Tesla recalls over 2 million vehicles to fix defective Autopilot monitoring system

PO1 William "Chip" Nagel
..."Safety metrics
On Tuesday, Tesla defended the safety of Autopilot in a post on X (formerly Twitter) in response to a Washington Post article.

"Safety metrics are emphatically stronger when Autopilot is engaged than when not engaged" it wrote, pointing to statistics that suggested there were fewer crashes when the system was used.

Jack Stilgoe, associate professor at University College London, who researches autonomous vehicles, said Tesla should have spent more time developing the system in the first place.

"The conventional way of ensuring safety is to check that a car is safe when it leaves the factory", he told the BBC.

But despite this being the second recall this year affecting Tesla vehicles, Susannah Streeter of investment company Hargreaves Lansdown, said her assessment was that it should not check the carmaker's momentum too greatly:

"This recall of 2 million cars on its own is not likely to seriously quash enthusiasm. The share price has dropped back slightly, but it doesn't look like it'll be hit by a bad bout of skidding.

"After all, recalls in the car industry are far from unusual and the group also has the financial ability to invest in fixes", she added.

Tesla has heavily promoted the technology in its cars and says remaining at the cutting edge of self-driving is key to its future growth.

Goldman Sachs analysts estimated this month that Tesla's most advanced Autopilot offering, full self driving, could end up generating more than $50bn a year in revenue by 2030, up from $1bn-$3bn presently."...