LONDON: Five children and an adult were taken to hospital with injuries after a Tesla Inc Model 3 crashed in a school car park in southern England on Monday, the Telegraph newspaper said.
At least one person was said to have been pinned under the electric car in the car park in Sussex, the report said, adding that the exact number was not clear.
The National Health Service's South East Coast Ambulance Service said one person was in critical condition and three had potentially serious injuries.
It was not known if there was a driver behind the wheel at the time of the collision, the Telegraph added.
Tesla did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
In a related development, US auto safety regulators opened a formal safety probe on Monday into Tesla's driver assistance system Autopilot after a series of earlier crashes involving Tesla models and emergency vehicles.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) said it had identified 11 crashes since January 2018 in which Teslas "have encountered first responder scenes and subsequently struck one or more vehicles involved with those scenes."
The probe will take in 765,000 US vehicles with Autopilot built since 2014.
NHTSA, which closed an earlier investigation into Autopilot in 2017 without taking any action, has come under fire for failing to ensure the safety of the system that handles some driving tasks and allows drivers to keep their hands off the wheel for extended periods.
After the new probe, the auto safety agency could opt to take no action, or it could demand a recall, which might effectively impose limits on how, when and where Autopilot operates.
Any restrictions could narrow the competitive gap between Tesla's system and similar advanced driver assistance systems offered by established automakers.
Tesla did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Chief Executive Elon Musk has repeatedly defended Autopilot and in April tweeted that "Tesla with Autopilot engaged now approaching 10 times lower chance of accident than average vehicle."
NHTSA said it had reports of 17 injuries and one death in the 11 crashes, including the December 2019 crash of a Tesla Model 3 that left a passenger dead after the vehicle collided with a parked fire truck in Indiana.
The 11 crashes included four this year and it had opened a preliminary evaluation of Autopilot in the 2014-2021 Tesla Models Y, X, S, and 3. The crashes involved vehicles "all confirmed to have been engaged in either Autopilot or Traffic Aware Cruise Control," it said.
Before NHTSA could demand a recall, it must first upgrade an investigation into an engineering analysis. The two-step investigative process often takes a year or more.
NHTSA said most of the 11 crashes took place after dark and crash scenes included measures like emergency vehicle lights, flares or road cones.
