Tesla admits Full Self-Driving beta may cause crashes, recalls 363,000 vehicles
Who could have possibly seen this coming?
Apparently those Super Bowl ads finally did the trick. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration announced on Thursday that Tesla is recalling nearly 363,000 of its vehicles because the Full Self-Driving software may cause a crash. Specifically, the NHTSA cites a risk to "exceed speed limits or travel through intersections in an unlawful or unpredictable manner increases the risk of a crash."
In all, the recall impacts 362,758 vehicles. They include, according to the announcement, “certain 2016-2023 Model S, Model X, 2017-2023 Model 3, and 2020-2023 Model Y vehicles equipped with Full Self-Driving Beta (FSD Beta) software or pending installation.”
The NHSTA initially launched its investigation into Tesla's much-hyped Full Self-Driving system back in August, 2021 following years of fatal highway accidents and terrifying social media posts documenting the software's seemingly self-destructive behavior. Initially it was just an engineering analysis looking into why Teslas kept chasing parked firetrucks but, last June, the agency upgraded that defect probe, enabling it to demand a recall from the company over this issue, which is how we ended up here.
"We're investing a lot of resources," NHTSA acting head Ann Carlson told reporters in January. "The resources require a lot of technical expertise, actually some legal novelty and so we're moving as quickly as we can, but we also want to be careful and make sure we have all the information we need."
Tesla will release an OTA update, free of charge to its customers to rectify the issue, Reuters reports. This recall follows a litany of similar corrective actions taken throughout 2022 for everything from funky tail lights to overheating infotainment systems to noisy seat belt chimes — even that gimmick Cyberquad for Kids got the regulatory hook.
