The electric car manufacturer Tesla is threatened with a 30-day sales stop in the strong-selling US state of California. The trigger is a court’s assessment that tech billionaire Elon Musk’s company exaggerated the capabilities of its “Autopilot” assistance system. The California Department of Transportation postponed implementation of the sales freeze for 60 days so that Tesla could make changes. If that doesn’t happen, the dealer’s license will then be suspended for 30 days, the authority said.
According to calculations by a dealer association, Tesla sold almost 135,500 vehicles in California in the first nine months of this year – a decline of 15 percent. This put the company in third place behind Toyota and Honda.
The court also proposed suspending Tesla’s manufacturer’s license in California for 30 days. However, the transport authority put this measure on hold indefinitely. In California, the Tesla headquarters is located in Fremont.
Does the name promise too much?
The debate about the name and marketing of the “Autopilot” system and especially the “Full Self-Driving” (FSD) expansion stage has been going on for a long time. Because FSD does not turn a Tesla into a self-driving car, even if the name suggests it. Anyone behind the wheel must be ready to take control at any time and bear responsibility. This means that FSD is actually just an assistance system.
Despite warnings in the Tesla manual, many drivers relied excessively on the “Autopilot” software, according to the NTSB. Tesla has already changed course somewhat and speaks of “FSD supervised” in the current version. Only at the “FSD unsupervised” level, which has not yet been introduced as standard, will the vehicles truly drive autonomously.
Robotaxi race
With a version of this future software, Tesla is currently using a few dozen vehicles as robotaxis in the Texas city of Austin. The seat at the wheel remains empty – but a supervisor is positioned in the passenger seat. Now two Teslas were spotted in Austin without any people, even if they were followed by another vehicle from the company. Tesla shares then closed at a record high of $489.88.
Google sister company Waymo has more than 2,500 fully autonomous robotaxis on the streets in several US cities and is considered the clear number one in technology for self-driving cars. Waymo wants to raise billions in a financing round for further expansion, reported the website “The Information” and the financial service Bloomberg. The company should be valued at at least $100 billion (85 billion euros), it said, citing people familiar with it. According to Bloomberg, Waymo wants to raise more than $15 billion, while “The Information” reported possibly more than $10 billion.
