Tesla Autopilot Crashes Lead to US Investigation Into Adequacy of Recall

A touch screen inside a Tesla Inc. Model S electric vehicle displayed at a Tesla Motors Japan store in Tokyo, Japan, on Friday, Aug. 18, 2023. Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk has arrived in Japan for his first known visit in nine years.

(Bloomberg) — The top US auto-safety regulator is again investigating Tesla Inc.’s Autopilot, this time over whether the carmaker did enough months ago to address issues with its driver-assistance system.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration disclosed Friday that it’s opening a query into the adequacy of Tesla’s recall in December, which aimed to safeguard against drivers misusing Autopilot. The agency is concerned as to whether Tesla’s remedy was sufficient, in part due to crashes that have happened since the company deployed an over-the-air software update.

A touch screen inside a Tesla Inc. Model S electric vehicle displayed at a Tesla Motors Japan store in Tokyo, Japan, on Friday, Aug. 18, 2023. Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk has arrived in Japan for his first known visit in nine years.

More than 2 million Tesla vehicles are subject to the probe, according to NHTSA.

The investigation cuts against Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk’s exuberance about Tesla’s automated-driving systems. The billionaire has set a date in August to unveil a driverless robotaxi, which he said five years ago would be ready by 2020. During an earnings call this week, he downplayed the difficulty of getting the green-light from regulators for that vehicle.

“I actually do not think that there will be significant regulatory barriers, provided there is conclusive data that the autonomous car is safer than a human-driven car,” Musk said.

Tesla filed its Autopilot recall in December to address concerns NHTSA raised as part of a years-long defect investigation. Part of the company’s remedy both requires car owners to opt in and allows drivers to readily reverse changes Tesla has made, according to the agency.

The carmaker also has deployed Autopilot updates separate from the one disclosed in its December recall that appear to be related to concerns NHTSA had raised as part of its defect probe, the agency said. The latest query will consider why these updates weren’t a part of the recall, NHTSA said.

Tesla has taken heat before from NHTSA over deploying software updates to Autopilot without filing a recall. The company did so in September 2021 weeks after the agency opened its defect investigation into the driving system.

(Updates with additional context starting in the fourth paragraph.)

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