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Tesla Model S on Autopilot crashes into stalled van on highway
A Tesla Model S crashes into the back of a stalled vehicle on a highway. Who is responsible, Autopilot, TACC, or the driver? Ultimately, we know the answer but not everyone wants to admit it.
A Tesla Model S on Autopilot crashed into the back of a stalled van in the high speed lane of a highway this week. The owner Chris Thomann who caught the accident through his dash cam believes it shows the Traffic Aware Cruise Control/Autopilot feature of his car malfunctioned. According to the description on Thomann’s YouTube video, he claims Autopilot and TACC have worked flawlessly many times before, but this time “The forward collision warning turned on way too late, it was set to normal warning distance”.
Updated: The original YouTube video has been marked as private so we added this animated gif via CNET showing the events of what happened.
There have been several instances lately in which Tesla drivers claim their cars malfunctioned, leading to collisions. Is there something wrong with these systems that people should be aware of?
The answer appears to be “No.” On Reddit, Tesla owner Ricodic took the time to post this language from page 69 of the Model S owner’s manual:
Warning: Traffic-Aware Cruise Control can not detect all objects and may not brake/decelerate for stationary vehicles, especially in situations when you are driving over 50 mph (80 km/h) and a vehicle you are following moves out of your driving path and a stationary vehicle or object, bicycle, or pedestrian is in front of you instead. Always pay attention to the road ahead and stay prepared to take immediate corrective action. Depending on Traffic-Aware Cruise Control to avoid a collision can result in serious injury or death. In addition, Traffic-Aware Cruise Control may react to vehicles or objects that either do not exist or are not in the lane of travel, causing Model S to slow down unnecessarily or inappropriately.
The problem is not with the software, it is with human drivers. It’s not that we don’t trust the technology; it’s that we trust it too much. We assume it means we can read the paper on the way to work or fall asleep at the wheel. We get lulled into a sense of false security by how well Autopilot and TACC work most of the time. The failure is in the human brain, which needs a moment or two to recognize that an emergency is in the making and that it is time to re-assert control over the vehicle.
Tesla owner Jarrod Overson spoke about this candidly in a post on Medium after his car suffered a collision in April. “Once I recognized the car was stopped in front of me, I explicitly remember panicking with the following thoughts going through my head: “Does my car see this? Is it going to do anything? NO. NO IT ISN’T. EMERGENCY.” In retrospect, the actions I needed to take were obvious . I should have regained control immediately. That half of a second or more probably would have made a lot of difference. The problem is that my brain wasn’t primed to have that conversation with itself. Now it is.”
Overson knew some would take him to task for his error in judgment. “I’m not looking forward to the comments calling me stupid for not doing this automatically, but I felt like it’s an important topic to be open about. I’d wager we all had a time in our lives where we didn’t know the extent of some technology, trusted it too far, and had to recalibrate after we understood the limits. Now we might just have to be a little bit luckier to get to that recalibration stage.”
It’s what autonomous driving experts refer to as “the handoff,” that brief period of time between when everything is going along serenely and when it is not. It’s when the computer suddenly finds itself in one of what Elon Musk calls a “corner case.” Those are instances that requires human input. Often, drivers have less than a second to react.
As good as Autopilot is — and it is getting better all the time — Tesla drivers still must be aware that the company and the software expect them to step in when necessary. Many put too much faith in the technology and are willing to abdicate ultimate responsibility for the operation of the car to machines.
The glowing praises we often hear from Elon make it easy to do. Perhaps Musk and Tesla could back their statements about the wonders they have created down a notch. Not everyone reads every page of the owner’s manual and even fewer commit everything found in the instructions to memory.
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Tesla ends Full Self-Driving purchase option in the U.S.
In January, Musk announced that Tesla would remove the ability to purchase the suite outright for $8,000. This would give the vehicle Full Self-Driving for its entire lifespan, but Tesla intended to move away from it, for several reasons, one being that a tranche in the CEO’s pay package requires 10 million active subscriptions of FSD.
Tesla has officially ended the option to purchase the Full Self-Driving suite outright, a move that was announced for the United States market in January by CEO Elon Musk.
The driver assistance suite is now exclusively available in the U.S. as a subscription, which is currently priced at $99 per month.
Tesla moved away from the outright purchase option in an effort to move more people to the subscription program, but there are concerns over its current price and the potential for it to rise.
In January, Musk announced that Tesla would remove the ability to purchase the suite outright for $8,000. This would give the vehicle Full Self-Driving for its entire lifespan, but Tesla intended to move away from it, for several reasons, one being that a tranche in the CEO’s pay package requires 10 million active subscriptions of FSD.
Although Tesla moved back the deadline in other countries, it has now taken effect in the U.S. on Sunday morning. Tesla updated its website to reflect this:
🚨 Tesla has officially moved the outright purchase option for FSD on its website pic.twitter.com/RZt1oIevB3
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) February 15, 2026
There are still some concerns regarding its price, as $99 per month is not where many consumers are hoping to see the subscription price stay.
Musk has said that as capabilities improve, the price will go up, but it seems unlikely that 10 million drivers will want to pay an extra $100 every month for the capability, even if it is extremely useful.
Instead, many owners and fans of the company are calling for Tesla to offer a different type of pricing platform. This includes a tiered-system that would let owners pick and choose the features they would want for varying prices, or even a daily, weekly, monthly, and annual pricing option, which would incentivize longer-term purchasing.
Although Musk and other Tesla are aware of FSD’s capabilities and state is is worth much more than its current price, there could be some merit in the idea of offering a price for Supervised FSD and another price for Unsupervised FSD when it becomes available.
Elon Musk
Musk bankers looking to trim xAI debt after SpaceX merger: report
xAI has built up $18 billion in debt over the past few years, with some of this being attributed to the purchase of social media platform Twitter (now X) and the creation of the AI development company. A new financing deal would help trim some of the financial burden that is currently present ahead of the plan to take SpaceX public sometime this year.
Elon Musk’s bankers are looking to trim the debt that xAI has taken on over the past few years, following the company’s merger with SpaceX, a new report from Bloomberg says.
xAI has built up $18 billion in debt over the past few years, with some of this being attributed to the purchase of social media platform Twitter (now X) and the creation of the AI development company. Bankers are trying to create some kind of financing plan that would trim “some of the heavy interest costs” that come with the debt.
The financing deal would help trim some of the financial burden that is currently present ahead of the plan to take SpaceX public sometime this year. Musk has essentially confirmed that SpaceX would be heading toward an IPO last month.
The report indicates that Morgan Stanley is expected to take the leading role in any financing plan, citing people familiar with the matter. Morgan Stanley, along with Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, and JPMorgan Chase & Co., are all expected to be in the lineup of banks leading SpaceX’s potential IPO.
Since Musk acquired X, he has also had what Bloomberg says is a “mixed track record with debt markets.” Since purchasing X a few years ago with a $12.5 billion financing package, X pays “tens of millions in interest payments every month.”
That debt is held by Bank of America, Barclays, Mitsubishi, UFJ Financial, BNP Paribas SA, Mizuho, and Société Générale SA.
X merged with xAI last March, which brought the valuation to $45 billion, including the debt.
SpaceX announced the merger with xAI earlier this month, a major move in Musk’s plan to alleviate Earth of necessary data centers and replace them with orbital options that will be lower cost:
“In the long term, space-based AI is obviously the only way to scale. To harness even a millionth of our Sun’s energy would require over a million times more energy than our civilization currently uses! The only logical solution, therefore, is to transport these resource-intensive efforts to a location with vast power and space. I mean, space is called “space” for a reason.”
The merger has many advantages, but one of the most crucial is that it positions the now-merged companies to fund broader goals, fueled by revenue from the Starlink expansion, potential IPO, and AI-driven applications that could accelerate the development of lunar bases.
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Tesla pushes Full Self-Driving outright purchasing option back in one market
Tesla announced last month that it would eliminate the ability to purchase the Full Self-Driving software outright, instead opting for a subscription-only program, which will require users to pay monthly.
Tesla has pushed the opportunity to purchase the Full Self-Driving suite outright in one market: Australia.
The date remains February 14 in North America, but Tesla has pushed the date back to March 31, 2026, in Australia.
NEWS: Tesla is ending the option to buy FSD as a one-time outright purchase in Australia on March 31, 2026.
It still ends on Feb 14th in North America. https://t.co/qZBOztExVT pic.twitter.com/wmKRZPTf3r
— Sawyer Merritt (@SawyerMerritt) February 13, 2026
Tesla announced last month that it would eliminate the ability to purchase the Full Self-Driving software outright, instead opting for a subscription-only program, which will require users to pay monthly.
If you have already purchased the suite outright, you will not be required to subscribe once again, but once the outright purchase option is gone, drivers will be required to pay the monthly fee.
The reason for the adjustment is likely due to the short period of time the Full Self-Driving suite has been available in the country. In North America, it has been available for years.
Tesla hits major milestone with Full Self-Driving subscriptions
However, Tesla just launched it just last year in Australia.
Full Self-Driving is currently available in seven countries: the United States, Canada, China, Mexico, Australia, New Zealand, and South Korea.
The company has worked extensively for the past few years to launch the suite in Europe. It has not made it quite yet, but Tesla hopes to get it launched by the end of this year.
In North America, Tesla is only giving customers one more day to buy the suite outright before they will be committed to the subscription-based option for good.
The price is expected to go up as the capabilities improve, but there are no indications as to when Tesla will be doing that, nor what type of offering it plans to roll out for owners.
Tesla ends Full Self-Driving purchase option in the U.S.
Musk bankers looking to trim xAI debt after SpaceX merger: report
