In brief: Dorsum in January of last year, Tesla became embroiled in all the same another NHTSA investigation; this time surrounding allegations that the company'south cars were suddenly accelerating, leading to crashes and injury. Now, merely a couple of weeks away from the anniversary of that report, the NHTSA has cleared Tesla of all wrongdoing and placed the blame firmly on drivers.

NHTSA was acting on data provided by a Mr. Brian Sparks, who requested that the NHTSA "recall all [Tesla] Model S, Model X, and Model 3 vehicles produced from 2022 to the nowadays" due to SUA (sudden unintended dispatch) problems.

To support his complaint, Sparks provided the organization with a total of 232 "not-duplicative" complaints regarding this issue, 203 of which involved collisions with the environment or other vehicles.

Later on a solid yr of investigation, though, the NHTSA has found that Sparks' complaints are largely without merit. In every single example of a SUA event in which log data was available, "pedal misapplication" was the cause of the dispatch.

In other words, as some of our readers theorized dorsum in 2022, drivers simply pressed the wrong pedal; accelerating when they intended to brake. Information technology's an understandable fault, of course, and one many of us have made a time or 2 in our lives (hopefully without crashing). All the same, a mistake is all information technology is, and not the consequence of a vehicle hardware or software flaw.

This is good news for Tesla, but it'due south also an effect the company likely predicted from the offset. The company previously claimed these complaints were brought on in bad faith by a stock "short-seller." If Tesla truly believed that was the instance, they had no reason to exist concerned here -- and the NHTSA's finalized report backs that up.

To be clear, this report does not clear Tesla of all future wrongdoing. The NHTSA reserves the right to open a separate investigation at a later date if other, valid complaints come to lite. But for now, the company has dodged a bullet, albeit a poorly-aimed one.