July 16 (Xinhua) — A court in Munich, Germany has asked U.S. electric car maker Tesla to compensate a consumer who paid for a Model X electric SUV due to problems with the in-car advanced driver assistance system Autopilot on Friday, local time. The consumer reportedly paid 112,000 euros (about $762,977) for the Model X electric SUV. A technical report showed that the Model X electric SUV was unable to reliably identify obstacles such as narrow sections of construction sites and sometimes activated the brakes unnecessarily.
The court ruled that it could pose a “great danger” in the city center and cause a crash.
Tesla lawyers reportedly argued that the Autopilot system was not designed for urban traffic. A court in Munich, Germany, said it was impractical for drivers to manually turn the feature on and off in different driving situations because it would distract them.
U.S. safety regulators are investigating Tesla’s Autopilot feature. Previously, it was reported that Tesla vehicles with Autopilot active crashed into stationary emergency personnel and road maintenance vehicles, resulting in a total of 16 crashes, including seven fatalities and one injury.
Tesla said the Autopilot system enables the vehicle to brake and follow automatically in the lane, but does not allow the vehicle to drive itself.
Musk said in March this year that Tesla may launch a new “Full Autopilot” beta software in the European market later this year, depending on local regulatory approval.
At the time, he told employees at the new Berlin superfactory, “It’s very difficult to achieve fully autonomous driving in Europe.” Musk said a lot of work needs to be done to deal with tricky road conditions in Europe, where road conditions vary greatly from country to country.
