“Because of the damage caused by the collision, the car was physically incapable of transmitting log data to our servers, and we therefore have no way of knowing whether or not Autopilot was engaged at the time of the crash,” a Tesla spokeswoman, Alexis Georgeson, said in the company’s statement. “We have tried repeatedly to work with our customer to investigate the cause of the crash, but he has not provided us with any additional information that would allow us to do so,” she said of the car’s owner, Mr. Gao’s father.

She said Tesla was saddened to learn of the death of Mr. Gao. “We take any incident with our vehicles very seriously and immediately reached out to our customer when we learned of the crash,” she said.

Tesla and Autopilot have been under scrutiny since the disclosure of the May fatality. That crash killed Joshua Brown, 40, whose 2015 Model S was traveling 74 miles per hour when it collided with a tractor-trailer that had turned left and was crossing a highway near Williston, Fla. Autopilot’s radar and cameras failed to recognize the white truck against a bright sky.

News of the China crash comes just three days after Tesla’s chief executive, Elon Musk, outlined changes planned for Autopilot that he said would have prevented Mr. Brown’s accident and that he contended would make the Model S one of the safest cars on the road.

The changes include refinements in Autopilot’s radar that improve its ability to spot and identify obstacles down the road and additional warnings to force drivers to keep their hands on the steering wheel and eyes on the road while the system is active.