Tesla releases Vehicle Safety Report for Q1 2024

$Tesla(TSLA.US)$ $BYD COMPANY(01211.HK)$ $NIO Inc(NIO.US)$ $XPeng(XPEV.US)$ The article reported that Tesla has released its Q1 2024 Vehicle Safety Report:

“In the 1st quarter, we recorded one crash for every 7.63 million miles driven in which drivers were using Autopilot technology. For drivers who were not using Autopilot technology, we recorded one crash for every 955,000 miles driven. By comparison, the most recent data available from NHTSA and FHWA (from 2022) shows that in the United States, there was an automobile crash approximately every 670,000 miles.”

The report includes data on crashes involving Tesla vehicles, both when Autopilot was engaged and when the advanced driver-assist system was disabled. As could be seen in the electric vehicle maker’s data, Teslas on Autopilot crash significantly less than vehicles that did not have the system engaged.

My Take: Electrek also made an article of the above but discredited the safety report. I summarized 3 Electrek's negative biased points below:

1) It said the data is "limited and not taking into account some accidents". This is untrue. Tesla provides an explanation on how the data is collected:

"Tesla noted on its official website that its Autopilot crash data is actually pretty conservative. This was because the company counted any crash in which Autopilot was deactivated within 5 seconds before impact. Tesla also counts all crashes in which vehicles’ incident alerts showed an airbag or other active restraint deploying. The electric vehicle maker further noted that it does not differentiate based on the type of crash or fault, so even if a Tesla gets rear-ended by another vehicle while Autopilot is engaged, the crash gets counted."

2) It said Tesla has something to hide because the company didn't release Autopilot quarterly data after January 2023 until now - a year later. It suggested that Tesla started to release safety data after Autopilot had significant improvement. This is untrue because the quarterly data showed that Autopilot performed consistently well between Q4 2020 to Q1 2024. There's no "bad data" to hide.

3) It suggested that Tesla's safety data is inaccurate because it didn't include FSD and "Autopilot functionality has become limited recently". Electrek's suggestion which is not a fact nor data is unfair. First there is no change in functionality of Autopilot and second FSD and Autopilot served different purposes. FSD started to roll out to the customers in 2022 and showed significant improvement in Q4 2023. Including FSD in the report will only make the comparison confusing.

As Darren Appleton in X.com suggested, he hopes to see a separate safety report for FSD. This suggestion FSD vs Autopilot is a fairer comparison.