‘The vehicle suddenly accelerated with our baby in it’: the terrifying truth about why Tesla’s cars keep crashing | Tesla

It was a Monday afternoon in June 2023 when Rita Meier, 45, joined us for a video name. Meier instructed us concerning the final time she stated goodbye to her husband, Stefan, 5 years earlier. He had been leaving their residence close to Lake Constance, Germany, heading for a commerce honest 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 best way and in the end determined to attempt it. Rita had a foul feeling. She stayed residence with their three kids, the youngest lower than a 12 months previous.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 visitors indicators earlier than crashing right into a slanted guardrail. “The collision with the guardrail launches the automobile 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 street, leaving a path of wreckage. In line with witnesses, the Mannequin S burst into flames whereas nonetheless airborne. A number of passersby tried to open the doorways and rescue the driving 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, might 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 now not labored. By the point law enforcement officials rang her doorbell late that night time, Meier was already bracing for the worst.Prospects described their vehicles out of the blue accelerating or braking arduous. Some escaped with a scare; others ended up in ditchesThe crash made headlines the following morning as one of many first deadly Tesla accidents in Europe. Tesla launched a press release to the press saying the corporate was “deeply saddened” by the incident, including, “We’re working to assemble all of the information on this case and are totally cooperating with native authorities.”To this present day, Meier nonetheless doesn’t know why her husband died. She has stored all the pieces 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 will probably be wanted once more, she says. She hasn’t given up hope of uncovering the reality.Rita Meier was one in all 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 knowledge shared by an nameless whistleblower. The primary report we revealed checked out issues with Tesla’s autopilot system, which permits the vehicles to briefly 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 driving force, who ought to preserve their eyes on the street 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 automobile, but the richest particular person on the planet retains repeating the declare that his vehicles will quickly drive fully with out human assist. Is Tesla’s autopilot actually as superior as he says?The Tesla Recordsdata recommend in any other case. They include 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 issues lists greater than 3,000 entries. The oldest date from 2015, the latest from March 2022. In that point, Tesla delivered roughly 2.6m automobiles 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 automobiles. “After dropping my son off in his college parking zone, as I am going to make a right-hand exit it lurches ahead out of the blue,” one criticism learn. One other stated, “My autopilot failed/malfunctioned this morning (automotive didn’t brake) and I nearly rear-ended someone at 65mph.” A 3rd reported, “At present, whereas my spouse was driving with our child within the automotive, it out of the blue accelerated out of nowhere.”Braking for no cause prompted 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 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 1000’s of examples of why such worry could also be justified.‘My husband died in an unexplained accident. And nobody cared.’ Illustration: Carl Godfrey/The GuardianWe got down to match a few of these incidents of autopilot errors with clients’ names. Like a whole bunch of different Tesla clients, Rita Meier entered the automobile identification variety of her husband’s Mannequin S into the response type we revealed on the web site of the German enterprise newspaper Handelsblatt, for which we carried out our investigation. She shortly found that the Tesla Recordsdata contained knowledge associated to the automotive. In her first e mail to us, she wrote, “You possibly can in all probability 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 at some point after the deadly accident. Within the remark area was written, “Automobile concerned in an accident.” The reason for the crash stays unknown to this present day. In Tesla’s inner system, an organization worker had marked the case as “resolved”, however for 5 years, Rita Meier had been trying to find 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 chargeable for your husband’s dying?” we requested her. “Isn’t it doable he was distracted – perhaps his cellphone?”Nobody is aware of for certain. However Meier was effectively conscious that Musk has beforehand claimed Tesla “releases crucial crash knowledge affecting public security instantly and all the time will”; that he has bragged many instances about how its superior dealing with of information units the corporate other than its opponents. Within the case of her husband, why was she anticipated to consider there was no knowledge?Meier’s account was structured and exact. Solely as soon as did the toll turn out to be 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 instructed 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 method us. Upset clients, present and former staff, analysts and legal professionals have been sharing hyperlinks to our reporting. A lot 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 type with others in her community – together with individuals who, like her, misplaced family members in Tesla crashes. Certainly one of them was Anke Schuster. Like Meier, she had misplaced her husband in a Tesla crash that defies rationalization 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 truly 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 stated, had been “hell”. Nobody appeared to grasp 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 way in which the software program appeared to make selections by itself by no means sat proper together with her. Now, she felt as if her instincts had been confirmed within the worst approach.We uncovered an ominous black field by which each byte of buyer knowledge was collected – and sealed off from public scrutinyOliver Schuster was coming 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 street and crashed right into a tree. Schuster began to fret when her husband missed a scheduled financial institution appointment. She tried to trace the automobile however discovered no strategy 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 have been nearly three years aside however the parallels have been chilling. We examined accident experiences, eyewitness accounts, crash-site photographs and correspondence with Tesla. In each circumstances, investigators had requested automobile knowledge from Tesla, and the corporate hadn’t supplied it. In Meier’s case, Tesla employees claimed no knowledge was accessible. In Schuster’s, they stated there was no related knowledge.Over the following two years, we spoke with crash victims, grieving households and specialists around the globe. What we uncovered was an ominous black field – a system designed not solely to gather and management each byte of buyer knowledge, however to safeguard Musk’s imaginative and prescient of autonomous driving. Important 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 problem 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 – not less than, that’s what the Mannequin S handbook says.The thought for the smooth, futuristic design stems from Musk himself. He insisted on retractable handles, regardless of repeated warnings from engineers. Since 2018, they’ve been linked to not less than 4 deadly accidents in Europe and the US, by which 5 folks died.In February 2024, we reported on a very tragic case: a deadly crash on a rustic street close to Dobbrikow, in Brandenburg, Germany. Two 18-year-olds have been killed when the Tesla they have been in slammed right into a tree and caught hearth. First responders couldn’t open the doorways as a result of the handles have been retracted. The youngsters burned to dying within the again seat.A court-appointed professional from Dekra, one in all Germany’s main testing authorities, later concluded that, given the retracted handles, the incident “qualifies as a malfunction”. In line with the report, “the failure of the rear door handles to increase mechanically should be thought-about a decisive issue” within the deaths. Had the system labored as supposed, “it’s assumed that rescuers may need been capable of extract the 2 backseat passengers earlier than the hearth developed additional”. With out what the report calls a “failure of this security perform”, the kids may need survived.’I really feel like I am within the films’: malfunctioning robotaxi traps passenger in automotive – video Our investigation made waves. The Kraftfahrt-Bundesamt, Germany’s federal motor transport authority, acquired 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 advice that Tesla drivers ought to carry emergency window hammers. In a press release, ADAC warned that retractable door handles might critically hinder rescue efforts. Even skilled emergency responders, it stated, could battle to succeed in trapped passengers. Tesla exhibits no intention of fixing the design.That’s Musk. He prefers the smooth 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 take a look at 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 steady emerges. Income and market share arrive a lot earlier. The motto: in the event you wait, you lose.Musk has taken that mindset to the street. The world is his lab. Everybody else is a part of the experiment.By the top of 2023, we knew quite a bit about how Musk’s vehicles labored – however the best way they deal with knowledge nonetheless felt like a black field. How is that knowledge saved? At what second does the onboard pc ship it to Tesla’s servers? We talked to impartial specialists 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 known as “Elon Mode” – a hidden setting by which the automotive drives totally autonomously, with out requiring the driving force to maintain his fingers on the wheel. In addition they managed to get well deleted knowledge, together with video footage recorded by a Tesla driver. And so they traced precisely what knowledge Tesla sends to its servers – and what it doesn’t.The hackers defined that Tesla shops knowledge in three locations. First, on a reminiscence card contained in the onboard pc – basically a working log of the automobile’s digital mind. Second, on the occasion knowledge recorder – a black field that captures a couple of seconds earlier than and after a crash. And third, on Tesla’s servers, assuming the automobile uploads them.The researchers instructed 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 information to the black field – and transmit it to Tesla’s servers. Except the automobiles have been in an entire community useless zone, in each the Meier and Schuster circumstances, the vehicles ought to have recorded and transmitted that knowledge.‘Is the automotive driving erratically by itself regular? Yeah, that occurs once in a while.’ Illustration: Carl Godfrey/The GuardianWho within the firm really works with that knowledge? We examined testimony from Tesla staff in court docket circumstances 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 automobile dynamics or street grip. There’s additionally a bunch that steps in every time authorities request crash knowledge.skip previous publication promotionSign as much as Inside SaturdayThe solely strategy to get a glance behind the scenes of the Saturday journal. Signal as much as get the within story from our high writers in addition to all of the must-read articles and columns, delivered to your inbox each weekend.Privateness Discover: Newsletters could include data about charities, on-line advertisements, and content material funded by outdoors events. For extra info see our Privateness Coverage. We use Google reCaptcha to guard our web site and the Google Privateness Coverage and Phrases of Service apply.after publication promotionWe compiled an inventory 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 instructed police that von Ohain, who had been ingesting, had activated Full Self-Driving. Tesla, nevertheless, stated it couldn’t affirm whether or not the system was engaged – as a result of no automobile knowledge 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 prompted the crash. Mates of von Ohain, nevertheless, instructed US media he had proven them the system. His passenger that day, who barely escaped together with his life, instructed reporters that hours earlier the automotive had already pushed erratically by itself. “The primary time it occurred, I used to be like, ‘Is that ordinary?’” he recalled asking von Ohain. “And he was like, ‘Yeah, that occurs once in a while.’”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 obtained the Full Self-Driving system as a perk. His widow defined how he would use the system nearly each time he acquired behind the wheel: “It was jerky, however we have been like, that comes with the territory of latest know-how. We knew the know-how needed to be taught, and we have been prepared to be a part of that.”The Colorado State Patrol investigated however closed the case with out blaming Tesla. It reported that no usable knowledge was recovered.For an organization that markets its vehicles as computer systems on wheels, Tesla’s declare that it had no knowledge accessible in all these circumstances is shocking. Musk has lengthy described Tesla automobiles as a part of a collective neural community – machines that repeatedly be taught 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 automobile 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 be taught it. That’s past what different automotive firms are doing.” Each Tesla driver, he defined, turns into a sort of “professional coach for a way the autopilot ought to work”.In line with Musk, the eight cameras in each Tesla transmit greater than 160bn video frames a day to the corporate’s servers. In its proprietor’s handbook, Tesla states that its vehicles could gather much more: “analytics, street phase, diagnostic and automobile utilization knowledge”, all despatched to headquarters to enhance product high quality and options akin to autopilot. The corporate claims it learns “from the expertise of billions of miles that Tesla automobiles have pushed”.It’s a highly effective promise: a fleet of hundreds of thousands of vehicles, consistently feeding uncooked info right into a gargantuan processing centre. Billions – trillions – of information factors, all in service of 1 purpose: making vehicles drive higher and preserving drivers protected. Initially of this 12 months, Musk acquired an opportunity to indicate 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 automobile, 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 strategy 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 lodge shattered. As an alternative, together with his remaining act, Livelsberger revealed one thing else fully: simply how far the arm of Tesla’s knowledge 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 be taught something. We’ve by no means seen something like this.”Later that day, Musk posted once more. Tesla had already analysed all related knowledge – and was prepared to supply conclusions. “We’ve now confirmed that the explosion was brought on by very massive fireworks and/or a bomb carried within the mattress of the rented Cybertruck and is unrelated to the automobile itself,” he wrote. “All automobile telemetry was constructive 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 automobile. He handed over inner footage captured up-to-the-minute 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 sort of sweeping surveillance occurring,” 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. Firms that gather this knowledge can abuse it.”‘In lots of crashes, investigators weren’t even conscious that requesting knowledge from Tesla was an choice.’ Illustration: Carl Godfrey/The GuardianThere are different examples of what Tesla’s knowledge assortment makes doable. We discovered the case of David and Sheila Brown, who died in August 2020 when their Mannequin 3 ran a pink gentle at 114mph in Saratoga, California. Investigators managed to reconstruct each element, because of Tesla’s automobile knowledge. It exhibits precisely when the Browns opened a door, unfastened a seatbelt, and the way arduous the driving force pressed the accelerator – all the way down to the millisecond, proper up-to-the-minute of affect. Over time, we discovered extra circumstances, extra detailed accident experiences. The info undoubtedly is there – till it isn’t.In lots of crashes when Teslas inexplicably veered off the street or hit stationary objects, investigators didn’t really request knowledge from the corporate. Once 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 circumstances, they acted solely when pushed by victims’ households.Within the Meier case, Tesla instructed authorities, in a letter dated 25 June 2018, that the final full set of auto knowledge was transmitted practically two weeks earlier than the crash. The one knowledge from the day of the accident was a “restricted snapshot of auto parameters” – taken “roughly 50 minutes earlier than the incident”. Nevertheless, this snapshot “doesn’t present something in relation to the incident”. As for the black field, Tesla warned that the storage modules have been seemingly destroyed, given the situation of the burned-out automobile. Information transmission after a crash is feasible, the corporate stated – however on this case, it didn’t occur. In the long run, investigators couldn’t even decide whether or not driver-assist techniques have been lively on the time of the crash.The Schuster case performed out equally. Prosecutors in Stralsund, Germany, have been baffled. The street 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 knowledge.Each street consumer trusts the vehicles round them to not be a menace. Does that belief nonetheless stand when a automotive is driving itself?When prosecutors did formally request the information 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 transient and daring. The corporate didn’t say there was no knowledge. It stated that there was “no related knowledge”. 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 an alternative, 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 circumstances by which police had requested knowledge from Tesla. Their conclusion was that whereas Tesla formally complied with these requests, it omitted massive volumes of information 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, area knowledge and buyer communications, and pointed to “gaps in Tesla’s telematic knowledge” that made it unimaginable to find out how typically autopilot was lively throughout crashes. If a automobile’s antenna was broken or it crashed in an space with out community protection, even critical accidents typically went unreported. Tesla’s inner statistics embrace solely these crashes by which an airbag or different pyrotechnic system deployed – one thing that happens in simply 18% of police-reported circumstances. Because of this the precise accident fee is considerably greater 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 circumstances by which Tesla automobiles crashed into stationary emergency automobiles. In every, autopilot disengaged “lower than one second earlier than affect” – far too little time for the driving force to react. Critics warn that this behaviour might permit Tesla to argue in court docket that autopilot was not lively in the meanwhile of affect, probably dodging duty.The YouTuber Mark Rober, a former engineer at Nasa, replicated this behaviour in an experiment on 15 March 2025. He simulated a variety of hazardous conditions, by which the Mannequin Y carried out considerably worse than a competing automobile. The Tesla repeatedly ran over a crash-test dummy with out braking. The video went viral, amassing greater than 14m views inside a couple of days.Mark Rober’s Tesa take a look at driveThe actual 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 affect 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 experiences from a UK-based engineer who led Tesla’s Security Incident Investigation programme, overseeing the corporate’s most delicate crash circumstances. His inner memos reveal that Tesla intentionally restricted documentation of explicit points to keep away from the danger of this info being requested underneath 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 concerning the firm’s knowledge practices. We requested concerning the Meier and Schuster circumstances – 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 visitors authority and to the findings of Dutch forensic investigators. We additionally requested why Tesla doesn’t merely publish crash knowledge, 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 concerning the huge quantity of information his vehicles generate – knowledge that, he claims, won’t solely enhance Tesla’s whole fleet but in addition revolutionise street visitors. However, as we now have witnessed many times in probably the most crucial of circumstances, Tesla refuses to share it.Tesla’s dealing with of crash knowledge impacts even those that by no means needed something to do with the corporate. Each street consumer trusts the automotive in entrance, behind or beside them to not be a menace. Does that belief nonetheless stand when the automotive is driving itself?Internally, we known as our investigation into Tesla’s crash knowledge Black Field. At first, as a result of it handled the bodily knowledge items constructed into the automobiles – so-called black containers. However the gadgets Tesla installs hardly deserve the title. Not like the flight recorders utilized in aviation, they’re not fireproof – and in most of the circumstances we examined, they proved ineffective.Over time, we got here to see that the title held a second which means. A black field, in widespread parlance, is one thing closed to the surface. One thing opaque. Unknowable. And whereas we’ve gained some perception into Tesla as an organization, its dealing with of crash knowledge stays simply that: a black field. Solely Tesla is aware of how Elon Musk’s automobiles 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 help the Guardian, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Supply prices could apply.