Newest Tesla recall affects almost 12,000 cars

Tesla has recalled almost 12,000 vehicles sold in the United States over the last four years due to a software bug that could cause the car to behave dangerously, it emerged on Tuesday.

The electric carmaker, which recently became America’s newest trillion-dollar listed stock, told Reuters that 11,704 Model 3, S, X and Y cars were being recalled, following a software update rolled out to cars enrolled in its 10.3 Full Self-Driving (FSD) Beta programme.

It was reported that an error in the software could cause the collision warning system to activate falsely, or the emergency brakes to be applied by the car unexpectedly.

According to the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), Tesla issued an uninstall of the FSD 10.3 software after it received reports of “inadvertent activation of the emergency braking”.

The company then, however, “updated the software and released FSD version 10.3.1 to those vehicles affected”, the NHTSA continued.

It is the latest incident in a line of issues regulators have had with Tesla and its software, which the carmaker insists does not make vehicles autonomous.

In October, the NHTSA asked the company to explain itself after it did not recall vehicles affected by an earlier software update to its ‘Autopilot’ system, which had issues in detecting emergency vehicles.

After issues with sudden autonomous braking were reported in late October, the firm’s controversial chief executive officer tweeted that “some issues” were being seen with version 10.3 of the FSD software, so the company was rolling back to 10.2 temporarily.

“Please note, this is to be expected with Beta software,” he wrote.

In August, the NHTSA launched a formal investigation into the Autopilot system installed in more than three-quarters of a million Tesla vehicles in the United States, after a number of crashes were reported between Tesla cars and emergency vehicles.

On Monday, the company recalled almost 3,000 vehicles for issues with fasteners on the front suspension becoming loose, while in June it recalled almost 300,000 cars in China over safety concerns with the cruise control system.

Just under 6,000 cars were recalled separately in June due to concerns that their brake caliper bolts could be loose, while in January, the company was told by the NHTSA to recall 158,000 cars over issues with failing touchscreens.

Musk returned to his controversial practice of tweeting about Tesla’s share price overnight, noting that any firm deal was yet to be signed with car rental giant Hertz.

Shares in Tesla have risen to over $1,200 apiece in the week since Hertz said it was buying 100,000 vehicles from the company, from around the $1,000 level before the news.

“If any of this is based on Hertz, I’d like to emphasize that no contract has been signed yet,” Elon Musk said on Twitter.

“Tesla has far more demand than production, therefore we will only sell cars to Hertz for the same margin as to consumers.

“Hertz deal has zero effect on our economics.”