More than 2 million Teslas are being recalled due to unsafe Autopilot

Inadequate driver monitoring means that Autopilot is far too easily misused.

See full article...

 

[ColdWetDog]

The linked Reddit thread/Twitter video is hilarious. It's not just teddy bears being recognised as human drivers. It's also dogs, balloons with smiley face drawn in marker, and (my personal favourite) a giant inflatable champagne bottle.

But that was FSD, not autopilot, yes?

Not that it makes it any less hilarious / scary.

 

[numerobis]

I don't think that bragging about how at least 50% of all Telsas on the road have a major safety hazard built into them is the flex you think it is, amigo.

That was intended as a flex? I thought it was just context.

On another thread there was someone asking about how big the recall would eventually get if it expands to all cars, not understanding that it was essentially all cars (there’s some old S and roadster that might not be covered).

 

[Celery Man]

By all means protect people from their own attempts to subvert the system, and those who ignore or refuse to read the manual and warnings in bold. But think about it, without natural selection and survival of the fittest, what else will keep us lean and mean? Protecting the stupid to this degree is leading us to an 'Idiocracy' (see the movie) like future. Just sayin'

This is called eugenics and is one of the more monstrous ideas humans have conceived of.

 

[stk5]

Autopilot-engaged Teslas have killed non-Tesla-owning people. What exactly did they do to merit being included in your Darwinian selection fantasy?

Just them adding more evidence to my theory that 100% of people saying “just like Idiocracy” have only seen its title.

 

[Dr Gitlin]

I might respectfully argue that "recall" intrinsically makes sense when the car is literally being RECALLED into a dealership for safety fixes, but it's a confusing anachronism when the fix is applied OTA with zero involvement of even the customer, let alone a dealership garage.

I think this is a fairly similar issue to the "save" icon. It used to make sense to refer to that visually with a floppy disk, but now it's just weird and an awful lot of people have no idea why we would refer to saving with a weird little square icon with a circle in it.

I'm not sure off the top of my head what a better term would be, but I have to agree about calling OTA updates a "recall" being somewhat confusing.

For the fifth time in this thread, absolutely not.

Is there a safety defect that the public must be notified about? Yes.

Is there a manufacturer fix for the defect that owners must be notified about? Yes.

Is there an official Part 573 Safety Recall Report? Yes.

Congratulations, you have a recall. No amount of dissembling by Tesla owners will change that fact. And I'm dismayed I have to explain that to you, Jim.

 

[cerberusTI]

Imagine if you think it’s embarrassing to have a different definition of what a word means.

so physical harm is the difference? Where did you see that definition anywhere?

“More than 2 million teslas are getting an emergency software update to fix a problem in autopilot”. Yea that to me explains a lot more than the headline this article has.

Yes, essentially.

If the paint on your car starts looking splotchy after a while, or the radio likes to cut out, or your game crashes, or your towel falls apart, nobody is going to mandate a recall. It will probably be more a warranty issue.

If your car falls apart while driving, or the radio explodes, or the software on your insulin pump gets a wrong value under some conditions and starts putting people into a coma on occasion, or your towel catches fire if exposed to direct sunlight, that product will be recalled.

 

[Dr Gitlin]

This certainly is an automotive recall as defined by the regulatory agencies. Even as a Tesla critic, though, I believe there's need for a "safety update" term (or perhaps "remote recall") to contrast with a physical "recall" simply due to the word's widely understood colloquial meaning, outside of automobile enthusiasts and experts. To recall is to return or bring back.

The way Tesla describes its driver assists is recklessly overoptimistic, but small amount of credit where its due, Tesla did mostly start this trend of automatic car software updates.

The hundreds of crashes and dozens and dozens of deaths suggest this is actually a quite important issue and maybe people shouldn't try and minimize it just because its software.

 

[herko]

Just drove a Polestar with the same detection mechanism and it is horrible having to constantly jerk the wheel to prove to adaptive cruise that my hands are on the wheel.

I have a Polestar. I love my Polestar, but this drives me completely batty as well. Pun not intended.

 

[numerobis]

Autopilot-engaged Teslas have killed non-Tesla-owning people. What exactly did they do to merit being included in your Darwinian selection fantasy?

Clearly those inferior beings hadn’t evolved to be resistant to high-velocity impacts.

 

[Jim Salter]

It's the main reason I very rarely use Autosteer. Autosteer tends to put the car right where I want it, so I don't want to correct it for the most part. I need to constantly think to try to steer the car away from where I actually want the car to be, and when I fail to do that, I get nagged by the screen which draws my attention away from actually driving.

The cruise control is pretty great in normal conditions though.

I've never experienced either the frequency OR intensity of Tesla TACC panic-braking in TACC systems from Nissan, GM, etc.

The first time we rented a Nissan with TACC, my wife drove the Nissan and I drove my old Mazda hatch. She left an hour before I did, but I caught up with her... Because instead of the 75 she set the TACC to, it was perfectly shadowing whatever car was ahead of her in the slow lane, for hundreds of miles, well enough that she didn't even realize she'd slowed down until she saw me rocketing past her on the left.

My M3P would have panic braked MULTIPLE times before I caught up with her, even on its very very best day.

 

[numerobis]

We're not protecting the Tesla drivers from themselves. They can personally win a Darwin Award all they want, that's cool. But It's not "natural selection" or "survival of the fittest" if some moron drives his Tesla through a busy crosswalk and kills a bunch of other people.

As a Tesla driver, I very much do want the NHTSA and equivalent authorities to protect the Tesla drivers from themselves. In addition to other people.

 

[msawzall]

This certainly is an automotive recall as defined by the regulatory agencies. Even as a Tesla critic, though, I believe there's need for a "safety update" term (or perhaps "remote recall") to contrast with a physical recall simply due to the word's widely understood colloquial meaning, outside of automobile enthusiasts and experts: To recall is to return or bring back.

Small amount of credit where it's due, though, Tesla did mostly start this trend of automatic car software updates. By no means does this excuse one bit of its reckless marketing or easily defeated monitoring, though.

What would be the benefit of categorizing recalls? Besides minimizing damage to Elon's company.

Also, OTA software updates for automobiles has been a thing quite a while before Teslas went out into the wild.

 

[stormcrash]

A recall is more than applying a fix. The manufacturer is legally obligated to notify affected customers of the problem, what will be done to remediate it, and what the customer needs to do, if necessary, to get the remediation applied. The manufacturer is legally obligated to track which vehicles have had the remediation applied to them and provide that information to the NHTSA. The manufacturer is legally obligated to periodically follow up with notices via snail mail to the customer's last known address if the recall work isn't getting performed (I got recall notices from GM for a car I bought second hand in another state, they got my address from the state DOT via a VIN search). If necessary, the manufacturer is legally obligated to physically remediate the problem, at their own expense, and for remediation via software, this includes having a technician physically plug a computer into the car to update the software if over-the-air updates cannot be installed for whatever reason.

No matter how you cut it, this is a recall.

I think that last point is a good one because crying "but it's OTA" doesn't cover it. If a Tesla owner moves way out into the woods with no data reception to send them the OTA update Tesla is still obligated to fix their car even if that means sending them a physical update via a USB drive or arranging to bring the car to a service center or send a technician. OTA may be part of the recall but it is not the totality of it

 

[andygates]

Looks like loads of elmo dickriders are missing the point over at the Nazi Bar, so it's hardly suprising to see em here.

 

[numerobis]

I've never experienced either the frequency OR intensity of Tesla TACC panic-braking in TACC systems from Nissan, GM, etc.

The first time we rented a Nissan with TACC, my wife drove the Nissan and I drove my old Mazda hatch. She left an hour before I did, but I caught up with her... Because instead of the 75 she set the TACC to, it was perfectly shadowing whatever car was ahead of her in the slow lane, for hundreds of miles, well enough that she didn't even realize she'd slowed down until she saw me rocketing past her on the left.

My M3P would have panic braked MULTIPLE times before I caught up with her, even on its very very best day.

That was my experience last year, but this year it’s been good for me.

 

[AusPeter]

I might respectfully argue that "recall" intrinsically makes sense when the car is literally being RECALLED into a dealership for safety fixes, but it's a confusing anachronism when the fix is applied OTA with zero involvement of even the customer, let alone a dealership garage.

The problem is you are conflating the mechanism of the fix with the requirement of the fix. A recall is a something that has legal repercussions (But IANAL so I don't know what the details are). How the work performed during a recall is independent of the recall itself (as was pointed out in TFA).

The solution to your argument would be to split the process into two things:

Recall-that-requires-you-to-take-the-vehicle-to-the-dealership-in-order-to-be-fixed

and

Something-called-other-than-recall-that-is-still-actually-a-legally-defined-recall

Now imagine the additional confusion that would cause.

 

[Jim Salter]

It will be interesting to see whether Tesla makes these updates mandatory and pushes them over-the-air on cellular (instead of WiFi as normal).

IME, they all go out over cellular if necessary. My M3P is not and has never been connected to my Wi-Fi, but I still get OTA updates regularly.

 

[doug r]

A recall is a recall and a defect a defect no matter what delivery option is used to try and remedy it. A recall notice serves a legal and regulatory purpose and it required so that automakers can't just sneak around behind our backs pretending they never had a defect to try and pass cost or repair responsibility onto the customer/driver.

Yeah, the step below recall is a TSB-where the manufacturer sends a notice to dealers of a problem BUT the cost of the repair is borne by the customer. My Honda dealer offered me a 10 or 25 per cent "discount" on the LABOR on the driver's side lock cylinder replacement, I said f*ck that, I'll just take it to my favorite mechanic and let him make the profit.

 

[Keith Tanner]

Tesla's mechanism for detecting hands on the wheel is terrible. It requires you to exert rotational force on the wheel, and sometimes it requires you to do it enough to alter the direction of the car, albeit slightly. Other cars are easily able to detect hands on the wheel without you having to turn the wheel. Phones have detected touch reliably for a long time now. It's not an area that should be implemented so poorly.

Didn't earlier implementations have some sort of sensor on the wheel to detect touch? Capacitive, I think. People would bypass it using an orange jammed in the spokes of the wheel. That was replaced with the torque sensor.

 

[stormcrash]

This certainly is an automotive recall as defined by the regulatory agencies. Even as a Tesla critic, though, I believe there's need for a "safety update" term (or perhaps "remote recall") to contrast with a physical recall simply due to the word's widely understood colloquial meaning, outside of automobile enthusiasts and experts: To recall is to return or bring back.

Small amount of credit where it's due, though, Tesla did mostly start this trend of automatic car software updates. By no means does this excuse one bit of its reckless marketing or easily defeated monitoring, though.

A) Why muddy the waters with a second term and mechanism almost identical to the existing one, especially when the second term might downplay the seriousness of the defect purely due to the repair mechanism

B) OTA update might cover a large part of the recall but it's not the totality of it. The manufacturer is responsible for making sure all units get fixed. So if a car is having a glitch that prevents downloading or installing an OTA, or the car is in an area with weak or no signal to get an OTA update to them, Tesla is obligated to fix their car by some other means. OTA is not the outer ring of responsibility, they can't just say "lol well we sent out the update so you're on your own if you didn't get it"

 

[lewax00]

They kind of have a point that, etymologically speaking, a recall involves the action of calling something back. Which, with OTA updates, is unnecessary.

This is, essentially, a fix, or update. A recall (to the garage) is a way to apply the fix or update. An OTA is another.

Etymologically speaking, "fat chance" and "slim chance" should have opposite meanings, but they don't. "Awful" and "awesome" should mean the same, but they don't. Etymology explains the origin of words, it does not prescribe their usage.

 

[randomcat]

As a Tesla driver, I very much do want the NHTSA and equivalent authorities to protect the Tesla drivers from themselves. In addition to other people.

Of course! The OP was implying that operating a vehicle unsafely is a personal choice that should be allowed to play itself out, to remove that person from the genepool. I'm disagreeing with the idea that safety laws are basically a eugenics program that only considers the direct user and not anybody or anything else.

 

[msawzall]

Hey Elon stans... If it's not false advertising to say Teslas have an autopilot, it's not a false statement to say this is a recall. Freeze peach, baby!

 

[AusPeter]

Because instead of the 75 she set the TACC to, it was perfectly shadowing whatever car was ahead of her in the slow lane, for hundreds of miles, well enough that she didn't even realize she'd slowed down until she saw me rocketing past her on the left.

I do the exact same thing all the time. Set the adaptive cruise control, and then later realize that the car in front of me has slowed down to well under the speed limit. But as I am not an aggressive driver, when I notice it I just shake my head and then pass the car in front of me.

 

[heartburnkid]

Autopilot is also not full self driving.

It is named "Autopilot".

 

[AverageDutchGuy]

If this "recall" doesn't mean Tesla has to disable (and keep disabled) autopilot until it can PROVE that it's new version is safe, this recall is rather pointless. Tesla will just sent an OTA update claiming it's fixed all the issues and then it'll be another few years before enough data can be gathered to prove that no, it's not actually solved.

The problem for Tesla however is that keeping Autopilot disabled is going to piss off a lot of people who have paid a lot of money for the privilege of having the feature "available" (insofar it works). My experience with it so far is that it's only decent on highways. Using it on twisty, narrow roads is terrifying as it doesn't seem to even attempt to slow down for tight turns and happily barrels into max 50 km/h turns at the max speed of 80 km/h.

 

[Keith Tanner]

Tesla has a real branding problem with their driver assist stuff. "Autopilot" covers a lot of things. In this case, it seems to be about Autosteer which is included on every Tesla. Don't confuse it with FSD or whatever Enhanced Autopilot is - both of which cost more.

TACC is pretty solid - I've experienced phantom braking twice, but only on an urban interstate in Denver. Mapping problem?

Autosteer feels like you're babysitting a nervous 16 year old driver. And it has the same basic flaw that all Level 3* systems do, that it depends on a driver being attentive and ready to take over. And brains aren't built that way. I don't find it relaxing one bit. I tried it out when we got our car in 2019, I've tried it a few times since. At no time has it been less work than simply having the car follow my eyes.

* technically, I think Autosteer is Level 2 lane centering but it's being used and sold like Level 3

 

[Bad Monkey!]

Etymologically speaking, "fat chance" and "slim chance" should have opposite meanings, but they don't. "Awful" and "awesome" should mean the same, but they don't. Etymology explains the origin of words, it does not prescribe their usage.

"'Inflammable' means 'flammable'? What a country!"

 

[Jim Salter]

yeah, NHTSA has been appalling on this issue, but it's probably terrified that if it took action against Musk he'd set his army of alt-right trolls on it, the way he went after Misty Cummings.

Kinda wish you'd dropped a link. I wasn't familiar with this, and it wasn't the easiest Google. Had to wade through pages of a murdered (?) woman named Misty Croslin whose boyfriend's last name was Cummings, and it took a while to be sure Croslin wasn't a maiden name, etc.

 

[EnPeaSea]

But think about it, without natural selection and survival of the fittest, what else will keep us lean and mean?

BTW, natural selection only depends on being fit enough to pass on genes, not necessarily being the most fit. "Survival of the fittest" was shorthand, dumbed-down version of Darwin's original thesis, that, unfortunately, he incorporated in later editions.

 

[msawzall]

If this "recall" doesn't mean Tesla has to disable (and keep disabled) autopilot until it can PROVE that it's new version is safe, this recall is rather pointless. Tesla will just sent an OTA update claiming it's fixed all the issues and then it'll be another few years before enough data can be gathered to prove that no, it's not actually solved.

The problem for Tesla however is that keeping Autopilot disabled is going to piss off a lot of people who have paid a lot of money for the privilege of having the feature "available" (insofar it works). My experience with it so far is that it's only decent on highways. Using it on twisty, narrow roads is terrifying as it doesn't seem to even attempt to slow down for tight turns and happily barrels into max 50 km/h turns at the max speed of 80 km/h.

I can picture Elon just updating to change the version number and that's it. He'll probably change it to v*.69 or v*.420. Just so he can get lulz from his stans.

 

[wallinbl]

Didn't earlier implementations have some sort of sensor on the wheel to detect touch? Capacitive, I think. People would bypass it using an orange jammed in the spokes of the wheel. That was replaced with the torque sensor.

I had one with the torque sensor. If I was using Autopilot, I had to periodically jerk the car to one side or the other. Otherwise, it would harass me about hands on the wheel. It's a poor mechanism since it requires me to actually alter the car's direction whenever its timer goes off.

 

[msawzall]

This is why I come to Ars... "What do words mean?"

 

[Bad Monkey!]

Didn't earlier implementations have some sort of sensor on the wheel to detect touch? Capacitive, I think. People would bypass it using an orange jammed in the spokes of the wheel. That was replaced with the torque sensor.

IIRC, it was always a torque sensor, it was just easily fooled by the weight of the orange providing just enough torque on the steering wheel. They updated it so the software actually looked for the varying torque that would indicate a human hand on the wheel, rather than the constant torque caused by a simple weight.