Elon Musk suggests that autopilot was not turned on during the ghastly Saturday car crash, Shares of Tesla fall

Shares of Tesla fell 2.5% in premarket trading on Monday, following the ghastly incident that occurred over the weekend in Houston, involving its 2019 Model S.

According to news reports, two people died in the fatal car crash – one at the passenger seat and the other at the back seat – leaving the driver’s seat vacant which is believed to be a result of an autopilot crash. A Wall Street Journal responder at the crash site said they were almost certain that there was no one driving the car. The responder said it took about four hours and 32,000 gallons of water to put off the fire.

Although all fingers point at the possible failure of Tesla’s autopilot which resulted in the deadly crash, CEO and founder Elon Musk argues that autopilot wasn’t responsible for the crash.

The Tesla boss tweeted on Monday that the initial data accessed by Tesla indicated that the vehicle’s Autopilot driver-assistance technology wasn’t enabled. He said the data logs recovered so far show no sign that the Autopilot was engaged and that the owner of the car didn’t purchase a “Full Self-Driving” option to enhance the full functionality of the Autopilot.

The EV maker clearly stated that the Autopilot system is primarily for highway travel, and isn’t a substitute for drivers. It said the system also requires “active driver supervision” and shouldn’t be left unattended.

Chief of the Woodlands Fire Department Palmer Buck said during a Monday phone interview with Bloomberg the department received several calls about a fire incident, but by the time the fire-fighters arrived at the scene, the whole vehicle was engulfed in flames. He was certain that there was no one behind the wheel.

To confirm the fire chief’s statement, local police said there was “no one” driving the vehicle, as the deceased passengers were found in the passenger seat and the back seat.

Federal regulators from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) and the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) launched an investigation into the crash, Monday morning. The news of the investigation sent Tesla’s shares plunging as much as 6.5% and closed down 3.45% at $714.63.

Texas police served Tesla search warrants on Tuesday to secure crash data, a senior officer, Mark Herma told Reuters Monday. The demand for Tesla crash data came after Musk insisted that the company’s checks showed that the vehicle’s Autopilot was not engaged.

Although Tesla declined to comment on the matter when asked, Musk took to his tweeter to make his claims. Herman said the first officials have heard from Tesla was Musk’s tweet which stated that data logs the company retrieved so far rules out the use of Autopilot, but still leaves many questions unanswered.

“If he is tweeting that out, if he has already pulled the data, he hasn’t told us that,” Herman said. “We will eagerly wait for that data.”

The federal authorities probing Tesla said they have some witness statements which state that both deceased occupants of the car left to test drive the vehicle to see how it could drive itself. Saturday’s crash is the 28th Tesla crash to be investigated by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), which regulates vehicle safety.

Ironically, a few hours before the crash, Musk has tweeted: “Tesla with Autopilot engaged now approaching 10 times lower chance of accident than average vehicle.”