By Adriano Marchese
A federal safety regulator has found that a long-standing investigation into unexpected braking issue in certain Tesla models found that the slowdowns posed only a low safety risk and have been addressed in subsequent software updates.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's review, launched in early 2022 after a surge in complaints about unexpected deceleration during autopilot driving use, found no crashes tied to the issues and said that Tesla's shift to a vision-only sensing system likely contributed to the behavior.
Incident traffic has dissipated substantially in the past years, it noted, with 45 incidents reported in 2024, 19 in 2025, and three since the beginning of 2026.
In early 2022, the regulator launched an investigation that covered roughly 416,000 2021 and 2022 Tesla Model 3 sedans and Model Y compact sport-utility vehicles. The complaints were linked to Tesla's Autopilot system, as well as Full Self-Driving and Traffic Aware Cruise Control.
While the evaluation is now closed, the NHTSA said that doesn't mean that the safety-related defect doesn't exist and that it could potentially take additional action if the situation warrants it.
Write to Adriano Marchese at adriano.marchese@wsj.com