US senator calls on Tesla to rebrand ‘Autopilot’ function amid crashes

The company has been lauded as an innovator central to the future of transport, but one of its features needs an urgent change.

A US senator says he’s found a sure-fire way to keep Tesla owners from falling asleep behind the wheel, among other antics that have led to crashes: stop claiming the cars can drive themselves.

Massachusetts Senator Ed Markey on Friday called on Tesla boss Elon Musk to rebrand the Autopilot feature of his company’s electric vehicles, saying it’s “an inherently misleading name” because the cars cannot actually fully drive themselves.

Markey, a member of the Senate’s Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, has been probing Tesla’s Autopilot since last year, after Boston news stations reported on a viral video of a man who appeared to be asleep while his Tesla sped along the Massachusetts Turnpike.

A driver rides in a Tesla Motors Inc. Model S vehicle equipped with Autopilot hardware and software. Picture: Christopher Goodney / Bloomberg News

Autopilot helps Tesla drivers steer, accelerate and brake automatically in their lane, but requires them to keep their hands on the steering wheel at all times.

Markey called for the name change — among other tweaks — to stop Tesla owners from tricking the driver-assistance program into doing all the work. Drivers have been getting around the hands-on-wheel requirement by resting only one hand on the wheel, tying a weight to the wheel “and wedging a water bottle or an orange” into the wheel, Markey claimed.

Tesla Autopilot has been involved in five fatal crashes since 2016, including a grisly accident in Mountain View, California, just 15 minutes away from the company’s headquarters, which left the driver dead after his Model X hit a highway divider.

Tesla Autopilot only works on relatively straight roads with clear markings, like highways.

The function also made headlines last year when an amateur porn star filmed a video in a self-driving Tesla. Musk merely laughed along after the video was uploaded to Pornhub: “Turns out there’s more way [sic] to use Autopilot than we imagined,” he wrote on Twitter.

Markey did not give any indication of what sort of branding he would prefer for Autopilot, though one Twitter user took a page out of Musk’s book and suggested it be called “Not Autopilot,” a reference to the Not-a-Flamethrower sold by Musk’s Boring Company.

Tesla founder Elon Musk introducing the company’s upcoming “Cybertruck” last year. Picture: AP Photo / Ringo H.W. Chiu

Though Tesla has upgraded its steering wheel monitoring following news reports in recent years, Markey says that the vehicle’s “inherent flaw” is the company’s “decision to over-rely” on the hand-pressure system. He wants it to introduce new redundancy measures to promote safety.

Tesla did not respond to a request for comment.

Shares of the automaker closed down 1.3 per cent Friday, at $US564.82 ($A836.08).

This article originally appeared on the New York Post and was reproduced with permission.