The National Transportation Safety Board expressed displeasure with Tesla TSLA 3.24% Inc.’s recent disclosure that the company’s semiautonomous driving system was activated before a fatal crash last month in California.
The agency, which dispatched a team last week to investigate the March 23 crash, said Sunday it is “unhappy” that Tesla revealed detailed information it had gleaned from vehicle logs about the collision, including its suggestion that the driver had time to put his hands on the wheel and react.
Tesla declined to comment Sunday about the NTSB statement.
The rare rebuke from the U.S. agency, which investigates significant accidents involving various transportation modes, comes amid mounting scrutiny of partial and fully automated driving technologies. The NTSB is also probing the March 18 death of a pedestrian fatally struck by an Uber Technologies Inc. self-driving vehicle with a safety operator behind the wheel in Tempe, Ariz.
Not long after the NTSB expressed its disapproval Sunday, Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk joked on Twitter that the company was going bankrupt. “Despite intense efforts to raise money, including a last-ditch mass sale of Easter eggs, we are sad to report that Tesla has gone completely and totally bankrupt,” he wrote. “So bankrupt, you can’t believe it.”
Mr. Musk’s tweet, which doesn’t appear to be in response to the NTSB, was timed for April Fools’ Day and Easter. But it also comes at a particularly sensitive time for Tesla, which is also in a tight cash situation as it tries to ramp up production of its mass-market car, the Model 3.
Tesla is expected to report first-quarter vehicle sales numbers this week, and the market will be carefully examining the company’s guidance on whether or not it can hit its oft-delayed goal, of producing 5,000 Model 3 cars each week, by the end of the second quarter. Analysts say that milestone is an inflection point for Tesla when the company can start generating cash.
Tesla’s shares had surged over the past couple of years on the promise that Mr. Musk could not only deliver an all-electric car for the masses, but also fulfill his vision of creating cars that drive themselves.
Tesla’s disclosure on Friday that the semiautonomous system, called Autopilot, was engaged before the fatal crash near Mountain View, Calif., immediately reignited questions about the technology. A man was killed after his Tesla Model X sport-utility traveling southbound on Highway 101 collided with a barrier and was struck by two other vehicles, according to the California Highway Patrol.
Tesla late Friday said Autopilot was activated in the seconds leading up to the crash. The driver’s hands weren’t detected on the wheel for six seconds before the collision, the company said. Tesla said vehicle logs showed the driver took no action despite having five seconds and about 500 feet of unobstructed view of the concrete highway divider.
On Sunday, the NTSB said it needs Tesla to decode the data recorded by the vehicle. “In each of our [past] investigations involving a Tesla vehicle, Tesla has been extremely cooperative on assisting with the vehicle data,” an agency spokesman said. “However, the NTSB is unhappy with the release of investigative information by Tesla.”
The NTSB said it would probe all aspects of the crash, including suggestions the driver had expressed previous concerns about Autopilot. It said it would publish a preliminary report on the investigation, likely within a few weeks of completion of field work.
“We’ve been doing a thorough search of our service records and we cannot find anything suggesting that the customer ever complained to Tesla about the performance of Autopilot,” Tesla said in a statement. “There was a concern raised once about navigation not working correctly, but Autopilot’s performance is unrelated to navigation.”
The NTSB probe won’t necessarily lead to sanctions against the electric car company. The NTSB determines probable causes of accidents and makes recommendations to policy makers, but doesn’t issue penalties or take other punitive actions.
Write to Mike Spector at mike.spector@wsj.com and Tim Higgins at Tim.Higgins@WSJ.com
Appeared in the April 2, 2018, print edition as 'NTSB Rebukes Tesla in Wake of Crash.'