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Opinion: Tesla Autopilot NHTSA investigation headlines are out of control
There is a difference between slant and straight-up inaccuracy. Slant is unavoidable as it typically relies on a writer’s personal biases. Making connections that could be immediately debunked with the slightest modicum of research, however, is completely avoidable. This was exactly the case on Monday as a wave of negative Tesla news emerged following an announcement that the NHTSA is launching a formal investigation on Autopilot over 11 incidents that involved Teslas crashing into parked emergency vehicles.
The NHTSA Investigation
The NHTSA’s ODI Resume was very brief and direct. And while the agency did state that it would be evaluating Autopilot for Model S, Model 3, Model X, and Model Y from model year 2014 to 2021, the NHTSA did note that its investigation would involve 11 incidents in the United States. These incidents resulted in 17 injuries and one fatality.
Tesla prides itself on being a company that focuses intently on the safety of its vehicles, and in this light, investigations that would make systems like Autopilot ultimately safer for the general public would likely be welcomed by the company. Elon Musk, after all, has posted in the past that he agrees with the NHTSA “99.9% of the time.” The Tesla CEO has also specified on Twitter that he thinks the “NHTSA is great.”
If one were to look at the coverage of the investigation in some mainstream media outlets, however, one would think that things are far more dire.
The Coverage and Missing Details
It is true that negative stories attract more eyeballs. This is something that has been true even before the days of online journalism. And in this landscape, a company led by a rebel CEO that no longer issues comments on issues is the perfect target. This could be seen in the headlines that immediately followed the NHTSA” s announcement. CNN’s headline, “Tesla is under investigation because its cars can’t stop hitting emergency vehicles,” is a great example of this. It’s sensationalist and it suggests that the issue being investigated by the NHTSA is something extremely grave. And this is just one outlet.
Other news outlets such as CNBC proceeded to feature Ford former Co-CEO Mark Fields, who proceeded to highlight that the NHTSA’s investigation covers Teslas from a large time period. Persistent Tesla bears were also featured for their take on the news despite their past accuracy on the EV maker.
Interestingly enough, one of the things that were not mentioned much (if at all) in the general coverage of the NHTSA Autopilot investigation was the state of the drivers in some of the incidents. As aggregated by some Tesla watchers online, a good number of the drivers in the 11 crashes were hardly the most attentive. Two incidents were deemed as DUI cases, for example, and one driver had a suspended license. Four cases involved driver inattention, with one incident having a driver who did not have their hands on the wheel for 3 minutes 41 seconds. The other four incidents have no police report readily available.
An Unrelated Incident
On the same day as the NHTSA announced its investigation, a Tesla Model 3 was involved in a car crash at a school parking lot in the UK, injuring six people. It did not take long before Reuters, citing a report from The Telegraph, ran with a headline which read “Six injured as self-driving Tesla crashes in school car park in Southern England – Telegraph.” Such a headline immediately raised red flags, the first being that no Teslas owned by consumers today are “self-driving” cars per se. They have advanced driver-assist features, but those still require constant attention.
This headline grabbed a lot of attention — that much was no surprise. What was unfortunate was that as it became clear that the Tesla involved in the incident could not be a “self-driving” car, Reuters proceeded to issue a retraction on the article, stating that it had updated the story to correct the headline and drop the “self-driving” reference. The publication, however, kept a section of the article which still stated that it remained to be seen if the Tesla that injured six people had a driver behind the wheel at the time of the incident.
The Perfect Target
Tesla is no stranger to negative reporting, and that’s to be expected. Some negative slant from a reporter covering news about the company is pretty understandable, after all. However, it becomes a bit more difficult to justify errors such as those committed by Reuters about the UK incident. Even a little research on the features of a Model 3 in Europe would show that there are no “self-driving” Teslas right now, after all, and narratives which seem to hint at rogue electric cars are ultimately just as fantastical as they are inaccurate.
This may not be Tesla’s first rodeo with false news, but it’s not like there is nothing that could be done. Tesla China, for example, has adopted an assertive external relations and legal campaign that pursues false reporting on Giga Shanghai, and it has worked to great effect. Whether a similar strategy would work in the United States is up for question, but there seems to be few reasons remaining why Tesla should just allow itself to be a punching bag for misinformation without even airing its side.
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Tesla revealed a major new Cybercab detail in a guide it released for First Responders, showing new territory in its beliefs and intentions for the ride-hailing-focused vehicle that entered production in April.
The First Responders Guide is released to give fire departments, paramedics, and other emergency personnel the proper guidance on what to do in the event of an accident, entrapment, or other situation that would require immediate attention.
On one of the pages of the First Responders Guide, Tesla revealed a stark detail about the Cybercab, which could help personnel enter the vehicle more easily in case of an emergency.
Tesla Cybercab has one important piece that AI4 cars might need for FSD
It shows Tesla has no intention of releasing any Cybercab units that were initially proposed for ride-hailing services for the general public with any manual controls, meaning a steering wheel or pedals:
“A Cybercab equipped with steering wheel, brake pedal, and an acceleration pedal is typically an engineering or test vehicle, and operates at SAE Level 2 autonomy. Cybercab is not typically equipped with a steering wheel or acceleration and brake pedals.”
New official Cybercab documentation from Tesla:
“A Cybercab equipped with steering wheel, brake pedal, and an acceleration pedal is typically an engineering or test vehicle, and operates at SAE Level 2 autonomy. Cybercab is not typically equipped with a steering wheel or… https://t.co/P6ut1mZyzr pic.twitter.com/yq6skl9s2J
— Sawyer Merritt (@SawyerMerritt) June 27, 2026
This is a major development for those who continue to believe Tesla planned to release the Cybercab with any sort of manual controls so that passengers could take over if needed. However, when Tesla started manufacturing production versions of the Cybercab in Giga Texas earlier this year, they were spotted without a steering wheel or pedals.
It essentially confirms the company has no intentions of bringing manual controls to the car’s production versions. Some have argued that the likelihood of Tesla having something
There still are some Cybercab units out there with a steering wheel and pedals, and as Tesla said, these cars are engineering or test vehicles, which have Safety Monitors on board to help the car out of a precarious situation or emergency.
Tesla released the Full Self-Driving v14 ‘Lite’ suite to owners of Hardware 3 or AI3 vehicles today, adding several new features to the vehicles that were once believed to be capable of unsupervised self-driving.
Now, Tesla has released this modified suite to older Tesla vehicles, adding plenty of new features and capabilities.
Here are the full release notes for the suite:
- Distilled the intelligence from HW4 V14 into HW3. This allows HW3 to directly learn how to handle scenarios using HW4 V14 as a guide. This process unlocks the improvements that have been made to HW4 including Reinforcement Learning (RL) and offline models for HW3.
- Improved both proactive and reactive responsiveness across a wide variety of categories including navigation handling, merges and forks, pedestrian interactions, traffic lights, and vehicle cut-in scenarios.
- Improved general comfort in nominal scenarios through fewer false slowdowns, smoother steering and more consistent lane centering.
- Introduced parking, unparking, and reversing capabilities.
- Added Arrival Options for you to select where FSD should park: in a Parking Lot, on the Street, in a Driveway, or at the Curbside.
- Speed Profiles are now available at all times, to further customize driving style preference.
These improvements, according to Tesla’s Head of AI, Ashok Elluswamy, help distill the driving behavior from AI4’s v14 series into both the camera and compute configurations of AI3.
Tesla Full Self-Driving v14 ‘Lite’ for older cars finally gets released
He added:
“It includes destination options and speed profiles on city roads, but more importantly significantly improved safety. We hope you’ll enjoy it, once the build ships wide.”
FSD v14 Lite is now rolling out to AI3 early-access customers. Based on the feedback, will rollout to more customers over the next few weeks.
This build distills the driving behavior from AI4’s v14 series into both the camera and compute config of AI3. It includes destination…
— Ashok Elluswamy (@aelluswamy) June 29, 2026
Tesla will continue to roll out the v14 Lite suite more widely in the coming weeks, the company said.
Tesla has finally released its Full Self-Driving v14 ‘Lite’ suite for older cars that equip the Hardware 3 or AI 3 chip, which have not been able to handle the newest versions of the company’s driver assistance software.
Tesla officially started releasing the v14 Lite suite to owners in the Early Access Program last night. The company’s Head of AI, Ashok Elluswamy, said that the rollout will continue over the next few weeks. The build distills the driving behavior from AI4’s v14 series into both the camera and compute configurations of an AI3 car.
🚨 Tesla is releasing v14 Lite for AI3 owners who are in early-access
This will give AI3 cars the ability to experience new FSD features like parking preferences. https://t.co/pp6Q5FOKoz pic.twitter.com/tqexMB8SVy
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) June 29, 2026
It also includes a variety of new features that were available to AI4 cars running v14, including:
- Start Self-Driving from Park
- Arrival and Parking Options
- Speed Profiles
The release is highly anticipated because those owners with AI3 vehicles were early adopters into the FSD platform and were promised that their cars would be capable of achieving Full Self-Driving.
However, Tesla CEO Elon Musk admitted during the company’s recent Q1 Earnings Call that these vehicles would not be capable of achieving unsupervised Full Self-Driving, which is what Tesla had originally said.
Owners were not pleased with this answer, or the idea that their commitment to buying the suite outright for thousands of dollars would not yield the ability to drive without operating the car. Tesla gave some solutions for this, including a discount on a new car, or an upgrade to an AI4 or AI5 self-driving computer and new, upgraded cameras.
Tesla owners do not seem pleased with these options, as they require giving the company more money.
Nevertheless, it is important to note that Tesla came through for owners here by releasing v14 Lite before the end of Q2, something it had promised owners during the previous Earnings Call. Tesla has had trouble keeping up with timelines, but this is a big achievement for the team.
Tesla reveals huge Cybercab detail in new guide for First Responders
Tesla Full Self-Driving v14 ‘Lite’ Release Notes: new capabilities and features
