The federal government is not impressed with Tesla. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's Office of Defects Investigation (ODI) is further probing Tesla's Full Self Driving Beta and Full Self Driving (Supervised) degradation detection system, which was deployed after the automaker began moving away from using both cameras and radars to just cameras with its Tesla Vision system in mid-2021. The agency is concerned that, despite an update, it "fails to detect and/or warn the driver appropriately under degraded visibility conditions such as glare and airborne obcurants."

In other words, the camera-only semi-autonomous driving aid could be compromised in certain conditions, and it may not warn the driver of its shortcomings soon enough to avoid a crash. There are also concerns of under-reporting related crashes, and at least one has been fatal. Let's dig deeper.

What the NHTSA is Investigating at Tesla

The NHTSA says that Tesla began developing a software update to the degradation detection system the day after submitting a report of a fatal crash on November 28, 2023, but the ODI "does not have information on when the update was deployed and which vehicles have the updated system." However, it is aware of at least nine incidents of crashes, and if the software was deployed to these vehicles, it may have affected a third of those crashes. During the preliminary evaluation phase, Tesla said that internal data and labeling limitations prevented a uniform identification and analysis of crashes with the potentially problematic system engaged, and because it hasn't been able to correctly determine which crashes involved the software, this may have led to under-reporting of crashes at various times during the defined period. Thus, the preliminary evaluation has now been graduated to an engineering analysis. The following 43 products equipped with FSD are named in the NHTSA investigation:

2016-2026 Tesla Model S
2016-2026 Tesla Model X
2017-2026 Tesla Model 3
2020-2026 Tesla Model Y
2023-2026 Tesla Cybertruck

The NHTSA's incident data may suggest that Tesla's degradation detection system (both the original software and the update) fails to detect and/or warn the driver appropriately when visibility is compromised. The crashes that the ODI reviewed showed that the system failed to detect common conditions that impaired camera visibility and/or provide alerts warning that camera performance had deteriorated "until immediately before the crash occurred," and Tesla's responses to NHTSA inquiries found that additional crashes occurred in similar environments. The NHTSA adds that "FSD also lost track of or never detected a lead vehicle in its path."

What's Next for Tesla FSD

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PE24031 is now upgraded to an engineering analysis, which will allow the ODI to gather more info on Tesla's updated degradation detection system and to determine how far along Tesla got in deploying the new software. It will also seek to determine the scope of compatible vehicles and how effective the system actually is in detecting impairments and warning drivers thereof. Then, the ODI will analyze six potentially related incidents (SGO reports 13781-11937, 13781-13211, 13781-13569, 13781-13633, 13781-13693, 13781-13788). With vehicles nearly flying off overpasses on FSD and Senators deeply concerned about how the system deals with rail crossings, Tesla needs to develop a real fix soon. Or go back to radars, though we doubt it's willing to incur the expense.