WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) said Friday it will review a petition asking the agency to formally investigate 500,000 Tesla Inc vehicles over sudden unintended acceleration reports.
The petition covers 2012 through 2019 model year Tesla Model S, 2016 through 2019 Tesla Model X, and 2018 through 2019 Tesla Model 3 vehicles, the agency said. The petition cites “127 consumer complaints to NHTSA involving 123 unique vehicles. The reports include 110 crashes and 52 injuries,” the agency added.
Tesla did not immediately comment Friday.
Many of the complaints report sudden acceleration incidents when attempting to park vehicles in a garage or at a curb. Others claimed the sudden acceleration happened while in traffic or when using driver assistance systems and led to crashes.
In one complaint, a driver said a 2015 Tesla Model S 85D in California was closed and locked when he claimed “a few moments later the vehicle started accelerating forward towards the street and crashed into a parked car.”
A Tesla driver in Avondale, Pennsylvania, was pulling into a parking spot at an elementary school when the vehicle accelerated on its own, the complaint said adding: “It went over a curb and into a chain link fence.”
Another complaint said a Tesla driver in Andover, Massachusetts was approaching her garage door “when the car suddenly lurched forward: and “went through the garage door destroying two garage doors.” The Tesla stopped when it hit the garage’s concrete wall.
In October, the agency said it was reviewing whether Tesla should have recalled 2,000 of its electric cars in May instead of issuing
