Did Tesla Just Secretly Put Owners Back in the Driver’s Seat For Accessing Vehicle Data?
Although most headlines center around Tesla’s disruptive advances in electrification and purported driverless technology, Tesla’s frontier innovations in data collection, analysis, and telematics are genuinely altering the landscape of the automotive industry, and society itself, in revolutionary ways many never envisioned.
Tesla vehicles come equipped with a battery of sensors that record a constant stream of data about driver behavior, other road users, and vehicle performance down to the millisecond. In fact, there is now a worldwide cottage industry trading around connected car telematics accessed from millions of vehicles in worldwide markets from most major OEMs. Of this group, Tesla is generally viewed as the current industry leader in storing, analyzing, and utilizing this connected-car data. To the surprise of many, however, Tesla has historically been highly reluctant to freely share this data with its vehicle owners.
In fact, the data request form on Tesla’s website cautions that “access to this feature varies by location.” Pursuant to this warning, Tesla’s policy has been to deny requests for U.S. residents outside the State of California. Although a little over a year old, this Tesla Motors Club thread includes a screenshot of one such denial that says “as required by law, access to the data you have requested is only supported for vehicle registrants of specific locations such as the European Economic Area, Canada, Australia, New Zealand or if you live in the United States, in California.”
Based on information we recently obtained that does not seem to have been publicly advertised or disseminated to vehicle owners, Tesla may have reversed course on its highly scrutinized data disclosure policy. Inside sources recently informed us that as of January 13, 2023, all US customers have been able to request data, EDR, and video from their Tesla account. Accordingly, it seems that Tesla is listening to industry leaders like our own Mike Nelson who commented recently in a New York Times article that “[t]he data associated with driving should be more open to those that need to understand how accidents happen.”
Copyright Nelson Niehaus LLC
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