Assisted driving tech in focus after fatal electric car crash in China

autonomous driving features.

A Xiaomi SU7 sedan drove into a concrete guardrail on an expressway in eastern China late Saturday at a speed of around 60 mph, according to a post on Xiaomi's official social media account. On Tuesday, local media published reports about the collision and ensuing fire, which killed three college students, along with pictures of the charred remains of the vehicle.

Xiaomi said the driver had deployed the company's Navigate On Autopilot, an assisted-driving feature, while going around 70 mph on the expressway. The car was traveling at that speed when it reached a roadblock, because a portion of the road was under repair with traffic diverted into a different lane.

Seconds before the collision, the car warned that there were obstacles ahead and started to decelerate, but it was too late. The company said it had called the police and emergency services.

China has aggressively promoted assisted driving or driverless technology in a bid to establish global leadership in the emerging field. Many Chinese makers of electric vehicles include these advanced features on their mass-production cars. When there are fatal accidents involving the technology, information about the crashes is quietly removed from the Chinese internet.

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Xiaomi promotes its assisted-driving capabilities on the company's official website. It says the car can automatically accelerate or decelerate, change lanes, enter and exit a highway, and avoid construction. However, it cautions that these «intelligent