Feds expand investigation into Tesla’s Self-Driving (Supervisory) program.

The top US auto safety watchdog is reviewing its research into the performance of Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (Supervised) program for driving in low-visibility areas.

National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s Office of Defects Investigation (ODI) he said Thursday that it has raised the investigation it initiated in October 2024 to what is known as “technical analysis,” its most advanced analysis. It is a step that is often required before an organization can tell a company to pay back.

This is one of two research projects that ODI is using for the Tesla Full Self-Driving (Supervised) program. The regulator too analyzing over 80 events how Tesla’s driver assistance program has violated basic road safety rules, such as running red lights. The investigation comes as Tesla spent months trying to land a robotaxi service in Austin, Texas.

The ODI opened the investigation after four accidents took place in low-visibility areas, one of which involved the death of a pedestrian. The regulator has spent the last year and a half exchanging information with Tesla, and appears to have identified several instances where the company’s control software showed inadequacies in the visuals.

ODI said on Thursday that it did not get all of its demands from Tesla in the transaction. The investigation office wrote that, while Tesla began “making changes” to correct the visible problems in June 2024 – before the investigation was opened – the company has not yet informed the ODI whether the correction was sent, or the vehicles that received it.

ODI also believes that there may be a lack of disclosure of similar damages due to data collection and documentation limitations that Tesla reported to the security agency.

“In the crashes reviewed by the ODI, the system did not detect road conditions that impeded the camera’s visibility and/or provided information when the camera was malfunctioning until before the accident,” the agency wrote. “A review of Tesla’s response revealed other accidents that occurred in the same locations and where the system did not detect a problem, and/or did not alert the driver with enough time for the driver to react.”

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