Tesla has asked a judge to reject a demand for some of its vehicle crash data held by the US National Highway Transportation Safety Administration, saying that public disclosure of the information could cause competitive harm.
Tesla, the electric carmaker owned by billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk, said in a federal court filing in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday that the requested information is confidential and could be used by rival companies to assess Tesla’s technology.
Tesla was responding to a lawsuit filed by The Washington Post last year against the NHTSA seeking records about crashes that occurred while driver-assistance systems were in use.
Tesla is widely known for its so-called advanced driver-assistance systems, including Autopilot and Full Self-Driving (FSD).
Tesla has defended its technology and said that its self-driving software requires active driver supervision and does not make vehicles autonomous.
Tesla and the safety agency did not immediately respond to requests for comment, and neither did a lawyer for The Washington Post.
The highway safety agency in a separate filing also argued that the Post’s demand sought information that is exempt from the federal public records laws.
The Post has said that the NHTSA releases some crash report information, “but it withholds critical details about the technologies in use and the circumstances and locations of the crashes.”
Tesla in its court filing said it and the auto safety agency should be allowed to keep secret certain crash-related narrative information, including road conditions and driver behavior.
Tesla also said the agency cannot be forced to share information about the hardware and software versions of the driver assistance programs that may have been in use at the time of a vehicle crash.
Public release of the information would allow Tesla’s competitors to assess the efficacy of each version and also allow them to calculate how many crashes are associated with different systems, Tesla said.
Lawyers for the Post have argued that the version information of the Tesla software and hardware is not kept private, since Tesla drivers can access that information on their own within their vehicle.
In October, NHTSA opened an investigation into 2.4 million Tesla vehicles featuring full self-driving technology after four reported collisions, including a 2023 fatal crash.
Tesla in 2023 recalled more than 2 million US vehicles to install safeguards in its Autopilot advanced driver-assistance system.
The case is WP Co LLC v. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, No. 1:24-cv-01353.
