US safety probe into Tesla Autopilot

An investigation of Teslas on Autopilot colliding with emergency vehicles at crash sites has been launched by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration in the US.

It comes just ahead of a briefing by Tesla chief executive Elon Musk on its work with artificial intelligence (AI) planned for Thursday,Bloomberg reports, with Musk saying AI is key for driverless cars.

The NHTSA investigation follows 11 incidents during the past three-and-a-half-years resulting in 17 injuries and one death, the regulator having power to consider vehicles to be defective and order recalls.

The probe is reported to cover about 765,000 Tesla Model Y, X, S and 3 vehicles from the 2014-2021 model years.

Autopilot is Tesla’s driver-assistance system which maintains speed and keeps a Tesla EV centred in its lane, although the driver is supposed to supervise and even have their hands on the wheel at all times.

Tesla has marketed a higher-level function called Full Self-Driving (FSD) since late 2016 as it prepares for fully autonomous vehicles (AVs).

Meanwhile, Tesla has seen its shares plunge by more than 5% following the probe announcement, Bloomberg adds.