Feds open criminal investigation into Tesla Autopilot claims:
Tesla's controversial Autopilot driver assist might have just gotten even more controversial. According to Reuters, the company has been under federal criminal investigation since 2021 for misleading people about Autopilot's capabilities. It's the latest in a string of state and federal investigations, coming at a time when the automaker is removing more sensors from the cars while increasing the price of its "full self-driving" (FSD) feature.
The safety of Tesla's electric vehicles has been repeatedly extolled by Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who claimed his EVs are the safest cars on sale. However, those claims have been challenged by regulators such as the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration as well as by collated crash data.
Now, Reuters reports that "Justice Department prosecutors in Washington and San Francisco are examining whether Tesla misled consumers, investors and regulators by making unsupported claims about its driver assistance technology's capabilities," the sources said.
Although Tesla's website states that Autopilot requires active supervision and is not autonomous, it also features a video that claims, "The person in the driver's seat is only there for legal reasons. He is not doing anything. The car is driving itself," and Musk has repeatedly been interviewed from the driver's seat of a Tesla hands-free.
Whether the Department of Justice's investigation will result in criminal prosecutions is unknown.
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Tesla has yet another federal headache to contend with. On March 4, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's Office of Defects Investigation opened a preliminary investigation after two reports of Tesla Model Y steering wheels detaching in drivers' hands while driving.
NHTSA's ODI says that in both cases, the model year 2023 Model Ys each required repairs on the production line that involved removing their steering wheels. The wheels were refitted but were only held in place by friction—Tesla workers never replaced the retaining bolt that affixes the steering wheel to the steering column. In 2018, Ford had to recall more than 1.3 million vehicles after an incorrectly sized bolt resulted in a similar problem.
The ODI document states that "sudden separation occurred when the force exerted on the steering wheel overcame the resistance of the friction fit while the vehicles were in motion" and that both incidents occurred while the electric vehicles still had low mileage.
Related:
Tesla recalls all cars with FSD (full self driving) option (Elon Tweet:"Definitely. The word "recall" for an over-the-air software update is anachronistic and just flat wrong!")
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