Federal Agency Looks Into Complaints of Sudden Acceleration in Three Tesla Models

The U.S. government's auto safety agency is looking into allegations that all three models of Tesla's electric vehicles can accelerate suddenly on their own.

An unidentified person petitioned the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration asking for an investigation into the problem. An agency document shows 127 owner complaints to the government, which includes 110 crashes and 52 injuries.

The agency said it will look into allegations that cover about 500,000 Tesla vehicles. That includes Model 3, Model S and Model X vehicles from the 2013 through 2019 model years. The agency's investigations office will evaluate the petition and then decide if it should open a formal probe.

Messages were left Friday seeking comment from Tesla.

NHTSA is already investigating three December crashes involving Tesla vehicles in which three people were killed. The agency's special crash investigations unit sent teams to Gardena, California, and Terre Haute, Indiana, to probe two fatal crashes. Another crash in Connecticut also is under investigation.

Frank Boris, a former head of safety defect investigations for NHTSA, said the number of complaints cited in the petition is unusual and warrants further investigation.

“The sheer number of complaints would certainly catch my eye,” said Boris, who now runs an auto safety consulting business.

Tesla owners communicate with other owners in online forums and via social media, and that could influence the number of complaints, he said.

He thought the timing of the petition is good, because the agency needs to do a “deeper dive” into Tesla safety, he said.

Some of the unintended acceleration complaints, which have yet to be verified by NHTSA, allege that the cars’ electronics malfunctioned.

For instance, one owner in San Clemente told NHTSA that in November 2018, a Model X SUV accelerated on its own to full power during a U-turn on a city street. The driver had a foot on the brake, but the SUV accelerated in a fraction of a second, according to the complaint. The driver alleged that something in Tesla’s system “triggered the sudden spontaneously full acceleration, resulting in this collision.”

The SUV hit a parked vehicle, the air bags inflated and the owner had a large abdominal bruise and several small chest bruises, according to the complaint. People who file complaints with NHTSA are not identified in the agency’s database.

That driver asked NHTSA to find out whether the Tesla complaints had common elements, including parking or making turns at low speeds.

In another crash, in May 2013, the owner of a Model S sedan in Thousand Oaks complained that while pulling into a parking spot the car suddenly accelerated on its own.

The Model S went over a parking block and a curb and struck a cement light post. The air bags inflated, but no one was hurt, the complaint said.

Three weeks after the crash, the owner got a letter from Tesla saying that the accelerator was depressed to 48% just before the crash and 98% at the time of impact. The owner still believes the car accelerated by itself, the complaint stated.

Anyone can petition NHTSA to investigate an auto safety problem, and the agency said in a statement Friday that it encourages people to report concerns.

In the other Tesla crashes that NHTSA is investigating, authorities are trying to determine whether the cars were operating on Tesla's Autopilot driver assist system, which is designed to keep a car in its lane and a safe distance from other vehicles. Autopilot also can change lanes on its own.

Separately, the National Transportation Safety Board will hold a hearing Feb. 25 on a fatal crash in Mountain View involving a Tesla that was operating on the company's Autopilot system.

Tesla has said repeatedly that its Autopilot is designed only to assist drivers, who must still pay attention and be ready to intervene at all times. The company contends that Teslas with Autopilot are safer than vehicles without it, but cautions that the system does not prevent all crashes.

NHTSA’s crash program has inspected 23 crashes involving vehicles that the agency believed were operating on some form of partially automated advanced driver assist system. Fourteen of these cases involved Tesla models.