Elon Musk opened up about losing his own son

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There is nothing more devastating than losing your kid,” Elon Musk addressed the family of a driver who died in a Tesla collision. Over worries over Tesla’s speed limiter, Tesla CEO Elon Musk addressed a series of emails to James Riley in 2018.

In an email discussion recently made public with the family of a motorist who died in a Tesla incident, Tesla CEO Elon Musk revealed that his eldest son had perished in a car accident.

In an email to James Riley dated May 10, 2018, Tesla CEO Elon Musk wrote, “There is nothing worse than losing a child.”

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After losing control of his Tesla Model S while travelling at 116 mph and ploughing into a concrete wall in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, Riley’s 18-year-old son Barrett Riley perished in the catastrophic wreck.

In December, the family of Edgar Monserratt, the front-seat passenger who died in the incident, filed a wrongful death case in Broward County Court against the driver of the car. Lawyers are attempting to convince a judge to order Tesla CEO Elon Musk to answer questions about the company’s Autopilot feature.

When Musk’s emails to the family cover six weeks in 2018, he expresses his sorrow for the disaster and promises to provide them access to the crash data as well as meet with them on the phone personally. Musk even brings up his own personal tragedy, the death of his 10-week-old son Nevada Alexander Musk due to complications during delivery.

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“I get it,” wrote Tesla CEO Elon Musk to Riley in response to Riley’s parents’ concerns about teenagers driving Teslas. “My first child died as I held him. I could hear and feel the beat of his heart.”

In 2002, Musk’s kid passed away. According to a biography of Musk authored by former New York Times writer Ashlee Vance, when Musk and his then-wife Justine Wilson went to rouse up the child, they discovered he was not breathing. According to the biography, the infant was on life support for three days.

When he heard of the tragedy, Musk told Riley he was “very upset.”

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“Everything we can do at Tesla to increase safety,” Musk wrote. “Even if my family, friends, and I didn’t own Teslas, I would still do all I could to promote Tesla.”

Tesla is being sued by both the Monserratt and Riley families. When Barrett Riley was able to circumvent a speed limitation put in place by his parents, Tesla “negligently” permitted him to do so, the Monserratt lawsuit claims. According to Riley’s product liability complaint, Tesla’s batteries “burst into an uncontrolled and lethal fire” after the incident and the youngsters were “killed by the battery fire,” not by their own car.

Emails from Musk reveal that he plans on modifying the function that enables parents to control the speed of their Tesla’s, as well as “acknowledging” Barrett’s death in the update.

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A software upgrade to the speed restriction function of Tesla’s app was released in June 2018 that allowed users to select a maximum speed between 50 mph and 90 mph using a password. Barrett Riley received special recognition in the owner’s handbook for this particular feature.

As previously said, a trial in Riley’s case is expected to take place this year. Tesla disputed that its battery was damaged in both lawsuits and claimed that Barrett had “power to authorise service/repairs on the vehicle.”

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