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Gao’s family filed the lawsuit in a Beijing court in July against Tesla and the Beijing-based dealer who had sold Gao the car.
Gao Yaning’s family filed the lawsuit in a Beijing court in July against Tesla and the Beijing-based dealer who had sold Gao the car. Photograph: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
Gao Yaning’s family filed the lawsuit in a Beijing court in July against Tesla and the Beijing-based dealer who had sold Gao the car. Photograph: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

Tesla says it has 'no way of knowing' if autopilot was used in fatal Chinese crash

This article is more than 7 years old

The damage suffered during the collision that killed Gao Yaning made the car ‘physically incapable’ of determining if autopilot was engaged, the company said

Tesla Motors is investigating the cause of a fatal crash in China involving one of its vehicles but said that it has “no way of knowing” if its semi-automated autopilot system was engaged at the time of the accident.

“Because of the damage caused by the collision, the car was physically incapable of transmitting log data to our servers,” the company said in a statement on Wednesday.

China’s CCTV on Wednesday reported 23-year-old Gao Yaning died in January after crashing into the back of a road-sweeping vehicle while driving a Tesla car on a highway in the north-eastern province of Hebei.

Gao’s family filed the lawsuit in a Beijing court in July against Tesla and the Beijing-based dealer who had sold Gao the car.

Tesla, in its statement, said it had “tried repeatedly to work with” Gao’s family to determine the cause of the crash, but the family “has not provided us with any additional information that would allow us to do so”.

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