After a Tesla driver using Autopilot plowed into a Florida couple in 2019, killing a 22-year-old woman, crucial data detailing how the wreck unfolded was missing, unable to be located for years. A hacker found it and Tesla said in court it had been on its own servers all along.
The collision snapshot showing how the wreck unfolded had been "unlinked" from the car at the scene the night of the crash. Tesla couldn't find it on its servers either. The hacker, known as 'greentheonly,' found the data five years later while sipping a hot chocolate in a Starbucks.
greentheonly's findings proved crucial to a $243 million verdict against the company headed by Elon Musk. The dispute over accessibility to the data likely had a "significant impact" on the outcome, a person close to Tesla said
But it almost didn't happen. The plaintiffs had been preparing to go to trial without the data. “if they were able to drag this on a little longer, or the plaintiff couldn’t ... get the Autopilot [computer] cloned in time," one Tesla observer said, the case could've gone differently
In a last-ditch effort to locate the data, the plaintiffs obtained the Autopilot computer from the Florida Highway Patrol. They turned to
greentheonly, known for his work recovering data from damaged Teslas. They won a $243 million verdict this month.
...
"That work is only becoming harder, he said, as Tesla is tightening the controls over access to vehicle crash data.
“If an accident happened today like this, I won’t be able to extract the data,” he said." https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2025/08/29/tesla-autopilot-crashes-evidence-testimony-wrongful-death/?pwapi_token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJyZWFzb24iOiJnaWZ0IiwibmJmIjoxNzU2NDQwMDAwLCJpc3MiOiJzdWJzY3JpcHRpb25zIiwiZXhwIjoxNzU3ODIyMzk5LCJpYXQiOjE3NTY0NDAwMDAsImp0aSI6IjM5ZWNmNDA3LTFiNGEtNGViNi1iNThkLWU2NWI0NzlmOTAyZSIsInVybCI6Imh0dHBzOi8vd3d3Lndhc2hpbmd0b25wb3N0LmNvbS90ZWNobm9sb2d5LzIwMjUvMDgvMjkvdGVzbGEtYXV0b3BpbG90LWNyYXNoZXMtZXZpZGVuY2UtdGVzdGltb255LXdyb25nZnVsLWRlYXRoLyJ9.JCQ0spQR4dzn2UdiyZtRULDDZ1NGU2F7fOvYYVWnI5Y