A federal agency has rejected a 2019 petition over non-crash-related Tesla fires, which the automaker later released an update to fix, as shown on Monday in a filing.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) declined a petition to open a formal investigation into non-crash-related fires in China, according to a Reuters report syndicated on Autoblog.
The agency conducted a formal review of the October 2019 fires to see if Tesla needed to recall roughly 2,000 of its electric vehicles (EVs) in China, though the agency ultimately called the incidents “rare events,” rather than “design or manufacturing defect conditions.”
In the original 2019 petition, California lawyer Edward C. Chen represented Tesla owners who claimed that Tesla simply used an over-the-air (OTA) software update to “mask and cover up a potentially widespread and dangerous issue with the batteries in their vehicles.”
U.S. Regulator Seeks Assistance From 12 Other Automakers in Tesla Investigation https://t.co/c1024wlfYe
— TeslaNorth.com (@RealTeslaNorth) September 14, 2021
In its response, the NHTSA said, “Tesla’s investigation of the non-crash fires in China did not identify a root cause or positively link the incidents to any design or manufacturing defect conditions.” The NHTSA continued, “The available data indicate that non-crash battery fires in Tesla vehicles are rare events.”
The NHTSA also commented, “No fires related to the subject condition have been observed globally since three fires in China and Hong Kong over a 48-day period from late-March to mid-May 2019.” According to the agency, “there have been no fires in the United States related” to the original petition.
The news also comes amidst a larger ongoing probe the NHTSA is conducting on Tesla’s Autopilot system, following a series of crashes with first responder vehicles.
