Tesla Facing Potential 500,000 Recall After Speed Surge

Paul Myles

TU-Editor

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20th January 2020

EV maker Tesla is facing the prospect of recalling up to half a million of its cars after 123 crashes have sparked calls for a full enquiry into its vehicle safety standards.

It has been reported that 52 people sustained injuries in the accidents that affected Tesla’s Model S, Model X and Model 3 vehicles according to a petition sent to the US regulator, National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). A spokesperson for the regulator’s Office of Defects said the petition called for an investigation into customer complaints and promised to assess the validity of the allegations.

Claims include reports of drivers experiencing a sudden unintended acceleration of the vehicles and that some suffered accidents after their vehicles were thrown off the road.

While the company has yet to respond to the claims, it seems likely it’s release of its own data that shows a rise in Tesla vehicle accidents in the last quarter of 2019 was a bid to display some transparency from an organization know for its extreme secrecy. Its own figures, as yet not known to have been independently audited, reveal that accident rates while the vehicles were driving in Autopilot rose by more than 40% in the US compared to the previous quarter of last year.

In the final three months of the 2019, a Tesla vehicle with Autopilot engaged crashed, on average, once every 3.07M miles, 41% more than in, which stood at 4.34M miles. However, is should be pointed out that Tesla’s claimed data suggests accident rates 6.4 times lower than the latest NHTSA produced figures which show a US average of one crash every 479,000 miles.

Studies suggest that Tesla’s use of the label Autopilot could be responsible for motorists assuming the system can do more than the function’s advertised by the automaker which has repeated stressed that drivers must have hands on the steering wheel and be able to take control of the vehicle at any time.