autopilot

Tesla's promotion of Autopilot – its advanced safety and driver technology system – has been labelled "misleading" by a German non-profit organisation taking the electric car maker to court there over its claims. The Centre for Protection Against Unfair Competition – an association of industry groups working to uphold competition law in Germany – is taking the US electric-car specialist to court, alleging Tesla is promising customers more than it can deliver.

Edward Markey, a Democratic senator from Massachusetts, has called on Tesla to rebrand and change the marketing around its Autopilot driver assistance suite. In a statement released last week, Markey, a member of the Senate's Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, called on Tesla to improve Autopilot in light of videos appearing online showing drivers how to fool the system's driver monitoring processes.

Tesla customers have driven over 1.2 billion miles (1.9b kilometre) with the company's semi-autonomous Autopilot systems engaged, a new report says. First covered by Electrek, a team from MIT Human-Centered AI has produced (and is still updating a report) estimating the distance covered by Tesla vehicles operating with Autopilot turned on.

Tesla and the US National Transport Safety Board are investigating a fatal crash involving Autopilot. Wei Huang, an Apple software engineer, was killed when his Model X struck a barrier on US Highway 101 in Mountain View, California on March 23. According to Tesla, the driver received multiple visual and one audible 'hands-on warning', and was running with his hands off the wheel for six seconds prior to the accident.

The US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHSTA) has ruled in favour of electric carmaker Tesla, in an investigation into a fatal crash last year involving a Model S in semi-autonomous Autopilot mode. In May 2016, a man in the US was killed when his Tesla Model S collided with a tractor trailer at an intersection on a non-controlled access highway.