TechCrunch Mobility: All eyes on Tesla FSD

Welcome back to TechCrunch Mobility, your hub for the future of transportation and now, more than ever, how AI is playing a part. To get this in your inbox, sign up here for free — just click TechCrunch Mobility ! A quick heads-up to readers: I will not publish an issue next week due to the July 4th holiday. I will see you all the following week. A series of stories this week highlight the continued — and apparently growing — scrutiny of Tesla’s automated driving system known as Full Self-Driving (Supervised). A fatal crash involving a Tesla that struck a home in Texas and killed a 76-year-old woman gained national attention after the driver told police that Autopilot — the company’s basic driver-assistance system, which has since been discontinued — was engaged at the time of the crash. Ashok Elluswamy , vice president of AI software at Tesla, shared a different account of the crash, claiming on X that the driver manually overrode “self-driving by pressing the accelerator all the way to 100% of the accel pedal in this residential area.” His comments suggest the vehicle was equipped with FSD (Supervised), and not Autopilot, but without an independent investigation we don’t know for sure. But we might, eventually. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) and the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) have now opened investigations into the crash. …