News
Tesla Model S driver using Autopilot killed after crash with tractor trailer
New details were released of a driver that was killed after his Autopilot enabled Tesla Model S was involved in a deadly crash with a tractor trailer. The crash took place on May 7 in Williston, Florida, when 40 year old Joshua Brown’s Tesla Model S on Autopilot failed to detect a tractor trailer under a brightly lit sky and proceeded to pass underneath it.
LATEST UPDATE: Witnesses reveal new details behind the deadly Tesla Model S accident [Video]
According to a statement issued by Tesla on its blog,
“What we know is that the vehicle was on a divided highway with Autopilot engaged when a tractor trailer drove across the highway perpendicular to the Model S. Neither Autopilot nor the driver noticed the white side of the tractor trailer against a brightly lit sky, so the brake was not applied. The high ride height of the trailer combined with its positioning across the road and the extremely rare circumstances of the impact caused the Model S to pass under the trailer, with the bottom of the trailer impacting the windshield of the Model S.”
This accident marks the first Autopilot related fatality in more than 130 million miles of driving bringing to light that fatalities are statistically inevitable with autonomous driving cars.
The Police beat of the May 7 incident describes the event in tragic detail.
“The top of Joshua Brown’s 2015 Tesla Model S vehicle was torn off by the force of the collision. The truck driver, Frank Baressi, 62, Tampa was not injured in the crash. The FHP said the tractor-trailer was traveling west on US 27A in the left turn lane toward 140th Court. Brown’s car was headed east in the outside lane of U.S. 27A. When the truck made a left turn onto NE 140th Court in front of the car, the car’s roof struck the underside of the trailer as it passed under the trailer. The car continued to travel east on U.S. 27A until it left the roadway on the south shoulder and struck a fence. The car smashed through two fences and struck a power pole. The car rotated counter-clockwise while sliding to its final resting place about 100 feet south of the highway. Brown died at the scene.”
Site of fatal crash in Florida. Credit: TMC member Some Guy
Tesla has released a full and comprehensive statement regarding this incident. As is its usual custom, it reiterates that Autopilot is still in beta mode and that the driver always remains ultimately responsible for the safe operation of the car. From the description of the accident, it seems like death or serious injury was inevitable even if the driver had been in full control of the car. This is definitely one of those “corner cases” Elon Musk says make designing autonomous driving software that can react appropriately to every imaginable situation.
Joshua was a notable member of the Tesla community having often shared his endorsement of Tesla’s Autopilot system by way of the many personal driving videos he posted to YouTube.
Here is Tesla’s statement in full:
A Tragic Loss
The Tesla Team June 30, 2016
We learned yesterday evening that NHTSA is opening a preliminary evaluation into the performance of Autopilot during a recent fatal crash that occurred in a Model S. This is the first known fatality in just over 130 million miles where Autopilot was activated. Among all vehicles in the US, there is a fatality every 94 million miles. Worldwide, there is a fatality approximately every 60 million miles. It is important to emphasize that the NHTSA action is simply a preliminary evaluation to determine whether the system worked according to expectations.
Following our standard practice, Tesla informed NHTSA about the incident immediately after it occurred. What we know is that the vehicle was on a divided highway with Autopilot engaged when a tractor trailer drove across the highway perpendicular to the Model S. Neither Autopilot nor the driver noticed the white side of the tractor trailer against a brightly lit sky, so the brake was not applied. The high ride height of the trailer combined with its positioning across the road and the extremely rare circumstances of the impact caused the Model S to pass under the trailer, with the bottom of the trailer impacting the windshield of the Model S. Had the Model S impacted the front or rear of the trailer, even at high speed, its advanced crash safety system would likely have prevented serious injury as it has in numerous other similar incidents.
It is important to note that Tesla disables Autopilot by default and requires explicit acknowledgement that the system is new technology and still in a public beta phase before it can be enabled. When drivers activate Autopilot, the acknowledgment box explains, among other things, that Autopilot “is an assist feature that requires you to keep your hands on the steering wheel at all times,” and that “you need to maintain control and responsibility for your vehicle” while using it. Additionally, every time that Autopilot is engaged, the car reminds the driver to “Always keep your hands on the wheel. Be prepared to take over at any time.” The system also makes frequent checks to ensure that the driver’s hands remain on the wheel and provides visual and audible alerts if hands-on is not detected. It then gradually slows down the car until hands-on is detected again.
We do this to ensure that every time the feature is used, it is used as safely as possible. As more real-world miles accumulate and the software logic accounts for increasingly rare events, the probability of injury will keep decreasing. Autopilot is getting better all the time, but it is not perfect and still requires the driver to remain alert. Nonetheless, when used in conjunction with driver oversight, the data is unequivocal that Autopilot reduces driver workload and results in a statistically significant improvement in safety when compared to purely manual driving.
The customer who died in this crash had a loving family and we are beyond saddened by their loss. He was a friend to Tesla and the broader EV community, a person who spent his life focused on innovation and the promise of technology and who believed strongly in Tesla’s mission. We would like to extend our deepest sympathies to his family and friends.
Elon Musk
Elon Musk shuts down talk of TSMC taking over Terafab
Musk says Tesla and SpaceX will build and run Terafab, with TSMC limited to renting.
Elon Musk has drawn a firm line around who will be in charge of Terafab, the giant chip factory Tesla and SpaceX are planning in Texas.
Musk replied to a post on X arguing that Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) would most likely end up owning and operating the plant. “No, we will build and run the fab. Let there be ZERO doubt about that,” Musk wrote. “Maybe TSMC subleases part of the Terafab if they want, but nothing more than that.”
In plain terms, a sublease means TSMC could rent a section of the complex to make chips, similar to a tenant renting one floor of an office tower. The building, the equipment decisions and the daily operation would stay with Tesla and SpaceX.
@herbertong @thejefflutz No, we will build and run the fab. Let there be ZERO doubt about that.
Maybe TSMC subleases part of the Terafab if they want, but nothing more than that.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 7, 2026
The comment shuts down speculation that started last week. On October 2, tech journalist Tim Culpan reported that TSMC was exploring ways to help run Terafab’s factories. Musk responded the next day that it was “just discussions, but something may come of it,” as Teslarati reported at the time. That left room for a scenario where the world’s largest contract chipmaker took the wheel. Musk’s latest post closes that door.
Some background helps explain why this matters. Tesla designs its own AI chips today but pays outside companies like TSMC and Samsung to manufacture them. Musk unveiled Terafab in March as a joint project between Tesla, SpaceX and xAI, arguing that existing suppliers cannot expand fast enough to meet his companies’ future demand. The goal is to produce enough chips each year to supply one terawatt of computing power, roughly 50 times what the entire global AI chip industry produces now.
Those chips are meant for Tesla’s Optimus humanoid robots, the Cybercab and Full Self-Driving computers, along with chips for SpaceX’s planned data centers in orbit. Owning the factory means Musk’s companies would not have to compete with every other chip customer for time on someone else’s production lines.
Intel is still part of the picture. The company signed on in April to help design, build and package chips for the project, and CEO Lip-Bu Tan told Bloomberg this week that Intel will keep working on Terafab despite the TSMC chatter.
The project moved from concept to construction planning over the summer. In August, SpaceX confirmed the Grimes County site about an hour from Houston, sent the county a $10 million payment under its tax abatement deal and said civil work would begin shortly. The first phase carries a $16.8 billion price tag, and total spending across all phases could reach as much as $119 billion.
TSMC chairman C.C. Wei has said a new fab typically takes two to three years to build and another one to two years to reach full output. Tesla and SpaceX have never run one, which is why TSMC’s expertise drew so much attention. Musk’s answer suggests he would rather learn that process in house than hand control of a project this central to Tesla’s robotics and autonomy plans to an outside company.
Terafab Texas will be the largest and most valuable building on Earth by far.
And it will be stunningly beautiful. https://t.co/4NweOqTL7y
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 6, 2026
Elon Musk
Trump to hand Elon Musk a top honor that traces back to JFK
Trump will award Elon Musk the National Medal of Science at Thursday’s White House summit.
Elon Musk is set to receive the highest honor the U.S. government gives to scientists and engineers.
President Donald Trump will present Musk with the National Medal of Science on Thursday at the White House’s Science: A New Golden Age Summit, Fox News Digital first reported on Wednesday. Google cofounder Sergey Brin, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and AMD CEO Lisa Su will receive the same medal, while Dell Technologies CEO Michael Dell and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella will receive the National Medal of Technology and Innovation. A White House official later confirmed the list to Reuters.
“The Trump administration is grateful for the contributions of these incredible leaders in science and technology. These recipients are helping ensure America keeps leading the world in innovation,” White House spokesperson Liz Huston told Fox News.
FIRST ON FOX: Trump will award Elon Musk the National Medal of Science at the White House Thursday.
Sergey Brin, Jensen Huang and Lisa Su will also receive the science medal, while Michael Dell and Satya Nadella will receive the technology medal.
It marks Trump’s first time presenting the awards across either administration.
Full story here https://t.co/omnrLV0EwS
— Fox News Politics (@foxnewspolitics) October 7, 2026
It will be the first time Trump has presented either medal in his two terms. Congress created the National Medal of Science in 1959, and the National Science Foundation, which administers it, says 529 scientists and engineers have received it since. A presidential committee reviews nominees, but the president makes the final call.
Thursday’s group of medalists run or founded companies, and three of them sit at the center of the Super Intelligence hardware race that Musk competes in. Huang’s Nvidia supplies the GB300 chips filling SpaceX’s Colossus 2 cluster, while Su’s AMD is Nvidia’s biggest rival in data center GPUs.
Worth noting that Trump’s uncle, MIT physicist John G. Trump, received the National Medal of Science from President Ronald Reagan for his work on ionizing radiation and its uses in medicine and industry.
The Pentagon taps Elon Musk to design the battlefield of the future
For Musk, the medal is the latest sign of how far his relationship with Trump has come since their 2025 split over the “Big Beautiful Bill” and his exit from DOGE. Last week, he sat at Trump’s left during a White House lunch where AI executives signed a voluntary safety accord, and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth named him to help lead the Pentagon’s Project Meridian study on the future of warfare. Musk has also adopted the administration’s new vocabulary, saying on Sunday that SpaceXAI will be renamed SpaceXSI after Trump ordered federal agencies to replace “artificial intelligence” with “super intelligence.”
Musk has collected science honors before, including the Stephen Hawking Medal for Science Communication in 2019.
Lifestyle
Tesla FSD changed its mind mid-intersection, and it may have saved a life
Tesla shares dashcam footage of FSD Supervised stopping mid intersection to avoid a T-bone crash.
Tesla is putting another Full Self-Driving save in front of its 24.8 million followers on X.
On Tuesday morning, Tesla’s main account shared a dashcam clip with the caption “FSD Supervised preventing T-bone crash.” The footage came from an owner posting as TheNewGrid, who described what happened at a stop sign: “I looked at the car coming to the stop sign figured they would stop, my car went, then came to a stop mid intersection as they flew by. Had I been manually driving this would have resulted in a crash.”
The sequence is the notable part. FSD had already started crossing when the other driver ran the stop sign. Instead of pressing on, the car braked hard in the middle of the intersection and let the crossing vehicle pass in front of it. By the owner’s own account, they had made the same assumption the software initially made, that the other car would stop, and would not have corrected in time.
FSD Supervised preventing T-bone crash
— Tesla (@Tesla) October 6, 2026
The clip is the latest in a run of safety posts Tesla has amplified over the past several days. On Saturday, the company shared a video from Selling Sunset star Jason Oppenheim, who sold his Bentley for a Model Y and said he was buying Teslas with FSD for 10 of his employees. Ashok Elluswamy, who leads Tesla AI, followed up by writing that Tesla self-driving “reacts to other people cutting into your path with super-human response times.” On Monday, a Cybertruck owner posted footage of FSD moving across three lanes from a red light to clear a path for an ambulance approaching from behind.
This recent clip also lands a few weeks after Tesla began shipping Automatic Collision Evasion with FSD v14.3.9, a feature that can activate FSD on the driver’s behalf when a frontal collision is imminent or the driver appears distracted. Elluswamy said in September that “even earlier prediction of hazards, even faster reaction time and overall significantly better safety and collision avoidance” are coming with v15, the release Tesla has tied to round the clock Robotaxi operation.
The safety messaging matters beyond social media. Tesla has said FSD Supervised was 4.1 times less likely to crash than manual driving across 100 million kilometers on European roads, and it has been putting those figures in front of regulators. Eight EU countries have now approved FSD Supervised, with Croatia the most recent, but the EU’s bloc-wide vote originally set for October 6 has been pushed to December at the earliest.
FSD Supervised is still a Level 2 system, and the driver remains responsible at all times. Even heavy users find reasons to step in. Teslarati’s Joey Klender, who uses FSD for about 76 percent of his driving, laid out five recurring issues on Tuesday that still prompt him to intervene. Clips like this one show the other column of that ledger: moments where the software caught a mistake a human was about to make.
Elon Musk shuts down talk of TSMC taking over Terafab
Trump to hand Elon Musk a top honor that traces back to JFK
Tesla FSD changed its mind mid-intersection, and it may have saved a life
The Pentagon taps Elon Musk to design the battlefield of the future
Tesla Roadster’s new patent preps white-knuckle speeds, keeping it grounded
