Tesla’s Autopilot fix for more than 2 million vehicles called ‘inadequate’ by Consumer Reportsafter preliminary tests.
Kelly Funkhouser, the nonprofit’s deputy director of vehicle technology, tells TechCrunch that she discovered it’s still possible to cover the dash cam while Autopilot is in use, meaning drivers can override one of the two main ways in which the car monitors if they are paying attention to the road.
Additionally, Funkhouser says she didn’t notice any differences when activating or using Autopilot’s flagship Autosteer outside of controlled-access highways, where Tesla says the software is designed to be used.
While the tests aren’t complete, they show that questions remain about Tesla’s approach to driver monitoring — the technology at the heart of the recall.
The group, which has a long history of criticizing both Tesla’s technology and its vehicles, plans to do more extensive testing in the coming weeks. Funkhouser says Consumer Reports has not yet evaluated other changes, such as more prominent visual alerts on the Model 3 sedan and Model Y SUV, because it has only received the over-the-air software update for the Model S sedan.
Tesla also added a suspension policy that will disable Autopilot for a week if “inappropriate use” is detected, which Funkhouser said she didn’t encounter during two drives of between 15 and 20 miles each.
The recall, announced last week, affects more than 2 million cars in the US and Canada and comes in the middle of a two-year investigation by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). It focused heavily on the Autosteer feature, which is designed to keep a car centered in a lane on controlled-access highways, even around bends.
Tesla tells drivers to keep their eyes on the road and their hands on the wheel while using Autosteer, and it monitors this through a combination of a torque sensor on the steering wheel and, in its newer cars, the camera in the cabin. But NHTSA said in documents released last week that it considered those controls to be “inadequate to prevent misuse.”
However, Tesla does not limit the use of Autosteer to controlled access highways. Instead, drivers can activate Autosteer on other roads as long as certain basic conditions (such as visible lane markers) are met. As part of the recall, NHTSA said Tesla will add “additional checks when activating Autosteer and when using the off-highway function and when approaching traffic controls.”
Some owners feared that this meant Tesla would limit Autosteer and limit it to controlled-access highways — similar to how Ford and General Motors are treating their respective Blue Cruise and SuperCruise systems. As the update began rolling out over the weekend, some even shared thoughts on online forums how to avoid it disconnecting the Tesla cellular or Wi-Fi radios.
But such drastic measures are apparently not necessary, according to Funkhouser’s tests. While Tesla notes in its latest software update that the camera “can now identify driver inattention and provide you with audible alerts to remind you to keep your eyes on the road when Autopilot is engaged,” it the language is the same as the company used when it first activated the dashcam driver monitoring in 2021, she points out. And Ddespite what Tesla says in release notes that he has[i]increased the severity of the driver’s attention requirements when using Autosteer and approaching traffic lights and off-highway stop signs,” Funkhouser said those changes weren’t noticeable in her preliminary tests — in part because it’s hard to know exactly what they mean originally Tesla.
All of this makes it unclear whether, or how much, Tesla modified the camera’s ability to track the driver’s attention to the update. (NHTSA declined to comment and instead referred questions to Tesla. Tesla disbanded its press department years ago.)
“None of it is very restrictive or clear as to what they’re going to do [change]Funkhouser says.
