DETROIT — Federal safety investigators have booted electric car maker Tesla Inc. from the group investigating a fatal crash in California that involved an SUV operating with the company’s Autopilot system. “Today, Tesla withdrew from the party agreement with the NTSB because it requires that we not release information about Autopilot to the public, a requirement which we believe fundamentally affects public safety negatively," a Tesla spokesperson told The Drive, "We believe in transparency, so an agreement that prevents public release of information for over a year is unacceptable. 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.”

April 11: Tesla says it has withdrawn from its party agreement with the NTSB: “We believe in transparency, so an agreement that prevents public release of information for over a year is unacceptable.”

April 12: NTSB releases a statement saying it had removed Tesla as a party to its crash investigation. “Such releases of incomplete information often lead to speculation and incorrect assumptions about the probable cause of a crash.”

On Thursday afternoon, Tesla issued a statement claiming that it withdrew from the agreement two days earlier after being told that it would be removed if it made additional statements before the NTSB finished its probe in the next 12 to 24 months. Tesla said it had “been clear in our conversations with the NTSB that they’re more concerned with press headlines than actually promoting safety” and accused the agency of violating its own rules while trying to prevent Tesla from disclosing all the facts. The safety board has subpoena power that it’s used in rare instances to compel companies involved in investigations to provide information. “We believe in transparency, so an agreement that prevents public release of information for over a year is unacceptable.”

Although Tesla won’t be a formal party to the probe, the company said it will continue to provide technical assistance to the NTSB. It's been less than two weeks since the stock of Tesla tumbled, when amid a flurry of scandal, production setbacks and Wall Street downgrades, the company admitted that its autopilot had been engaged during a fatal March 23 crash in which Apple engineer Walter Huang died when his Model X collided with a highway barrier in Mountain View, California, and caught fire. March 27: The NTSB sends two investigators to the crash scene and notes on Twitter: “Unclear if automated control system was active at time of crash.”

March 27: Tesla releases its first blog post, “What We Know About Last Week's Accident,” saying it hasn’t been able to retrieve computer logs from Huang’s vehicle and blames the damaged highway safety barrier for the severity of the crash. This in turn prompted a furious rebuke from the NTSB, which was angry that Tesla was clouding the conclusion by presupposing that the autopilot had no guilt:

And now, just hours after Huang's family hired a law firm in preparation for a major lawsuit against Tesla, Musk doubled down and once again placed the blame for the fatal Model X crash on the deceased driver, claiming in an emailed statement that the tragic accident happened on a clear day, with several hundred feet of visibility ahead, and that Huang didn’t have his hands on the steering wheel for six seconds before his vehicle collided with a highway barrier in Mountain View, California, and caught fire. “We don’t believe this is right and we will be making an official complaint to Congress,” Tesla added, saying it would make an open records request to “understand the reasoning behind their focus on the safest cars in America while they ignore the cars that are the least safe.”

NTSB spokesman Christopher O’Neil said the agency declined to comment on Tesla’s allegations. Musk's repeat defense of the autopilot, which we also learned that Huang had previously complained about, and which nearly caused a similar fatal crash at exactly the same location, will once again infuriate the National Transportation Safety Board, whose investigators are currently looking into the causes of the crash that killed Huang, as well as a collision in January involving a Tesla Model S using Autopilot that rear-ended a fire truck parked on a freeway near Los Angeles. And yet, the company has declined to say how long drivers can now use Autopilot between visual or audible warnings to have a hand on the wheel, how many alerts can be ignored before the system disengages, what version of software was in Huang’s Model X, or when it was built. It also says automatic emergency braking “is not designed to avoid a collision and is not a substitute for maintaining a safe travelling distance between you and the vehicle in front of you.”

In its statement Thursday, Tesla says there is one auto death in the U.S. for every 86 million miles driven, but for Tesla vehicles, it’s only one death for every 320 million miles.
Tesla Inc. withdraws from the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board's probe of a fatal Model X crash in California. Tesla had drawn the NTSB's ire by releasing information publicly about its view of the case and about the car's Autopilot feature, something the Board does not allow during active investigations.