— Tesla crash reports are under a federal investigation by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration after the automaker took too long to file the reports.
NHTSA's Standing General Order 2021-01 took effect in May 2023 and requires a company to report certain crashes involving vehicles equipped with automated driving systems or SAE Level 2 advanced driver assistance systems.
In this case, regulators found numerous Tesla crash reports that were not filed until several months after the crash dates. Those crash reports should be filed from one to five days after Tesla learns of a crash.
NHTSA says Tesla also submitted the crash reports in batches or on a rolling basis, a problem Tesla blamed on data collection failures.
Tesla told safety regulators the data collection problems have been fixed, but NHTSA has opened the investigation to determine if that's the truth. According to the government, Tesla must follow the legal requirements of the Standing General Order regarding driver assistance systems.
NHTSA will look into the reporting delays, how large they were and how Tesla has allegedly fixed the reporting failures. Regulators also want to know if there were crashes that were never reported.
The Tesla crash report investigation involves about 2,600,000 vehicles.
CarComplaints.com will update our website with results of the Tesla investigation.