The top automotive safety regulator in the U.S. is escalating its investigation into Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (Supervised) software performance in low-visibility conditions.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s Office of Defects Investigation (ODI) announced on Thursday that it has advanced the probe initiated in October 2024 to an “engineering analysis,” the highest level of scrutiny needed before potentially ordering a recall.
This is one of two investigations ODI is conducting on Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (Supervised) software. The agency is also examining over 80 cases where Tesla’s driver-assistance software violated basic traffic laws, such as running red lights. These investigations emerge as Tesla has been working to launch a robotaxi service in Austin, Texas.
ODI commenced this specific investigation after four reported crashes in low-visibility scenarios, including one fatal pedestrian accident. Over the past year-and-a-half, the regulator has been gathering information from Tesla, identifying additional incidents where the driving software underperformed in low-visibility situations.
ODI also mentioned on Thursday it has not received all needed information from Tesla. Despite Tesla starting to develop an update to address the low-visibility issues in June 2024, before the probe began, the company has not disclosed to ODI whether the fix has been deployed or which vehicles received it.
Additionally, ODI suspects under-reporting of similar crashes due to data collection and labeling limitations that Tesla disclosed to the agency.
“In the crashes reviewed by ODI, the system failed to detect common roadway conditions affecting camera visibility or alert when camera performance deteriorated until just before the crash,” the agency stated. “Tesla’s responses revealed more crashes in similar environments where the system didn’t detect a degraded state or failed to alert the driver with enough time to react. In these crashes, FSD lost track of or never detected a lead vehicle in its path.”
This story is developing. Check back for updates.