Smells like intentional destruction of evidence.

Hell, it could be that this is private information about the driver and the car's probably gonna end up in a Copart auction after insurance is done with it, so in a way they're protecting PII.

Before anyone's gonna accuse me of Tesla fanboyism (I do make a lot of devil's advocate style comments), I've driven exactly one Tesla in my life, decided it's a piece of shit with a great powertrain and OK infotainment but absolutely lacking UX for drivers, and a ridiculously plain interior. I will never buy a Tesla unless it's a used Tesla S or X with a newish battery for 10k because at that price it'd just be the cheapest way to get a luxury EV lol

Nearly all of the vehicles have 4G/5G connectivity via AT&T. This isn't a dial up connection. They can transmit whatever the fuck they want.

Forensic analysis managed to retrieve this data, so it must have been stored in non-volatile memory.

Yeah, this is a good point. Also, another comment said it’s possible the data snapshot is very large, so it’s not intended to be stored locally.

Either way, if you are sending data about my car to a server, it better be easy for me to get this data if needed.

Tesla was caught withholding data, lying about it, and misdirecting authorities in the wrongful death case involving Autopilot that it lost this week.

The automaker was undeniably covering up for Autopilot.

Last week, a jury found Tesla partially liable for a wrongful death involving a crash on Autopilot. We now have access to the trial transcripts, which confirm that Tesla was extremely misleading in its attempt to place all the blame on the driver.

The company went as far as to actively withhold critical evidence that explained Autopilot’s performance around the crash. Within about three minutes of the crash, the Model S uploaded a “collision snapshot”—video, CAN‑bus streams, EDR data, etc.—to Tesla’s servers, the “Mothership”, and received an acknowledgement. The vehicle then deleted its local copy, resulting in Tesla being the only entity having access.

What ensued were years of battle to get Tesla to acknowledge that this collision snapshot exists and is relevant to the case.

The police repeatedly attempted to obtain the data from the collision snapshot, but Tesla led the authorities and the plaintiffs on a lengthy journey of deception and misdirection that spanned years.

Do a China and just execute them.

While an attractive pitch, remember that what's going to fuck over the working class are the laws intended to attack the assholes at the top. Which group do you think will have the means to defend themselves in court, has the power to make legislative moves, and would benefit from having another tool to fuck their slaves with?

Poor people get looked down upon, including by poor people

Criminal destruction of evidence.

Criminal withholding of evidence.

Uhh there's still death penalty in USA. And if corporations are legally people....

Don't these keep a video record of every time a squirrel gets too close to the parked car?

Another m.2 under the dash isn't going to kill the electric vehicles battery, this isn't an excuse.

What PII is there? It's a fucking dash cam video, it's not my blood results from my annual checkup.

While an attractive pitch, remember that what's going to fuck over the working class are the laws intended to attack the assholes at the top. Which group do you think will have the means to defend themselves in court, has the power to make legislative moves, and would benefit from having another tool to fuck their slaves with?

It is possible that the data is just never saved in non-volatile memory meaning that once power is lost that the values are also lost. In which case its not really deleting the information but rather just that information is just never intentionally saved.

P.S. I am not a tesla fan boy just wanted to give this tiny insight.

This explanation is completely fabricated, based on nothing, and nonsense.

It is obviously critical data that nobody halfway competent would write to ram. Also video data is very large and makes no sense to store in ram.

Furthermore the article says it was deleted and they later recovered it which would not have been possible with RAM

Basically why are you pushing this drivel.

Within about three minutes of the crash, the Model S uploaded a “collision snapshot”—video, CAN‑bus streams, EDR data, etc.—to Tesla’s servers, the “Mothership”, and received an acknowledgement. The vehicle then deleted its local copy, resulting in Tesla being the only entity having access.

Holy fucking shit. What is the purpose of deleting the data on the vehicle other than to sabotage the owner of the vehicle?

If the data is temporarily stored until it is transmitted and then is not considered to be needed anymore I see no reason as to why that would need to be stored locally forever.

If the data is temporarily stored until it is transmitted and then is not considered to be needed anymore I see no reason as to why that would need to be stored locally forever.

Within about three minutes of the crash, the Model S uploaded a “collision snapshot”—video, CAN‑bus streams, EDR data, etc.—to Tesla’s servers, the “Mothership”, and received an acknowledgement. The vehicle then deleted its local copy, resulting in Tesla being the only entity having access.

Holy fucking shit. What is the purpose of deleting the data on the vehicle other than to sabotage the owner of the vehicle?