Tesla (TSLA) stock revved higher in pre-market trading today after safety regulators closed an investigation into its Actually Smart Summon vehicle feature.
The U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) said today that it had closed its over-a-year-long investigation into the EV giant’s feature that allows users to remotely move vehicles over short distances in parking areas using a smartphone app while maintaining continuous supervision.
The agency concluded that the Actually Smart Summon feature, deployed in about 2.59 million vehicles, was linked primarily to low-speed incidents resulting in minor property damage, with no reported injuries or fatalities.
However, it added that the low frequency and severity of incidents, along with the implemented fixes, did not warrant further action at this time.
Tesla addressed the identified issues through a series of over-the-air software updates aimed at improving obstacle detection and camera visibility.
The NHTSA launched the investigation last January after it received a complaint alleging that an Actually Smart Summon session resulted in a crash. It had looked at least three media reports of apparently similar crashes. All four incidents involved the Tesla vehicles operating in Actually Smart Summon mode and failing to detect posts or parked vehicles, resulting in a crash.
At the time it said that it was aware of “multiple crash allegations, involving both Smart Summon and Actually Smart Summon, where the user had too little reaction time to avoid a crash, either with the available line of sight or releasing the phone app button, which stops the vehicle’s movement.”
The result will be a relief for Tesla, as a ruling against it would have been a reputational and technological blow. It is why, according to the TipRanks Risk Analysis tool, these are key risks which both the company and investors need to be aware of.
Tesla isn’t quite clear with the NHTSA just yet. It is also looking into its Full Self-Driving supervised services and its performance in fog, heavy rain and glare.
On TipRanks, TSLA has a Hold consensus based on 13 Buy, 11 Hold and 8 Sell ratings. Its highest price target is $600. TSLA stock’s consensus price target is $394.36, implying a 9.37% upside.
