Musk porta in tribunale Trump – or rather: Tesla denounces the US government for i duties recently imposed on chips and other technology products from China. The ultimate goal of this type of legal action – which has become extremely common in recent months, undertaken by hundreds of American companies – is have the duties declared illegal and get a refund, naturally with interest, of the extra money spent on procuring critical components.
In the specific case of Tesla, the action revolves around a custom chip that is fundamental for the hardware part of Autopilot 3.0, Elon Musk’s proprietary autonomous vehicle driving system. Tesla had applied for a duty exemption last year, but the request was denied. The chip is essential to enable the FSD mode, or “Full Self Driving” or complete autonomous driving; the hardware is found in all the control units of the Model S, 3 e X in production, but the customer has to pay $ 7,000 ($ 7,500 with us) to unlock the functionality via software.
The control unit is assembled in China by Quanta Computer, and since 2018 it is subject to an import duty of 25%. Trump said these measures were introduced to revive the US manufacturing sector, but Tesla specifies in his complaint that was unable to find any American suppliers with the appropriate technical skills to build the device – especially in the quantities and timing required.
Tesla also said she was denied duty exemption for the MCU (Media Control Unit) of Model 3 – this is the control unit that manages the multimedia commands, is responsible for on-board connectivity, manages the audio system, USB charging and the reversing camera.
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