Tesla Recalls More Than 2 Million Cars Over Faulty Autopilot System

Tesla has issued a recall of more than 2 million of its cars after the US regulator (NHTSA) found its driver assistance system – Autpilot – partly defective. The US safety regulator carried out a 2-year investigation into crashes that occurred when the tech was in use. The Autopilot feature was launched in 2015 and is in almost all cars that the company sells. This means that Tesla will have to recall almost all the cars it has sold to date to repair the fault.

Autopilot is meant to help with steering, acceleration and braking, but according to the NHTSA, a two-year investigation of 956 Tesla crashes found that "the prominence and scope of the feature's controls may not be sufficient to prevent driver misuse".

While Tesla does not ‘agree’ with the findings, it has said that it will publish a mandatory software update for all its cars. The owner of a Tesla vehicle will not have to head to a dealership to get it updated as it will be done over the air, automatically. NHTSA has said that it will keep monitoring the updation of the software.

Elon Musk, co-founder and CEO, Tesla, in fact even went on to state that this required a change in terminology. Replying to a comment on the recall Musk said, “Definitely. The word “recall” for an over-the-air software update is anachronistic and just flat wrong!”

Recalls usually hurt carmakers, but this one did not. Tesla’s performance at NASDAQ remained positive with no major dip in stock price.