Tesla Autopilot finds itself once again under NHTSA investigation after the agency is now doubting the effectiveness over the 2-million vehicle “recall” last year.

As you may remember, Tesla and NHTSA announced a new “safety recall” of all Tesla vehicles equipped with Autopilot in North America last December.

The recall marked the conclusion of the NHTSA’s years-long investigation into crashes of Tesla vehicles on Autopilot into stopped emergency vehicles on the highway.

The “fix” to the “recall” is again an over-the-air software update.

In the defect notice, Tesla made it clear that it doesn’t agree with NHTSA’s findings of improper driver monitoring leading to these accidents, but it agreed to add more warnings and alerts when drivers are using the Autopilot features – hence the recall.

Now, a few months later, NHTSA seems to be having doubts about how effective the recall has been after new crashes have been reported and the agency was made aware of some concerns about the “remedy”.

NHTSA decided to open a new investigation. It wrote in the notice:

Tesla filed Recall 23V838 to address concerns regarding the Autopilot system investigated in EA22002. Following deployment of the remedy in Recall 23V838, ODI identified concerns due to post-remedy crash events and results from preliminary NHTSA tests of remedied vehicles. Also, Tesla has stated that a portion of the remedy both requires the owner to opt in and allows a driver to readily reverse it. Tesla has also deployed non-remedy updates to address issues that appear related to ODI’s concerns under EA22002. This investigation will consider why these updates were not a part of the recall or otherwise determined to remedy a defect that poses an unreasonable safety risk.

The agency says that the new investigation covers all Tesla vehicles in the US with Autopilot – just over 2 million vehicles.

Electrek’s Take

The original recall always felt like a compromise. The fact that Tesla didn’t agree with NHTSA’s findings and that the actual recall mainly consisted of mild increases in alerts looked like significant compromises on both sides.

Now, it looks like NHTSA is trying to push further.

I’m not sure what they mean by drivers having to “opt-in”. It might be due to some owners not having accepted the driver monitoring through the cabin camera? They would have to approve it to enable any change to the driver monitoring through the camera in the first place.

Honestly, the driver monitoring through the cabin camera is fairly strong now. You can’t look away from the road for more than 3 seconds without getting an alert. There’s an unfortunate way to bypass that, which I don’t want to popularize even though it’s widely known.

That might be part of what NHTSA is investigating now.

China’s BYD is unleashing a series of new electric vehicles as it expands the brand globally. BYD unveiled two new EVs at the Beijing Auto Show: a sleek Ocean-M electric hatch and the Denza Z9 GT EV. Check out the first images below.

After declaring a “liberation battle” against gas-powered vehicles earlier this year, BYD has been on an EV release spree.

BYD has introduced several new “Honor” editions of its most popular EVs at cheaper prices. For example, its most affordable, the new Seagull (or Dolphin Mini overseas), launched last month with a starting price of $9,700 (69,800 yuan).

Although BYD is best known for its low-cost electric cars, like the Dolphin, Seagull, and Atto 3, the EV giant is expanding into new segments.

BYD launched its luxury Yangwang brand last January, showing off the off-road U8 and U9 electric supercar. The Yangwang U8 began rolling out in China in December, with starting prices of over $150,000 (1,089,000 yuan). Earlier this year, the brand introduced its first electric sedan, the U7.

The company is also expanding into Tesla’s sweet spot with new mid-size electric SUVs that will rival the best-selling Model Y.

BYD announced Friday the Sea Lion 07, its new mid-size smart urban electric SUV, is arriving in stores.

BYD reveals two new EVs, the Ocean-M and Z9 GT EV

Earlier this week, BYD teased the new Ocean-M, an electric performance hatch based on a new EV platform.

After officially revealing the model at the Beijing Auto Show, BYD calls the Ocean-M the industry’s first RWD performance electric hatch.

As part of BYD’s Ocean series, it resembles other models like the Dolphin or Seal but with a Volkswagen Golf-like profile.

BYD said at the launch that the Ocean-M will be powered by a new EV platform with its latest-gen C2B batteries. The new electric hatch is set to hit the market in Q3 with prices between $20,700 (RMB 150,000) and $$27,600 (RMB 200,000).

BYD’s Denza, its premium NEV brand with Mercedes-Benz, also unveiled its new Z9 GT at the Beijing Auto Show.

The Z9 GT is the brand’s new flagship luxury electric sedan poised to compete with Porsche and BMW.

At 5,180 mm long, 1,990 mm wide, and 1,500 mm tall, Denza’s new Z9 GT is about the size of the Porsche Panamera GTS (5,053 mm long, 1,937 mm wide, 1,417 mm tall).

Powered by BYD’s e-Platform 3.0, the Z9 GT will include three electric motors packing nearly 1,000 hp for a 0 to 100 km/h (0 to 62 mph) sprint in under 3 seconds.

Denza is holding a tech launch event in May, while the Z9 GT’s official launch is planned for the end of the year.

Founded in 2010 as a 50/50 JV between BYD and Daimler (Mercedes-Benz), BYD now controls 90% of the brand.

What do you guys think of BYDs new EVs? Let us know in the comments below.

Source: CnEVPost, BYD

Formula E unveiled its new “Gen3 EVO” car, an update to the Gen3 car which debuted last season, ahead of the Monaco ePrix this weekend.

The new car will be used for next season, and is basically a mid-cycle update of the Gen3 car which has been in service for last and this season. The succeeding Gen4 car is not expected until 2027.

The Gen3 car was introduced as both lighter and more powerful as the previous generation car, with a lot of promises about how much quicker it could be in the races.

It also utilized some pretty unique design ideas. The biggest difference is the addition of a front motor, but this motor was only used for braking, and conversely, the rear friction brakes were entirely deleted and instead the rear axle is braked only by the rear motor using regenerative braking, for a total of 600kW regenerative braking power.

However, The Gen3 didn’t turn out to be all that much faster. This often happens with new racecars as teams get used to tuning and using them, but teams struggled to harness the extra power available to them.

At the same time, the series switched tire providers, and the new tires may have proven to be a limiting factor.

Now, the Gen3 car is hoping to fix both of these problems at once. Not only has Hankook provided stickier tires (with 5-10% more grip, and made of 35% recycled materials) which should help to harness some of the car’s additional power, Formula E has also taken the rather unique move (in the world of formula cars) of activating the Gen3 car’s front motor for thrust, not just regen – thus making its cars all-wheel drive.

The Gen3’s inclusion of a front motor left many thinking – ourselves included – that it would inevitably get activated not just for regen, but for power delivery.

There have been all-wheel drive single seater open wheel cars in the past, but it has only been tried a few times. Currently, other open-wheel single seaters (like F1, IndyCar and the like) are rear-wheel drive only.

AWD has been popular on road cars recently, because it enhances acceleration and drivability. And on EVs, it’s quite easy to add, because you can just slap a second motor on the other axle and run a few cables to it, rather than needing to run driveshafts and gearing mechanisms all through your car to transfer the power from a single combustion engine to two separate axles.

However, sportscar and racing enthusiasts have often preferred rear-wheel drive because it makes cars more squirrelly and difficult to control, showcasing driver skill more readily.

So Formula E is going to allow all-wheel drive only in certain situations. During qualifying duels, race starts, and during the activation of “attack mode,” a temporary 50kW power boost that each driver gets at certain points in the race.

One complaint about the Gen3 cars was that attack mode was hard to use, because the car felt like it couldn’t properly utilize that additional 50kW. By activating the front motor, this should give drivers a huge advantage – quicker acceleration through and out of corners is an enormous benefit.

While 0-60 numbers don’t matter a lot for a racecar – they’re only ever at 0mph at one point, at the start of the race, after all – acceleration is still important for exiting corners, and gives you a lasting benefit for the entire straight if you can get a better exit than another racer. And the Gen3 EVO boasts a truly impressive 0-60 number: 1.82 seconds.

This 0-60 time is 30% quicker than an F1 car and 36% quicker than the Gen3 car, thanks to that front motor helping pull the car forward with 4 contact patches instead of 2.

In addition, the design of the car has changed somewhat. The nose and front wing have been redesigned from the (perhaps overly) angular design of the original Gen3 car. Over the last season and a half, cars have struggled with front wing damage, so hopefully the new wing will be a little more durable.

All told, Formula E says that the new car could be 1-3 seconds faster per lap, depending on circuit and whether the AWD system is in use. This would be a pretty massive improvement as far as laptimes go, but we’ll have to see how it plays out when next season comes around.

Now, if only we could also see that 600kW mid-race charging they’ve been working on…

The new Gen3 EVO car will start seeing use next season, but if you want to see the current Gen3 car in action, you can watch it this weekend at the Monaco ePrix.

The race proper starts at 6am PDT, 9am EDT, 1pm UTC, and 3pm local Monaco time on Saturday April 27. In the US, all sessions other than the race will be available on the Roku channel, practice sessions will be on Formula E’s YouTube, and the race will be on CBS/CBS Sports Network. To see how to watch the race in other countries, head on over to Formula E’s Ways to Watch site.