While much digital ink has been spilled about how things are not going so hot for Elon Musk's $44 billion social media network, it appears things aren't going great at one of his other major brands either.
Tesla, once widely thought of as a serious forerunner in the automobile industry due to its potential to be the leader in self-driving cars, has had to recall all cars sold in the past 11 years (the Models S, X, Y and 3 sold between October 5th, 2012 to December 7th, 2023) due to an issue with its autopilot feature.
The autopilot feature in Tesla cars requires drivers to maintain proper attention when it's engaged. This requires drivers to keep their hands placed on the wheel (which some have pointed out sort of defeats the purpose of "autopilot"). If hands are not placed on the wheel, Tesla cars will warn drivers with a series of escalating audio and visual warnings before braking and forcing drivers to properly drive the car for the remainder of their trip.
However, some Teslas could be fooled into thinking the driver was still engaged by having a weight placed on the steering wheel. Furthermore, the car's process of realizing a driver was not paying attention to braking could take up to a minute — as Wired pointed out in a report, which could mean a driver would be insufficiently in control of their vehicle for over a mile if it's going over 60 MPH.
According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, this isn't a traditional "recall" that involves Tesla taking back the cars to fix them. Instead, the company will put out a software update that addresses the issue.
While a software update that allows Tesla owners to keep their vehicles is arguably less embarrassing than a recall that takes all Teslas off the road, the news was still not great for the company.
Once again the brunt of the blame (and jokes) fell on its owner, Elon Musk, who was already in hot water for spending part of the weekend chatting with Alex Jones and other contentious conservative "thought leaders" on X's Spaces.
Tesla's Autopilot feature has been at the center of much negative press over the past few years, as crashes attributed to self-driving Teslas continued to pile up. Jay Leno hit two cop cars with his self-driving Tesla in a widely publicized incident. Tests also seemed to show that Teslas wouldn't stop for children on the road. Even some of Tesla's outspoken supporters conceded that the cars' autopilot feature would eventually try to kill their drivers.