Tesla is recalling over 2 million vehicles following the conclusion of a series of accidents involving its Autopilot self-driving system by the US government.
Tesla has recently announced the recall of almost all the cars it has sold in the US market. This action is in response to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) determining that Tesla’s self-driving technology could increase the risk of traffic accidents.
This recall affects 2.03 million vehicles, including the Model S, Model X, Model 3, and Model Y models equipped with the Autosteer feature. The solution provided by Elon Musk’s company is to update the software to limit the vehicle’s automation capabilities, provide warnings to the driver to keep their hands on the steering wheel, and simplify the on/off functionality of this feature.
The NHTSA has been conducting investigations for over two years into the correlation between Tesla’s autonomous features and accidents involving Tesla electric vehicles. According to their findings, there have been 736 accidents across the US directly or indirectly related to Tesla’s autonomous driving features, including 17 fatalities. Notably, the number of accidents has sharply increased in the past two years as Tesla introduced new features that enabled the vehicles to operate almost entirely on their own.
The Autopilot technology has faced criticism for encouraging Tesla owners to excessively rely on this driving assistance technology. The capabilities of this technology only reach level 3 – which means conditional automation in specific cases and still requires driver supervision. Currently, level 4 autonomous driving technology – semi-autonomous driving – is being tested, and there are no commercially available vehicles that have achieved level 5 – fully autonomous driving.
In February of this year, Tesla also had to recall 362,000 vehicles in the US to update the FSD Beta self-driving software after the NHTSA stated that these vehicles did not fully comply with traffic safety laws and could pose a risk of accidents.
In the future, the NHTSA has stated that it will continue to investigate Tesla while monitoring and evaluating the effectiveness of the measures the company has implemented. The agency will also work closely with car manufacturers to ensure the highest level of safety for drivers and road users.
By Thai Son (Tuoitrethudo)