Automotive company Tesla has denied claims of "unintended acceleration" with its cars, saying that Teslas only accelerate when drivers want them to.
In a blog post, Tesla slammed claims that its cars were having accidents because of unintended acceleration. The company stated that Teslas only accelerate when you want them to.
The post was in response to a petition filed with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) regarding accidents caused by Tesla cars accelerating unintentionally.
While the identity of the group or person who submitted the complaint to the federal agency, Tesla blamed it on a "short-seller," someone who makes money from falling stock prices. The company wrote: "This petition is completely false and was brought by a Tesla short-seller."
According to the petition, there were over 100 complaints submitted to the NHTSA stating that Tesla cars had accelerated on their own resulting in accidents, injuring at least 52 people.
CNN Business reviewed the complaints and found that almost all the cases involved people in a Tesla Model S, Model X or Model 3 pulling into or out of a parking space, driveway or garage.
In the blog post, the company mentioned that it already discussed the majority of the cases with the NHTSA and that in every case, Tesla said the car only responded to driver inputs, either intentional or not, and not accelerating on its own.
Tesla said: "We investigate every single incident where the driver alleges to us that their vehicle accelerated contrary to their input, and in every case where we had the vehicle's data, we confirmed that the car operated as designed."
The company pointed out that in many cases when drivers claimed that the car had accelerated on its own, the driver was actually pressing on the accelerator pedal and not the brake.
Tesla added: "While accidents caused by a mistaken press of the accelerator pedal have been alleged for nearly every make/model of vehicle on the road, the accelerator pedals in Model S, X and 3 vehicles have two independent position sensors, and if there is any error, the system defaults to cut off motor torque."
