Tesla under fire as autonomous driving scrutiny intensifies

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board have launched inquiries into a collision where a Tesla struck a residential home, resulting in the death of a 76-year-old woman. Although the driver claimed the vehicle's Autopilot system was engaged, Ashok Elluswamy, Tesla’s vice president of AI software, contested this, asserting that the driver manually overrode the system by accelerating fully.

Beyond this incident, Tesla recently settled a lawsuit linked to a separate 2023 fatality, which remains tied to a broader federal investigation into whether the company’s software can safely navigate reduced visibility conditions like fog or sun glare. As Tesla markets itself as an AI-centric firm, FSD (Supervised) remains its primary revenue-generating product, yet these regulatory hurdles suggest a difficult path ahead for its autonomous ambitions.