Tesla Whistleblower Leaks 100GB Data Of Customer Complaints Against Self-Driving Cars

Despite several concerns, Elon Musk-run Tesla made its Full Self-Driving (FSD) beta self-driving features available to all its car owner.

Challenging Elon Musk's full self-driving claims, a Tesla whistleblower has reportedly leaked 100GB of data to a German media outlet that contains thousands of customer complaints about the automaker's Full Self-Driving (FSD) features. The documents obtained by Handelsblatt detail about 2,400 self-acceleration issues and more than 1,500 braking problems with Tesla cars. The Tesla FSD complaints were reported across the US, Europe and Asia from 2015 to March 2022, reports The Verge.

According to Handelsblatt, there were 139 reports of "unintentional emergency braking" and 383 reports of "phantom stops" from false collision warnings from customers. According to the media company, when they made Tesla aware about the data it received, the electric car-maker allegedly "demanded that the data be deleted and spoke of data theft."

Some of the customer incidents include descriptions of how cars "suddenly brake or accelerate abruptly." Some Tesla drivers "ended up in a ditch, hit walls or crashed into oncoming vehicles."

Tesla's FSD capability enables all the features that come with Tesla's Autopilot and Enhanced Autopilot features, including automatic lane changes, autosteering, auto parking, and more.

Despite several concerns, Tesla made its FSD beta available to everyone in November last year. Tesla is under intense scrutiny for its Autopilot and its FSD software driver assistance features.

The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is also investigating self-driving claims made by Musk. The SEC probe is to determine if the electric car-maker flouted its rules in promoting its FSD and Autopilot software.

Last month, in some relief for Tesla CEO Musk, jurors in an Autopilot-related 2019 crash in the US gave the verdict in favour of the electric car company. The jury in the California state court awarded plaintiff Justine Hsu, who sued Tesla in 2020, no damages.

In February, Tesla received a clean chit from the US National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) in a fatal crash involving a Tesla Model S Autopilot system in 2021.