Tesla shares fall after driver claims car crashed while using autopilot

NEW YORK: Tesla Inc shares dropped on Monday after a Minnesota man claimed his vehicle suddenly accelerated after he engaged the car’s driver-assistance system and crashed into a marsh.

Dave Clark, 58, told police the 2016 vehicle left the roadway after he activated Tesla’s Autopilot system, according to a statement released on Sunday by the Kandiyohi County Sheriff’s Office. Clark and four adult passengers sus-tained minor injuries, police said.

“We are working to establish the facts of the incident and have offered our full cooperation to the local authori-ties,” Tesla said in an emailed statement. “We have not yet established whether the vehicle’s Autopilot feature was activated, and have no reason to believe that Autopilot, which has been found by NHTSA to reduce accident rates by 40%, worked other than as designed.”

Tesla shares fell as much as 4.4% and traded down 3.3% to $317.10 as of 11:36 am in New York trading. The stock has climbed 48% this year. Months after a fatal May 2016 crash in which the Autopilot system and the vehicle’s driver failed to brake for a semi truck that was crossing a Florida highway, Tesla began shipping each of its new vehicles with more cameras and sensors to give them 360-degree visibility.

The National Hi ghway Traffic Safety Administration investigated the incident and didn’t find a defect. The regulator and Tesla have said Autopilot is a driver-assistance feature and not a self-driving system, and drivers are told when engaging it to keep their hands on the wheel.