Action
Denial of petition for a defect investigation.
Summary
This notice sets forth the reasons for the denial of a petition submitted on September 17, 2019, by Mr. Edward Chen (the petitioner), requesting that the Agency "initiate a Defect Investigation into the recent set of software updates, including software updates 2019.16.1 and 2019.16.2 and all subsequent updates issued by Tesla, Inc. to its Model S and Model X vehicles, which have been alleged to be issued by Tesla in response to the alarming number of car fires that have occurred worldwide." On October 1, 2019, ODI opened Defect Petition DP19-005 to evaluate the petitioner's request. After reviewing the information provided by the petitioner, information provided by Tesla in response to an information request letter from NHTSA, and field data regarding non-crash vehicle fires in model year (MY) 2012 through 2019 Tesla Model S and Model X vehicles, NHTSA has concluded that the issues raised by the petition do not warrant a defect investigation at this time. Accordingly, the Agency has denied the petition.