“Insufficient.” That’s a word that Elon Musk does not like to hear, but the one used by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to describe Tesla Motor’s driver-assistance system in millions of its vehicles.
The largest electric vehicle company in the world now faces its first major crisis–a recall.
The Washington Post reports:
“There may be an increased risk of a crash,” the agency wrote, in some situations when the system is engaged “and the driver does not maintain responsibility for vehicle operation and is unprepared to intervene as necessary or fails to recognize when Autosteer is canceled or not engaged.”
The recall comes days after The Washington Post published an investigation that found Teslas in Autopilot had repeatedly been involved in deadly crashes on roads where the software was not intended to be used.
NHTSA said Tesla will send out a software update to fix the problems affecting its 2012-2023 Model S, 2016-2023 Model X, 2017-2023 Model 3, and 2020-2023 Model Y vehicles, effectively encompassing all Tesla vehicles equipped with Autopilot on U.S. roads. Autopilot is a standard feature on Tesla’s vehicles; only some early Tesla models are not equipped with the software.
“Automated technology holds great promise for improving safety but only when it is deployed responsibly; today’s action is an example of improving automated systems by prioritizing safety,” NHTSA said in a statement.
Investigators discovered that under certain circumstances with Autosteer, Tesla’s autodriving system, the driver could “not maintain responsibility for vehicle operation and is unprepared to intervene as necessary or fails to recognize when Autosteer is canceled or not engaged, there may be an increased risk of a crash.”
Luckily for the high-tech auto manufacturer, this recall will not result in drivers needing to turn their cars in. Instead, Tesla has begun working on a software upgrade to solve the problem.
Although Tesla disagreed with the agency’s analysis of the Autosteer issue, the company, according to NBC News, has decided to “voluntarily administer a recall and remedy: a free over-the-air software update to impacted vehicles.”
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