Blumenthal: Tesla recall of 360K vehicles ‘long overdue’
The recall of more than 360,000 “Full Self-Driving” Tesla vehicles this week was tied to concerns that the vehicles don’t always follow speed limits and sometimes misbehave around intersections.
The recall, pushed for by U.S. safety regulators, is part of a larger investigation the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is conducting into the Elon Musk-run company’s automated driving systems.
U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., has raised safety concerns about the self-driving vehicles and on Thursday said the recall was “rightly” pushed for.
“We have long warned that there are critical flaws with Tesla’s software, including the rolling stops feature, which puts the public at grave risk,” he said in a joint statement with U.S. Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass. “While a critical step, this recall is long overdue and was clearly needed, as we explained when we raised alarm about Tesla’s features. We strongly urge NHTSA to swiftly require recalls for safety risks it finds during its ongoing investigations, and Tesla must finally stop overstating the real capabilities of its vehicles.”
According to the release from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the recall affects Model S, Model X, Model 3 and Model Y cars with the self-driving technology installed. There are as many
“We have long warned that there are critical flaws with Tesla’s software, including the rolling stops feature, which puts the public at grave risk.” Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., in a joint statement with Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass.
as 400,000 vehicles with the software that is currently being tested.
This is not the first time Blumenthal and Markey have raised concerns over Tesla and its self-driving automation systems. The pair urged the Federal Trade Commission to investigate the company on these grounds in August 2021 and sent Musk himself a letter in February 2022 laying out safety concerns surrounding Tesla’s technology. They have also been staunch supporters of previous NHTSA investigations into the company.
NHTSA reported that Tesla will release an overthe-air software update to all affected models in response to the recall.
Musk and the Tesla team released the selfdriving software in November and touted the software’s safety and innovation to his Twitter followers. In a YouTube interview, Musk said, “the overwhelming focus is on solving full self-driving. That’s essential. It’s really the difference between Tesla being worth a lot of money or worth basically zero.” Now, the company is recalling over 360,000 cars employed with this self-driving technology.
NHTSA has opened over three dozen investigations into Tesla since 2016 in cases where the company’s automated driving systems were suspected to be at fault. From those investigations, 19 deaths have been reported.