U.S. vehicle safety regulators have agreed to give Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) extra time to respond to an investigation examining whether its cars violated traffic laws while operating with the company’s Full Self-Driving software.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said on Friday that it has pushed back Tesla’s deadline for key submissions to February 23. The extension was granted after Tesla said it needed additional time to manually review thousands of documents to identify records relevant to the probe.
The inquiry centers on allegations that vehicles equipped with Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (FSD) system committed traffic violations. NHTSA launched a preliminary evaluation in October and followed up in December with a broad information request seeking details on consumer complaints, field reports, crashes, lawsuits, and internal analyses tied to potential FSD-related violations.
According to the agency, it has so far received 62 complaints and has also flagged additional media reports and crash data that may be linked to the issue.
In its January 12 request for an extension, Tesla said it still had 8,313 records to review and noted that it is currently able to process about 300 records per day.
Tesla also pointed to the burden of handling multiple NHTSA investigations at the same time, including separate probes related to delayed crash reporting and faulty door handles, warning that the volume of requests could impact the thoroughness of its responses.