Tesla’s Autopilot is once again acting up. But this time, it concerns vehicles sold in China.
The world number 1 in electric vehicles must face a software problem affecting its Autopilot, and must be corrected everywhere in the world. In the middle of last December, more than 2 million vehicles sold in the United States had to be updated. And today, the same defect is to be removed from a massive fleet of cars in China.
All Tesla models affected
It was an alert from the Chinese market regulator, the State Administration for Market Regulations (SAMR), which forced Tesla to launch an update. The authority has identified “safety risks” in the assisted driving software, as well as in door locking.
As a result, Tesla must carry out a recall on an extremely large number of vehicles, namely 1.62 million cars. The problem concerns two batches of Model S, Model X, Model Y and Model 3 produced over the last decade, between 2014 and 2023.
Bad publicity stunt in an important market
Obviously, these recalls, when they concern software problems, are updates that are carried out remotely. Additional controls and alerts will be added during the update, which Chinese authorities ask drivers to download as soon as they receive it.
This announcement is not good news for Tesla, for which China is an extremely important market, and where it has the largest factory in the world (excluding the USA), in Shanghai. Because Elon Musk’s firm has to deal more and more with competition from the Chinese manufacturer BYD, some models of which display unbeatable prices. It must therefore be careful not to know, one day, too, the fate of Apple in the country, a brand long favored by the consumer before suffering a certain disaffection this year in favor of a local manufacturer ( namely Huawei).
Source : SAMR, Engadget
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