Tesla Inc.’s latest iteration of Autopilot, the car maker’s suite of advanced driver-assistance features, can make choices that are dangerous, illegal or both, Consumer Reports said Wednesday.
Tesla TSLA, -6.02% upgraded its Autopilot feature last month, essentially allowing Tesla vehicles to change lanes on their own in some instances. The company repeatedly has said that drivers are responsible for all maneuvers, and must be in control of their cars at all times.
Monitoring the system for all potential pitfalls was ultimately more work than just changing lanes without it, Consumer Reports said.
Instead of helping drivers, the system made some questionable choices, such as cutting too closely in front of other cars and passing on the right, Consumer Reports said.
“In practice, we found that Navigate on Autopilot lagged far behind a human driver’s skill set: The feature cut off cars without leaving enough space and even passed other cars in ways that violate state laws, according to several law enforcement representatives CR interviewed for this report. As a result, the driver often had to prevent the system from making poor decisions,” Consumer Reports said.
“Despite Tesla’s promises that it will have full self-driving technology by the end of next year, our experience with Navigate on Autopilot suggests it will take longer,” it said.
Chief Executive Elon Musk has promised a fleet of “robo-taxis” by late next year in some areas.
Read more: Tesla unveils ‘best in the world’ chip for self-driving cars, promises robo-taxi fleet
In a blog post last month announcing the upgrade, Tesla reiterated that it was the driver’s responsibility to make sure any maneuvers are safe and law abiding.
“This feature does not make a car autonomous, and lane changes will only be made when a driver’s hands are detected on the wheel. As has always been the case, until truly driverless cars are validated and approved by regulators, drivers are responsible for and must remain in control of their car at all times,” Tesla said.
Tesla also noted Wednesday that lane-change is an optional, not default, feature for drivers using Navigate on Autopilot.
A preliminary report by the National Transportation Safety Board said last week that the Tesla vehicle that was involved in a fatal crash in March in Florida had Autopilot on. The 50 year-old male driver, who died as a result of the crash, engaged Autopilot about 10 seconds before the collision, the report said.
From less than 8 seconds before the crash to the time of the impact, the vehicle did not detect the driver’s hands on the steering wheel, it said. The vehicle struck a semitrailer at 68 miles per hour and the roof of the Tesla was sheared off.
“Neither the preliminary data nor the videos indicate that the driver or the ADAS executed evasive maneuvers,” the NTSB report said. The crash remains under investigation, it said. Earlier this month, the family of a man who died after his Model X crashed against a highway barrier and caught fire in Silicon Valley filed a lawsuit against Tesla, blaming Autopilot for the accident.
Tesla’s stock fell for the sixth straight session on Wednesday following a raft of criticism from Wall Street and after it broke through some technical support.
The shares were recently trading under $200 and are down more than 28% in the past 12 months, contrasting with gains of around 5% for the S&P 500 index SPX, -0.28% in the same period.
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