Tesla has stopped rolling out its Full Self-Driving Beta (FSD Beta) software in the international market until a firmware update is available. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) ordered Tesla to recall its driver assistance system after it caused several high-speed crashes.
The recall instruction stated:
The FSD Beta system may allow the vehicle to act unsafe around intersections, such as traveling straight through an intersection while in a turn-only lane, entering a stop sign-controlled intersection without coming to a complete stop, or proceeding into an intersection during a steady yellow traffic signal without due caution. In addition, the system may respond insufficiently to changes in posted speed limits or not adequately account for the driver’s adjustment of the vehicle’s speed to exceed posted speed limits.
A report highlighted last week that Tesla has recalled 362,758 Model S, Model X, Model Y, and Model 3 units between July 16, 2017, and January 18, 2023. Recalled vehicles have the “Autosteer” software installed.
Tesla reports 18 FSD Beta warranty claims received between May 8, 2019, and September 12, 2022, as of February 14, 2023. It said it was unaware of any injuries or deaths related to the above conditions.
Despite the “auto-pilot” marketing, FSD Beta is a level-two driver support feature that can assist the driver with steering and braking or acceleration under certain conditions. The carmaker clarified on its support page:
The driver is responsible for operation of the vehicle whenever the feature is engaged and must constantly supervise the feature and intervene as needed to maintain safe operation of the vehicle.
Recently, Martin Eberhard told Insider he isn’t a big fan of having autonomous driving being the prime focus of Tesla cars. Eberhard, who Elon Musk fired as Tesla CEO in 2007, said creating self-driving car software was his lowest priority.
Musk is investing huge money in developing fully autonomous driving technology, which Eberhard also criticized. He added:
All this FSD autonomous, autopilot crap — none of that existed when I was there. We were still busy trying to make the car work and we never thought about that at all. That came later. That requires a much, much bigger budget than we had.
