Tesla withheld data, lied, misdirected police to avoid blame in Autopilot crash

Summary

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. I explained the case in the verdict in this article and video. But 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. Advertisement - scroll for more content The company went as far as to actively withhold critical evidence that explained Autopilot’s performance around the crash. Tesla withheld the crash‑snapshot data that its own server received within minutes of the collision 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. Here, in chronological order, is what happened based on all the evidence in the trial transcript: 1 | 25 Apr 2019 – The crash and an instant upload Tesla pretended never happened Within ~3 minutes of the crash, the Model S packaged sensor video, CAN‑bus, EDR, and other streams into a single “snapshot_collision_airbag-deployment.tar” file and pushed it to Tesla’s server, then deleted its local copy. We know that now, thanks to forensic evidence extracted from the onboard computer. The plaintiffs hired Alan Moore, a mechanical engineer who specializes in accident reconstruction, to forensical...