Tesla’s (TSLA) shares edged higher on Friday morning after U.S. safety regulators gave the electric vehicle maker until February 23 to respond to the investigation into the safety of its full self-driving system.
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The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), which has been investigating over 2.88 million Tesla vehicles since early October over traffic violations linked to the carmaker’s Full Self-Driving System (FSD), extended the response deadline by five weeks. The extension came after Tesla said it needed more time to manually comb through thousands of vehicle records.
Tesla rolled out the FSD system — which automates driving tasks using advanced AI and sensors — in 2016 and regularly update it with fixes to improve performance. The system is a key part of Tesla’s revenue strategy as the Texas-based company has now jettisoned the $8,000 upfront purchase option for the system, adopting the monthly subscription model instead.
The extension comes as Tesla is battling falling sales. The EV maker’s vehicle deliveries declined for a second straight year in 2025, with Chinese rival BYD (BYDDY) emerging as the biggest EV seller globally.