The Autopilot and the Total Autonomous Driving Capacity (FSD) have been available in the Tesla sold in the United States for years. Its existence, its commercial deployment and even its general operation are well known. What remains a mystery are some details of the accidents occurred With those activated systems. Tesla does not want this information to come to light, and now he has resorted to court to keep it locked.
The origin of the conflict is in a lawsuit filed by The Washington Post against NHTSA, the Federal Road Safety Agency of the United States. The newspaper requests access to the full spreadsheet that compiles the reports of incidents occurred while the Tesla driving assistance systems were activated. According to the medium, the NHTSA publishes some data, but retains “critical details” such as environmental conditions, the location of the claims or the concrete versions of the software that were in use. For the plaintiffs, it is information of public interest that can shed light on the true performance of these technologies.
A defense based on commercial secret
As Reuters collects, Tesla has responded firmly. This week, he presented a writing before the Federal Court of the Columbia district to oppose the publication of this data. Its central argument is that certain fields of reports contain sensitive information. Specifically, the hardware or software version, the indication of whether the car circulated inside its Designed Operational Domain (ODD) and the detailed narrative of the accident. According to the company, revealing these elements would allow its competitors to evaluate the effectiveness of each version of the system, track the pace of improvement and associate errors with specific versions. It is, says Tesla, “a technological road map” that could cause severe competitive damage.
The NHTSSA, meanwhile, has partially backed that position. In a separate writingthe agency coincides with Tesla that these three fields are protected by the Law of Freedom of Information (FOIA). Both argue that it is not only privacy, but of commercial confidentiality, a category that can legally justify that documents are not delivered to the public. The newspaper’s lawyers, on the other hand, have alleged that this information is already partially accessible to the drivers themselves and that their compilation should not be armored by the business secret.
Now it is the Federal Court who must decide whether that information comes to light or remains hidden. But the debate is not purely legal; It occurs in full scrutiny of driving assistance systems. As NPR points outNHTSSA investigates FSD’s yield in 2.4 million vehicles After several accidentsincluding mortal in 2023. It also maintains other inquiries on collisions in low visibility conditions and on the function Actually Smart Summon. Although not all collisions are known publicly, the confidential spreadsheet that the Washington Post claims contains the incidents that Tesla regularly refers to the agency, but seeks to delve into the information that is made known.
Autopilot, improved autopilot and total autonomous driving capacity are the three levels at which Tesla organizes its driving assistance systems. The first, Autopilot, comes standard in new vehicles sold in the United States and includes functions such as adaptive cruise control and autogyro, which keeps the car inside the lane. From there, the user can pay to access a more advanced package, the improved autopilot, or directly to the total autonomous driving capacity (Full Self-Driving or FSD), the most complete set offered by the brand.
In practice, none of these systems converts the car into an autonomous vehicle. Despite his name, Full Self-Driving requires the driver to be attentive, with his hands on the steering wheel and willing to take control at any time. Tesla makes it clear: These are systems designed to attend, Not to replace the driver. That does not prevent functions such as automatic lane changes, assisted parking or the ability to stop before traffic lights and stop signals (in beta) are already available in many cars. They are important advances, but under mandatory human supervision.
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