The U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has closed its investigation into Tesla’s “Actually Smart Summon” feature after recording 159 incidents, all involving minor property damage. The agency found no injuries or deaths linked to the feature and concluded that Tesla’s six over-the-air software updates adequately addressed the issues. No recalls were issued.
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NHTSA's Office of Defect Investigation (ODI) opened the investigation in January 2025 after reports of accidents during Actually Smart Summon.
The investigation, coded PE24033, covered Model S and X from 2016 to 2025, Model 3 from 2017 to 2025, and Model Y from 2020 to 2025, equipped with FSD — a population of approximately 2,585,000 vehicles. According to the closing document dated April 3, 2026, ODI identified a total of 159 incidents, 97 of which involved crashes.
The agency found that “nearly all reported Summon crashes involved minor property damage with no reported incidents involving vulnerable road users, injuries, fatalities, or major property damage, as indicated by airbag deployment or vehicle rollover.” NHTSA noted that out of “millions of Summon sessions, a fraction of 1 percent resulted in an incident.”
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Impacts occurred most often with parking gates, adjacent parked vehicles, and low parking barriers — the kind of low-speed, close-range obstacles that make it difficult to move around in parking lots.
The investigation identified specific failure modes. Snow camera obstructions caused at least two crashes where Summon attempted to navigate snow-covered parking lots with partially or fully obstructed forward-facing cameras. The system failed to detect the obstruction and collided with parked vehicles. In another case, the vehicle failed to yield to a parking gate, resulting in a crash.
Rather than wait for a recall order, Tesla released a series of over-the-air software updates throughout 2025 to address the identified issues.
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All six updates were rolled out to affected vehicles and new production vehicles. NHTSA closed the preliminary assessment citing “low incident frequency and low incident severity.” The agency was clear, however, that “the closure of this investigation does not constitute a finding that no safety-related defect exists.” NHTSA reserves the right to take additional action if future circumstances warrant.
