It seems the facts of the story are similar though. In the Zhang case, they were driving 50 mph over the speed limit. Brakes were depressed, but not hard or early enough. Automatic braking kicked in, which caused the brake pedal to be depressed much harder, but not enough to avoid the crash (and possibly led to driver believing that there was a brake failure?).
At least, this is what I found [1] while trying to understand the story a bit better. Who knows what's true?
There's no proof either way, so we must weigh facts ourselves. Which lie is more likely - an embarrassed driver who wrecked their new Tesla at 50 over the speed limit in a culture that values saving face, or a company with deep pocketbooks to compensate the occasional malfunction instead chooses to risk their entire authorization to sell to 1/5th of the earth by attempting fabricate millions of data points perfectly, any one of which could reveal their lie. The conspiracy levels one entertains can vary a lot person to person. I'm not implying the answer is obvious. It's up to each reader to choose their world model.
At least, this is what I found [1] while trying to understand the story a bit better. Who knows what's true?
[1] https://teslamotorsclub.com/tmc/threads/model-3-braking-fail...