A former Tesla Inc. employee said in an interview with the BBC published today that the software powering the company’s self-driving cars is not ready and should not be used on public roads.

Lukasz Krupski, a former service technician for the company, says he was fired from his job in Oslo, Norway, when he questioned the safety of Tesla’s autopilot driver-assistance software. He has since handed more than 100 gigabytes of data to the German newspaper Handelsblatt, a leak that has become known as the “Tesla Files.”

The data protection authority in the Netherlands, the home of Tesla’s European headquarters, told the BBC that it had been notified of the leak and was looking into the claims. Meanwhile, Krupski has picked up the Blueprint for Free Speech Whistleblowing Prize.

“I don’t think the hardware is ready and the software is ready,” Krupski told the BBC. “It affects all of us because we are essentially experiments on public roads. So even if you don’t have a Tesla, your children still walk on the footpath.”

He added that when he was at the company, other employees approached him to discuss what they said were vehicles randomly braking in response to obstacles that weren’t there – known as “phantom braking.”

Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk has not directly responded to the accusations, although he recently wrote on X, “Tesla has by far the best real-world AI.”

Musk might be right or he might be wrong, but he certainly could do without another investigation into his car company. Last year, the U.S. Department of Justice announced it had launched a probe into how effective Tesla’s Autopilot software was following a series of crashes on the back of the company using language such as “Full Self-Driving” mode.

In 2021, the California Department of Motor Vehicles began its own investigation, stating that Tesla may have misled consumers apropos the claims of full self-driving capabilities. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has for a while also been investigating a series of crashes in Tesla cars.

Over in the U.K., the government recently announced its “Automated Vehicles Bill,” a legislative framework intended to “regulate the use of automated vehicles on roads and in other public places.”

Photo: Austin Ramsey/Unsplash