In 2021, Tesla exceeded its objectives by approaching one million vehicles sold worldwide. In France, the Model 3 – the car involved in the Paris accident – topped the list with 3,959 sales. Records, but also shadows on the board. Because the brand of Elon Musk is the subject of several investigations, mainly in the United States. In question, its automated driving system, Autopilot.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), an American federal agency responsible for road safety, is also investigating suspicious accidents and has obtained the recall of 12,000 vehicles due to reports of sudden braking. At the end of 2021, more than 650,000 vehicles, in China and the United States, were recalled for a problem related to the misalignment of one of the trunk latches located at the front of the vehicle causing the opening and the repeated closing of the trunk. In June 2021, the American manufacturer had already recalled 285,000 cars in China after an anomaly in the assisted driving software.
Death at 145 km/h
Because there have been accidents. In April 2021, a Tesla crashed into a tree in Spring, Texas, killing two. In September 2021, Nicholas Garcia, 20, lost his life with his elderly passenger, she, 19, aboard a Tesla Model 3 which caught fire after hitting two trees. The vehicle was traveling at almost 145 km/h in a zone limited to 50 km/h. For the family of the driver, who filed a complaint, the suspensions of the vehicle had an anomaly and this failure could have caused a loss of control. In October, Tesla had to recall 2,800 vehicles for suspension problems. In 2019 and July 2021, Tesla has already been targeted in the United States by complaints after fatal accidents.
In China, in February 2021, a young driver causes an accident. In question, according to her, the reliability of the braking. Two months later, at the Shanghai Motor Show, she took advantage of the event to publicly question the American firm and obtained an apology from Tesla…
Tesla responds with the data collected, specifying for example that during the fourth quarter of 2021, there was “1 accident for every 6.93 million km traveled in which the drivers used Autopilot technology (…) In comparison, the NHTSA’s most recent data shows that in the United States there is a car accident every 779,000 km. »