As popular as Teslas are in the EV market, the company is still linked to issues with its Autopilot feature, particularly collisions caused by it. The EV giant will attempt to fix the situation by issuing an update to millions of vehicles.
Tesla Update for US Vehicles
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) kept its eye on Tesla during a two-year investigation regarding the alleged defect in its self-driving technology, resulting in an issued recall on Monday to address the issue.
The company is now required to provide software updates for more than two million vehicles with affected models such as Model S from 2012-2023, Model Y from 2020-2023, Model X from 2016-2023, and Model 3 from 2017 to 2023, all of which support the Autosteer feature.
Although it's categorized as a recall, affected Tesla owners are expected to get an over-the-air software update which could be issued "shortly after" December 12th, as reported by The Verge. The 2023.44.30 update will be of no charge to Tesla customers.
The NHTSA said in a statement that in certain circumstances when Autopilot is engaged, "the prominence and scope of the feature's controls may not be sufficient to prevent driver misuse," which could eventually lead to an increased risk of collision.
With that said, the EV company is adding more controls and alerts so that drivers would be in full control of the vehicle when Autosteer is enabled. With the new update, Autosteer cannot be used by drivers "when conditions are not met for engagement."
Reports say that Tesla still does not agree with the analysis from the agency. Regardless, it has been collaborating with the NHTSA from October 6th to December 4th to come up with a solution for its safety concerns.
Ultimately, the EV giant identified nine warranty claims regarding the Autosteer defect as of December 8th, although Tesla still believes that it only "may be related" to the self-driving feature and that it's still not a total guarantee.
While the investigation for the issued recall was two years long, the NHTSA has actually been looking into Tesla incidents since 2016, and over 50 crashes that were investigated were suspected to be due to the Autopilot feature.
New Feature for Precaution
No matter how many updates are issued for the Autopilot feature, Teslas manually driven by its owners can still suffer vehicular incidents. In acknowledgment of this, the company is soon adding a feature that allows the car itself to call emergency services when an accident occurs.
In addition to calling 911, it will also send information to a Public Safety Answering Point (PSAP) such as vehicle type, number of passengers detected in the vehicle, GPS, and the VIN. Unfortunately, some models may not support this feature.
Model Y vehicles, for instance, can only get the Emergency Call function depending on the date of manufacture and market region. To activate it manually, you can head to the touchscreen's top status bar and tap the SOS icon.
