NHTSA: ‘Self-driving’ cars were linked to 392 crashes in 10 months

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has released its first batch of data for semi-autonomous driving technology. As The New York Timesexplains, the agency linked 392 crashes to partial self-driving and driver assistance systems in the 10 months between July 1st, 2021 and May 15th, 2022. About 70 percent of those, 273, were Tesla vehicles using Autopilot or the Full Self-Driving beta. Honda cars were tied to 90 incidents, while Subaru models were involved in 10. Other makes, including Ford, GM, VW and Toyota, had five incidents or less.

Out of the 98 crashes with injury reports, 11 resulted in serious injuries. Five of the Tesla incidents were fatal. The 130 total crashes for self-driving systems included 108 with other cars and 11 with “vulnerable” road users like cyclists and pedestrians.

The findings are a response to a Standing General Order requiring that car manufacturers and operators report crashes to the NHTSA when Level 2 or higher autonomy is active at the time of the incident. The transportation agency hopes the info will support a “more data-driven approach” to safely rolling out self-driving tech, including regulation and education.

As administration head Steven Cliff told the press, the data doesn’t offer any conclusions by itself. There are roughly 830,000 Autopilot-equipped Tesla vehicles in the US, for instance — they may dominate incident reports simply because they’re some of the most common semi-autonomous cars. Ford, GM and others have equivalents, but they’re frequently optional (Autopilot is standard on Teslas) and simply rarer on the road.

The statistics nonetheless draw attention to multiple investigations into crashes like these, including from the National Transportation Safety Board. One Tesla driver in California is also facing felony charges from state prosecutors over a deadly 2019 incident. While companies like Tesla have long argued that their driver assists are safer than exclusively human control, the NHTSA, NTSB and other bodies clearly want a better understanding of real-world safety issues before they embrace autonomous driving in earnest.

Ford voluntarily recalls 49,000 Mach-Es due to overheating batteries

Ford has announced a recall for 48,924 Mustang Mach-E EVs and asked dealers to pause deliveries of the vehicle. The company said there’s a possibility of the high-voltage battery connectors overheating, which could prevent the vehicle from starting or cause it to lose propulsion power while on the road.

According to Automotive News, Ford claims it should be able to fix the issue with an over-the-air software update, which will be rolled out next month. Alternatively, owners can take their Mach-E to a Ford or Lincoln dealer and have the update installed there. Affected vehicles were built between May 27th, 2020, and May 24th, 2022 at Ford’s factory in Cuautitlán, Mexico.

There’s no open National Highway Traffic Safety Administration investigation into the problem, Ford says, which means this is a voluntary recall. Still, it’s not a great look for the company.

Lightyear’s very pricey solar-powered car will go into production in late 2022

EV startup Lightyear debuted its first solar-powered vehicle this week, a sleek sedan called the Lightyear 0. The company gave us a peek at a production prototype of Lightyear 0 in 2019, and at first glance, not much has changed. The car is essentially an unconventional hybrid equipped with both a conventional 60-kilowatt-hour EV battery pack and solar panels on its roof, hood and hatch. The solar panels on the Lightyear 0 will charge automatically whenever the car is exposed to the sun — it doesn’t matter if it’s parked or driving.

The Lightyear 0 isn’t as much solar-powered as solar-assisted. In order to drive for long distances, the vehicle has to tap into its battery reserve. The car’s solar panels can provide 44 miles of range per day in a sunny climate, whereas its EV range is 388 miles. But for drivers with exceptionally short commutes or those who need their vehicle infrequently, the Lightyear 0 could allow them to no longer spend money on gas or charging. The company claims that those with a daily commute of 22 miles can drive the Lightyear 0 for two straight months in the Netherlands summer without needing to charge. Drivers in sunnier climates can go for longer. Lightyear claims that the sun can provide the Lightyear 0 with anywhere between 3,700 to 6,800 miles of range annually.

It’s important to note that Lightyear 0 owners will need to drive for a significantly long time in order to justify the vehicle’s purchase as a cost-saving measure. The Lightyear 0 will cost €250,000 (which amounts to roughly $263,262 USD), and the company only plans on making 946 units. But a more reasonably-priced vehicle is on the way. Lightyear recently also unveiled a prototype of a $33,000 solar-powered car, which is scheduled to go into production by 2025.

NHTSA deepens its probe into Tesla collisions with stationary emergency vehicles

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has deepened (PDF) its investigation into a series of Tesla crashes involving first responders to an engineering analysis. As The Washington Post explains, that’s the last stage of an investigation, and the agency typically decides within a year if a vehicle should be recalled or if the probe should be closed. In addition to upgrading the probe’s status, the investigation now covers 830,000 units, or almost all the Tesla Model Y, Model X, Model S and Model 3 vehicles the company has sold since 2014.

This development expands upon the investigation the NHTSA initiated back in 2021 following 11 collisions of Tesla vehicles with parked emergency responders and trucks. Since then, the agency has identified and added six more incidents that occurred over the past couple of years. In most of those crashes, Autopilot gave up vehicle control less than one second before impact, though Automatic Emergency Braking intervened in at least half of them. 

The NHTSA also found that the first responders on the road would’ve been visible to the drivers at an average of eight seconds before impact. Plus, forensic data showed no driver took evasive action between 2 to 5 seconds prior to impact even though they all had their hands on the wheel. Apparently, nine of the 11 vehicles originally involved in the investigation exhibited no driver engagement visual or chime alerts until the last minute before the collision. Four of them didn’t exhibit any engagement visual or chime alert at all. 

The NHTSA also looked into 191 crashes not limited to incidents involving first responders. In 53 of those collisions, the agency found that the driver was “insufficiently responsive” as evidenced by them not intervening when needed. All these suggest that while drivers are complying with Tesla’s instructions to make sure they have their hands on the wheel at all times, they’re not necessarily paying attention to their environment. 

That said, the NHTSA noted in its report that “a driver’s use or misuse of vehicle components, or operation of a vehicle in an unintended manner does not necessarily preclude a system defect.” As University of South Carolina law professor Bryant Walker Smith told The Post, monitoring the position of a driver’s hands isn’t effective enough, because it doesn’t ensure a driver’s capability to respond to what they encounter on the road. 

In addition, the NHTSA noted that the ways a driver may interact with the system is an important design consideration for Level 2 autonomous driving technologies. These systems still aren’t full autonomous and still mostly depend on the human driver, after all. “As such, ensuring the system facilitates the driver’s effective performance of this supervisory driving task presents an important safety consideration,” the agency wrote.