Tesla told the agency this week that customers had filed warranty claims consistent with the situations outlined by NHTSA on at least 18 occasions between spring 2019 and fall 2022. The filing notes that the automaker The automaker said it was not aware of any injuries or deaths related to the defects discovered by the agency.
NHTSA filings say Tesla disagreed with the agency’s analysis but agreed to continue with the recall. The agency says the software bugs will be fixed through an over-the-air update “in the next few weeks,” which means motorists won’t have to bring their vehicle in for service. Tesla did not respond to a request for comment, and it’s unclear what changes the automaker will make to its fully self-driving feature. (Company report disbanded its press team in 2020.) But Tesla, SpaceX and Twitter CEO Elon Musk tweeted that using the word “recall” to describe the update “is outdated and completely wrong!”
Tesla’s Full Self-Driving is not really “self-driving” as most people understand it. Even Tesla calls it a “driver assistance” feature that is in “beta”. The company document states that drivers must be alert and ready to take over at any time.
This feature is intended to keep the car driving in a lane; automatic lane change; parallel park; and slow down and stop at stop signs and traffic lights. Drivers paid anywhere between $5,000 and $15,000 for the “beta” feature. It was first released in 2020 to customers who Tesla said had proven they were safe and skilled enough to test the software on public roads.
At the end of November, Tesla released the feature to everyone who paid for it. Some Tesla owners have filed a class-fraud lawsuit on technology, quote by Musk many promises that true self-driving technology is only a matter of months away.
Tesla releases its quarterly vehicle safety report, which says cars using Autopilot are much less likely to crash than the average American vehicle. But that comparison doesn’t take into account other variables that could shed more light on Autopilot’s role in crashes, including the type and age of the vehicle (new and luxury vehicles like the Tesla are less more crashes) and location (rural areas, where Teslas are less common, see more crashes on average). Federal data shows that Tesla vehicles equipped with Autopilot have caused at least 633 crashes since July 2021.
This is just Tesla’s latest trouble with the federal government. The investigation into collisions between first responders and vehicles on Autopilot continues. NHTSA also launched an investigation last year after it received hundreds of driver complaints that the company’s vehicles on Autopilot displayed “ghost brakes,” stopping suddenly without warning or cause. core.
Some of Tesla’s interactions with the US government have been more tolerable. Just this week, the Biden Administration announced that the company will be participating in an effort to create a nationwide, public electric vehicle charging network by allowing drivers of other electric vehicles to use part of its well-developed Supercharger network for the first time.
The announcement marks a softening after years of eternal frost between Musk and the White House. The CEO has argued that the administration has not recognized Tesla for kicking off a project to electrify climate-friendly vehicles in the US; the administration pushed back against Tesla anti-union stance. The truce comes in Musk’s love language: a tweet by the president.
