🚨 Tesla recall

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🚨 Tesla recall

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Tonight: Tesla's in trouble for treating stop signs like suggestions. Plus: Wall Street is trying to put that ugly January selloff firmly in the rear view. Let's get into it.

By Allison Morrow

🚗 TSK TSK

It turns out the problems with Tesla's "full self-driving" feature aren't just the fact that it's unreliable and super expensive. Apparently, it was also designed to break the law now and then.

The news: Tesla is recalling nearly 54,000 vehicles with its misleadingly named "full self-driving" driver-assist feature because regulators say the technology was intentionally programmed to roll through stop signs in some scenarios.

The recall will affect Model S, 3, X and Y vehicles that have the beta version of the FSD software enabled. (And yes, Elon Musk actually chose the model names to spell out "S3XY" because he's the world's richest child.)

Here's the thing: As we've discussed here before, "full self-driving" is something of a misnomer. It aims to eventually allow cars to drive themselves, but right now it's nowhere near that goal. We've heard negative reviews from several drivers who posted their hair-raising close encounters online. And just to be sure, my colleague Matt McFarland checked it out for himself. (Spoiler alert: It didn't go so great.)

The recalled feature, called "rolling stop," allowed Teslas using FSD to travel through all-way stop intersections at up to 5.6 mph under certain conditions, Matt explains. The "rolling stop" function also required that no relevant moving cars or pedestrian or bicyclists were detected near the intersection.

But the sticklers over at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration weren't super keen on that idea. In a letter to Tesla, the regulator stated: "Failing to stop at a stop sign can increase the risk of a crash."

(Just a quick aside: Is it just me, or is it a bit surreal to think that the top road safety agency in America had to send a literal ink-and-paper letter to the world's most valuable car company explaining a rule of the road that most of us grasped in grade school?)

Tesla said that it was not aware of any collisions, injuries or deaths related to the feature. The company will disable the function as soon as this month in software update that's released over the internet.

BIG PICTURE

Musk has staked Tesla's reputation on the promise of fully autonomous cars. But a series of safety issues are casting doubt on whether it can actually deliver.

Last year the NHTSA opened an investigation into Teslas that were crashing into parked emergency vehicles. A separate investigation was resolved in December when Tesla agreed to disable a feature that allowed people to play video games on the touchscreens of its vehicles while they are in motion. (Again, that's something Tesla had to be compelled to do.)

#️⃣ NUMBER OF THE DAY

5.3%

It was cold and cruel start to 2022 for Wall Street. After rallying almost 27% in 2021, the S&P 500 finished the month down 5.3% — the index's worst January since 2009.

The tech-heavy Nasdaq fared even worse, shedding 9% as Wall Street lost its appetite for risk. The selloff, which many analysts say was overdue, was driven by looming shifts in policy at the Federal Reserve (and, perhaps, one too many grumpy traders doing Dry January?)

On Tuesday, the first day of February, there were signs the rout was behind us as US stocks finished in the green for the third session in a row.

💼 QUITTIN' TIME

Last year, a record number of people quit their jobs, while US employers had more positions to fill than ever before.

The news: The Labor Department released its so-called JOLTS report on Tuesday — JOLTS being a fun acronym for a decidedly dull-sounding "job openings and labor turnover survey." Here are the key findings:

People are still quitting (a lot) because they have better options. In December, 4.3 million Americans quit, down just slightly from the record 4.5 million in November. For context: Before the pandemic that figured averaged around 3.2 million a month.
Job openings stood at 10.9 million — little changed from the high of 11.1 million over the summer. In other words, employers are still struggling to attract workers.
In total last year, nearly 69 million people left their jobs, either by quitting, being laid off, or being fired. Of those, more than two-thirds of them — 47 million — were voluntary quits.

All of this has made for an incredibly tight labor market in which employers are having to raise wages and figure out other incentives — better health care, flexible hours, stock options, etc. — to attract workers.

For example, one major employer, Home Depot, is hoping it can lock in new staff almost immediately after they apply.

On Tuesday, Home Depot said job applicants "could receive an offer within one day of applying." A 24-hour turnaround is an intriguing tactic, and it wasn't immediately clear just how the company plans to pull it off.

The aggressive hiring is part of Home Depot's ambitious plan to hire more than 100,000 new workers before spring, aka the season when everyone wants to spruce up the old homestead, increasing already elevated demand on hardware stores.

QUOTE OF THE DAY

When the times are good and when you're making money, it all feels great. And when the times are bad and you're losing, you can evaluate it like that and say, you know, 'I don't have a consistent paycheck.' There's no way to guarantee my future doing this.

AJ Vanover is one of the lucky amateur traders who bought GameStop options before its Reddit-fueled stock boom last January. A year ago, he was working in a battery store in Cape Girardeau, Missouri, earning $35,000 a year. Then he turned a bet of a few thousand dollars into a life-changing windfall that allowed him to quit his job and start investing full-time. However, with markets and meme stocks suffering a tumultuous few months, he's discovering the challenges of giving up a regular paycheck.

WHAT ELSE IS GOING ON?

💸 America's national debt just surpassed $30 trillion for the first time, spurred by accelerated government borrowing during the pandemic.

📈 Google's stock jumped 8% in after-hours trading after it reported a blowout quarter fueled by strong ad sales.

💰 Facebook's ambitious plan to create its own global cryptocurrency has officially unraveled after various setbacks and regulatory pressure made it impossible to get off the ground.