Tesla is known for its Full Self-Driving (Supervised) feature, which packs automatic parking, lane changes and city driving into an $8,000 upgrade for buyers. Although FSD it is popularnew data released Friday morning shows that a federal agency is concerned about the system's security.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) opened a preliminary investigation into all 2.4 million Tesla vehicles with FSD, including the Model 3 and Model Y, two of them most popular electric vehicles sold in the US last year. The investigation follows four accidents involving Tesla cars; A resulted in one fatality, and one caused an injury.
The incidents were caused by low visibility conditions, such as sun glare or fog, which interfered with the FSD, NHTSA wrote in the report. The preliminary review will examine how well FSD responds to low visibility conditions, whether other FSD crashes have occurred in similar circumstances, and whether Tesla makes any updates to the FSD system to improve safety.
Tesla Model 3. (Photo by Stanislav Kogiku/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)
The NHTSA investigation arrived a week after the Tesla was impounded its robotaxi event. The robotaxis must be fully autonomous, which Tesla itself admits is difficult to achieve.
“Full autonomy will depend on achieving reliability far beyond human drivers, as demonstrated by billions of miles of experience, as well as regulatory approval, which may take longer in some jurisdictions,” Tesla wrote on her page.
Tesla remains the market leader for electric vehicles, selling more than 1.8 million cars in 2023 alone. Its most recent earnings report, released earlier this month, shows it delivered nearly half a million cars in the third quarter alone, with delivery numbers up 6% from last year.
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