Tesla seeks to guard crash data from public disclosure

It is exactly what they said at the time: "Tesla will not initiate patent lawsuits against anyone who, in good faith, wants to use our technology."

They offered this statement along with a "good faith" patent pledge that required reciprocity.

Just like the annual "robotaxis this year", nothing has changed. lol

Yes, but Tesla has made several weird strategic errors IMO. The first one I remember reacting to where the falcon doors on the model X. They had issues which delayed the launch, and I remember thinking it was strange to put those kind of specialty doors on a SUV instead of focusing on delivering a functional car as quick and easy as possible. The next was of course the massive focus on self driving, and then the cyber truck. The company has had the same CEO during all of these decisions.

But what do I know, I assume their self driving AI hype is what drives their hugely inflated stock price, so it has made a lot of people very rich, which is a goal in itself. It's hard to point at the richest man in the world and say he made strategic errors.

Yeah, that's just how developing new technologies works. Home PCs, VCRs, CD players, cell phones: every one was hundreds or thousands of dollars at first, a plaything for wealthy people. Then as volume increased, prices came down to where most people could afford them and they became mass-market consumer items.

It doesn't always work out. Sometimes another technology or a competitor gets over that hump first, and the other (LaserDisc, Betamax) never gets the volume it takes to become an affordable commodity. And it doesn't necessarily have anything to do with which one was better. But that's the path to selling a new tech to the masses: sell with a high price tag to the wealthy first.

It’s a shame they chose to seriously pursue the ridiculous cybertruck and vapourware rather than cheaper cars.

People in the Bay Area perhaps.

Would this hold for median car prices?

Is that a meaningful comparison if the biggest car manufacturers have their sales split across a dozen models for each Tesla model?

Can we expand the sources for that? I ask because I want to know if this source is the same company that had dealerships "selling" thousands of cars over a single weekend right before a tax incentive disappeared. It could very well be true, but there's also reasons it might not be.

Only because their competitors divide up their model lines.

The combined sales of Toyota's sedan models dwarfs Tesla's sales.

It depends on the segment and time range and market. MotorEasy conducted a survey in 2024 in the U.K. with 29,967 respondents. (https://www.whatcar.com/news/most-reliable-cars/n27337) The Tesla Model Y was the 9th (equal) most reliable car. However Teslas tend to fare poorly in the Consumer Reports survey in the U.S. I suspect one of the reasons for the discrepancy between this market and the U.S. is that the U.K. received Tesla shipments a lot later for new models - years, in fact. This gave Tesla time to iron out first-model issues. Another is potentially the location of manufacture. Most Teslas sold in the U.K. come from China and Germany. Most Teslas sold in the U.S. come from Fremont, California. There were widespread reports of strange manufacturing practises at the Fremont plan during the covid outbreak, like spray-painting cars in makeshift tents.

Interestingly, MotorEasy found that gas and hybrids were the most reliable. Diesel were the least reliable.

These studies don't really show a decent comparison between EV's, just car makers in general. We aren't trying to argue whether Tesla's are better than ICE car makers, but whether they're consistent or better against other EV's of other car makers.

However, if you look at the latest press release by JDPower (https://www.jdpower.com/business/press-releases/2025-us-vehi...) you'll see that Tesla now ranks right near the average. Significantly better than in previous years and ahead of other common car makers.

The dependability study could do with a segment purely on EV's, given that EV's as a whole are improving by roughly 33 PP100 per year.

Isn’t Tesla Model S Plaid still ranked the fastest (maybe 1 or 2 $300k super cars are faster) while being the safest and have arguably the most advanced self drive available in the market?

I dislike Tesla as a brand; however, they're not particularly lacking considering their size and price point. JD Power's "ratings" are almost entirely based on surveys and are essentially worthless.

My Model Y is the most reliable car I've ever owned, except it eats tires quickly because it's so heavy. Just one anecdote of course.

I'll never buy another one as long as Elon Musk is associated with the company, but I'd be crazy to sell it now because it's paid for and it's a great car.

Bruh, JD Power is a joke, they said the Chevy Equinox is the most reliable compact SUV of 2024, look at any of their rankings, it’s all basically random, meaningless noise. I assume they just create hundreds of oveRlapping categories to make sure everyone has something they will pay the license fee to talk about in a commercial

I have a Model 3 2024 and the "ride quality" is beyond any other vehicle I've been in. I genuinely get a little excited every time I drive it. Best car I've ever been in or drove, and it's not close.

The new Model 3 released in Jan 2024 has resolved the ride harshness

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Is the 2025 Ioniq 5 still running a laggy and old looking Android 4 for its infotainment?

So what it has going for it is the most importantly part of the EV ecosystem?

I'll compare the top spec Ioniq 5 N line with the Model Y AWD Long Range as they're priced the same here in Denmark. The Ioniq has 520 liters of trunk space vs 854 in the Model Y. The Ioniq has 495km of range vs the Y's 586. Software isn't even close - I have tried both. The Tesla wins hands down on software. The only metric the Ioniq wins on is acceleration. Specifically when using special boost mode from stopped. It can do 0-100 in 3.4s vs the Y's 4.8s, which is fast.

For me this is a clear win for Tesla. Anything under 5s is crazy fast to me anyway, so the other things I mention are worth a lot more.

What do you want to sync? I was able to use my phone book contacts and addresses. Use my phone's WiFi for data and play music or videos from any app on my phone. I was able to send destination POI to the car GPS to navigate there. Ticked all my boxes.

Bidirectional charging would be great, everything else is already far up there.

I purchased a 2026 Model Y in April. I love it and it’s the best vehicle I’ve even owned. My Apple phone pairs with the car just fine. I can call my contacts, play audio from my phone etc.

Well TMY is really efficient for the size, while I've seen hilarious consumption figures for Ioniq 5. Doesn't matter if you charge from solar, but at European electricity prices, TMY is probably significantly cheaper to run.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0CWfPUrmeiU

I have a family and a wife who doesn't pack light so it's a pretty important one for us. There are options if I'm willing to drop some of those things, but the Y gives me all of it for a reasonable price.

Do you mean I could get something significantly better if I choose not to get the things which are important to me? Because that would be worse for me, not better. I have never cared about the badge.

Out of interest, if I reduced the trunk space a little, which similarly priced EVs could you recommend with more range and better performance than the Model Y AWD Long Range?

What gets at least equal mileage and is also not tiny? A friend is looking to buy and EV, and his problem specifically is nothing comes close to Teslas range.

I'm the same. I loved my 2020 Model Y when I bought it new and I love my 2020 Model X that I bought used. Both are the best cars I've ever owned. I know that everyone likes to complain about fit and finish but honestly I never noticed a single thing wrong with either of them. They are performant, silent, efficient, and the MX doors make my grandkids giggle (that's worth quite a bit :).

I keep looking for the next EV to buy but every one that I test drive seems lacking, mostly in the software area. Tesla has the software nailed and nobody else can seem to figure it out. I recently drove a Rivian R1S and really liked it, but the software was not great (for a $100K car) and it really disappointing me.

I really feel like Tesla does great work but their leader needs to go. He's smeared the name so badly that I fear it might never recover.

That sounds like unbelievable hyperbole but I'm not interested in getting into a culture war fight today. It's going to be hard to find a brand which hasn't been associated with bad things before but I wish you luck :)

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I don’t think this discussion makes sense without pointing to specific models. And discussing specific models doesn’t make sense without establishing what are the set of required properties (which is different for everyone). I was just pointing out that for some people (including me) there are no other cars with similar properties that I need.

> I am aware that FSD has a different software stack. But it's the same hardware. So why would they make the detection of kids different on the standard firmware artificially worse? As Marketing for people who hate school kids?

Not sure what's your argument here. The visualization you get using "Enhanced Autopilot" is completely different to the one you get using "FSD Beta" because the software you are running is completely different as well.

Not defending Musk, I don’t like him but I am not sure why you would think two separate software stacks should somehow be comparable. Maybe it’s my old age but I get tired of these style of rants where folks are fixated on a single thing.

Other than the first paragraph, this all seems to be replying to something else?

US kids walk to school far less than in the Good Old Days...but there's still a fair amount of walking. And on low-traffic residential streets, there can be quite a bit of de facto playing in the street. So it's still a "passably" target-rich environment for killer robocars.

In the US, letting your children walk to school is taking a non-negligible risk that you'll be charged with a crime or have your children taken away. Their deaths from a motor vehicle are assumed by all to be a certain eventuality, and parents are more likely to be blamed for it than drivers.

I think it is just not possible to have mixed traffic of devices (humans) with a weight of 70kg and SUVs of 3 metric tons.

You have to seperate those. And the default in car nations like Germany or the US has always been to ban the humans. After having seen how other nations are handling it, and what it does for quality of life, whenever I see how German cities look like (and of course most of US cities) it feels totally alien to me.

Anyway: No, Robotaxis clearly are not the solution to the problem. In school kid vs. Tesla, the car always will win. And this includes even if you blame the kid for having made a mistake according to road regulations - making mistakes in regards of traffic rules as a young human should not be punished by death.

What I have seen in my German home town also is a downward spiral: Hockey mums thinking it is safer for their kids to come pick them up with their SUVs. But because those are so big that it is impossible to see the other kids, risk of accidents is actually rising, causing more mums to driver their kids in SUVs etc.

Setting a bar is the mistake. We need to reframe the entire narrative.

Safety implementation is never objective. You can only implement a system by subjecting it to context. Traffic safety is a world of edge cases, and each driving implementation will engage with those edge cases from a different subjective context.

We are used to framing computation as a system of rules: explicit logic that is predictably followed. Tesla is using the other approach to "AI": statistical models. A statistical model replaces binary logic with a system of bias. A model that is built out of good example data will behave as if it is the thing creating that data. This works well when the context that model is situated in is similar to the example. It works poorly when there is a mismatch of context. The important thing to know here is that in both cases, it "works". A statistical model never fails: that's a feature of binary logic. Instead, it behaves in a way we don't like. The only way to accommodate this is to build a model out of examples that incorporate every edge case. Those examples can't conflict with each other, either. The model must be biased to make the objectively correct decision for every unique context it could possibly encounter in the future; or it will be biased to make the wrong decision.

The only real solution to traffic safety is to replace it with a fail-safe system: a system whose participants can't collide with each other or their surrounding environment. Today, the best implementation of this goal is trains.

Humans have the same problems that statistical models have. There are two key differences, though:

1. Humans are reliably capable of logical deduction.

2. Humans can be held directly accountable for their mistakes.

Tesla would very much like us to be ignorant of #1, and to insulate their platform from #2.

> The only manufacturer with heavily redacted information in that data to the point of being useless is Tesla.

The nice thing is we can look for ourselves to what extent that is true by downloading the CSV: https://static.nhtsa.gov/odi/ffdd/sgo-2021-01/SGO-2021-01_In...

For example, in the case of BMW, in every single case the field for ADS/ADAS Version is either blank or redacted.

Not “all” crash data, though.

>and the crash involves a vulnerable road user being struck or results in a fatality, an air bag deployment, or any individual being transported to a hospital for medical treatment.

The "We'll wait" isn't really seen as effective discourse here like it on on Reddit/Twitter. Just state your argument and let it stand on its own without the perceived "mic drop".

A plurality of those are in Texas, as well. I used to say, someone in the US is more likely to die in a car wreck in Texas even if they never go to Texas, that's how skewed they make the statistics. But I stopped looking at the stats a few years ago so I stopped saying and defending that. It's just a new lens to view this information through.

Until the car requests intervention and the timer runs out, levels 3 and 4 are supposed to have the same behavior. If that process has not happened, why should the driver's level of responsibility be any different?

(Though a consequence is that levels 3 and 4 are very close together in difficulty. We might not see many level 3 cars.)

I believe they call it SFSD (supervised) now.

i think it's fairly easy to get 80+ percent of the way to FSD and it looks like you're on the verge of being able to moat your company with actual FSD. He should and probably did know better - although i've seen lots of videos/articles about how he isn't actually that proficient technically.

even if that 80% was 99%, that last 1% will be the cause of some mishaps.

my subaru is within a few percent of 80% FSD if everything is turned on. I still technically have to hold the wheel, but the steering only shuts off about 20% of the time with that being met.

Do they? Given that Tesla can make those logs say anything they want, I would like that code reviewed by a 3rd party.

If we're going to allow companies to write code in which human safety is in danger if that code misbehaves, that code should be auditable by a 3rd party, and those audits should regularly happen.

Code which affects the safety of humans should be reviewed with AT LEAST as much rigor as code for slot machines.

Tesla had to be "instructed" by the NHTSA to use this criteria.

"Surprise, you were supposed to be driving" is a level 2 problem. Level 2 requires inhuman levels of constant vigilance. Level 3 requires you to be awake and able to drive, and you will get several seconds of warning to switch from watching TV to looking at the road.

People on average can't effectively pretend to drive and switch to actually driving very effectively

Thats an irrelevant argument (and unless you work there directly on this just empty baseless words).

The point is - it didnt deliver, and still doesnt. Its a securities fraud out in the open, but clearly from a guy who is above the threshold of applicable law

One thing I wonder is, if BYD was allowed to compete in the western markets, would the scale of deployment yield better data and thus a better FSD experience?

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The latter option being the one that is the best possible one.

Tesla comes across safer when you compare the performance under completely different conditions and then shift blame on humans for not reacting in a second when Tesla suddenly disengage.

Those are numbers for Autopilot, not FSD. Autopilot is driving mostly highway miles which have much lower crash rates than the highway/city combined stat Tesla compares against. More importantly, those statistics describe the safety of a supervised system and can't be used to infer the safety of the system on it's own. Tesla refuses to disclose the industry standard "miles per disengagement" for FSD but crowdsourced data puts them at 456, pitiful compared to humans and other self-driving projects. [1]

Also to note, FSD disengagements are probably common enough to still be on the left hand side of the "Valley of Degraded Supervision"[2], where mistakes are common enough that users stay viligant. As mi/de increases to 5,000 or 50,000, the quality of the supervision could degrade to the point that the supervised system is less safe than an unaided driver.

[1] https://teslafsdtracker.com/Main

[2] https://users.ece.cmu.edu/~koopman/pubs/koopman19_TestingSaf...

When the words are actually spelled out the sheer ridiculousness of "Full Self Driving" having a "(Supervised)" postscript becomes rather readily apparent.

Tesla can't help but know that the supposed non-driver getting constantly nagged to be vigilant as if actively driving destroys most of the value proposition of FSD. Vision Attention Monitoring has quite a bit of potential to be very useful … precisely in situations in which vehicles are not driving themselves.

Put on a hat or sunglasses and it falls back to periodic steering wheel nags

I haven't tested it but I assume the same is true if you put tape over the camera

> you can't not pay attention with the new Vision Attention Monitoring

Polarised sunglasses. Works on my Subaru. Works on my buddy’s Tesla.

Quite frankly sounds super boring. I prefer driving than supervising. Only true unsupervised autonomous driving would be interesting for me (e.g Waymo).

Indeed. My point is: so why focus on regulation that targets <0.1% of traffic fatalities?

Here's an alternative idea that would save a lot more lives:

Take the camera-based driver attention monitoring that works in my seven year-old Tesla, which notices IMMEDIATELY if I look away from the windshield for more than a second or two, and then require that in the human-driven cars.

Estimates for annual deaths in the US from distracted driving are between 3,250 and 12,400. An in-cabin camera is not expensive or specialty hardware. The tech is there, the costs are low. We could save a lot of lives!

If we're ignoring that to focus on Tesla's FSD, the goal is not sensible regulation or saving lives.

Well, my claim was fairly specific, so it's quite easy.

There are ~42k traffic fatalities in the US each year. Cameras-only self driving cars are a tiny fraction of the number of total cars.

The highest estimates I've seen for annual traffic deaths with an ADAS involved (not even implying causation) is in the range of dozens. Cameras-only self driving cars would be a fraction of those. As a result, there are quite possibly more than a thousand traffic fatalities each year caused by human-driven cars for each ONE caused by a cameras-only self driving car.

But my original claim was only that they kill a lot fewer. That seems self-evident.

> less than honest people will pretend it says

Like Tesla?

If your airbags don't deploy, Tesla doesn't consider it an accident for the purposes of reporting (modern safety systems don't blindly deploy airbags, they evaluate g-forces, speeds, angles of impact, etc., so you can hit something at 25mph and the vehicle decides your seatbelts are sufficient. Tesla decides "that's not a reportable collision"). Know when else your airbags might not deploy? Very serious accidents, when hardware or controllers are damaged.

Speaking of which, fatalities are not included in that report. "It was a collision where someone died, but doesn't merit inclusion in a safety report" is a weird position to take.

Isn't Musk one of the least honest persons on the planet? His capacity for lying is known for years and literal grounds for his success.

Too bad? Their devices are interacting with people in a public environment. Tough industry I guess.

Pfizer provides the data to the FDA which decides whether to approve the medication, and releases only a subset of the data to public.

https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/wait-what-fda-wants...

> The records must be reviewed to redact “confidential business and trade secret information of Pfizer or BioNTech and personal privacy information of patients who participated in clinical trials,” wrote DOJ lawyers in a joint status report, filed Monday.

...

> But we can’t show you data

Tesla shows the data to the NHTSA whose experts look at it and can force recalls so your analogy and argument make no sense.