Despite the revelation that Ms Chao was intoxicated, not surprising given she had been celebrating, there is indication that her Tesla did in fact glitch and drive her into the pond.
The report said Chao left the lodge at 11:37 p.m. and, wrapped in a blanket, got in her Tesla. She apparently intended to drive to another house in the compound. Surveillance video shows the car lurching forward, then reversing over a limestone block wall at the edge of the pond.
Right there, the Tesla lurched forward suggesting that she had in fact put it into drive and then suddenly it reversed; this is not unlike the behavior of another Tesla accident posted below that suddenly surged forward before reversing itself. Its likely this behavior, combined with possible distance she reversed, that likely prompted investigators to consider the accident to be strange from the onset. The "sudden" revelation that she was intoxicated would have been known by investigators within the first 24 hours but only recently confirmed by blood work.
At least 12 complaints filed with the Department of Transportation and first reported by Business Insider are related to how Tesla vehicles are put into reverse. Seven users have reported confusion with the gearshift design, resulting in them sometimes putting the car into drive when they intended to shift to reverse, or vice versa. Five other complaints were from people who said their Teslas appeared to switch between drive and reverse without warning, according to Business Insider.
5 complaints have been filed with the DoT claiming their Teslas shifted themselves from drive to reverse without warning. I dont know if the following accident is one of those five, but below is video evidence of a Tesla lurching forward into a car as the driver attempted to park. Then the Tesla suddenly reverses itself and drives itself backwards until it hits a neighbor garage. This would be like Ms Chaos Tesla reversing into the Pond. Media indicated that EMI may have caused the accident as i have indicated may have also impacted Ms Chao's Tesla! EVs and especially Teslas are a danger to the public.
Heres an example of it being claimed in the media that electromagnetic interference is causing Teslas to drive on their own without driver input. Case study of where this has been observed in other EVs posted below. Video of the Tesla driving itself is here:
Video Footage:
https://youtu.be/AuViTuuYgpg
For an expert opinion, KXAN took the case to Dragan Djurdjanovic. A professor in mechanical engineering, Djurdjanovic looked into similar allegations against Tesla around 2008. The expert said it's very possible that electromagnetic interference between wires caused the accident.
Not only can low-frequency magnetic fields pose health hazards to human beings, but they can also affect some electric control units (ECUs) in a vehicle. An ECU that consists of Hall-effect sensors located near the battery pack or powertrain modules could be affected by the low-frequency magnetic field if no sufficient shielding is provided.
The electromagnetic interference affects the automobile electronic control system mainly in two ways: one is to affect the input signal of the sensor of the electronic control system, causing distortion and resulting in electric control signal where the ECU output does not match the driver's intention, which leads to the wrong operation of the actuator; the other is to interfere the ECU output signal to result in its deviation, misleading the operation of the actuator.