Elon Musk Unmasked as Empathic Dad in Emails to Father of Teen Who Died in Tesla Car Crash

Behind his controversial personality as the CEO of Tesla and Space X, Elon Musk is apparently an empathic dad who understands the pain of losing a son. In 2018, the brash billionaire spent weeks exchanging emails with another father whose teenager died in a Tesla car crash.

According to Bloomberg, the victim's father sued Tesla for wrongful death, but Musk conveyed his sorrows to the family in the emails, which went into the court records. Musk told James Riley, who lost his son Barrett Riley, that he knew what he was going through in one of his messages.

"My firstborn son died in my arms," Musk wrote to James. "I felt his last heartbeat."

Death of Elon Musk's Son

In 2002, Musk's son with then-wife Justine Wilson, Nevada Alexander Musk, was only 10 weeks old when his parents found him not breathing in his crib. Paramedics tried to revive the baby, but Wilson wrote in a piece on Marie Claire that Nevada was already brain-dead because he was out of oxygen for so long.

Their baby spent three days on life support at the hospital until Musk and Wilson decided it was time to let him go. Wilson said that Nevada died of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS).

While Wilson openly grieved for Nevada, she said that Musk seldom talked about the loss. However, he and Wilson would go on to have a set of twins and triplets until their divorce in 2008.

The Tesla Tragedy

Ten years later, James would also grieve for his son, who died driving a Tesla Model S at 116 miles in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Barrett and a friend in the passenger seat were crashed into a wall and were trapped in the car by engulfing flames.

Per a request from James, the Tesla CEO signed off on tweaking a computerized feature of the car that would allow parents to control its maximum speed. A month following the accident, Tesla released software to include parental controls on a smartphone app that allows mothers and fathers to lower the maximum speed of a Tesla from 50 to 90 mph.

A page was also dedicated to Barrett in the manual of the updated feature, as James asked as well. He told Musk in their email exchanges that an acknowledgment of Barrett's death, along with his friend, which would lead to the safety of other drivers and Tesla riders, was a nice gesture from the CEO.

However, after filing a wrongful death lawsuit, James sued Musk and Tesla again in 2020 for product liability. He claimed that Barrett died because the car's battery caught fire due to the accident.

The dad also stated in the complaint that Tesla removed a limiter device without their consent when the Riley family had the Tesla serviced two months before the accident. The complaint cited that Barrett would still be alive had the limiter been reinstalled in the car.

However, Tesla has responded to the product liability lawsuit and stated that Barrett returned to their service center to have the speed limiter removed because it affected the car's acceleration. According to the court dockets, this trial will begin in Florida sometime this year.