Tesla CEO Elon Musk has a sensitive side, as shown in recent court documents submitted during a wrongful death lawsuit.
Musk exchanged emails with a grieving father whose teen died in a Tesla fire for weeks, according to court records obtained by Bloomberg.
The emails between Musk and James Riley lasted nearly seven weeks and led to Musk helping to update a speed-limiting safety feature by request of the father.
When driving his father’s Tesla Model S on May 8, 2018, Barrett Riley lost control while going 116 miles per hour, before crashing into a Fort Lauderdale, Florida home.
Both Riley and his passenger passed away in the accident, as the car caught on fire.
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James Riley went on to lodge a lawsuit against Tesla two years later, but not before Musk emailed the father offering to talk — in an extremely rare glimpse into the automaker head’s sensitive side.
In the email, Musk said, “There’s nothing worse than losing a child,” he wrote.
Riley responded saying he would like to talk, but that he and his wife weren’t quite ready yet.
Musk responded saying, “I understand. My firstborn son died in my arms. I felt his last heartbeat,” in reference to son Nevada Alexander Musk who passed away at just 10 weeks old.
Tesla in June 2018 issued a software update to offer a way to limit a vehicle’s maximum speed between 50 to 90 mph, locked by a four-digit PIN. The company dedicated the feature to Barrett Riley in its user manual, at the request of James Riley in an email to Musk.
Musk told James days before the software update, Tesla “is doing everything we can to improve safety. My friends, family and I all drive Teslas, and even if they didn’t I would still do everything I could.”
James Riley claims a speed limiter installed on his Model S was removed by Tesla without permission, when his vehicle was being serviced at the automaker. The lawsuit says if the limiter was in place, his son would still be alive today.
Tesla in response said James’s son Barrett went himself to a service center to ask for the speed limiter to be removed.
The emails were revealed in a court filing in a wrongful death suit over for a different Tesla accident, in which the lawyer is trying to convince the judge to force Musk to be questioned about the company’s Autopilot. The case is set to go to trial later this year, Riley v. Tesla Inc., 20-cv-60517, U.S. District Court, Southern District of Florida (Fort Lauderdale).
