Just heard one mention of this on I think CNN, and have not heard it again in the past 15 minutes.
News person stated that they had just received information that after the message about the electrical short circuit, the plan continued for some hours more under autonomous control.
They did not say where this information came from, but I wonder if there is something to this and why the confusion around the time contact was reported as lost. Could it be voice communication was lost around 3 hours after takeoff, but the plan was then tracked for another couple of hours until it was closer to the African coast.
Just watching other news feeds now to see if anyone else mentions this.