U.S. senators urge FTC chair to investigate Tesla's self-driving claims

Two U.S. senators on Wednesday wrote to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to open an investigation against Tesla Inc, saying the carmaker has misled consumers and endangered the public by advertising its drivers’ assistance systems as fully self-driving.

“Tesla and (CEO) Mr. (Elon) Musk’s repeated overstatements of their vehicle’s capabilities...put Tesla drivers – and all of the traveling public – at risk of serious injury or death,” Senator Richard Blumenthal and Edward Markey said in a letter to newly appointed FTC Chair Lina Khan.

“Tesla drivers listen to these claims and believe their vehicles are equipped to drive themselves – with potentially deadly consequences.”

The letter came days after the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration (NHTSA) opened an investigation into Tesla’s Autopilot software, citing reports of multiple collision instances involving emergency vehicles.

The NHTSA said Tesla cars were involved in 11 crashes in which the vehicles “have encountered first responder scenes and subsequently struck one or more vehicles involved with those scenes” since January 2018, causing 17 injuries and one death.

Autopilot is a standard feature for all the Tesla models, namely X, Y, S and 3, helping the vehicles to maintain distance from cars in front.

Tesla sells the Full Self-Driving (FSD) package, its advanced driver assistant features, for $1,000, which enables lane changing and automated parking in the software, although it does not make the cars fully autonomous.

Elon Musk, who has nearly 60 million Twitter followers, uses the term FSD frequently, generally referring to the Tesla feature package, but many consumers take it to mean fully autonomous driving.

Musk has flaunted the technology’s safety features and promised that Tesla vehicles would soon drive themselves, but missed his deadlines multiple times.

In June, the vehicle safety regulators said it has opened 30 probes since 2016 against the carmaker, where it suspected the use of advanced driver assistance systems during the crashes.

In 2018, the NHTSA wrote a letter to Tesla stating the carmaker had made “misleading statements” about the safety of its Model 3 and had confused consumers and referred the issue to the FTC to investigate whether the statements constituted “unfair or deceptive acts or practices.”

Picture Credit: Electrek