Regulator closes investigation into Tesla ‘actually smart summon’ feature

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has closed its investigation into Tesla’s “actually smart summon” feature after finding that incidents occurred infrequently and were not particularly severe.

The agency opened an investigation into the feature, which allows Tesla users to summon their cars to a particular location without a driver, in January 2025 after receiving reports of several crashes.

The NHTSA opted to close the probe Friday following several over-the-air software updates from Tesla aimed at improving detection of camera blockages and dynamic gates.

By the end of the investigation, the regulator found 159 incidents involving the “actually smart summon” feature, including 97 crashes. However, none of the incidents resulted in injuries or fatalities.

The NHTSA also noted that this reflects a fraction of 1 percent of millions of sessions using the feature.

“Due to low incident occurrence and low incident severity, this preliminary evaluation is closed,” it said, while underscoring that its decision to end the probe does not mean a “safety-related defect does not exist” and that it “reserves the right to take additional action if warranted.”

The Hill has reached out to Tesla for comment.

The decision to close the probe into the summon feature comes as the NHTSA recently intensified its investigation into the company’s full self-driving technology.

The agency upgraded the investigation in mid-March from a preliminary evaluation to an engineering analysis of the software’s ability to function in poor driving conditions and alert drivers quickly enough to allow them to respond.

“Available incident data raise concerns that Tesla’s degradation detection system, both as originally deployed and later updated, fails to detect and/or warn the driver appropriately under degraded visibility conditions such as glare and airborne obscurants,” the regulator said at the time.