Tesla ordered to pay $243 million in lawsuit over 2019 Autopilot crash
A jury in Miami federal court in Florida on Friday found that Tesla was responsible for about a third of the accident in the state that killed one pedestrian and seriously injured another when the Tesla Model S drove through a T-intersection and hit a parked car at 80.5kph.
The jury assigned the remaining two-thirds to the driver, who was reaching for his mobile phone at the time of the crash.
'Today's verdict is wrong and only works to set back automotive safety and jeopardise Tesla's and the entire industry's efforts to develop and implement life-saving technology. We plan to appeal given the substantial errors of law and irregularities at trial,' Tesla said in a statement.
Brett Schreiber, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, said after the verdict: 'Tesla designed Autopilot only for controlled-access highways yet deliberately chose not to restrict drivers from using it elsewhere, alongside Elon Musk telling the world Autopilot drove better than humans.'
Mr Musk, the world's richest person, is Tesla's chief executive and majority Tesla shares fell 1.8 per cent at the market close on Friday, and are down 25 per cent this year.
In the second quarter of 2025, Tesla said in its safety report that it recorded one crash for every 6.69 million miles driven in which drivers were using its Autopilot technology.
For drivers who were not using Autopilot, it recorded one crash for every 963,000 miles driven. By comparison, the most recent data available from National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and Federal Highway Administration (from 2023) shows that in the US there was an car crash approximately every 702,000 miles.
Tesla markets its automated driving systems under two brand names – Autopilot and Full Self-Driving. All new Tesla cars come with the Autopilot driver-assist feature as a standard option and the company sells the more advanced Full Self-Driving at a premium for an additional $10,000.
Autopilot allows the car to steer, accelerate and brake automatically for other vehicles and pedestrians. Full Self-Driving offers more enhanced features such as auto-parking and automatic lane changes while driving on the motorway.
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