Tesla Settles Autopilot Class Action Lawsuit

Tesla has settled a class-action lawsuit over the company’s autopilot system for its Model S and Model X cars, which was accused of being “dangerous.”

The lawsuit reportedly claimed that the autopilot system was “essentially unusable and demonstrably dangerous,” prompting Tesla to “compensate car owners who purchased the 2.0 version of Autopilot and had to wait longer than expected for the driving features to become active.”

“Class members, who paid an extra $5,000 to get the Autopilot upgrade between 2016 and 2017, will receive between $20 and $280 in compensation,” Reuters explained, adding, “Tesla has agreed to place more than $5 million into a settlement fund, which will also cover attorney costs and other fees.”

In April, Tesla blamed a driver who died in an autopilot accident.

“According to the family, Mr. Huang was well aware that Autopilot was not perfect and, specifically, he told them it was not reliable in that exact location, yet he nonetheless engaged Autopilot at that location,” the company declared in a statement. “The crash happened on a clear day with several hundred feet of visibility ahead, which means that the only way for this accident to have occurred is if Mr. Huang was not paying attention to the road, despite the car providing multiple warnings to do so.”