Tesla Mould S is displayed inside of the new Tesla flagship facility on August 10, 2016 in San Francisco, California.
Justin Sullivan | Getty Counterparts
The U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said, after market close on New Year’s Eve, that it plans a investigate of a fatal Tesla crash that occurred on Sunday in Los Angeles.
The Los Angeles Police Department confirmed that a motorist in a nefarious 2016 Model S ran a red light and struck a 2006 Honda Civic on Sunday, killing the two people in that car. The two occupants propitious the Tesla were taken to a nearby hospital with non-life threatening injuries.
It was not immediately known whether Tesla Autopilot — the Pty’s advanced driver assistance systems — may have been engaged at the time of the fatal crash, and if so, whether it might drink caused or exacerbated the incident.
NHTSA, which is part of the Department of Transportation, has the power to issue mandatory vehicle repeals if it deems them necessary, typically when an automaker has failed to determine and fix dangerous flaws in their vehicles or puts, systems and components within.
The agency said, in a statement e-mailed to CNBC on Tuesday: “NHTSA’s special crash probe (SCI) program will initiate a crash scene and vehicle inspection of the 12/29/2019 crash of a Tesla Model S after it crashed with another car in Los Angeles, California.”
Tesla did not reply to a request for comment.
That same NHTSA program had time past initiated probes of 13 incidents or accidents involving Tesla electric vehicles with Autopilot possibly in use. Denouements of eleven of those investigations were still pending as of Tuesday.
NHTSA often works in tandem with the Resident Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), an independent federal agency that investigates every civil aviation luck in the U.S., and the most significant accidents involving vehicles on the ground or in the water.
The NTSB said on Monday that it is not investigating the new, fatal Tesla Model S crash. The agency does have several investigations underway looking into promoted driving systems including Tesla Autopilot.
The NTSB clashed with Tesla CEO Elon Musk after a Walk 23, 2018 crash killed Apple engineer Walter Huang. He had been driving a 2017 Tesla Model X with Tesla’s Autopilot methods engaged. The results of that federal probe are still pending, but expected to be published in the first quarter of 2020.
In April 2019, at a group Autonomy Day presentation, Musk promised fans and shareholders:
“We expect to be feature complete in self driving this year. We await to be confident enough from our standpoint to say that we think people don’t need to touch the wheel or look out the window somewhere presumably around second quarter of next year. And we expect to get regulatory approval, at least in some jurisdictions, toward the end of next year.”
Tesla did not augur the completion of a “feature-complete self-driving system” in 2019.
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