Tesla will recall 2 million cars due to autopilot
The company said that the updated software will be sent via the Internet directly to the on-board computers of electric vehicles
Elon Musk's Tesla is recalling more than two million of its electric vehicles after the US regulator found potentially dangerous defects in the automatic control system.
Prior to that, the company had been investigating accidents with cars that occurred when the autopilot was on for two years, Bloomberg reports.
Almost all Tesla cars sold in the United States since 2015 in a configuration that included an autopilot are subject to recall.
However, owners will not have to drive their cars to sales and service centers: Tesla said that it will send the necessary firmware for the software directly to the onboard computers of electric vehicles via the Internet. However, formally, this is still called a recall.
Autopilot is designed to help the driver with road control, acceleration, and braking, but despite its name, it still requires some effort from the person behind the wheel.
According to the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), the recall is related to a defect in the driver monitoring system. This system monitors the behavior of a person behind the wheel – first of all, whether they are paying attention to the road, whether they keep their hands on the steering wheel, and whether they have fallen asleep.
During the investigation, the NHTSA reviewed the circumstances of 956 accidents in which the autopilot was involved and ruled that the system's controls "may not be sufficient to prevent driver abuse."
On Tuesday, the company defended its autopilot in a post on Twitter.
"Safety performance is significantly higher with autopilot on than off," it said, pointing to statistics showing that there were fewer road accidents when the system was used.
Background. As a reminder, Tesla has officially started deliveries of the cheapest model of the Cybertruck electric pickup truck.
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