According to the NHTSA investigation, the incidents of sudden acceleration with Tesla vehicles where drivers said the vehicles were accelerating on their own were due to user errors.
Tesla sudden acceleration
Last year, we reported that the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) said it was investigating allegations that Tesla vehicles were defective leading to a “sudden unintentional acceleration” after receiving a petition with 127 alleged incidents.
As we said at the time, over the years, several claims of sudden unintentional acceleration with Tesla vehicles have been announced. The most famous one involved a South Korean celebrity and claimed that his Model X accelerated in his garage by itself.
In each case, including the one, however, Tesla claimed that the car’s logbook showed that it was a user error due to incorrect use of the pedal, which means that the driver pressed the accelerator instead of the brakes.
In one case, Electrek was able to have Tesla’s logbook verified by a third party, and this supports the automaker’s claims that it shows the driver pressed the accelerator.
Following the NHTSA investigation, Tesla issued a statement claiming that there were no defects in its vehicles resulting in unintentional acceleration, and that the petition with NHTSA was initiated by a TSLA short seller.
Tesla is also facing a similar investigation in China.
NHTSA Research
NHTSA’s Office of Inquiry into Defects (ODI) today released the results of its investigation to confirm that the incidents were due to ‘incorrect use of the pedal’ – in other words: drivers who pressed the wrong pedal.
They write in the report:
“After reviewing the available data, ODI did not identify evidence that would support the opening of an investigation into defects in SUA in the vehicles concerned. In each case in which data was available through ODI, the evidence showed that SUA accidents in the complaints cited by the petitioner were caused by incorrect application of the pedal. There is no evidence of any fault in the accelerator pedal, motor control systems or braking systems that contributed to any of the incidents mentioned. There is no evidence that a design factor contributes to the increased 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. ‘
Here is the new report in full:
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