Feds Expand Tesla Probe Over Self-Driving Failures

Tesla's driver-assistance tech is drawing fresh scrutiny from US safety regulators, this time over how it behaves when the weather or visibility turns bad. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has escalated its investigation into Tesla's "Full Self-Driving (Supervised)" system to an "engineering analysis," a step that can precede a recall or other enforcement action, the Wall Street Journal reports.

• The move follows crashes—including a fatal one—in which the system allegedly failed to recognize or properly warn drivers about low-visibility conditions like sun glare, fog, or dust, and in some cases lost track of vehicles ahead until just before impact.

• The probe, covering about 3.2 million Teslas with FSD, most of the Teslas on the roads, zeroes in on the company's camera-only "vision" approach and a software-based "degradation detection" feature that's supposed to spot poor visibility. Regulators say data so far suggests the system isn't reliably doing its job.
• The NTHSA's preliminary evaluation of the software began in October 2024, reports Reuters. A separate investigation was launched last year over dozens of incidents in which vehicles with FSD violated traffic safety laws. In some cases, vehicles ran red lights or drove on the wrong side of the road.
• The deepened inquiry lands roughly a month before Tesla is slated to begin building its Cybercab robotaxi, a planned steering-wheel-free vehicle designed to run autonomously on FSD.