Tesla Autopilot system was on during fatal California crash, adding to self-driving safety concerns

In mid-April, a Tesla crashed into a tree in a suburb outside of Houston, and it took firefighters four hours to put out flames fueled by the car’s battery pack. When the fire was out, they concluded that neither of the car’s two occupants had been in the driver’s seat at the time of the crash. A Tesla executive later broke with that official account and claimed that a person had been in the driver’s seat. A National Transportation Safety Board spokesman later said Tesla was “working with” the investigation but is “not a party” to it, a break with typical procedure that suggests a strained relationship between Tesla and regulators.