Tesla car crashes into bus in Germany

The crash involving a Tesla electric car and a Danish tourist bus took place Wednesday afternoon on an autobahn in northern Germany, police in Ratzeburg in Schleswig-Holstein state said on Thursday.

The car hit the bus as it changed lanes outside the northern town of Gudow. The 50-year-old driver of the car was slightly injured, while the 29 people on board the bus were unhurt in the incident.

Police said that the driver told officers he had used the car's autopilot. "We will now have to look into why the autopilot didn't work" to prevent the crash, police said in a statement.

A Tesla spokesperson, however, said in a statement that "we have spoken to our customer, who confirmed that Autopilot was functioning properly and that his use of Autopilot was unrelated to the accident.

"We're glad that he's safe."

Global scrutiny

This is not the first time Tesla's Model S came under the spotlight on account of such incidents. Two fatal crashes in northern China in January and in the US state of Florida in May drew global attention to the car's autopilot system.

Even a US Senate committee stepped in and demanded a briefing on the autopilot's role in the accident.

Tesla also updated the software for its autopilot following the deadly incident in Florida.

Still, consumer activists have called on the company, founded by PayPal billionaire Elon Musk, to disable the autopilot feature until it is updated to detect whether the driver's hands are on the steering wheel during operation, as the company says they ought to be.

The driver in Wednesday's crash told police that he had not removed his hands from the wheel while the autopilot was activated, German press agency DPA reported.

sri/hg (AFP, AP, dpa)