After years of battling a lawsuit, Tesla has now settled the infamous 2018 fatal Autopilot crash that killed Apple engineer Walter Huang after the EV sped towards a barrier near San Francisco.
In the past five years, Tesla and the departed's family fought it out in court, with both presenting their case and evidence about whose fault it was.
It is one of the earliest cases against Tesla and its autonomous driving, and this settlement now allows the company to pay for other cases instead of going to trial.
Tesla Settles Fatal 2018 Autopilot Crash After Legal Battle
(Photo: Sean Gallup/Getty Images)
Court documents revealed that Tesla was able to settle with the family for an undisclosed amount regarding the crash, neither confirming nor denying the issue.
Both parties have presented their cases in this five-year legal trial. One says it was the fault of the other, and Tesla claims that Huang misused the system and was playing video games while doing so.
On the other hand, Huang's family claimed that Autopilot caused their 2017 Model X to crash into the highway barrier and raise other usage issues.
Read Also: Tesla Autopilot Issue: Elon Musk's Vision vs. Engineering Safety Concerns Exposed
Tesla is Not Going to Trial, Not Answering Questions
The settlement came as Tesla and the plaintiff were nearing the start of this high-profile case that started in 2018, with the EV company avoiding the trial where it could be forced to answer questions about the incident and its tech.
It was revealed by a law professor at the University of South Carolina that this might send a message to other attorneys and cases that the company will resort to settlements and payouts rather than fight this in court.
The Many Cases of Autopilot Crash Lawsuits
Tesla has faced scrutiny over its Autopilot and Full-Self Driving (FSD) autonomous driving technology for years, with many victims pursuing a lawsuit against the company for their allegedly flawed system.
Last year, there were several times that Tesla escaped being named the culprit of the incident, with one centering on the 2019 case where the jury found that Tesla was not accountable.
However, not all cases against Tesla went well. Last year, a Florida judge ruled against the company, saying that the EV company knew about its Autopilot's defects.
This centered on a 2019 crash near Miami, FL, with the Florida judge allowing the case against Tesla for deliberate misconduct and gross negligence to proceed. Moreover, this came forth despite Tesla winning two California lawsuits against its Autopilot systems.
In another case, the NTSB ruled in favor of Tesla not being the culprit behind a 2019 incident where a Model S crashed into a tree.
Now, Tesla has settled a lawsuit from 2018, one of the most renowned cases against them, centering on the California accident that claimed the life of an Apple engineer, with experts looking at this as a dangerous precedent for the company's future cases for settlements.
Related Article: Ex-Tesla Employee Whistleblower Claims Autopilot as 'Experiments on Public Roads'
