Always strive to learn something useful. --Sophocles

A Tesla insider sent 23,000 files and documents - over 100 GIG of data - to the German news org Handelsblatt. It details (to put it mildly) numerous customer complaints about the full self-driving/Auto Pilot, information on current and former employees, and dates back to 2015. More than 2,400 complaints about sudden and unintended acceleration, 1,500+ complaints about braking.

Handelsblatt went to the trouble of contacting people directly to confirm their complaints. And Tesla had a policy in place of never replying in writing or on voice mail, all responses had to be verbal to the customer so nothing was in print in the event of litigation.

Here's a comment to the Ars article that's a both telling and scary: "Some years ago I interviewed for a position as engineering lead for systems test, and I was fortunate enough to have an interview slot with the outgoing lead.

After going through his questions, I asked him one question - How does the engineering culture here treat testing reports?

He started his reply defensively, with "it's improving." But then outlined a culture where reports that indicated engineering flaws, or issues were routinely rejected, where test engineers were frequently pressured to adjust tests to avoid failures - not because the tests were wrong, or the failures not legitimate, but because the failure might hold up the product release cycle. A culture where test engineers were seen as lesser quality, or just technicians, because "real engineers design things, test engineers just try to screw things up."

I turned down the position.

An engineering culture that sidelines failure reports, that marginalizes the bugs and problems, that doesn't see fixing issues as a win for the product, for the engineering teams, and the company - that culture will build problematic products. This article is hardly news to anyone who's looked with a critical eye at the undercurrent of problem reports around Tesla, but it seems to be a lot of hard evidence that the company has a culture that doesn't take product quality seriously enough."

One of my best friends lives in Scottsdale. Down the street was a Tesla that was damaged in an accident. It sat for 6+ months, unrepaired, because of problems getting replacement body panels. Apparently the insurance company finally junked the car and soon there was an Audi eTron sitting in the drive and the Tesla was gone.

https://arstechnica.com/cars/2023/05/massive-trove-of-tesla-files-contains-thousands-of-safety-complaints/