Tesla Robotaxi Probed By Feds After Just One Day On The Road

Good morning! It’s Tuesday, June 24, 2025, and this is The Morning Shift, your daily roundup of the top automotive headlines from around the world, in one place. This is where you’ll find the most important stories that are shaping the way Americans drive and get around.

In this morning’s edition, Tesla’s robotaxis are off to a rocky start, a ship carrying thousands of Chinese vehicles just sank after being on fire, Tesla is sued after three family members are killed in a Model S crash, and Ford issues another Mustang Mach-E recall.

That was fast. Tesla’s robotaxis may have only “launched” over the weekend, but they’re already facing scrutiny from the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Regulators are looking into incidents where Tesla’s self-driving vehicles appeared to violate traffic laws during the company’s first day of offering paid rides to the public in Austin, Texas.

NHTSA says it is aware of videos posted on social media that show Tesla vehicles aggressively breaking traffic laws. It’s now gathering additional information from the company. The agency says its going to assess those reports, and it’ll take “any necessary action to protect road safety.” From Bloomberg:

In one video taken by investor Rob Maurer, who used to host a Tesla podcast, a Model Y he’s riding in enters an Austin intersection in a left-turn-only lane. The Tesla hesitates to make the turn, swerves right and proceeds into an unoccupied lane meant for traffic moving in the opposite direction.

[…]

In two other posts on X, initial riders in driverless Model Ys shared footage of Teslas speeding. A vehicle carrying Sawyer Merritt, a Tesla investor, reached 35 miles per hour shortly after passing a 30 miles per hour speed limit sign, a video he posted shows.

In a separate live stream from Herbert Ong, a YouTuber with more than 123,000 subscribers, he commented that the vehicle was going faster than the posted limit of 35 miles per hour.

Two more videos posted over the weekend apparently show passengers having trouble after pressing a button on the rear screen of the Model Y to indicate that they wanted to pull over. One of the videos shows the passenger pressing the button and then getting a message on the screen that says the car would find a safe place to pull over. However, rather than actually do that, it just stopped in the middle of the road.

A spokesperson for Austin says the city hasn’t gotten any safety incident reports pertaining to Tesla’s robotaxis, so I guess that’s good.

We’ll see where this all goes — especially as Tesla adds more vehicles to its self-driving fleet in Austin.

A ship carrying about 3,000 Chinese vehicles that caught fire in the Pacific Ocean last month has finally sunk about 360 miles away from land. This isn’t exactly a surprise. Damage caused by the fire was compounded with severe weather, which meant the doomed ship wasn’t long for this world.

Smoke was initially seen pouring out of a deck that was carrying electric vehicles. It’s not exactly clear what started the fire, but of the 3,000-ish vehicles on board, about 800 were EVs. Now, the ship and its cars are about 16,400 feet below the ocean’s surface. From Automotive News:

[The ship’s relative distance from land] made a rapid response trickier. The second of three specialist vessels that were due to assist the ship arrived on June 15, more than a week after the fire first broke out.

The vessel was carrying cars from a range of manufacturers including Chery Automobile Co. and Great Wall Motor Co. to Mexico, people familiar with the matter said at the time.

If it’s the EVs that are to blame, this wouldn’t be the first time an electric car fire had caused a massive vehicle transport ship to sink. We all remember when the Felicity Ace sank after a huge fire scorched over $350 million worth of Lamborghinis, Porsches, Audis, Volkswagens and hundreds of other vehicles. I suppose this is just the risk you take with transporting that many vehicles with lithium-ion batteries so close together. 

Tesla has been sued for wrongful death by the estates of three people who were killed last September when the 2024 Model S they were in crashed on the Garden State Parkway in New Jersey. The sedan was equipped with Autopilot and Full Self-Driving software.

The lawsuit filed in federal court in Camden, New Jersey, attributed the deaths of a husband and wife and their 17-year-old daughter to the car’s “defective and unreasonably dangerous design.” The family’s older son — who wasn’t in the car at the time of the crash — is also a plaintiff. The suit seeks unspecified compensatory and punitive damages. From Reuters:

The complaint said the car’s defective design caused it to stray from its lane of travel and fail to apply emergency braking, resulting in the crash.

It also said Tesla failed to warn David Dryerman, who was driving, that his Model S was unsafe, citing Musk’s statement in 2016 that Autopilot was “probably better” than human drivers.

The Dryermans were wearing seat belts, according to the complaint.

“Thousands of Tesla drivers have relied on Tesla’s ADAS technology as though it were capable of safe, fully autonomous self-driving with minor software updates when in fact it is incapable of safely handling a variety of routine roadway scenarios without driver input,” the complaint said.

Elon Musk’s company has long faced questions about the safety of its driver-assist technology. Mixed messaging from the CEO himself when it comes to the systems’ capabilities sure hasn’t helped matters, either. 

Ford is recalling 197,432 2021-2025 Mustang Mach-es because passengers could get trapped in the back seat thanks to an issue with the rear door latches, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. I don’t need to explain to you why this is less than ideal for a myriad of safety reasons. From The Detroit News:

The government agency that regulates automobile safety said that the electronic door latches may remain locked after a driver or front seat passenger exits the vehicle and shuts the door, potentially trapping a child or other passenger who is unable to use the interior door releases.

[…]

Ford dealerships will fix the problem by updating the vehicles’ software, with the remedy expected to be available by late September.

NHTSA says letters notifying owners of the safety risk were scheduled to be sent out on Monday, June 23.

This is just the latest in another year marred by massive recalls at Ford. One day, the Blue Oval will get its stuff together when it comes to recall repairs, but today is not that day.

History.com

Head over to History.com to learn more about whatever the hell was going on with Tom Cruise 20 years ago.

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