NHTSA closes Tesla Smart Summon probe after 159 incidents

Key Points:

• The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has closed its investigation into Tesla’s "Actually Smart Summon" feature after documenting 159 incidents, all involving minor property damage with no injuries or fatalities reported.
• The investigation, covering approximately 2.58 million Tesla vehicles from 2016 to 2025, found that incidents occurred in a fraction of 1% of millions of Summon sessions, primarily involving low-speed impacts with parking lot obstacles like gates and bollards.
• Tesla proactively addressed the issues by releasing six over-the-air software updates throughout 2025, improving camera blockage detection and the vehicle’s response to dynamic obstacles such as parking garage gates.
• NHTSA closed the probe due to low incident frequency and severity but emphasized that this does not rule out the existence of a safety-related defect and reserved the right to reopen the investigation if future evidence arises.
• This closure contrasts with NHTSA’s ongoing, more serious investigation into Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (FSD) system, which involves crashes, injuries, and a fatality related to the system’s failure to handle reduced visibility conditions.