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Auto-park bashed our neighbour's car - should Tesla pay both repair bills?

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My wife has just used auto-park to park our Model 3, and while on auto-park it swung round way too early at speed damaging the left rear of the car in front and right front side of our car. It did it too quickly to have cancelled, and there were no obstacles and there was plenty of space so we've no idea why it would have misjudged so badly.

We've pulled the video which clearly shows the speed our car was going and how much it shook the other car on impact. Although the videos don't confirm it was on auto-park, it does show movements that would be familiar to those who have used auto-park, and Tesla should have the telematics data confirming it was on auto-park at the time of impact.

We'll take our car to Tesla and hope they'll repair our damage free of charge, but we have some unanswered questions:
- Who will pay for the repair to the damage to the other car, us or Tesla?
- How do we report to Tesla, because this sounds like some sort of bug that they should fix?
- Given the only thing we use "Full Self Driving" for is the auto-park, and we've lost confidence in auto-park now, is there any way to get the "Full Self Driving" package cost refunded?

Does anyone on this forum have any experience with this scenario?
 
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From the manual

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I rarely use auto park. The reason behind it; it is so slow that by the time it finishes I would have done it like 4 times already. How sure are you that no misuse of the accelerator took place?
As for covering costs I doubt Tesla will chip in. They state everywhere that all auto functions are to be supervised and it is the drivers responsibility.
I hope the damage is not too big and it doesn't cost you a fortune to get it shorted out.
Also regarding refund on FSD; I haven't heard of anyone actually achieving this. They refuse to transfer it from one Tesla to another; nevermind pay back for it.
 
You are ultimately responsible for what the car does on AP or auto park. Auto park is speed limited and pretty slow. If it accelerated at “high speed” as was stated, then it seems highly likely that the driver hit the accelerator. Every example of unintended acceleration has been determined to be driver input.
This’ll make for an interesting conversation with his wife. The old ‘It wasn’t me, it was the car’.

I’d rather pay for all the damage than have this conversation with my missus :)
 
This’ll make for an interesting conversation with his wife. The old ‘It wasn’t me, it was the car’.

I’d rather pay for all the damage than have this conversation with my missus :)

I’m with you there!

“And that, your honor, is when the fight started”

Regardless, based on what was described, it is pretty apparent that she mistakenly hit the accelerator instead of the brake. We can say that even if the OP wouldn’t dare.
 
How sure are you that no misuse of the accelerator took place?

It is not consistent with a driver having hit the accelerator by mistake, because the issue isn't so much the speed but the fact that it swung round way too early. Looking at the video, the speed of the impact is consistent with the normal auto-park speed. I described it as "at speed" because auto-park always moves faster than when I manually park, given the narrow streets and (usually but not this case) tight parking spots in the area.
 
Studying the video carefully, the time between auto-park starting and the car making impact was under 3 seconds. It is hard to tell from the video at what point the auto-park started behaving unexpectedly, i.e. swung around too soon, but it is likely to have been well under 1 second, which isn't really enough time for a human to react.
Are you sure the driver didn’t see the turn angle didn’t look right and misapplied the accelerator (bearing in mind “one pedal driving”) instead of the brake pedal?
 
It is not consistent with a driver having hit the accelerator by mistake, because the issue isn't so much the speed but the fact that it swung round way too early. Looking at the video, the speed of the impact is consistent with the normal auto-park speed. I described it as "at speed" because auto-park always moves faster than when I manually park, given the narrow streets and (usually but not this case) tight parking spots in the area.

Okay, you have edited your original post. You originally stated at “high speed”. Your words, not mine. Also, the description of how the car shook suggests a speed greater than the speed that auto park is restricted to. Auto park typically has to make at least a couple of back and forth maneuvers to park. If the driver overrides with accelerator input, it will hit the other car. Sorry, I know you want to blame Tesla, but this one is driver error.
 
To reiterate what's been said by others. In UK law the driver is ultimately responsible.

You could initiate a civil case against tesla to recoup the costs, but you need to be damm sure of your facts before you go down that route and it can get very expensive very quickly.
 
Have you got a link to the video? You're asking us to comment on a situation where you have more information than we do.

It didn't let me attach mp4 files, so I put them inside zip files - sorry for the extra level of indirection.

Timings are:
00:03 - autopark starts moving the car
00:06 - impact

To re-iterate the points above, the issue is that autopark turned the front of our car too soon hitting the back of the car in front. Of those 3 seconds the autopark is active, it is hard to tell from the video at what point it would be clear that it was turning too soon, but I'd guess you'd have had well under 1 second to react. And the issue is the turning too soon rather than the accelerator being hit or anything like that. Tesla's telematics should confirm it was autopark driving and that the user didn't touch any controls. I also have TeslaMate running - is there any data I can pull out of there?
 

Attachments

  • autoparkprang-2021-04-19_13-30-front.zip
    5.6 MB · Views: 220
  • autoparkprang-2021-04-19_13-30-right_repeater.zip
    3.8 MB · Views: 160