0 Comments 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 cras h, 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 forensically recover data from the Autopilot ECU (computer). Based on the data, Moore was able to confirm that Tesla had this “collision snapshot” all along, but “unlinked” it from the vehicle: “That tells me within minutes of this crash Tesla had all of this data … the car received an acknowledgement … then said ‘OK, I’m done, I’m going to unlink it.’” The plaintiffs tried to obtain this data, but Tesla told them that it didn’t exist. Tesla’s written discovery responses were shown during the trial to prove that the company acted as if this data were not available. 2 | 23 May 2019 – Tesla’s lawyer scripts the homicide investigator’s evidence request Corporal Riso, a homicide investigator with the Florida Highway Patrol (FHP), sought Tesla’s help in retrieving telemetry data to aid in reconstructing the crash. He was put in contact with Tesla attorney Ryan McCarthy and asked if he needed to subpoena Tesla to get the crash data. Riso said of McCarthy during the trial: “He said it’s not necessary. ‘Write me a letter and I’ll tell you what to put in the letter.’” At the time, he didn’t see Tesla as an adversary in this case and thought that McCarthy would facilitate the retrieval of the data without having to go through a formal process. However, the lawyer crafted the letter to avoid sending the police the full crash data. Riso followed the instructions verbatim. He said during the trial: “I specifically wrote down what the attorney at Tesla told me to write down in the letter.” But McCarthy specifically crafted the letter to ommit sharing the colllision snapshot, which includes bundled video, EDR, CAN bus, and Autopilot data. Instead, Tesla provided the police with infotainment data with call logs, a copy of the Owner’s Manual, but not the actual crash telemetry from the Autopilot ECU. Tesla never said that it already had this data for more than a month by now. 3 | June 2019 – A staged “co‑operation” that corrupts evidence Tesla got even more deceptice when the police specifically tried to collect the data directly from the Autopilot computer. On June 19, 2019, Riso physically removed the MCU and Autopilot ECU from the Tesla. Again, the investigator thought that Tesla was being collaborative with the investigation at the time so he asked the company how to get the data out of the computer. He said at the trial: I had contacted Mr. McCarthy and asked him how I can get this data off of the computer components. He said that he would coordinate me meeting with a technician at their service center, the Tesla service center in Coral Gables. Tesla arranged for Riso to meet Michael Calafell, a Tesla technician, at the local service center in in Coral Gables with the Autopilot ECU and the Model S’ MCU, the two main onboard computers. To be clear, Tesla already had all this data in its servers and could have just sent it to Riso, but instead, they lured him into its service center with the piece of evidence in his custody. What ensued was pure cinema. Michael Calafell, who testified never having been tasked with extracting data from an Autopilot ECU before, connected both computers to a Model S in the shop to be able to access them, but he then claimed that the data was “corrupted” and couldn’t be access. Riso said during his testimony: I brought the center tablet [MCU] and the flat silver box [Autopilot ECU] with multicolored connectors to the Tesla service center.” “I watched Mr. Calafell the whole time. The evidence was in my custody. I did not let it out of my sight.” However, the situation got a lot more confusing as Calafell swore in an affidavit that he didn’t actually power the ECU, only the MCU, on that day, June 19. Only years later, when Alan Moore, the forensic engineer hired by the plaintiff, managed to get access to the Autopilot ECU, we learned that Tesla undeniably powered up the computer on June 19 and the data was accessible. 4 | 2019 – 2024 – Repeated denials and discovery stonewalling Through years of communications with the police, the plaintiffs and the court through the investigation and later the discovery process for the lawsuit, Tesla never mentioned that it had all the data that explained how Autopilot saw the crash, which everyone was seeking, sitting on its servers for years. The facts are: