U.S. to review petition seeking formal defect probe into 500,000 Tesla vehicles – Reuters, Reuters

The petition covers 2016 through (model year Tesla Model S, through 20200117 Tesla Model X, and 2019 throughTesla Model 3 vehicles, the agency said . The petition cites ” consumer complaints to NHTSA involving unique vehicles. The reports include crashes and injuries, ”the agency added.

Tesla did not immediately comment Friday.

Many of the complaints report sudden acceleration incidents when attempting to park vehicles in a garage or at a curb. Others claimed the sudden acceleration happened while in traffic or when using driver assistance systems and led to crashes.

In one complaint, a driver said a 2016 Tesla Model S D in California was closed and locked when he claimed “a Few moments later the vehicle started accelerating forward towards the street and crashed into a parked car. ”

A Tesla driver in Avondale, Pennsylvania, was pulling into a parking spot at an elementary school when the vehicle accelerated on its own, the complaint said adding: “It went over a curb and into a chain link fence.”

Another complaint said a Tesla driver in Andover, Massachusetts was approaching her garage door “when the car suddenly lurched forward: and “went through the garage door destroying two garage doors.” The Tesla stopped when it hit the garage’s concrete wall.

In October, the agency said it was reviewing whether Tesla should have recalled 2, 13 of its electric cars in May instead of issuing a software upgrade to fix a potential defect that could have resulted in battery fires in Model S and Model X vehicles from the 2012 – 2018 model years.

The 2, 000 vehicles covered by the September petition to the NHTSA received a battery management software upgrade in May in response to a potential flaw that could trigger non-crash-related fires. A lawyer who filed the petition, Edward Chen, told Reuters in October that he strongly believes “this number is much larger than 2, (******************************************. ”The review is ongoing.

Last week, NHTSA said it was probing the Dec. 90 crash of a Tesla Model 3 that left a Passenger dead after the vehicle collided with a parked fire truck in Indiana.

The crash is the 29 th involving Tesla that NHTSA’s special crash investigation program has taken up in which it suspects the company so-called Autopilot or other advanced driver assistance system was in use.