Electric vehicle manufacturer Tesla is once again in trouble with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). This time, the federal agency forced Elon Musk's company to recall nearly 2 million cars in the U.S. because, a safety regulator claimed, its AutoPilot system is open to "foreseeable misuse of the system."
Incidents with Autopilot are nothing new. The agency launched an investigation into Tesla in 2021 because it was concerned about the correct use of this tool offered by the automaker, which had caused a multitude of accidents, some of them fatal. As early as February, more than 362,000 vehicles were recalled.
According to safety experts, the problem with AutoPilot is that it does not detect certain obstacles and therefore does not stop when it encounters them in its path. Faced with this, the company has sent a software update that includes more controls and additional alerts. According to the documents submitted by NHTSA, this "will further encourage the driver to adhere to their continuous driving responsibility" but still does not solve the mishaps already detected.
The cars affected by this new measure are the Y, S, 3 and X models that were manufactured between October 5, 2012 and December 7 of this year. The software update, AP reports, should be available this Tuesday on selected vehicles, while the rest of the cars will receive it later.
