Shulou(Shulou.com)12/24 Report--

The cost is almost zero.

Author | Wang Lei Chumen

2.03 million!

Tesla recently announced a large-scale recall, which is almost all vehicles sold in the United States.

The reason for the recall is precisely Tesla's proud autopilot, which the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) called "flawed."

However, this is not a recall in the traditional sense. According to the documents released by NHTSA, Tesla will solve the problem through OTA (Over-the-Air).

Musk himself has expressed dissatisfaction with the word "recall", saying that it is very unreasonable and completely wrong to regard OTA updates as a recall.

Even so, many industry insiders believe that the large-scale recall is bound to affect Tesla's core business.

01. Use will be more stringent

Earlier, NHTSA announced that Tesla's autopilot problem may involve all vehicles sold in the United States since the launch of Autopilot at the end of 2015, including the 2012 Model S.

Let's first take a look at how NHTSA described the recall:

"in some cases, if drivers abuse the SAE level 2 driving assistance function, they will not be continuously responsible for the operation of the vehicle and are not ready to intervene to identify when the feature is cancelled or not enabled, which may increase the risk of collision."

This passage of NHTSA is a mouthful. To put it simply, the automatic steering assist system (Autosteer) function of Autopilot equipped by Tesla may cause drivers to pay less attention to the road while driving.

In most cases, cars equipped with automatic steering assistance will have some safety measures to prevent drivers from being distracted.

For example, when you temporarily take your hand off the steering wheel, the system will issue a warning. Once the warning is triggered too many times, or the hand is away from the steering wheel for too long, there will be an "ultimatum"-the system will automatically shut down and the driver must regain full control of the vehicle.

This is the requirement of most cars with L2 autopilot assistance system, but Tesla's Autopilot does not seem to do so.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) said Tesla's system failed to correctly warn drivers with their hands off the steering wheel, so US safety regulators asked him to recall all Tesla models sold from 2012 to today with automatic steering assistance.

It should be pointed out that this recall is the result of a two-year investigation into Tesla's autopilot system.

In August 2021, when NHTSA investigated 11 crashes involving the use of Tesla's autopilot function, NHTSA found that drivers "abusing" Autopilot's automatic steering system may increase the risk of crashes.

Tesla and NHTSA held several meetings from October to December this year, and finally agreed to a voluntary recall for OTA update on December 5.

In order to solve this problem, Tesla has pushed a free OTA update of 2023.44.30 to the affected vehicles since December 12.

The updated contents include:

1. Additional controls and reminders will be added to affected vehicles. Depending on the hardware of the vehicle, additional controls will include simplifying the start and exit of Autosteer and additional checks at start-up, during driving and when approaching traffic control points.

two。 In the process of using Autosteer, the system will monitor the driver, if the driver can not fulfill the driving responsibility well, such as put his hand on the steering wheel and pay attention to the road conditions, then the related functions will be suspended.

3. If the driver enables the Autosteer function if it does not meet the conditions, the system will prompt you to disable it and ensure that the Autosteer will not start.

On the whole, this OTA update has more stringent requirements for car owners when turning on and using related functions.

In addition, the OTA update does not involve models produced after December 7, and the software version of the new car shipped after that is the latest 2023.44.30.

According to Reuters, Tesla did not respond to whether the recall would be carried out outside the United States.

02. The cost of the recall was 0. Musk continued to talk high, but Tesla's share price did not seem to be affected by the "recall." on December 13, North American time, Tesla fell by more than 3%, but then picked up again, and by the end of the day, the offer was $239.29, up 1% instead.

Gary Black, an investor in Tesla and managing partner of Future Fund, said on the public platform that Tesla's OTA update and NHTSA's "recall" had never had more than a day's impact on Tesla's valuation or share price, as the cost of Tesla's OTA update was close to zero.

Or the market has become accustomed to this kind of news, and this level of "recall" does not hurt.

In fact, in the past few years, NHTSA has launched many investigations into Tesla, most of which are related to Tesla's autopilot safety.

As early as February this year, NHTSA announced that Tesla would recall as many as 362758 cars equipped with fully self-driving test software or that had not yet been installed, citing an increased risk of collision.

In July, NHTSA announced that it had reopened its investigation into Tesla's suspected accidental acceleration, which involved about 1.8 million cars produced by Tesla, which also covered almost all models at that time, so it attracted a lot of attention.

Just a few days ago, the California Motor vehicle Administration (DMV) thought that Tesla was deceptive in using the term "self-driving". They thought the names implied that Tesla's cars could achieve full autopilot, but in fact they were just an auxiliary driving system that still needed driver supervision and control, and asked Tesla to provide more data about his FSD project.

Interestingly, Tesla responded forcefully, arguing that DMV "has been aware of the Autopilot and FSD names since Tesla started using them in 2014 and 2016" and "acquiesced in the use of these names".

Tesla believes that since DMV has not taken any action before, it should now allow the company to continue to use these names. In addition, Tesla claimed that restricting the use of the term violated his freedom of expression.

Indeed, as Tesla's core competitive tool, FSD, Tesla has been vigorously promoting his own autopilot, and Musk publicly said in April that he would achieve full autopilot in 2023. But the reality is, it's almost 2024, and FSD still doesn't have full autopilot.

In the face of increasing pressure from public opinion, Tesla's attitude is also gradually softening. After NHTSA launched the investigation, Tesla said on his website that even if a fully autopilot system is installed, drivers must always be ready to intervene.

The reason why Tesla has always been tough on the issue of autopilot comes from the particularity of FSD to Tesla.

Musk has said more than once that he can sell cars at zero profit. The implication is that Tesla can not make money on hardware, but there must be something alternative to make money, so how does Tesla make money?

The answer is Tesla's fully autopilot ability.

FSD is currently priced at $12000 (about RMB 86000) in North America or charged at $199 / $99 a month. At a price where the cost of OTA is close to zero, it is indeed much more profitable than selling cars.

As Musk puts it: "in the long run, autopilot revenue will make all these numbers (profits from traditional car sales) look stupid."

Musk has not yet "opposed" the recall on Twitter, but Musk has been adamant that autopilot is much safer than human drivers.

Tesla's test version of FSD is very close to the goal of being safer than human drivers without supervision. "

This article is from the official account of Wechat: Chaodian Lab (ID:SuperEV-Lab), author: Wang Lei Chumen

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