Two Democratic senators wrote to the U.S. Federal Trade Commission chair, urging her to investigate "potentially deceptive and unfair practices in Tesla's advertising and marketing of its driving automation systems."
The letter to Lina Khan from Sens. Richard Blumenthal and Ed Markey follows the announcement of U.S. highway regulators' safety probe into Tesla's Autopilot performance around scenes with first responders in them.
That investigation, which will look into the systems that monitor whether humans are actually in control of the cars even when driver-assistance technologies are engaged, dented the carmaker's stock price when it was announced on Monday.
Blumenthal and Markey highlighted what they said were instances of Tesla and its CEO Elon Musk over-hyping the cars' capabilities at self-driving, even though the technologies are only supposed to assist human drivers with cruise control, staying in lanes and other tasks.
"Their claims put Tesla drivers — and all of the traveling public — at risk of serious injury or death," the lawmakers wrote.