TESLA said yesterday that one of its cars had crashed in Beijing while in “autopilot” mode, with the driver contending sales staff sold the function as “self-driving,” overplaying its actual capabilities.

    Tesla said it had reviewed data to confirm the car was in autopilot mode, a system that takes control of steering and braking in certain conditions.

    The company, which is investigating the crash in China’s capital last week, also said it was the driver’s responsibility to maintain control of the vehicle. In this case, it said, the driver’s hands were not detected on the steering wheel.

    The crash, Tesla’s first known such incident in China, comes months after a fatal accident in Florida, which turned up pressure on auto industry executives and regulators to tighten rules on automated driving technology.

    A 33-year-old programmer at a tech firm, Luo Zhen was driving to work and engaged the autopilot function as he often does on Beijing’s highways, he told Reuters in his first interview with international media.

    Luo, who filmed the incident with a dashboard camera, said his car hit a vehicle parked half off the road. The accident sheered off the parked vehicle’s side mirror and scraped both cars, but caused no injuries.

    “The driver of the Tesla, whose hands were not detected on the steering wheel, did not steer to avoid the parked car and instead scraped against its side,” a Tesla spokeswoman said in an emailed response to Reuters.

    “As clearly communicated to the driver in the vehicle, autosteer is an assist feature that requires the driver to keep his hands on the steering wheel at all times, to always maintain control and responsibility for the vehicle, and to be prepared to take over at any time.”

    Luo, however, blamed the crash on a fault in the autopilot system and said Tesla’s sales staff strongly promoted the system as “self-driving.” “The impression they give everyone is that this is self-driving, this isn’t assisted driving,” he said.

    Interviews with four other unconnected Tesla drivers in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou also indicated the message conveyed by front-line sales staff did not match up with Tesla’s more clear cut statements that the system is not “self-driving” but an advance driver assistance system (ADAS).

    These Tesla owners all said salespeople described the cars’ function in Chinese as “self-driving,” a term the company generally avoids using in English, and took their hands off the wheel while demonstrating it.

    Tesla does not regularly announce its sales data for China, where it has faced tough local competition, and it is not clear how many cars in the country have autopilot, an add-on feature that costs more than 27,000 yuan (US$4,000) extra.

    (SD-Agencies)