The driver of a Tesla Model S died after driving his car into a pond on Sunday night in Castro Valley, California.
His body wasn’t recovered until Monday morning by an Alameda County Sheriff’s rescue team, and authorities still don’t know why the man drove off the road and into the pond. A property owner nearby heard the crash on Sunday evening and called 911 after seeing that his fence had been damaged and noticed that there were tire tracks leading up to the pond.
“The vehicle was submerged…trees in the water made it difficult to tow it out,” stated CHP Sgt. Michael Novosel.
KTVU reporter Leigh Martinez was on location, where she learned that no other vehicles were suspected as being involved, according to CHP (California Highway Patrol) Castro Valley.
Authorities have yet to release the identity of the driver (adult male), while Tesla is also standing pat on making any official statements. Without a full investigation, it’s impossible to know anything regarding the condition of the driver or that of the vehicle prior to the crash.
Last week, the American EV-maker did release a statement with regards to another recent Model S accident, claiming that they have “not yet received any data from the car” and therefor don’t know any of the facts, “including whether Autopilot was engaged.”
We suspect the same could be said about this particular crash, which means we’ll just have to wait until all the facts are made public.
Update
Tesla released the following statement after analyzing the data following the crash: “We have been able to recover enough data from the vehicle to confirm that Autopilot was not engaged at the time of this accident.”
