> saying that public disclosure of the information could cause competitive harm.

Remember what Musk said many years ago, something along the lines of that he wants to get the global EV movement started, and that for this to happen he'd gladly let anyone use his patents without retaliating?

Now he doesn't even want data which might save lives to get out into the public.

> June 12, 2014

> Yesterday, there was a wall of Tesla patents in the lobby of our Palo Alto headquarters. That is no longer the case. They have been removed, in the spirit of the open source movement, for the advancement of electric vehicle technology.

> Tesla Motors was created to accelerate the advent of sustainable transport. If we clear a path to the creation of compelling electric vehicles, but then lay intellectual property landmines behind us to inhibit others, we are acting in a manner contrary to that goal.

https://web.archive.org/web/20160722033909/https://www.tesla...

At this point, why anyone would opt to buy a Tesla is beyond my understanding. The fact that regulation is lacking to such an extent as to allow Tesla to wait for airbag deployment for something to count as a crash is kind of sad.

My Tesla still detects about 90% of garbage bins on our street, but only about 60% of the school kids crossing the road (I live in Germany where kids walk to school). The rest it would kill. As I pass by that school daily on my way to work, my Tesla would probably kill about 10-20 kids per week.

Yeah, good idea to hide the crash data.

Unless there's a very good reason, if National Highway Transportation Safety Administration has it then the taxpayers who paid for it should have access too.

Wife has a relative who was just (this weekend) in a major accident where a tesla ran into them and pushed their a ditch where it rolled a few times. Initial report says the Tesla was in self drive mode. Will be interesting to see who was at fault here but so far it is not looking good for Tesla.

As an anecdotal data point, I picked up a '24 Model 3 precisely for the self-driving capabilities. The difference between a Tesla running hardware/software HW3/v11 vs HW4/v12 was night and day.

Literally felt like the difference between flying a helicopter (actively trying to kill u lol) and an airplane.

I honestly did not get the hype until this specific HW4/v12 combination which didn't exist until last summer or so. It's the first time FSD felt like a safety feature for just $99 a month.

For reference, [1] is the recent UN regulation for road vehicles to have an event data recording (EDR) function which records certain telemetry about a vehicle for -5 to +5 seconds around a crash event. None of these fields relate to ADS/ADAS. This difference is described at [3] but in summary, EDR telemetry describes what the vehicle physically does, not who or how the vehicle was instructed to operate in that way. EDR telemetry doesn't answer if ADS/ADAS applied the throttle input or whether it was the human operator depressing the accelerator pedal.

Countries take time to decide how to implement the UN regulations so in countries such as Australia, there is (from a quick check) still no regulation requiring light passenger road vehicles to record any telemetry. The US already had a form of regulation requiring limited telemetry about a vehicle for -20 to +5 seconds around a crash event to be recorded.[2] This US regulation also did not require recording of fields relevant to ADS/ADAS.[2]

What this article describes is access to telemetry data that manufacturers such as Tesla are voluntarily recording within vehicles that may include some idea of ADS/ADAS operation during a crash event. For example, Tesla may be recording the human throttle input separate from recording of the ADS/ADAS throttle input, showing whether it was the driver or vehicle who caused the car to accelerate dangerously before a crash. But the UN regulation and older US regulation didn't expect Tesla to record more than just a single throttle position field, ignoring whether ADS/ADAS or the driver directed the throttle position.

[1] UN Regulation No. 160 - Event Data Recorder (EDR) - https://unece.org/sites/default/files/2023-10/R160E.pdf

[2] CFR Title 49 Subtitle B Chapter V Part 563 - https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-49/subtitle-B/chapter-V/p...

[3] https://unece.org/fileadmin/DAM/trans/doc/2019/wp29grva/GRVA...

It's interesting that this is a case being brought by The Washington Post. The owner of WaPo is also the owner of Zoox. (Jeff Bezos)

Public roads, public data. I want to know how at risk I am from all these Teslas around me.

https://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/Pages/HWY19FH008.aspx

https://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/Pages/HWY18FH011.aspx

https://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/Pages/HWY18FH004.aspx

https://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/Pages/HWY16FH018.aspx

Battery fire

https://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/Pages/HWY21FH011.aspx

Honestly still waiting for someone—could be Canada, the EU or California—to announce heightened approval standards for (or even a moratorium on) cameras-only self-driving cars on public streets.

While I admit I shouldn't be defending Tesla for free - I've come to realize a lot of these "FSD crashed into me and Elon is hiding it!" claims usually come down to the user driving recklessly then using FSD as a get out of jail free card.

FSDs failures are either far more boring (imagining a stop sign) or put's the user in danger (driving onto train tracks).

It's always a red flag when a company starts leaning hard on "competitive harm" to block safety-related data

Tesla wants to be isolated from criticism. Why? It's not just because this will show how bad they are relative to competition. The real reason is much more concerning.

Criticism of Tesla would deconstruct their dualist narrative. Tesla has sold the public on the notion that "good enough" self-driving is objectively safer than human driving. Anyone who accepts this narrative can consider the failure of human driving safety as an ultimate bad, which implies that Tesla's automated driving alternative is an ultimate good. This dogmatic thinking hinges on Tesla's vague assertion that automated driving in general is statistically safer than human driving in general. As soon as people engage with any criticism of this narrative whatsoever, the dualist perspective is lost, and the narrative itself falls apart.

Given that Elon wants to torpedo this spending bill over his precious EV credits, I imagine the honeymoon phase is assuredly over and he won't be successful in influencing the administration here.

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/trump-ca...

I don’t understand all the FSD “disdain” in these comments. FSD 13+ on HW4 is amazing. I’ve basically stopped driving and it’s a marvel of technology.

It’s hard for me to understand how everyone doesn't geek out about it all the time.

Tesla has no reason to fear or hide data if it hasn't done anything wrong.

Right?

Tesla executive leadership continues to be a joke in their industry. I hope their sales continue to drop off across the globe.

Behold, transparency!

This company is evil

There is a lot of Tesla hate here on HackerNews its turning into reddit :)

Musk has clearly gone crazy but Tesla's are without a doubt great cars. Until a real competitor exists, I will never drive another gas car and I will continue to drive Teslas

I guess they haven’t doge’d enough people to bury this

It’s honestly hilarious that they think they deserve access to Tesla’s internal data just because users can view the software version on their own car. That’s like saying a public login screen means the whole system should be open-source. Tesla has every right to protect its own data — especially when it’s tied to proprietary tech and competitive edge. If regulators or media want deeper access, it should be done through proper agreements, not by demanding that confidential info be handed over. You can’t just expect to skip the hard work others have done.

Musk would never hide something,would he ?

This company should be boycotted in it's entirety

As a shareholder I'm pissed off that my money is going into unimportant legal wrangling rather than developing better products.

Like who cares if software version numbers are released on crash reports or not?

Reuters throwing shade:

> Tesla is widely known for its so-called advanced driver-assistance systems, including Autopilot and Full Self-Driving (FSD).

(emphasis mine)