The
German publication Handelsblatt is in possession of more than 23,000 internal files and documents from Tesla after an employee leaked the data. The files include personal information on more than 100,000 current and former employees, as well as thousands of reports of problems with Tesla's advanced driving assistance systems, Autopilot, and "Full Self-Driving."
The earliest complaints in the data trove date back to 2015, and the most recent to March 2022. Most of the complaints arise from the US, although European and Asian customer problems are also reflected in the data.
More than 2,400 complaints allege sudden unintended acceleration problems. Although Autopilot and FSD have been the focus of headlines for the last few years, during the mid-2010s there were
plenty of reports of Teslas taking off on their own accord—at least 232 cases have been reported in the US, although (as often turns out in cases like these) the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration found no evidence for a hardware or software problem,
instead blaming driver error.
More than 1,500 complaints allege problems braking, including 139 cases of phantom braking and 383 cases of phantom stops.
In February 2022, we learned that the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration had opened a safety investigation into Tesla's phantom braking problem after it received hundreds of complaints after an article in
The Washington Post drew attention to the issue. But the problem has persisted,
causing an eight-car collision over Thanksgiving after Tesla opened up its FSD Beta program to all owners.
Handelsblatt says there were more than 1,000 crashes linked to brake problems and more than 3,000 entries where customers reported safety concerns with the driver assists.
The German publication even went to the trouble of contacting Tesla owners to confirm the data was correct.
Beyond the customer complaints, the data leak also shows how Tesla responded to these problems—by committing to as little as possible in writing.
As anyone who covers Tesla would be able to tell you, Handelsblatt got no reply from the company when it queried it on the problems listed above. However, the automaker did demand its data back,
according to an accompanying note from Handelsblatt's editor.
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