Autopilot, Tesla’s controversial partially autopilot system, comes under investigation.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (Nhtsa) has opened a formal investigation after 11 accidents since the beginning of 2018 in which the automaker’s cars collided with one or more vehicles involved in emergency situations, resulting in one death and 17 injuries. . Most of the incidents occurred after dark, despite safety measures implemented by rescuers, such as light signals and traffic cones. Collisions have been recorded in various states, from California to Florida, from Michigan to Texas.
“The preliminary investigation concerns the driving assistance system and the techniques used to monitor it and enforce the driver’s commitment during its use,” explained the American agency. The news sank the shares of the group headed by Elon Musk on the stock market. Nhtsa will examine the Autopilot system in approximately 765,000 Tesla models produced from 2014 to date: Y, X, S and 3.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has long since increased its focus on driver assistance systems, which are becoming increasingly popular on American roads, and has asked automakers to regularly report incidents involving such systems.
Tesla has always maintained that driving with Autopilot is safer than driving without it and that the device is designed to help the driver use the steering and maintain an adequate distance from other vehicles. But some drivers, perhaps also misled by the controversial name of this technology, could use it incorrectly, for example without keeping their hands on the wheel, against the instructions of the company.
The investigation is another tile on Musk’s company, which recently recalled over 285,000 vehicles in China to fix a speed control system problem. System that according to the Beijing regulatory authorities could be activated accidentally, causing sudden accelerations. Most of these cars were produced at the Shanghai plant and the software could be remotely fixed. At the beginning of the year, however, Tesla recalled about 135,000 models of the S luxury sedan and the sport utility X due to problems with the touch-screen. Difficult Monday, precisely due to the launch of the investigation, for the stock of Elon Musk’s company on Wall Street, which slips by over -5%, falling back into the area of $ 680.