The US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) contacted Tesla after a footage shared on social media, which appeared to show its newly launched driver-free car-free car-free-launched cars.
The firm’s long -awaited robotauxis – which Boss Elon Musk says that Tesla is central for the future – Austin first tried on public roads in Austin, Texas on Sunday.
Online posted videos show examples where the vehicle, which had a security driver in the passenger seat, drives incorrectly.
In a statement, NHTSA stated that it was “aware of the events referred to and is in touch with the manufacturer to collect additional information.”
The BBC has approached Tesla for comment.
Despite the mask places of importance on its robotaxi project, Sunday’s launch was less important.
A small group of invited analysts, affected and shareholders participated in a paid ride.
Musk congratulated Tesla’s Artificial Intelligence and Chip Design Teams at launch In a post on XWriting that it was “the culmination of a decade of hard work”.
However, social media footage shows vehicles struggling with real -world driving scenarios.
A video shows a robotaxi Stop Since it passes through a standing police car.
Tech News outlet Techcrunch said that there were cars Also saw floating in high speed and wrong lane.
Rollout is limited to 12 taxis and Tesla says they will not work in bad weather, will not try difficult intersections or take customers under the age of 18.
Analysts had already said that a small -scale launch showed how far to catch Tesla with rivals.
Vemo owned by Google parent alphabet with Amazon’s zox, already provided self-driving taxi rides in Austin as well as San Francisco, California and Phoenix, Arizona.
Fully driverless cars have worked in other countries at a distance of millions of miles on public roads including China, UAE and Singapore, but are they still being investigated.
Tesla is using a separate technique for its rivals, depending on in-car cameras rather than the radar and sensors employed by the current market leaders.
It is bet that its approach will be cheaper and therefore will eventually be more attractive to consumers.
However, questions have been asked about its safety.
NHTSA highlighted that under the law it “pre-anonymous the new technologies or vehicle systems-but the manufacturers prove that each vehicle meets the rigorous security standards of NHTSA, and the agency investigates events related to potential security defects.”
