Tesla engineer defends ‘full self-driving’ name at crash trial

A Tesla engineer in court on Wednesday rejected a lawyer’s suggestion that the company named its driver-assistant feature “Full Self-Driving” because it wanted people to believe that its systems had more abilities than was really the case.

The electric vehicle maker is defending itself at the first US trial over allegations that Tesla’s Autopilot feature led to a death. The lawsuit, filed in a California state court, alleges the Autopilot system caused owner Micah Lee’s Model 3 to suddenly veer off a highway east of Los Angeles at 65 miles per hour (105 kph), strike a palm tree and burst into flames, all in the span of seconds.