US opens Tesla probe after more crashes involving its so-called full self-driving technology

Audio By Carbonatix

WASHINGTON (AP) — Federal auto safety regulators have opened yet another investigation into Tesla's so-called full-self driving technology after dozens of incidents in which its vehicles ran red lights or drove on the wrong side of the road, sometimes crashing into other vehicles and injuring people.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said in a filing dated Tuesday that it has 58 incident reports of Tesla vehicles violating traffic safety laws while operating in full self-driving mode. In reports to regulators, many of the Tesla drivers said the cars gave them no warning about the unexpected behavior.

In August, a Miami jury found that Tesla was partly responsible for a deadly 2019 crash in Florida involving its Autopilot driver assist technology — which is different than full self-driving — and must pay the victims more than $240 million in damages.

Tesla said it would appeal the decision.

The new probe covers 2,882,566 vehicles, essentially all Teslas equipped with full self-driving technology, or FSD, of which there are two types. Level 2 driver-assistance software, or “Full Self-Driving (Supervised),” requires drivers to pay full attention to the road. The company is still testing a version that does not require driver intervention, something that the automaker's owner and CEO Elon Musk has been promising to roll out for years.

The new investigation follows a host of other probes into the FSD feature on Teslas, which has been blamed for several injuries and deaths. Tesla has repeatedly said the system cannot drive itself and human drivers must be ready to intervene at all times.

Tesla is also under investigation by NHTSA for a “summon” technology that allows drivers to tell their cars to drive to their location to pick them up, a feature that has reportedly led to some fender benders in parking lots. A probe into driver-assistance features in 2.4 million Teslas was opened last year after several crashes in fog and other low-visibility conditions, including one in which a pedestrian was killed.

Another investigation was launched by NHTSA in August looking into why Tesla apparently has not been reporting crashes promptly to the agency as required by its rules.

NHTSA investigations can often lead to recalls.

Musk is under pressure to show that the latest advances in its driver-assistance features have not only fixed such glitches but have made them so good drivers don’t even need to look out the window anymore. He recently promised to put hundreds of thousands of such self-driving Tesla cars and Tesla robotaxis on roads by the end of the next year.

Tesla shares fell 2% Thursday.