HomeSelf Driving Car‘The car out of the blue accelerated with our child in it’:...

‘The car out of the blue accelerated with our child in it’: the terrifying reality about why Tesla’s vehicles maintain crashing | Tesla


It was a Monday afternoon in June 2023 when Rita Meier, 45, joined us for a video name. Meier informed us in regards to the final time she mentioned goodbye to her husband, Stefan, 5 years earlier. He had been leaving their residence close to Lake Constance, Germany, heading for a commerce truthful in Milan.

Meier recalled how he hesitated between taking his Tesla Mannequin S or her BMW. He had by no means pushed the Tesla that far earlier than. He checked the route for charging stations alongside the way in which and finally determined to attempt it. Rita had a nasty feeling. She stayed residence with their three kids, the youngest lower than a yr outdated.

At 3.18pm on 10 Could 2018, Stefan Meier misplaced management of his Mannequin S on the A2 freeway close to the Monte Ceneri tunnel. Travelling at about 100kmh (62mph), he ploughed by means of a number of warning markers and site visitors indicators earlier than crashing right into a slanted guardrail. “The collision with the guardrail launches the car into the air, the place it flips a number of instances earlier than touchdown,” investigators would write later.

The automotive got here to relaxation greater than 70 metres away, on the alternative facet of the highway, leaving a path of wreckage. Based on witnesses, the Mannequin S burst into flames whereas nonetheless airborne. A number of passersby tried to open the doorways and rescue the motive force, however they couldn’t unlock the automotive. After they heard explosions and noticed flames by means of the home windows, they retreated. Even the firefighters, who arrived 20 minutes later, may do nothing however watch the Tesla burn.

At that second, Rita Meier was unaware of the crash. She tried calling her husband, however he didn’t choose up. When he nonetheless hadn’t returned her name hours later – extremely uncommon for this devoted father – she tried to trace his automotive utilizing Tesla’s app. It not labored. By the point law enforcement officials rang her doorbell late that evening, Meier was already bracing for the worst.

The crash made headlines the subsequent morning as one of many first deadly Tesla accidents in Europe. Tesla launched an announcement to the press saying the corporate was “deeply saddened” by the incident, including, “We’re working to collect all of the info on this case and are totally cooperating with native authorities.”

To at the present time, Meier nonetheless doesn’t know why her husband died. She has stored all the things the police gave her after their inconclusive investigation. The charred wreck of the Mannequin S sits in a storage Meier rents particularly for that objective. The scorched cellphone – which she had forensically analysed at her personal expense, to no avail – sits in a drawer at residence. Possibly sometime all this can be wanted once more, she says. She hasn’t given up hope of uncovering the reality.


Rita Meier was one in every of many individuals who reached out to us after we started reporting on the Tesla Recordsdata – a cache of 23,000 leaked paperwork and 100 gigabytes of confidential information shared by an nameless whistleblower. The primary report we revealed checked out issues with Tesla’s autopilot system, which permits the vehicles to quickly drive on their very own, taking on steering, braking and acceleration. Although touted by the corporate as “Full Self-Driving” (FSD), it’s designed to help, not change, the motive force, who ought to maintain their eyes on the highway and be able to intervene at any time.

Autonomous driving is the core promise round which Elon Musk has constructed his firm. Tesla has by no means delivered a very self-driving car, but the richest particular person on the earth retains repeating the declare that his vehicles will quickly drive completely with out human assist. Is Tesla’s autopilot actually as superior as he says?

The Tesla Recordsdata recommend in any other case. They comprise greater than 2,400 buyer complaints about unintended acceleration and greater than 1,500 braking points – 139 involving emergency braking with out trigger, and 383 phantom braking occasions triggered by false collision warnings. Greater than 1,000 crashes are documented. A separate spreadsheet on driver-assistance incidents the place clients raised security considerations lists greater than 3,000 entries. The oldest date from 2015, the newest from March 2022. In that point, Tesla delivered roughly 2.6m autos with autopilot software program. Most incidents occurred within the US, however there have additionally been complaints from Europe and Asia. Prospects described their vehicles out of the blue accelerating or braking arduous. Some escaped with a scare; others ended up in ditches, crashing into partitions or colliding with oncoming autos. “After dropping my son off in his faculty car parking zone, as I am going to make a right-hand exit it lurches ahead out of the blue,” one grievance learn. One other mentioned, “My autopilot failed/malfunctioned this morning (automotive didn’t brake) and I nearly rear-ended any individual at 65mph.” A 3rd reported, “At the moment, whereas my spouse was driving with our child within the automotive, it out of the blue accelerated out of nowhere.”

Braking for no motive triggered simply as a lot misery. “Our automotive simply stopped on the freeway. That was terrifying,” a Tesla driver wrote. One other complained, “Frequent phantom braking on two-lane highways. Makes the autopilot nearly unusable.” Some report their automotive “jumped lanes unexpectedly”, inflicting them to hit a concrete barrier, or veered into oncoming site visitors.

Musk has given the world many causes to criticise him since he teamed up with Donald Trump. Many individuals do – largely by boycotting his merchandise. However whereas it’s one factor to disagree with the political opinions of a enterprise chief, it’s one other to be mortally afraid of his merchandise. Within the Tesla Recordsdata, we discovered hundreds of examples of why such concern could also be justified.

‘My husband died in an unexplained accident. And nobody cared.’ Illustration: Carl Godfrey/The Guardian

We got down to match a few of these incidents of autopilot errors with clients’ names. Like lots of of different Tesla clients, Rita Meier entered the car identification variety of her husband’s Mannequin S into the response kind we revealed on the web site of the German enterprise newspaper Handelsblatt, for which we carried out our investigation. She rapidly found that the Tesla Recordsdata contained information associated to the automotive. In her first e mail to us, she wrote, “You’ll be able to most likely think about what it felt wish to learn that.”

There isn’t a lot info – simply an Excel spreadsheet titled “Incident Overview”. A Tesla worker famous that the mileage counter on Stefan Meier’s automotive stood at 4,765 miles on the time of the crash. The entry was catalogued simply in the future after the deadly accident. Within the remark subject was written, “Car concerned in an accident.” The reason for the crash stays unknown to at the present time. In Tesla’s inner system, an organization worker had marked the case as “resolved”, however for 5 years, Rita Meier had been looking for solutions. After Stefan’s dying, she took over the household enterprise – a timber firm with 200 staff based mostly in Tettnang, Baden-Württemberg. As journalists, we’re used to powerful interviews, however this one was totally different. We needed to strike a cautious stability – between empathy and the persistent questioning good reporting calls for. “Why are you satisfied the Tesla was answerable for your husband’s dying?” we requested her. “Isn’t it attainable he was distracted – possibly taking a look at his cellphone?”

Nobody is aware of for positive. However Meier was nicely conscious that Musk has beforehand claimed Tesla “releases crucial crash information affecting public security instantly and at all times will”; that he has bragged many instances about how its superior dealing with of knowledge units the corporate other than its opponents. Within the case of her husband, why was she anticipated to consider there was no information?

Meier’s account was structured and exact. Solely as soon as did the toll change into seen – when she described how her husband’s physique burned in full view of the firefighters. Her eyes full of tears and her voice cracked. She apologised, turning away. After she collected herself, she informed us she has nothing left to realize – but in addition nothing to lose. That was why she had reached out to us. We promised to look into the case.


Rita Meier wasn’t the one widow to strategy us. Upset clients, present and former staff, analysts and attorneys had been sharing hyperlinks to our reporting. Lots of them contacted us. Greater than as soon as, somebody wrote that it was about time somebody stood as much as Tesla – and to Elon Musk.

Meier, too, shared our articles and the callout kind with others in her community – together with individuals who, like her, misplaced family members in Tesla crashes. One in all them was Anke Schuster. Like Meier, she had misplaced her husband in a Tesla crash that defies clarification and had spent years chasing solutions. And, like Meier, she had discovered her husband’s Mannequin X listed within the Tesla Recordsdata. As soon as once more, the incident was marked as resolved – with no indication of what that really meant.

“My husband died in an unexplained and inexplicable accident,” Schuster wrote in her first e mail. Her dealings with police, prosecutors and insurance coverage firms, she mentioned, had been “hell”. Nobody appeared to know how a Tesla works. “I misplaced my husband. His 4 daughters misplaced their father. And nobody ever cared.”

Her husband, Oliver, was a tech fanatic, fascinated by Musk. A hotelier by commerce, he owned no fewer than 4 Teslas. He liked the vehicles. She hated them – particularly the autopilot. The best way the software program appeared to make choices by itself by no means sat proper together with her. Now, she felt as if her instincts had been confirmed within the worst approach.

Oliver Schuster was getting back from a enterprise assembly on 13 April 2021 when his black Mannequin X veered off freeway B194 between Loitz and Schönbeck in north-east Germany. It was 12.50pm when the automotive left the highway and crashed right into a tree. Schuster began to fret when her husband missed a scheduled financial institution appointment. She tried to trace the car however discovered no option to find it. Even calling Tesla led nowhere. That night, the police broke the information: after the crash her husband’s automotive had burst into flames. He had burned to dying – with the hearth brigade watching helplessly.

The crashes that killed Meier’s and Schuster’s husbands had been nearly three years aside however the parallels had been chilling. We examined accident reviews, eyewitness accounts, crash-site pictures and correspondence with Tesla. In each instances, investigators had requested car information from Tesla, and the corporate hadn’t offered it. In Meier’s case, Tesla workers claimed no information was out there. In Schuster’s, they mentioned there was no related information.

Over the subsequent two years, we spoke with crash victims, grieving households and consultants world wide. What we uncovered was an ominous black field – a system designed not solely to gather and management each byte of buyer information, however to safeguard Musk’s imaginative and prescient of autonomous driving. Crucial info was sealed off from public scrutiny.


Elon Musk is a perfectionist with a bent in direction of micromanagement. At Tesla, his whims appear to override each argument – even in issues of life and dying. Throughout our reporting, we got here throughout the difficulty of door handles. On Teslas, they retract into the doorways whereas the vehicles are being pushed. The system is determined by battery energy. If an airbag deploys, the doorways are speculated to unlock mechanically and the handles lengthen – at the very least, that’s what the Mannequin S guide says.

The concept for the glossy, futuristic design stems from Musk himself. He insisted on retractable handles, regardless of repeated warnings from engineers. Since 2018, they’ve been linked to at the very least 4 deadly accidents in Europe and the US, wherein 5 folks died.

In February 2024, we reported on a very tragic case: a deadly crash on a rustic highway close to Dobbrikow, in Brandenburg, Germany. Two 18-year-olds had been killed when the Tesla they had been in slammed right into a tree and caught fireplace. First responders couldn’t open the doorways as a result of the handles had been retracted. The youngsters burned to dying within the again seat.

A court-appointed professional from Dekra, one in every of Germany’s main testing authorities, later concluded that, given the retracted handles, the incident “qualifies as a malfunction”. Based on the report, “the failure of the rear door handles to increase mechanically should be thought of a decisive issue” within the deaths. Had the system labored as meant, “it’s assumed that rescuers may need been in a position to extract the 2 backseat passengers earlier than the hearth developed additional”. With out what the report calls a “failure of this security operate”, the kids may need survived.

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Our investigation made waves. The Kraftfahrt-Bundesamt, Germany’s federal motor transport authority, bought concerned and introduced plans to coordinate with different regulatory our bodies to revise worldwide security requirements. Germany’s largest car membership, ADAC, issued a public suggestion that Tesla drivers ought to carry emergency window hammers. In an announcement, ADAC warned that retractable door handles may significantly hinder rescue efforts. Even skilled emergency responders, it mentioned, might wrestle to succeed in trapped passengers. Tesla reveals no intention of fixing the design.

That’s Musk. He prefers the glossy look of Teslas with out handles, so he accepts the danger to his clients. His pondering, it appears, goes one thing like this: in some unspecified time in the future, the engineers will work out a technical repair. The identical logic applies to his grander imaginative and prescient of autonomous driving: as a result of Musk needs to be first, he lets clients check his unfinished Autopilot system on public roads. It’s a precept borrowed from the software program world, the place releasing apps in beta has lengthy been customary observe. The extra customers, the extra suggestions and, over time – typically years – one thing secure emerges. Income and market share arrive a lot earlier. The motto: in case you wait, you lose.

Musk has taken that mindset to the highway. The world is his lab. Everybody else is a part of the experiment.


By the top of 2023, we knew so much about how Musk’s vehicles labored – however the way in which they deal with information nonetheless felt like a black field. How is that information saved? At what second does the onboard pc ship it to Tesla’s servers? We talked to impartial consultants on the Technical College Berlin. Three PhD candidates – Christian Werling, Niclas Kühnapfel and Hans Niklas Jacob – made headlines for hacking Tesla’s autopilot {hardware}. A quick voltage drop on a circuit board turned out to be simply sufficient to trick the system into opening up.

The safety researchers uncovered what they referred to as “Elon Mode” – a hidden setting wherein the automotive drives totally autonomously, with out requiring the motive force to maintain his fingers on the wheel. In addition they managed to get better deleted information, together with video footage recorded by a Tesla driver. They usually traced precisely what information Tesla sends to its servers – and what it doesn’t.

The hackers defined that Tesla shops information in three locations. First, on a reminiscence card contained in the onboard pc – primarily a working log of the car’s digital mind. Second, on the occasion information recorder – a black field that captures just a few seconds earlier than and after a crash. And third, on Tesla’s servers, assuming the car uploads them.

The researchers informed us that they had discovered an inner database embedded within the system – one constructed round so-called set off occasions. If, for instance, the airbag deploys or the automotive hits an impediment, the system is designed to save lots of an outlined set of knowledge to the black field – and transmit it to Tesla’s servers. Until the autos had been in an entire community lifeless zone, in each the Meier and Schuster instances, the vehicles ought to have recorded and transmitted that information.

‘Is the automotive driving erratically by itself regular? Yeah, that occurs from time to time.’ Illustration: Carl Godfrey/The Guardian

Who within the firm truly works with that information? We examined testimony from Tesla staff in court docket instances associated to deadly crashes. They described how their departments function. We cross-referenced their statements with entries within the Tesla Recordsdata. A sample took form: one staff screens all crashes at a excessive degree, forwarding them to specialists – some centered on autopilot, others on car dynamics or highway grip. There’s additionally a bunch that steps in each time authorities request crash information.

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We compiled a listing of staff related to our reporting. Some we tried to succeed in by e mail or cellphone. For others, we confirmed up at their houses. In the event that they weren’t there, we left handwritten notes. Nobody needed to speak.

We looked for different crashes. One concerned Hans von Ohain, a 33-year-old Tesla worker from Evergreen, Colorado. On 16 Could 2022, he crashed right into a tree on his approach residence from a golf outing and the automotive burst into flames. Von Ohain died on the scene. His passenger survived and informed police that von Ohain, who had been ingesting, had activated Full Self-Driving. Tesla, nonetheless, mentioned it couldn’t verify whether or not the system was engaged – as a result of no car information was transmitted for the incident.

Then, in February 2024, Musk himself stepped in. The Tesla CEO claimed von Ohain had by no means downloaded the newest model of the software program – so it couldn’t have triggered the crash. Buddies of von Ohain, nonetheless, informed US media he had proven them the system. His passenger that day, who barely escaped together with his life, informed reporters that hours earlier the automotive had already pushed erratically by itself. “The primary time it occurred, I used to be like, ‘Is that standard?’” he recalled asking von Ohain. “And he was like, ‘Yeah, that occurs from time to time.’”

His account was bolstered by von Ohain’s widow, who defined to the media how overjoyed her husband had been at working for Tesla. Reportedly, von Ohain acquired the Full Self-Driving system as a perk. His widow defined how he would use the system nearly each time he bought behind the wheel: “It was jerky, however we had been like, that comes with the territory of recent know-how. We knew the know-how needed to study, and we had been keen to be a part of that.”

The Colorado State Patrol investigated however closed the case with out blaming Tesla. It reported that no usable information was recovered.


For an organization that markets its vehicles as computer systems on wheels, Tesla’s declare that it had no information out there in all these instances is stunning. Musk has lengthy described Tesla autos as a part of a collective neural community – machines that repeatedly study from each other. Consider the Borg aliens from the Star Trek franchise. Musk envisions his vehicles, just like the Borg, as a collective – working as a hive thoughts, every car linked to a unified consciousness.

When a journalist requested him in October 2015 what made Tesla’s driver-assistance system totally different, he replied, “The entire Tesla fleet operates as a community. When one automotive learns one thing, all of them study it. That’s past what different automotive firms are doing.” Each Tesla driver, he defined, turns into a type of “professional coach for a way the autopilot ought to work”.

Based on Musk, the eight cameras in each Tesla transmit greater than 160bn video frames a day to the corporate’s servers. In its proprietor’s guide, Tesla states that its vehicles might gather much more: “analytics, highway section, diagnostic and car utilization information”, all despatched to headquarters to enhance product high quality and options resembling autopilot. The corporate claims it learns “from the expertise of billions of miles that Tesla autos have pushed”.

It’s a highly effective promise: a fleet of hundreds of thousands of vehicles, always feeding uncooked info right into a gargantuan processing centre. Billions – trillions – of knowledge factors, all in service of 1 aim: making vehicles drive higher and preserving drivers secure. At first of this yr, Musk bought an opportunity to point out the world what he meant.

On 1 January 2025, at 8.39am, a Tesla Cybertruck exploded outdoors the Trump Worldwide Lodge Las Vegas. The person behind the incident – US particular forces veteran Matthew Livelsberger – had rented the car, packed it with fireworks, gasoline canisters and grenades, and parked it in entrance of the constructing. Simply earlier than the explosion, he shot himself within the head with a .50 calibre Desert Eagle pistol. “This was not a terrorist assault, it was a wakeup name. Individuals solely take note of spectacles and violence,” Livelsberger wrote in a letter later discovered by authorities. “What higher option to get my level throughout than a stunt with fireworks and explosives.”

The soldier miscalculated. Seven bystanders suffered minor accidents. The Cybertruck was destroyed, however not even the home windows of the resort shattered. As a substitute, together with his ultimate act, Livelsberger revealed one thing else completely: simply how far the arm of Tesla’s information equipment can attain. “The entire Tesla senior staff is investigating this matter proper now,” Musk wrote on X simply hours after the blast. “Will publish extra info as quickly as we study something. We’ve by no means seen something like this.”

Later that day, Musk posted once more. Tesla had already analysed all related information – and was prepared to supply conclusions. “We now have now confirmed that the explosion was brought on by very giant fireworks and/or a bomb carried within the mattress of the rented Cybertruck and is unrelated to the car itself,” he wrote. “All car telemetry was optimistic on the time of the explosion.”

Abruptly, Musk wasn’t only a CEO; he was an investigator. He instructed Tesla technicians to remotely unlock the scorched car. He handed over inner footage captured up to date of detonation.The Tesla CEO had turned a suicide assault right into a showcase of his superior know-how.

But there have been critics even within the second of glory. “It reveals the type of sweeping surveillance happening,” warned David Choffnes, government director of the Cybersecurity and Privateness Institute at Northeastern College in Boston, when contacted by a reporter. “When one thing unhealthy occurs, it’s useful, nevertheless it’s a double-edged sword. Corporations that gather this information can abuse it.”

‘In lots of crashes, investigators weren’t even conscious that requesting information from Tesla was an choice.’ Illustration: Carl Godfrey/The Guardian

There are different examples of what Tesla’s information assortment makes attainable. We discovered the case of David and Sheila Brown, who died in August 2020 when their Mannequin 3 ran a crimson mild at 114mph in Saratoga, California. Investigators managed to reconstruct each element, because of Tesla’s car information. It reveals precisely when the Browns opened a door, unfastened a seatbelt, and the way arduous the motive force pressed the accelerator – all the way down to the millisecond, proper up to date of influence. Over time, we discovered extra instances, extra detailed accident reviews. The information positively is there – till it isn’t.

In lots of crashes when Teslas inexplicably veered off the highway or hit stationary objects, investigators didn’t truly request information from the corporate. After we requested authorities why, there was typically silence. Our impression was that many prosecutors and law enforcement officials weren’t even conscious that asking was an choice. In different instances, they acted solely when pushed by victims’ households.

Within the Meier case, Tesla informed authorities, in a letter dated 25 June 2018, that the final full set of auto information was transmitted practically two weeks earlier than the crash. The one information from the day of the accident was a “restricted snapshot of auto parameters” – taken “roughly 50 minutes earlier than the incident”. Nonetheless, this snapshot “doesn’t present something in relation to the incident”. As for the black field, Tesla warned that the storage modules had been seemingly destroyed, given the situation of the burned-out car. Knowledge transmission after a crash is feasible, the corporate mentioned – however on this case, it didn’t occur. In the long run, investigators couldn’t even decide whether or not driver-assist techniques had been energetic on the time of the crash.

The Schuster case performed out equally. Prosecutors in Stralsund, Germany, had been baffled. The highway the place the crash occurred is straight, the asphalt was dry and the climate on the time of the accident was clear. Anke Schuster stored urging the authorities to look at Tesla’s telemetry information.

When prosecutors did formally request the info recorded by Schuster’s automotive on the day of the crash, it took Tesla greater than two weeks to reply – and when it did, the reply was each temporary and daring. The corporate didn’t say there was no information. It mentioned that there was “no related information”. The authorities’ response left us shocked. We anticipated prosecutors to push again – to inform Tesla that deciding what’s related is their job, not the corporate’s. However they didn’t. As a substitute, they closed the case.

The hackers from TU Berlin pointed us to a research by the Netherlands Forensic Institute, an impartial division of the ministry of justice and safety. In October 2021, the NFI revealed findings displaying it had efficiently accessed the onboard recollections of all main Tesla fashions. The researchers in contrast their outcomes with accident instances wherein police had requested information from Tesla. Their conclusion was that whereas Tesla formally complied with these requests, it omitted giant volumes of knowledge which may have proved helpful.

Tesla’s credibility took an additional hit in a report launched by the US Nationwide Freeway Site visitors Security Administration in April 2024. The company concluded that Tesla didn’t adequately monitor whether or not drivers stay alert and able to intervene whereas utilizing its driver-assist techniques. It reviewed 956 crashes, subject information and buyer communications, and pointed to “gaps in Tesla’s telematic information” that made it inconceivable to find out how typically autopilot was energetic throughout crashes. If a car’s antenna was broken or it crashed in an space with out community protection, even severe accidents generally went unreported. Tesla’s inner statistics embrace solely these crashes wherein an airbag or different pyrotechnic system deployed – one thing that happens in simply 18% of police-reported instances. Because of this the precise accident charge is considerably larger than Tesla discloses to clients and buyers.

There’s extra. Two years prior, the NHTSA had flagged one thing unusual – one thing suspicious. In a separate report, it documented 16 instances wherein Tesla autos crashed into stationary emergency autos. In every, autopilot disengaged “lower than one second earlier than influence” – far too little time for the motive force to react. Critics warn that this behaviour may permit Tesla to argue in court docket that autopilot was not energetic in the meanwhile of influence, probably dodging accountability.

The YouTuber Mark Rober, a former engineer at Nasa, replicated this behaviour in an experiment on 15 March 2025. He simulated a spread of hazardous conditions, wherein the Mannequin Y carried out considerably worse than a competing car. The Tesla repeatedly ran over a crash-test dummy with out braking. The video went viral, amassing greater than 14m views inside just a few days.

Mark Rober’s Tesa check drive

The true shock got here after the experiment. Fred Lambert, who writes for the weblog Electrek, identified the identical autopilot disengagement that the NHTSA had documented. “Autopilot seems to mechanically disengage a fraction of a second earlier than the influence because the crash turns into inevitable,” Lambert famous.

And so the doubts about Tesla’s integrity pile up. Within the Tesla Recordsdata, we discovered emails and reviews from a UK-based engineer who led Tesla’s Security Incident Investigation programme, overseeing the corporate’s most delicate crash instances. His inner memos reveal that Tesla intentionally restricted documentation of explicit points to keep away from the danger of this info being requested beneath subpoena. Though he pushed for clearer protocols and higher inner processes, US management resisted – explicitly pushed by fears of authorized publicity.

We contacted Tesla a number of instances with questions in regards to the firm’s information practices. We requested in regards to the Meier and Schuster instances – and what it means when deadly crashes are marked “resolved” in Tesla’s inner system. We requested the corporate to answer criticism from the US site visitors authority and to the findings of Dutch forensic investigators. We additionally requested why Tesla doesn’t merely publish crash information, as Musk as soon as promised to do, and whether or not the corporate considers it applicable to withhold info from potential US court docket orders. Tesla has not responded to any of our questions.

Elon Musk boasts in regards to the huge quantity of knowledge his vehicles generate – information that, he claims, won’t solely enhance Tesla’s complete fleet but in addition revolutionise highway site visitors. However, as we’ve got witnessed time and again in essentially the most crucial of instances, Tesla refuses to share it.

Tesla’s dealing with of crash information impacts even those that by no means needed something to do with the corporate. Each highway consumer trusts the automotive in entrance, behind or beside them to not be a risk. Does that belief nonetheless stand when the automotive is driving itself?

Internally, we referred to as our investigation into Tesla’s crash information Black Field. At first, as a result of it handled the bodily information models constructed into the autos – so-called black bins. However the gadgets Tesla installs hardly deserve the identify. In contrast to the flight recorders utilized in aviation, they’re not fireproof – and in most of the instances we examined, they proved ineffective.

Over time, we got here to see that the identify held a second which means. A black field, in frequent parlance, is one thing closed to the skin. One thing opaque. Unknowable. And whereas we’ve gained some perception into Tesla as an organization, its dealing with of crash information stays simply that: a black field. Solely Tesla is aware of how Elon Musk’s autos actually work. But immediately, greater than 5m of them share our roads.

Some names have been modified.

That is an edited extract from The Tesla Recordsdata by Sönke Iwersen and Michael Verfürden, revealed on 24 July by Penguin Michael Joseph at £22. To assist the Guardian, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Supply costs might apply.

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