What made this such a big deal that it was reported in the news even IF you assume everything happened exactly as stated? Every once in a while (let's say 1 in 100,000) ICE cars will have a fault and the engine will die on the freeway. At that point, the car will begin to slow down whether you want it to or not and depending on the type of power steering and brakes, you may lose some steering and brake control: you may have to use a lot of force to turn or brake. The only difference here is that the car decided to maintain speed until the driver used the brakes, at which point he was able to pull over safely. I would argue that is better than just "dying" and drifting to a stop.
When the only thing that makes it news is that it's an EV, it's not news!
Mike