Tesla’s new software slammed

A FULL-page advertisement in The

New York Times by advocacy group The Dawn Project has slammed Tesla’s ‘Full Self-Driving’ (FSD) beta software, calling it “the worst software ever sold by a Fortune 500 company”.

The ad was published as part of a campaign to remove Tesla’s FSD beta software from public roads until it has “1 000 times fewer critical malfunctions”.

“We did not sign up for our families to be crash test dummies for thousands of Tesla cars being driven on the public roads,” the ad read.

Priced at $12 000 (about R184 000), the FSD software enables Tesla vehicles to virtually drive themselves both on highways and city streets by simply entering a location in the navigation system. However, the software does not make Tesla vehicles fully autonomous. The ad came just days after the California Department of Motor Vehicles told the Elon Musk-run electric car maker that it would be “revisiting” its opinion that the company’s test programme doesn’t fall under the department’s autonomous vehicle regulations, reports TechCrunch.

US regulators have also begun to take some action against Tesla and its Autopilot and FSD beta software systems. Tesla’s Autopilot has already been involved in around a dozen crashes the world over.