Elon Musk admitted Tesla mistake to crash victim’s dad, lawyer says

After confirming that James Riley, through his company, was the registered owner of the car, Musk said Tesla technicians shouldn’t have removed the speed limiter without his authorisation, according to the lawyer’s account of the phone call. — AFP

Elon Musk told the father of a teenager who died in a Tesla Model S crash that the carmaker made a mistake in removing a speed limiter from the vehicle without the father’s permission, a lawyer for the family said in court.

Curtis Miner, the attorney, told a jury on July 7 that the billionaire chief executive officer of Tesla Inc made a “critical confession” when James Riley asked him in a May 2018 phone conversation how a device that was supposed to prevent the vehicle from going faster than 85 miles per hour (137 kilometers per hour) was removed before 18-year-old Barrett Riley veered off a Florida road at 116mph and hit a wall.