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US wants details on Tesla's fix from recalled automated driving system

looking under the hood

The Austin, Texas, company supposedly fixed its self-driving software for more than 2 million vehicles, but the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration still has concerns. Photo courtesy of Tesla

Federal highway safety investigators want Austin-based Tesla to tell them how and why it developed the fix in a recall of more than 2 million vehicles equipped with the company's Autopilot partially automated driving system.

Investigators with the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration have concerns about whether the recall remedy worked because Tesla has reported 20 crashes since the remedy was sent out as an online software update in December.

The recall fix also was to address whether Autopilot should be allowed to operate on roads other than limited access highways. The fix for that was increased warnings to the driver on roads with intersections.

But in a letter to Tesla posted on the agency's website Tuesday, investigators wrote that they could not find a difference between warnings to the driver to pay attention before the recall and after the new software was released. The agency said it will evaluate whether driver warnings are adequate, especially when a driver-monitoring camera is covered.

The agency asked for volumes of information about how Tesla developed the fix, and zeroed in on how it used human behavior to test the recall effectiveness.

Phil Koopman, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University who studies automated driving safety, said the letter shows that the recall did little to solve problems with Autopilot and was an attempt to pacify NHTSA, which demanded the recall after more than two years of investigation.

“It’s pretty clear to everyone watching that Tesla tried to do the least possible remedy to see what they could get away with,” Koopman said. “And NHTSA has to respond forcefully or other car companies will start pushing out inadequate remedies.”

Safety advocates have long expressed concern that Autopilot, which can keep a vehicle in its lane and a distance from objects in front of it, was not designed to operate on roads other than limited access highways.

Missy Cummings, a professor of engineering and computing at George Mason University who studies automated vehicles, said NHTSA is responding to criticism from legislators for a perceived lack of action on automated vehicles.

“As clunky as our government is, the feedback loop is working,” Cummings said. “I think the NHTSA leadership is convinced now that this is a problem.”

The 18-page NHTSA letter asks how Tesla used human behavior science in designing Autopilot, and the company's assessment of the importance of evaluating human factors.

It also wants Tesla to identify every job involved in human behavior evaluation and the qualifications of the workers. And it asks Tesla to say whether the positions still exist.

A message was left by The Associated Press early Tuesday seeking comment from Tesla about the letter.

Tesla is in the process of laying off about 10% of its workforce, about 14,000 people, in an effort to cut costs to deal with falling global sales.

Cummings said she suspects that CEO Elon Musk would have laid off anyone with human behavior knowledge, a key skill needed to deploy partially automated systems like Autopilot, which can't drive themselves and require humans to be ready to intervene at all times.

“If you're going to have a technology that depends upon human interaction, you better have someone on your team that knows what they are doing in that space,” she said.

Cummings said her research has shown that once a driving system takes over steering from humans, there is little left for the human brain to do. Many drivers tend to overly rely on the system and check out.

“You can have your head fixed in one position, you can potentially have your eyes on the road, and you can be a million miles away in your head,” she said. “All the driver monitoring technologies in the world are still not going to force you to pay attention.”

In its letter, NHTSA also asks Tesla for information about how the recall remedy addresses driver confusion over whether Autopilot has been turned off if force is put on the steering wheel. Previously, if Autopilot was de-activated, drivers might not notice quickly that they have to take over driving.

The recall added a function that gives a “more pronounced slowdown” to alert drivers when Autopilot has been disengaged. But the recall remedy doesn’t activate the function automatically — drivers have to do it. Investigators asked how many drivers have taken that step.

NHTSA is asking Telsa “What do you mean you have a remedy and it doesn’t actually get turned on?” Koopman said.

The letter, he said, shows NHTSA is looking at whether Tesla did tests to make sure the fixes actually worked. “Looking at the remedy I struggled to believe that there’s a lot of analysis proving that these will improve safety,” Koopman said.

The agency also says Tesla made safety updates after the recall fix was sent out, including an attempt to reduce crashes caused by hydroplaning and to reduce collisions in high speed turn lanes. NHTSA said it will look at why Tesla didn't include the updates in the original recall.

NHTSA could seek further recall remedies, make Tesla limit where Autopilot can work, or even force the company to disable the system until it is fixed, safety experts said.

NHTSA began its Autopilot investigation in 2021, after receiving 11 reports that Teslas using Autopilot struck parked emergency vehicles. In documents explaining why the investigation was ended due to the recall, NHTSA said it ultimately found 467 crashes involving Autopilot resulting in 54 injuries and 14 deaths.

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ExxonMobil expands Gulf Coast CCS business with Louisiana deal

carbon contract

Spring-based energy powerhouse ExxonMobil has picked up another project in the carbon capture and storage (CCS) market.

Natural gas pipeline operator Williams Cos. has tapped ExxonMobil to transport and store up to one metric ton per year of CO2 from Williams’ natural gas collection and processing plant in southwest Louisiana’s Haynesville Shale.

Williams will transport natural gas via its Louisiana Energy Gateway pipeline, then process the natural gas and deliver it to the Gulf Coast for export as liquefied natural gas (LNG). The LNG will be used in power generation, residential and commercial heating, and industrial processes.

Williams recently agreed to acquire Momentum Midstream for up to $5.5 billion to expand Williams’ LNG presence in the Haynesville Shale. Haynesville is the country’s third-largest producer of natural gas.

Once the deal closes, Williams will own a $1.5 billion project in southwest Louisiana that will expand capacity of the Transco natural gas distribution system. The system serves power and LNG-export customers. Williams will also gain over 4,000 miles of pipeline and more than one million acres.

While Williams is based in Tulsa, Oklahoma, it has a significant presence in Houston. Last month, Green Street’s Real Estate Alert reported Williams bought the 64-story, 1.4 million-square-foot Williams Tower south of The Galleria from Invesco Real Estate for more than $300 million. The company will occupy about 360,000 square feet in the skyscraper for its Houston hub.

Williams employs about 800 people in Bayou City, including roughly 700 who work at Williams Tower, and plans to hire another 100 by the end of this year.

The Williams deal is ExxonMobil’s seventh CCS contract. ExxonMobil’s CCS portfolio supports LNG, lower-carbon-intensity steel, ammonia, natural gas processing, industrial gases and methanol.

ExxonMobil has established a “carbon superhighway” along the Gulf Coast to fuel its CCS business. The company owns and operates a more than 1,300-mile CO2 pipeline system, the largest in the U.S.

“Carbon capture is becoming an increasingly important part of industrial operations, but capture alone doesn’t solve the problem of high emissions,” says ExxonMobil. “What matters next is how CO2 is transported, used, and stored.”

ExxonMobil’s CCS initiatives are aimed at capturing a chunk of the rapidly growing CCS market in the U.S. Straits Research forecasts the market will grow from $5.66 billion this year to $13.56 billion by 2034.

“It’s not every day you get to witness the birth of a new American industry, but that’s exactly what’s happening right now at the U.S. Gulf Coast,” Dominic Genetti, senior vice president of CCS at ExxonMobil, wrote in an article published last year on the company’s website.

Fervo Energy, Mercury Fund leaders named first experts in residence for TEX-E

energy mentors

Two leading companies in Houston's clean energy scene have been named the Texas Exchange for Energy & Climate Entrepreneurship's first experts in residence.

TEX-E announced this month that Houston-based geothermal unicorn Fervo Energy and venture capital firm Mercury Fund have joined the nonprofit's new Expert-in-Residence partnership. The program aims to connect TEX-E Fellows with "the people and organizations shaping the future of energy and entrepreneurship."

The 2026 TEX-E Fellows were named in June and include 67 students from six Texas universities and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Nineteen are from Houston universities. See the full list here.

Through the Expert-in-Residence program, fellows will be able to network and work with:

"More than anything, students need the determination and creativity to step outside of their comfort zones and tackle problems that lack clear answers. At Fervo, we've consistently bet on young people who lack traditional 'hard skills' but are willing to embrace uncertainty and learn on the job. That open-mindedness will take students far," Jewett said in a prepared statement. Fervo named Jewett as COO in June.

TEX-E was founded in 2022 through partnerships with MIT Martin Trust Center for Entrepreneurship and Greentown Labs. It works with university students from six schools: Rice University, University of Houston, Prairie View A&M University, The University of Texas at Austin, Texas A&M University and MIT.

The organization named Houston venture capital and innovation leader Sandy Guitar as its new executive director last year. Guitar previously served as general partner and managing director at Houston-based VC firm HX Venture Fund and is co-founder of Weathergage Capital.

TEX-E is known for its student track within the Energy Venture Day and Pitch Competition at CERAWeek. It awarded $50,000 to student teams from the University of Texas and Rice University. Read more here.

BP to sell Houston’s Archaea Energy after $4.1 billion bet on biogas

RNG exit

Oil and gas conglomerate BP is unloading its Houston-based U.S. renewable natural gas business just four years after buying it.

The British company announced the planned sale of Archaea during its most recent earnings call but offered few details.

On the call, BP’s new CEO, Meg O’Neill, said her company had put Archaea on the market and already had attracted interest from potential buyers. BP acquired Houston-based Archaea Energy, the country’s largest producer of renewable natural gas (RNG), in 2022 for about $4.1 billion.

BP, whose North American headquarters is in Houston, is streamlining its portfolio. As such, O’Neill said Archaea represents a “capital intense” approach to biogas instead of the “capital light” approach BP now favors.

“If there’s somebody who sees an opportunity to create additional value, who will invest in that business, who will build on the foundation, because our team has made really good progress in improving the profitability of that business, then that will be a good outcome,” O’Neill told Wall Street analysts.

The proposed sale of Archaea is part of BP’s effort to sell about $20 billion in assets by the end of next year.

Archaea captures biogas, a natural byproduct of waste decomposition at landfills and dairy farms, and converts it into electricity or RNG. This process leads to cleaner air, less odor, and more sustainable energy than traditional fossil fuels.

Archaea was slated to be a cornerstone of BP’s plan to boost its biogas supply by roughly 600 percent to the equivalent of about 70,000 barrels of oil per day.

Bioenergy had been identified as one of bp’s five pillars of its multibillion-dollar energy transition initiative.

Another pillar: EV charging. Last month, BP agreed to sell its EV charging business in Austria to Switzerland’s Volenergy, along with 250 BP-branded stores and a fleet of business vehicles.

“By concentrating our capital on the assets and markets where BP can be most competitive and best serve customers, we are strengthening our balance sheet and creating a stronger downstream portfolio,” Richard Harding, interim executive vice president of downstream at BP, said of the Volenergy deal.

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