April 8 (Reuters) - Tesla has settled a lawsuit

over a 2018 car crash that killed an Apple engineer after his

Model X, operating on Autopilot, swerved off a highway near San

Francisco, court documents showed on Monday.

The settlement was made on the eve of the trial over the

high-profile accident involving Tesla's driver assistant

technology. Tesla faces a series of lawsuits over crashes

related to the alleged use of Autopilot, putting the automaker

at risk of large monetary judgments and reputational damage.

The settlement, whose terms were not disclosed, came as

Chief Executive Elon Musk is making major promotions of

self-driving technology, which he has touted as key to the

financial future of the world's most valuable automaker.

The 2018 accident killed 38-year-old Walter Huang. His

family had alleged that Autopilot steered his 2017 Model X into

a highway barrier. Lawyers for Huang's family had also raised

questions about whether Tesla understood that drivers likely

would not or could not use the system as directed, and over what

steps the automaker took to protect them.

Tesla had contended that Huang misused the Autopilot system

because he was playing a video game just before the accident.

Huang's lawyer and Tesla were not immediately available for

comment.

The crash that killed Huang is among hundreds of U.S.

accidents in which Autopilot was a suspected factor in reports

to auto safety regulators.

The U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration

has examined at least 956 crashes in which Autopilot was

initially reported to have been in use. The agency separately

launched more than 40 investigations into accidents involving

Tesla automated-driving systems that resulted in 23 deaths.

"It is striking to me that Tesla decided to go this far

publicly and then settle," said Bryant Walker Smith, a law

professor at the University of South Carolina with expertise in

autonomous vehicle law. "What this does do, though, is it says

to other attorneys, we might settle. We might not always fight

it. That is the signal."

The case follows two previous California trials over

Autopilot that Tesla won by arguing the drivers involved had not

heeded its instructions to maintain attention while using the

system.

Despite marketing features called Autopilot and Full

Self-Driving, Tesla has yet to prove it can produce an

autonomous car despite years of predictions by co-founder and

CEO Elon Musk that one was just around the corner, an

expectation that partly underpinned Tesla's soaring valuation.

Musk said on Friday that Tesla plans to unveil a completely

self-driving robotaxi on Aug. 8, after Reuters reported that

Tesla scrapped an inexpensive car plan in favor of robotaxis.

He also said last month that Tesla will offer U.S. customers

a month's free trial of its driver-assist technology, Full

Self-Driving.

Tesla says Autopilot can match speed to surrounding

traffic and navigate within a highway lane. The step-up

"enhanced" Autopilot, which costs $6,000, adds automated

lane-changes, highway ramp navigation and self-parking features.

The $12,000 Full Self-Driving option adds automated features for

city streets, such as stop-light recognition.

Tesla materials explaining the systems warn that it does

not make the car autonomous and requires a "fully attentive

driver" who can "take over at any moment."