Tesla FSD crashes in fog, sun glare—Feds open new safety investigation
- by Ars Technica
- Oct 18, 2024
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Pavlo Gonchar/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images
Today, federal safety investigators opened a new investigation aimed at Tesla's electric vehicles. This is now the 14th investigation by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and one of several currently open. This time, it's the automaker's highly controversial "full self-driving" feature that's in the crosshairs—NHTSA says it now has four reports of Teslas using FSD and then crashing after the camera-only system encountered fog, sun glare, or airborne dust.
Of the four crashes that sparked this investigation, one caused the death of a pedestrian when a Model Y crashed into them in Rimrock, Arizona, in November 2023.
NHTSA has a standing general order that requires it to be told if a car crashes while operating under partial or full automation. Fully automated or autonomous means cars might be termed "actually self-driving," such as the Waymos and Zooxes that clutter up the streets of San Francisco. Festooned with dozens of exterior sensors, these four-wheel testbeds drive around—mostly empty of passengers—gathering data to train themselves with later, with no human supervision. (This is also known as SAE level 4 automation.)
But the systems that come in cars that you or I could buy are far less sophisticated. Sometimes called "level 2+," these systems (which include Tesla Autopilot, Tesla FSD, GM's Super Cruise, BMW Highway Assistant, and Ford BlueCruise, among others) are partially automated, not autonomous. They will steer, accelerate, and brake for the driver, and they may even change lanes without explicit instruction, but the human behind the wheel is always meant to be in charge, even if the car is operating in a hands-free mode.
(Yes, there is also a level 3, but so far it is only available on a small number of Mercedes-Benz vehicles and just in California and Nevada.)
The investigation seeks to determine FSD's ability to "detect and respond appropriately to reduced roadway visibility conditions." Unlike almost every other system deployed on the road, Tesla chooses to rely on cameras alone and does not have a stereoscopic setup but instead has a wide-angle, main, and narrow-angle forward-looking sensor instead. And hundreds of thousands of older Teslas have less capable hardware yet are still able to run FSD.
NHTSA will also determine whether there are any other similar low-visibility crashes to the four it already knows about, as well as updates or tweaks to the system by Tesla, "in particular... the timing, purpose, and capabilities of any such updates, as well as Tesla’s assessment of their safety impact."
This one could be costly
The stakes are high for Tesla. If NHTSA determines that the company's camera-only strategy isn't capable of delivering on the promises repeatedly made by Tesla CEO Elon Musk, it can force the automaker to issue a recall. This could involve having to retrofit the cars with new hardware at great expense or require disabling FSD, which would deprive Tesla of a critical revenue stream and perhaps even force its investors to come to terms with reality.
While the company's valuation has long since entered meme stock status, decoupled from the fundamentals of the underlying business of making and selling EVs, after last week's "emperor's new clothes" robotaxi reveal there are signs that the market is finally starting to pay at least a little attention.
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