this post was submitted on 04 Aug 2025
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Tesla withheld data, lied, and misdirected police and plaintiffs to avoid blame in Autopilot crash (electrek.co)
submitted 6 days ago by DrunkEngineer@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world
74 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

Tesla was caught withholding data, lying about it, and misdirecting authorities in the wrongful death case involving Autopilot that it lost this week.

The automaker was undeniably covering up for Autopilot.

Last week, a jury found Tesla partially liable for a wrongful death involving a crash on Autopilot. We now have access to the trial transcripts, which confirm that Tesla was extremely misleading in its attempt to place all the blame on the driver.

The company went as far as to actively withhold critical evidence that explained Autopilot’s performance around the crash. Within about three minutes of the crash, the Model S uploaded a “collision snapshot”—video, CAN‑bus streams, EDR data, etc.—to Tesla’s servers, the “Mothership”, and received an acknowledgement. The vehicle then deleted its local copy, resulting in Tesla being the only entity having access.

What ensued were years of battle to get Tesla to acknowledge that this collision snapshot exists and is relevant to the case.

The police repeatedly attempted to obtain the data from the collision snapshot, but Tesla led the authorities and the plaintiffs on a lengthy journey of deception and misdirection that spanned years.

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[–] hodgepodgin@lemmy.zip 2 points 20 hours ago* (last edited 20 hours ago)

Agreed, if there was concern about the data falling into the wrong hands then there’s many different ways to secure the data (encryption w/ a secure enclave, masking, hardening) besides just deleting it. Tesla’s strategy here totally foregoes any typical data retention lifecycle like you mention, which is usually to delete old data that has little to no benefit besides just adding additional risk (e.g. trips older than 1 year or if there’s no space left). Plus you have to take into account the additional consequences you take on by deleting the data locally such as not being in compliance with regulations, and potentially risking sanctions or heavy fines.