Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceX and Tesla, attends the Viva Technology conference at the Porte de Versailles exhibition center in Paris on June 16, 2023.
Elon Musk's Tesla is facing a federal probe by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration after the U.S. auto safety agency found that the company was not reporting crashes as required.
According to documents posted to NHTSA's website on Thursday, the agency's Office of Defects Investigation had "identified numerous incident reports" from Tesla concerning crashes that had "occurred several months or more before the dates of the reports" to the agency.
The delayed reports were likely "due to an issue with Tesla's data collection, which, according to Tesla, has now been fixed," according to NHTSA's explanation for the probe.
Automakers must report on collisions that occurred on publicly accessible roads in the U.S. that involved the use of either partially or fully automated driving systems in their cars within five days of the companies becoming aware of any crash.
The agency will now conduct an "audit query" to figure out if Tesla is in compliance with its reporting requirements, and to "evaluate the cause of the potential delays in reporting, the scope of any such delays, and the mitigations that Tesla has developed to address them."
NHTSA will also investigate whether Tesla neglected to report any prior relevant collisions, and whether its reports submitted to the safety regulator "include all of the required and available data."