Here’s a nice, undramatic article about the meeting and letter exchange that’s been going on for a while in California between Tesla and regulatory authorities. Interesting reading, at least for me.
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/07/30/tesla-robotaxi-permit-problems-california-00486269
This summary of the trial transcripts shows how poorly Tesla behaved.
The summary from the summary:
- Tesla had the data on its servers within minutes of the crash
- When the police sought the data, Tesla redirected them toward other data
- When the police sought Tesla’s help in extracting it from the computer, Tesla falsely claimed it was “corrupted”
- Tesla invented an “auto-delete” feature that didn’t exist to try explain why it couldn’t originally find the data in the computer
- When the plaintiffs asked for the data, Tesla said that it didn’t exist
- Tesla only admitted to the existence of the data once presented with forensic evidence that it was created and transfered to its servers.
and the most damning part (to me):
Map and vision data from the ECU revealed:
- Map data from the Autopilot ECU included a flag that the area was a “restricted Autosteer zone.”
- Despite this, the system allowed Autopilot to remain engaged at full speed.
This is after the NTSB had instructed Tesla to “Incorporate system safeguards that limit the use of automated vehicle control systems to those conditions for which they were designed (the vehicle’s operational design domain).”
Do remember, that this was the old Autopilot autosteer system, not the current FSD (supervised). The current system is designed to handle stop signs and traffic lights, and probably would have stopped at the stop sign, and not hit a parked car. The old system had trouble with stationary objects in the path of travel, and though the incidents were rare, they were catastrophic (as @Stranger_On_A_Train references).
Though I used your post as a reply, this isn’t really directed at you, @Dr_Paprika. Tesla’s handling of this from start to finish is what created Tesla’s culpability. Everyone involves agrees the driver misused Autopilot, and it was the driver’s actions and inactions that caused the crash. Tesla let Autopilot be used in ways it was clearly not ready to handle, despite being told not to, then lied and impeded the investigation to try and cover it up.
This is interesting because what you describe as “Tesla” is, in fact, a human being, or multiple human beings, who all deserve to be tried and jailed for impeding an investigation.
IANAL, so: how do criminal charges work in the instance of subverting civil discovery?
Start at the top.
Step 1 - disbar the lawyers.
Step 2 - at the beginning, when the police were investigating, this was not a civil matter, a person was dead at the hands of another person, a homicide. Demand a subpoena if you must, but whatever human said “we don’t have that data” or “that data was corrupted” when that wasn’t true, should be charged.
If your boss tells you “please lie to the homicide detectives”, you should say “no, thanks, YOU can lie if you want, but I prefer life outside of prison”
Truly. That is some serious shit and while $200-million extra for the victim’s family is nice, for the rest of us, people should go to prison. This makes VW’s dieselgate look like nothing.
I really am not trying to minimize Tesla’s culpability with some sort of relative harms argument, but the number of deaths from dieselgate is staggering. A recent report from The Guardian claims 16,000 excess deaths just in the UK. Breathing diesel pollution is bad for you.
My car before the Tesla was a VW. I sure know how to pick winners.
This was the last mention of Dojo here, so it’s probably not too significant, but it’s been shut down.
Though maybe this is a different Dojo.
Yeah, I thought Tesla’s Dojo was where they trained the people who pretend to be their robots. 
Wait, I thought that was FauxJoe.
General Motors (GM) has begun reigniting its defunct self-driving Cruise business by approaching some of the subsidiary’s former employees for recruitment. However, the automaker is said to be pivoting from Cruise’s original mission of creating a robotaxi into manufacturing autonomous cars for personal use, Bloomberg reports. The Cruise revival would begin with GM developing a vehicle with hands-free, eyes-free driving with a human in the driver’s seat. Next, Cruise would create a car capable of operating without a human behind the wheel
GM Plans to Resurrect Self-Driving Car Project With a Twist: GM’s Cruise is making a comeback—and its strategy pivots from many rivals in the self-driving race.
https://www.autoblog.com/news/gm-plans-to-resurrect-self-driving-car-project-with-a-twist
So it sounds like it was a mistake to mostly kill Cruise as they have lost a lot of momentum.
Currently HW4 Teslas are on 13.2.9 and HW3 are on 12.6.4. They are (supposedly) functionally equivalent which is significant because HW3 owners were promised a free upgrade if they purchased a lifetime FSD subscription and the latest version is not functionally equivalent. The Tesla Robotaxis and using a more advanced version of FSD but still 13.x.
FSD v14 is, according to Elon, going to be released by the end of September. It’s alleged to be a major update that uses 10x more parameters and will have significantly fewer nags under most circumstances but the same amount of attention required in “unusual” situations. The Robo fleet and regular cars will be merged into the same FSD. It’s also supposed to be a much more natural feel to the driving.
Elon also claimed that by the end of the year we could see a version that is truly autonomous in many situations like, I think, highway driving without construction. There may be no bigger FSD fanboy that I am and this is complete bullshit in my opinion.
Relevant to the subject of self-driving, Tesla rejected $60 million settlement before losing $243 million Autopilot verdict
Something significant about this is that Denver gets 50 to 60 inches of snow a year–unlike the other cities Waymo is in. There have been questions about how well self-driving vehicles can do in the snow.
Zoox launches in Las Vegas. I’ve seen quite a few of their vehicles doing driverless tests in San Francisco, so they seem to be fairly close to launching here as well and I’ve received emails from them to that effect.
And as long as I’m here, I’ll update on my Waymo stats. 413 rides, 1416 miles, 7548 minutes, no significant issues but mild hiccups every now and then, usually overly cautious driving which can lead to it being more ‘stuck’ than it needs to be.
Musk said this month that Optimus robots will represent 80% of Tesla’s revenue.
Oh, you thought robotaxis were its future? Stop living in the past, man. That’s so August.
Of course, it doesn’t help that the head executive of the Optimus program quit Thursday to join Meta.
By the end of the year, next year at the latest, right?
Considering how little revenue Optimus generates, perhaps musk is telegraphing the cratering of Tesla, not the booming of Optimus. One can hope.
Why would you want a company that employs 125,000 people, mostly high paying, to crater?