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 mentioned goodbye to her husband, Stefan, 5 years earlier. He had been leaving their dwelling 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 finally determined to strive it. Rita had a foul feeling. She stayed dwelling with their three kids, the youngest lower than a yr previous.
At 3.18pm on 10 Might 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 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 aspect of the highway, 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. Once 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 cops 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 a press release to the press saying the corporate was “deeply saddened” by the incident, including, “We’re working to assemble 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 saved every little thing the police gave her after their inconclusive investigation. The charred wreck of the Mannequin S sits in a storage Meier rents particularly for that function. The scorched cellphone – which she had forensically analysed at her personal expense, to no avail – sits in a drawer at dwelling. Possibly sometime all this will likely be wanted once more, she says. She hasn’t given up hope of uncovering the reality.
Rita Meier was considered one of many individuals who reached out to us after we started reporting on the Tesla Information – 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 automobiles to briefly drive on their very own, taking up steering, braking and acceleration. Although touted by the corporate as “Full Self-Driving” (FSD), it’s designed to help, not substitute, the driving force, who ought to preserve 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 really self-driving car, but the richest particular person on this planet retains repeating the declare that his automobiles will quickly drive completely with out human assist. Is Tesla’s autopilot actually as superior as he says?
The Tesla Information 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 prospects raised security issues lists greater than 3,000 entries. The oldest date from 2015, the newest 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. Clients described their automobiles immediately 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 faculty parking zone, as I am going to make a right-hand exit it lurches ahead immediately,” one criticism learn. One other mentioned, “My autopilot failed/malfunctioned this morning (automotive didn’t brake) and I nearly rear-ended anyone at 65mph.” A 3rd reported, “At present, whereas my spouse was driving with our child within the automotive, it immediately 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 Information, we discovered 1000’s of examples of why such concern could also be justified.
We got down to match a few of these incidents of autopilot errors with prospects’ names. Like tons of of different Tesla prospects, 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 Information contained knowledge associated to the automotive. In her first e-mail to us, she wrote, “You’ll be able to in all probability think about what it felt prefer to learn that.”
There isn’t a lot info – simply an Excel spreadsheet titled “Incident Assessment”. 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, “Car concerned in an accident.” The reason for the crash stays unknown to at the present time. In Tesla’s inside 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 demise, she took over the household enterprise – a timber firm with 200 workers based mostly in Tettnang, Baden-Württemberg. As journalists, we’re used to powerful interviews, however this one was completely 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 demise?” we requested her. “Isn’t it doable he was distracted – possibly his cellphone?”
Nobody is aware of for certain. However Meier was nicely conscious that Musk has beforehand claimed Tesla “releases vital 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 aside from its opponents. Within the case of her husband, why was she anticipated to imagine there was no knowledge?
Meier’s account was structured and exact. Solely as soon as did the toll turn into seen – when she described how her husband’s physique burned in full view of the firefighters. Her eyes stuffed with 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. Dissatisfied prospects, present and former workers, analysts and legal professionals have 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 every 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 Information. 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 corporations, 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 automobiles. She hated them – particularly the autopilot. The way in which the software program appeared to make choices by itself by no means sat proper along 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 demise – 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 stories, eyewitness accounts, crash-site pictures and correspondence with Tesla. In each instances, investigators had requested car knowledge from Tesla, and the corporate hadn’t supplied it. In Meier’s case, Tesla workers claimed no knowledge was out there. In Schuster’s, they mentioned there was no related knowledge.
Over the subsequent two years, we spoke with crash victims, grieving households and consultants all over the world. 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. Essential info was sealed off from public scrutiny.
Elon Musk is a perfectionist with an inclination in the direction of micromanagement. At Tesla, his whims appear to override each argument – even in issues of life and demise. Throughout our reporting, we got here throughout the difficulty of door handles. On Teslas, they retract into the doorways whereas the automobiles are being pushed. The system depends upon battery energy. If an airbag deploys, the doorways are alleged to unlock mechanically and the handles lengthen – at the least, that’s what the Mannequin S handbook says.
The concept 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 at the least 4 deadly accidents in Europe and the US, during which 5 individuals 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 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 demise within the again seat.
A court-appointed professional from Dekra, considered one of 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 meant, “it’s assumed that rescuers might 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 perform”, the kids might need survived.
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 vehicle membership, ADAC, issued a public suggestion that Tesla drivers ought to carry emergency window hammers. In a press release, ADAC warned that retractable door handles might significantly hinder rescue efforts. Even educated emergency responders, it mentioned, might battle to achieve 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 chance to his prospects. 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 prospects 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 follow. The extra customers, the extra suggestions and, over time – usually years – one thing steady emerges. Income and market share arrive a lot earlier. The motto: should 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 automobiles 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 laptop ship it to Tesla’s servers? We talked to unbiased 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 short 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 during 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. They usually 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 laptop – primarily a operating log of the car’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 car uploads them.
The researchers instructed us they’d discovered an inside 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 avoid wasting an outlined set of information to the black field – and transmit it to Tesla’s servers. Until the automobiles have been in an entire community lifeless zone, in each the Meier and Schuster instances, the automobiles ought to have recorded and transmitted that knowledge.
Who within the firm truly works with that knowledge? We examined testimony from Tesla workers in courtroom instances associated to deadly crashes. They described how their departments function. We cross-referenced their statements with entries within the Tesla Information. A sample took form: one staff screens all crashes at a excessive degree, forwarding them to specialists – some targeted on autopilot, others on car dynamics or highway grip. There’s additionally a gaggle that steps in each time authorities request crash knowledge.
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We compiled an inventory of workers related to our reporting. Some we tried to achieve by e-mail or cellphone. For others, we confirmed up at their properties. In the event that they weren’t there, we left handwritten notes. Nobody wished to speak.
We looked for different crashes. One concerned Hans von Ohain, a 33-year-old Tesla worker from Evergreen, Colorado. On 16 Might 2022, he crashed right into a tree on his approach dwelling 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 consuming, had activated Full Self-Driving. Tesla, nevertheless, mentioned it couldn’t verify whether or not the system was engaged – as a result of no car 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 most recent 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 along 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 standard?’” he recalled asking von Ohain. “And he was like, ‘Yeah, that occurs now and again.’”
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 bought behind the wheel: “It was jerky, however we have been like, that comes with the territory of recent expertise. We knew the expertise 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 automobiles as computer systems on wheels, Tesla’s declare that it had no knowledge out there in all these instances is shocking. Musk has lengthy described Tesla automobiles as a part of a collective neural community – machines that constantly be taught from each other. Consider the Borg aliens from the Star Trek franchise. Musk envisions his automobiles, 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 completely 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 corporations are doing.” Each Tesla driver, he defined, turns into a sort of “professional coach for the 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 automobiles might accumulate much more: “analytics, highway phase, diagnostic and car utilization knowledge”, 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 automobiles have pushed”.
It’s a highly effective promise: a fleet of hundreds of thousands of automobiles, continually feeding uncooked info right into a gargantuan processing centre. Billions – trillions – of information factors, all in service of 1 aim: making automobiles drive higher and maintaining drivers protected. In the beginning 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 exterior 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, fuel 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 lodge shattered. As an alternative, along with his remaining act, Livelsberger revealed one thing else completely: 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 put up 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 now have now confirmed that the explosion was attributable to 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.”
All of the sudden, Musk wasn’t only a CEO; he was an investigator. He instructed Tesla technicians to remotely unlock the scorched car. He handed over inside footage captured up-to-the-minute of detonation.The Tesla CEO had turned a suicide assault right into a showcase of his superior expertise.
But there have been critics even within the second of glory. “It reveals the sort of sweeping surveillance occurring,” warned David Choffnes, govt 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, however it’s a double-edged sword. Firms that accumulate this knowledge can abuse it.”
There 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 purple mild at 114mph in Saratoga, California. Investigators managed to reconstruct each element, due to Tesla’s car 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 influence. Over time, we discovered extra instances, extra detailed accident stories. The info undoubtedly 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 knowledge from the corporate. After we requested authorities why, there was usually silence. Our impression was that many prosecutors and cops 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 instructed authorities, in a letter dated 25 June 2018, that the final full set of auto knowledge was transmitted almost 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”. Nonetheless, this snapshot “doesn’t present something in relation to the incident”. As for the black field, Tesla warned that the storage modules have been doubtless destroyed, given the situation of the burned-out car. Information 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 programs have been lively on the time of the crash.
The Schuster case performed out equally. Prosecutors in Stralsund, Germany, have 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 saved urging the authorities to look at Tesla’s telemetry knowledge.
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 transient and daring. The corporate didn’t say there was no knowledge. It mentioned 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 unbiased 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 during which police had requested knowledge from Tesla. Their conclusion was that whereas Tesla formally complied with these requests, it omitted giant 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 did not adequately monitor whether or not drivers stay alert and able to intervene whereas utilizing its driver-assist programs. It reviewed 956 crashes, area knowledge and buyer communications, and pointed to “gaps in Tesla’s telematic knowledge” that made it not possible to find out how usually autopilot was lively throughout crashes. If a car’s antenna was broken or it crashed in an space with out community protection, even critical accidents generally went unreported. Tesla’s inside statistics embrace solely these crashes during which an airbag or different pyrotechnic system deployed – one thing that happens in simply 18% of police-reported instances. Which means that the precise accident charge is considerably increased than Tesla discloses to prospects 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 during which Tesla automobiles crashed into stationary emergency automobiles. In every, autopilot disengaged “lower than one second earlier than influence” – far too little time for the driving force to react. Critics warn that this behaviour might permit Tesla to argue in courtroom that autopilot was not lively in the intervening time 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 variety of hazardous conditions, during which 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 a couple of days.
The 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 influence because the crash turns into inevitable,” Lambert famous.
And so the doubts about Tesla’s integrity pile up. Within the Tesla Information, we discovered emails and stories from a UK-based engineer who led Tesla’s Security Incident Investigation programme, overseeing the corporate’s most delicate crash instances. His inside memos reveal that Tesla intentionally restricted documentation of specific points to keep away from the chance of this info being requested below subpoena. Though he pushed for clearer protocols and higher inside 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 instances – and what it means when deadly crashes are marked “resolved” in Tesla’s inside 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 courtroom orders. Tesla has not responded to any of our questions.
Elon Musk boasts concerning the huge quantity of information his automobiles generate – knowledge that, he claims, is not going to solely enhance Tesla’s whole fleet but in addition revolutionise highway visitors. However, as we’ve got witnessed repeatedly in essentially the most vital of instances, Tesla refuses to share it.
Tesla’s dealing with of crash knowledge impacts even those that by no means wished something to do with the corporate. Each highway person 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 referred to 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 identify. Not like the flight recorders utilized in aviation, they’re not fireproof – and in lots of the instances we examined, they proved ineffective.
Over time, we got here to see that the identify held a second that 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 knowledge stays simply that: a black field. Solely Tesla is aware of how Elon Musk’s automobiles really work. But at present, greater than 5m of them share our roads.
Some names have been modified.
