The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has ended a year-long investigation into allegations that some Tesla vehicles accelerated without warning, saying there is not enough evidence to launch a full investigation. While NHTSA received 246 complaints about this ‘sudden unintentional acceleration’ phenomenon, the agency says that ‘misuse of pedals’ was the cause of the problem in every case for which it had to review data – user error, in other words.
“There is no evidence of any failure in the accelerator pedals, motor control systems or braking systems that contributed to any of the aforementioned incidents,” the agency wrote in a summary published Friday. ‘There is no evidence that a design factor contributes to the greater likelihood of misuse of the pedal. The theory about a possible electronic cause of SUA in vehicles is based on inaccurate assumptions about system design and log data. ‘
Claims of so-called “sudden unintentional acceleration” have dared Tesla for years. The company settled most of an alleged class action lawsuit in 2018 over the issue. NHTSA says it has collected accident data and videos from cars’ “black box” recording area recorders and from Tesla itself. While 246 cases were reported, the agency did not specify the amount of cases for which it collected data. The issue is thought to have affected about 662,000 vehicles in the Tesla range.
The review was opened in January 2020 in response to a ‘failure request’ by Brian Sparks, an investor who shorted Tesla’s share (or bet that the price would fall). He corrected more than 100 complaints about the issue already filed with NHTSA, as well as similar incidents covered in the press, and asked the agency to investigate.
‘I believe Tesla vehicles have a structural flaw that puts their drivers and the public at risk. I further believe that Tesla should be aware of this error and not react to it, ‘he wrote in December 2019. Sparks also addressed Tesla’s reluctance to provide information about these acceleration events to owners. “This petition shows that, based on the information available, it appears that Tesla vehicles have a sudden unintended acceleration problem and that Tesla needs to know about it.”
Tesla responded to the review with a blog post claiming that there is no merit to the idea. “We investigate every incident where the driver claims to us that their vehicle accelerated contrary to their input, and in each case where we had the vehicle’s data, we confirmed that the car was functioning according to design,” the company wrote .
In a message to The edge On Friday, Sparks said: ‘The rate of unintentional acceleration reports remains particularly high in Tesla-manufactured vehicles compared to other vehicles, but I trust the government institutions. If NHTSA says there is no shortage, I believe it. I thank NHTSA for evaluating the SUA allegations. ”