you point out, they're trying to do it "on the cheap" without Lidar (whereas what needs to happen is for someone to invest in mass-production of Lidar kit the way Tesla have been investing in batteries) and secondly, self-driving is absolutely going to be held to unreasonably high safety standards, and won't be ready for public use until this is proven and the legal situation established. Personally, I'm not operating a self-drive vehicle until the manufacturer accepts liability for accidents.
(Actually, what probably needs to happen is that insurers should stop trying to assign fault: your car gets bent, hits a pedestrian, your passenger gets injured - your insurer pays: the bill is going to end up with some insurance company anyhow and what goes around comes around. Good news is: then, when you get rear-ended, maybe your insurer won't sell your details to lawyers and ripoff replacement car services or force you to use their nominated repair shop...)