US seeks information from Tesla on how it developed and verified whether Autopilot recall worked
DETROIT– Federal highway safety investigators want Tesla to tell them how and why it developed the fix in a recall of more than 2 million vehicles equipped with the company’s partially automated Autopilot operating system.
Researchers at the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration are concerned about whether the recall worked because Tesla has reported 20 crashes since the fix shipped as an online software update in December.
In a message Tesla posted on the agency’s website Tuesday, researchers wrote that they could find no difference between warnings for drivers to pay attention before the recall and after the new software shipped. The agency said it will evaluate whether driver warnings are adequate, especially when a driver monitoring camera is covered.
The agency requested large amounts of information about how Tesla developed the fix, focusing on how the company used human behavior to test the effectiveness of the recall.
The 18-page letter asks how Tesla used human behavioral science in designing Autopilot, and how the company rates the importance of evaluating human factors.
It also wants Tesla to identify every job involved in evaluating human behavior and employee qualifications. And it asks Tesla to say if the positions still exist.
Tesla is in the process of laying off about 10% of its workforce, about 14,000 people, in an effort to cut costs and cope with declining global sales. CEO Elon Musk tells Wall Street that the company is more of an artificial intelligence and robotics company than a car manufacturer.
NHTSA said it will evaluate the “prominence and scope” of Autopilot’s controls to address misuse, confusion and use in areas for which the system was not designed.
It also said Tesla has stated that owners can decide whether to participate in parts of the recall, and that drivers can roll back parts of it.
Safety advocates have long raised concerns that Autopilot, which can keep a vehicle in its lane and away from objects in front of it, is not designed to work on roads other than limited-access highways.
Tesla tells owners that despite the name, the system cannot drive itself and that drivers must be ready to intervene at all times.