The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has launched a new investigation into Tesla’s latest autonomous feature, Actually Smart Summon (ASS). The Office of Defects (ODI) investigation was launched following multiple reports of crashes involving the system.
Actually Smart Summon, introduced in late 2024, builds upon Tesla’s original Smart Summon feature allowing owners to remotely summon their vehicles from parking spots, navigating the car autonomously to the user’s location through controls on the mobile app.
NHTSA’s ODI formally opened the investigation on January 6, 2025 as a Preliminary Evaluation (PE24033). The investigation was prompted by a single official complaint submitted through a Vehicle Owner Questionnaire, as well as at least three additional media-reported incidents, all involving Tesla vehicles operating on Actually Smart Summon. In these cases, the feature reportedly misjudged distances, causing collisions and leaving users with insufficient time to intervene.
The probe also mentions Tesla’s previous Smart Summon feature, which faced similar issues. Since its rollout in 2019, Smart Summon has generated at least 12 complaints to NHTSA, with crash reports indicating that the vehicles had trouble navigating tight spaces and recognizing obstacles. These earlier incidents also often involved situations where Tesla owners were unable to stop the vehicle in time by releasing the phone app button that controls the movement.
“ODI is 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 NHTSA writes in the report.
One point mentioned in the ODI resume is that Tesla has not officially reported any of these crashes under the federal Standing General Order, which requires manufacturers disclose crashes involving Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) or autonomous driving technologies on publicly accessible roads. However, both Smart Summon (now called Dumb Summon) and ASS do not work on public roads and are “designed and intended for use only on parking lots and driveways located on private property where the surrounding area is familiar and predictable,” according to Tesla’s website.
The NHTSA investigation aims to evaluate several aspects of the Actually Smart Summon system, including its top speed, limitations on public road usage, and line-of-sight requirements. The agency will also assess the system’s latency in remote control functionality, app connectivity delays, and the extent to which users can operate the feature in environments for which it was not originally designed.
This probe covers over 2.6 million Tesla vehicles across the United States, including Model S, Model X, Model 3, and Model Y units produced between 2016 and 2025 that are equipped with Full Self-Driving (FSD) software.
You can read the full NHTSA ODI Resume below.
