NHTSA's investigation of Tesla's advanced driver-assistance system covers an estimated 765,000 vehicles, the agency says. It covers Model S, X, 3 and Y vehicles from model years 2014 through 2021.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration probe made public Monday is the latest sign that U.S. authorities are beginning to scrutinize driver-assistance technologies more closely after largely giving companies free rein.
Four of the crashes NHTSA is probing happened this year and most took place after dark, the agency said. In one such crash in March, the driver of a Tesla Model Y had Autopilot engaged before plowing into a police vehicle that had stopped along a Lansing, Mich.-area highway to investigate a separate crash, Michigan State Police said. The police vehicle had its emergency lights on, police said.
Such investigations can but don't always lead to recalls. NHTSA recently began requiring companies to regularly report crashes involving such features to the agency.
Tesla, whose shares fell more than 4% Monday, didn't respond to a request for comment. The electric-vehicle company has long said that driving with Autopilot engaged is safer than doing so without it.
Autopilot has drawn scrutiny for how some drivers misuse the technology, overriding safety functions to operate the vehicle without their hands on the wheel, for example. Some critics also say the term Autopilot risks giving drivers an inflated sense of the system's capabilities.
Autopilot has evolved over time and has long relied on a combination of cameras, radar and other sensors. However, several months ago, the company did away with radar in Model 3 sedans and Model Y compact sport-utility vehicles made for the North American market.
Andrej Karpathy, senior director of artificial intelligence at Tesla, recently spoke about some of those challenges while discussing the company's technology at an industry conference. "The problem with radar is like, once in a while, at random, it will give you a dumb measurement, and you will not know when that is," he said in June.
NHTSA's action adds to the heightened regulatory scrutiny Tesla has faced in recent months.
Tesla recently recalled more than 285,000 vehicles in China to address a cruise control-related safety issue. Tesla apologized to car owners in connection with the recall and said it would continue to improve safety in line with national requirements.
In the U.S., Tesla agreed early this year to recall roughly 135,000 Model S and Model X vehicles over touch-screen failures. Tesla said at the time that it disagreed that the issue constituted a defect in the vehicles but that it was going ahead with a recall in the interest of customer experience.
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
August 16, 2021 11:47 ET (15:47 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2021 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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