NHTSA has started to investigate Tesla's FSD. Is the focus directly on the pure vision solution?

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) publicly released documents on Fri showing that the agency has officially launched an investigation into Tesla's 'Full Self-Driving' (FSD) system.

NHTSA stated that they are investigating whether Tesla's claimed 'Full Self-Driving' system has the necessary safety measures to require the driver to take over the vehicle when the autonomous driving technology cannot handle the situation. Although it has 'autonomous driving' in its name, it is misleading and Tesla also stated on its official website that FSD software requires active supervision by the driver when on the road, and this software does not enable vehicles to have autonomous driving capabilities.

FSD is still only a supervised Level 2 driver assistance system. It still needs to wait for FSD to reach Level 4 before it can start operating robotaxi services.

It is understood that the investigation covered approximately 2.41 million Tesla cars, including Model S, X from 2016 to 2024, Model 3 from 2017 to 2024, Model Y from 2020 to 2024, and the Cybertruck from 2023 to 2024. Although not all owners have purchased the FSD package, Musk revealed earlier this year that roughly half of the owners are using FSD, and this number is still increasing.

It is worth noting that this investigation involves four accidents during the FSD activation, one of which resulted in the death of a pedestrian.

The road safety regulatory authorities in the USA are evaluating the detection and response capabilities of Tesla's FSD in situations with reduced visibility. These accidents all occurred when Tesla cars with FSD entered road areas with reduced visibility and collided. The regulators state that they will review the reasons for not detecting pedestrians and failing to stop under specific circumstances.

It is well known that Tesla's head, Musk, is globally renowned for being a 'simplicity enthusiast'. He has emphasized multiple times that autonomous driving using a pure visual approach is sufficient, and that lidar is 'expensive, ugly, and not useful'.

The NHTSA report shows that these accidents occurred under limited road visibility conditions due to sunlight glare, haze, or dust. Generally speaking, sensors are better at detecting objects and pedestrians under intense sunlight or harsh weather conditions compared to cameras.

So all of this uncertainty leaves doubts about whether FSD is truly ready for widespread use, despite the company's bold claims.

"What matters in safety is not the average day. What matters is the bad day and the bad days are extremely rare," Phil Koopman, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at Carnegie Mellon University said. "Saying 'I drove 10 miles without an intervention' means nothing."

So unless there's a change of approach, it seems like solving autonomy is the start of an uphill and extremely uncertain battle.

The election also has an impact on this matter.

Prior to this investigation, the NHTSA had been entangled with Tesla's Autopilot driver assistance system for many years, pushing the company to release recall patches to improve the system's safety. In Apr of this year, the NHTSA stated that it was launching a new investigation into the effectiveness of the Autopilot recall.

Musk publicly announced his support for Trump in Jul and gave a USD75 million political donation for Trump's campaign. Musk's influence on Trump has risen.

Trump once stated that he would appoint Musk to lead a "Government Efficiency Committee". If Trump wins the presidential election, the question is whether Trump will prevent US regulators from continuing to investigate Tesla.