Tesla Avoided Investigation into One of Its Autopilot Features with a Simple Software Update (1 photo)
The misleading marketing labels of Tesla's active driver assistance features have long been the subject of numerous lawsuits and regulatory investigations. The NHTSA recently dropped its investigation into the Actually Smart Summon feature after Tesla released a software update fixing the issue. 
As Reuters reports, the NHTSA's investigation found that problems with the "Truly Smart Summon" feature resulted only in low-speed collisions in which no one was injured or killed. The feature allows car owners to "summon" a parked electric vehicle to their location, which the vehicle then automatically makes, eliminating the need for the owner to walk to a parking space. The vehicle must be summoned using Tesla's proprietary smartphone app, with constant visual monitoring of its movements within a closed area.
NHTSA concluded that incidents involving this feature resulted in only minor property damage and therefore cannot be taken seriously by the regulator, whose priority is to ensure the safety of Americans while driving on public roads. In most cases, minor accidents involved collisions with other stationary vehicles, gates, or other obstacles. These often occurred during the early stages of automated maneuvering in limited visibility conditions. The low frequency of incidents and the lack of significant damage allow NHTSA to refrain from intervening. However, closing the investigation does not mean regulators deny the existence of defects in Tesla's software. If necessary, the investigation will be reopened.
Tesla attempted to mitigate the scale of the problem by releasing several software updates that improved the Actually Smart Summon feature, including improved obstacle detection, camera blockage warnings, and the automatic system's response to moving objects such as motorized gates. A software update also improved the system's ability to use the onboard cameras in snowy conditions and wet conditions. The NHTSA investigation could have resulted in a recall of 3.2 million Tesla vehicles sold if the agency had deemed it necessary to address the software defects. Last month, NHTSA rejected a petition seeking a recall of 2.26 million Tesla vehicles, which its authors accused of unintentional acceleration. The regulator stated that it had found no defects in Tesla's software related to interpreting accelerator pedal inputs.
