According to media, a Munich court has ordered Tesla Inc. to refund a customer the majority of the 112,000 euros ($112,884.80) she spent for a Model X SUV due to issues with the Autopilot feature.
According to a technical report, the car occasionally would apply the brakes needlessly and was unable to properly identify barriers like the narrowing of a building site.
The court determined that this could result in crashes and present a “massive hazard” in urban areas.
According to media, Tesla lawyers claimed that Autopilot was not intended for use in city traffic, and the court agreed, stating that it would be dangerous for drivers to manually turn the feature on and off in certain situations.
Following reports of 16 crashes involving Tesla vehicles in Autopilot that had struck stationary emergency vehicles and road maintenance vehicles, including seven injury events and one fatality, U.S. safety officials are looking into Tesla’s Autopilot feature.
Tesla claims that while Autopilot enables vehicles to automatically brake and steer within their lanes, it does not give them the ability to drive independently.
Depending on regulatory approval, Musk stated in March that Tesla is likely to release a test version of its new “Full Self-Driving” software in Europe later this year.
Then, he said to workers in a Berlin factory, “It’s quite tough to implement full self-driving in Europe. Much work needs to be done to manage tricky driving circumstances in Europe where roads differ greatly by country.
