Tesla owners will be able to ask the robot that drives their car to break the speed limit, again

following a software update pushed out to users over the weekend.

In December, a software update was pushed out which limited the speed on roads without a central divider: cars could not be set to go faster than the speed limit. At the time, Tesla Motors’ chief executive, Elon Musk, said that there was “no major precipitating event” for the change, but that “people in general were going a bit too fast on winding roads”.

Now, that update has been reversed, allowing Tesla Motors owners to return to breaking the speed limit. The car is still capped at five miles per hour faster than the limit on non-divided roads, however. read more »

U.K. to test Jeep model after U.S. emissions accusations

The U.K. said on Monday it will carry out tests on the Jeep Grand Cherokee model following U.S. accusations that Fiat Chrysler Automobiles mislead regulators on diesel car emissions.

"We have instructed our market surveillance unit to undertake testing on one of these vehicles at the earliest opportunity," a spokesman at the Department for Transport said.

FCA CEO Sergio Marchionne has angrily rejected the allegations, saying there was no wrongdoing and FCA never sought to create software to cheat emissions rules. read more »

At Volkswagen, A scandal Where Executives Could Pay the Price

At the Detroit Auto Show last week, Volkswagen hoped to escape the present with a nod to the past, introducing a revamped version of its iconic flat-faced, boxy Microbus, the vehicle that shepherded the counterculture across the interstates some five decades ago. The bus’s reincarnation is a battery-propelled, self-driving vehicle called ID Buzz. But nostalgic wing-vent windows and chrome trim could not distract from the company’s current predicament. Barely had the auto show kicked off when the Justice Department announced that VW had pleaded guilty to criminal and civil charges related to its efforts to cheat on U.S. emissions standards.

The company agreed to pay $4.3 billion in penalties, the largest fine ever levied by the U.S. government on an auto company, dwarfing both Toyota’s $1.2-billion settlement for vehicle-safety problems involving unintended acceleration and GM’s nine-hundred-million-dollar settlement for ignition-switch defects. This new penalty was on top of the $14.7-billion settlement that VW signed, in July, to cover customers’ class-action suits. read more »

Toxic emissions from cars may be several times higher than the legal limit

CARMAKERS are again in regulators’ headlights over emissions, on both sides of the Atlantic. On January 13th French prosecutors announced they were investigating Renault for “suspected cheating” on diesel emissions. A day earlier, America’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) accused Fiat Chrysler (whose chairman, John Elkann, sits on the board of The Economist’s parent company) of using undeclared software in 104,000 diesel-engined Jeeps and Dodge Ram pick-ups. The EPA says that the software increases emissions of nitrogen oxides (NOx) from the vehicles in normal use, and was not declared or justified by the carmaker. It is illegal to fail to inform the EPA of software that might affect emissions, although the agency stopped short of saying it was a "defeat device". In 2015 Volkswagen (VW) admitted installing “defeat devices” in several models that were designed to hide the true level of emissions from vehicles during the testing process. VW has coughed up more than $20bn so far in fines and compensation for the 600,000 American vehicles in question. read more »

The Feds Move On VW: Does Fiat Chrysler Get The Message?

The timing is exquisite if not intended. On Thursday, the EPA accused Fiat Chrysler of knowingly using software that enables its diesel trucks to circumvent emissions tests. It was a mere one day after federal prosecutors announced they’d filed criminal charges against six Volkswagen executives for committing the same crime. read more »