Tesla sent a warning that it would exercise its warranty rights against the company after a Tesla driver reported an accident involving the autopilot feature in its cars.
Federal safety regulators said the autopilot and separate, but slightly different autopilot software could lead to these problems, FOX31 Denver reported Friday.
A Tesla driver on Interstate 280 in Mountain View, California, said her car’s autopilot function activated, not when she wanted it to, and allowed the car to slam on the brakes before spinning out of control.
Tesla’s autopilot is its own self-driving technology that can adjust speed and control the car’s direction.
Tesla included a link to a forum where drivers can share experiences with the feature.
In this post, a Tesla user reported seeing another man and woman staring at their phones as a Tesla went off the road.
Another said her Autopilot tool froze and “shut it off” and beeped, while she was “in an emergency situation.”
Another said that Tesla did not warn drivers that it was setting the car on autopilot mode and said that “when drivers are not watching what’s on their screens, this is what they can expect to happen.”
A series of Tesla problems linked to autopilot, Tesla CEO Elon Musk announced Friday night, drove the electric car maker to an unforeseen $300 million loss.
Musk, in his final quarterly earnings conference call, blamed the “rollercoaster” ride of Tesla trading on market jitters over alleged “production bottlenecks” stemming from the company’s $5 billion Model 3 sedan.
Tesla, he said, hopes to achieve its goal of manufacturing 5,000 Model 3s a week by the end of the current quarter.
The company’s shares fell 9 percent last month after a minor delay in the automaker’s high-profile new electric sedan.
Tesla is in the midst of trying to double its quarterly production in four months, from the current 25,000 vehicles produced.
The AP contributed to this report.
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