For Tesla, today’s decision will come as revenge. When the news of the petition was first released, the company said it was “completely false” and continued to claim that it was a “short seller” ploy to earn some money from his misfortune. At the time, Tesla said it had already designed its cars to avoid any potential problems with unintended acceleration. Each of the company’s cars comes with two pedal position sensors that will automatically turn off the engine’s torque if it detects “any error”. This safety against failures is complemented by the company’s Autopilot system, which was designed to detect any abuse of the pedal.
The person who asked NHTSA to examine the incidents asked the agency to revoke all Model S, X and 3 vehicles if it found any security problems. As such, Tesla has avoided a potentially devastating recall, but that doesn’t mean the automaker is free forever. NHTSA said it could revisit the issue in the future (or any other problem, by the way) if new information comes up.