Latest / Elon Musk Podcast / Tesla Murder? How a Hacker at Starbucks Uncovered the Crash Data Tesla Claimed It Didn’t Have

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Tesla Murder? How a Hacker at Starbucks Uncovered the Crash Data Tesla Claimed It Didn’t Have · Elon Musk Podcast

• 0:01
  Hey everybody. Welcome back to the Elon Musk
• 0:04
  podcast This. Is a show where we discuss the
• 0:07
  critical crossroads that shape SpaceX.
• 0:09
  Tesla X, The Boring Company and Neurolink I'm your.
• 0:14
  Host will. Walden.
• 0:16
  A federal jury in Miami ordered Tesla to pay 43, excuse me, $243
• 0:21
  million last month after a 2019 crash in Florida killed 22 year
• 0:26
  old Nabel Benavides Leon and left her boyfriend Dylan Angelo
• 0:32
  with life changing injuries. Of the verdict hanged on a
• 0:35
  single file that Tesla said did not exist until a hacker found
• 0:41
  it inside a Starbucks. How did Tesla lose critical
• 0:45
  crash data tied to its own Autopilot system, then claim it
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  didn't exist, only to have it recovered by a third party years
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  later? A hacker.
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  Now this raises doubts about how Tesla stores, retrieves, and
• 1:00
  controls access to information that can make or break lawsuits
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  about its driver assistance features.
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  Tesla denied withholding the file and said it couldn't locate
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  it. But the jury didn't buy that
• 1:12
  explanation, especially after the plaintiff's team proved the
• 1:14
  data had been on Tesla servers all along.
• 1:18
  Now, the crash occurred on April 25th, 2019 in Key Largo.
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  George McGee was driving a Tesla Model S on Autopilot when he
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  looked away from the road to pick up his dropped phone.
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  Car slammed into Anglo's truck, parked at the end of a dark Rd.
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  where Anglo and Benavides Leon stood behind hazard reflectors.
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  McGee later settled separately, admitting he was using Autopilot
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  at the time. But the civil lawsuit targeted
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  Tesla, accusing the company of negligence for allowing
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  Autopilot to operate on that road and for failing to alert
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  the driver of the situation. Now, Tesla told the court didn't
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  have the collision snapshot, which is a key internal data
• 2:00
  file that logs exactly what the vehicle saw, sensed and planned
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  in the moments before a crash. Plaintiffs believed it would
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  show that the car failed to detect the couple, failed to
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  warn the driver and proceeded with a deadly maneuver.
• 2:13
  Tesla eventually said it had simply missed the file.
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  In reality, a hacker known online as Green The only found
• 2:21
  it. That discovery happened inside
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  of Miami Starbucks. The hacker, who had spent years
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  reverse engineering Tesla's hardware, ran a forensic image
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  of the vehicle's Autopilot controlling unit on his laptop
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  and found the deleted file within minutes.
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  He also found evidence that Tesla had received the data
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  moments after the crash, meaning the company had a copy from the
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  start and test to confirm this in court.
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  Calling oversight clumsy but denied any intent to deceive.
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  Now, the Miami jury didn't need long to deliberate and ruled
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  that Tesla was 33% liable for the crash and ordered the
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  company to pay damages. The remaining responsibility
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  fell on the driver. The plaintiffs attorneys argued
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  that Tesla misled investigators and withheld access to vital
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  evidence for years. They said Tesla attempted to
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  settle quietly before trial, but the family wanted the truth
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  public now. Court records reveal the data
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  had indeed been uploaded to Tesla servers automatically
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  after the crash, but according to internal testimony, it was
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  then unlinked test, the standard protocol for separating vehicle
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  data from specific incidents. Later, an engineer testified
• 3:30
  that someone had likely taken affirmative action to delete the
• 3:33
  central server copy as well, although the court found no
• 3:37
  evidence this was intentional, and the judge ordered Tesla to
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  reimburse the plaintiffs for costs related to data recovery
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  now. That effort to recover the data
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  began years later, when Florida Highway Patrol turned over the
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  original Autopilot unit to the plaintiff's team.
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  The hacker flown in by the legal team warned against Tesla's
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  request to boot up the unit, saying it could trigger
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  automatic updates that would overwrite the file.
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  Instead, he extracted the contents himself.
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  What he found was exactly what the family had been looking for,
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  a complete record of what the Tesla saw as it speed toward the
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  victims. By using that data, the hacker
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  generated A detailed augmented video for the courtroom.
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  Frame by frame. It showed the Tesla detecting a
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  car and then a pedestrian, yet continuing to plan a path
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  straight through their location. Tesla argued the video proved
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  the driver had enough time to react, and the Plano said it
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  confirmed the system failed at every critical moment.
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  Tesla's legal team framed the situation as an honest mistake.
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  His lawyer told jurors the company would never hide helpful
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  evidence, simply didn't realize the file had been preserved.
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  The plaintiff's attorneys described a pattern of
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  obstruction, arguing that Tesla had evidence before the cops
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  even arrived on the scene and only admitted to having it after
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  they found another way to retrieve it.
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  Now, this was not Tesla's first trial involving Autopilot, but
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  it may be the most consequential.
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  The $240 million verdict marked the company's largest public
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  loss over its driver assistance tech to date.
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  Within weeks, investors filed a lawsuit in Texas accusing Tesla
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  of misleading the market about the safety and reliability of
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  its systems, citing the Miami case.
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  Other families are now preparing similar claims, including one in
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  California tied to the death of a 15 year old.
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  Federal regulators have repeatedly investigated Tesla
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  over Autopilot, and the system has been involved in dozens of
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  crashes, many fatal. Tesla has beaten two such
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  lawsuits in the past and settled others before they reach trial.
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  But the Miami case added new pressure, producing internal
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  records, engineer testimony and digital files that other
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  plaintiffs will now use to build their own cases.
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  One example is attorney Mark Dobin, who recently what a
• 6:04
  refund for the $10,600 he paid for Full Self Driving Software
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  after an arbiter ruled Tesla never delivered the promise
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  features. He said Musk Musk's public
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  claims had created unrealistic expectations, and the Miami case
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  showed what happens when the confidence turns deadly.
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  Tesla has declined us to comment on the outcome, except to say it
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  plans to appeal. A judge said she did not find
• 6:31
  enough evidence that Tesla deliberately destroyed or
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  withheld the data, but she agreed the company had
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  mishandled it and ordered reimbursement of the cost
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  incurred by the plaintiffs to retrieve it.
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  The hacker who helped find the data says future cases may not
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  be so lucky. Tesla has since tightened its
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  security protocols, making it harder for independent analysts
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  to access internal crash data. Now they believe that's part of
• 6:55
  the problem sometimes, he said. You just have to get the data
• 6:59
  out. Hey, thank you so much for
• 7:02
  listening today. I really do appreciate your
• 7:04
  support. If you could take a second and
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  hit this subscribe or the follow button on whatever podcast
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  platform that you're listening on.
• 7:10
  Right. Now I greatly appreciate it.
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  It helps out the show tremendously and you'll never
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  miss an episode. And each episode is about 10
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  minutes or less to get you caught up quickly.
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  And please, if you want to support the show even more, go
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  to. Atreoncom Stage 0.
• 7:28
  And please take care of yourselves and each other, and
• 7:30
  I'll see you tomorrow.