Federal highway safety regulators announced Saturday that they have officially closed their investigation into power steering failures in certain Tesla electric vehicles, citing a recall the automaker completed earlier this year.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said the probe covered approximately 376,241 Tesla Model 3 and Model Y vehicles from the 2023 model year. The investigation had been classified as an engineering analysis at the time it was closed.
The agency first opened a preliminary evaluation back in July 2023 after Tesla owners reported trouble turning their steering wheels or noticed that significantly more effort was required to steer their vehicles.
By early 2024, regulators had elevated the investigation to a more detailed engineering analysis to dig deeper into the reported steering defect.
Tesla then moved to recall approximately 376,000 of its U.S. vehicles in early 2025, citing a failure of the power steering assist system that made the cars more difficult to control — especially at lower speeds — and increased the risk of a crash. The company, however, stated that the recall was not a direct response to the federal investigation, which was still open at that point.
As part of the recall, Tesla deployed an over-the-air software update intended to stop overvoltage breakdown and reduce stress on motor drive components located on the vehicle’s printed circuit board — the root cause of the increased steering effort.
With the recall now in place, the NHTSA’s Office of Defects Investigation determined there was no longer a need to continue its engineering analysis and formally closed the case.
