Tesla has launched a new online hub reporting safety statistics for its Full Self-Driving technology, claiming superior performance to average drivers. However, safety experts criticize the data as misleading due to methodological flaws and the company's history of deceptive reporting. The hub separates highway and non-highway miles for the first time, but excludes key injury and fatality information.
Last week, Tesla introduced a dedicated section on its website for safety statistics on Autopilot and Full Self-Driving (FSD), aiming to provide more verifiable data amid past criticisms of its quarterly reports. The hub features a live counter showing 6.47 billion miles driven by Tesla owners using FSD. According to the report, FSD users travel 5.1 million miles before a major collision and 1.5 million miles before a minor one—figures that surpass the US average of 699,000 miles for major collisions and 229,000 miles for minor ones.
Despite these improvements, experts remain unconvinced. Noah Goodall, a civil engineer who has published peer-reviewed studies on Tesla's Autopilot, stated, “Yeah on the surface it looks like FSD is performing fairly well. But I put very little faith in these numbers because of Tesla’s past deceptions.” Previous reports were faulted for focusing mainly on highway use with Autopilot, where crashes are less frequent, without adjusting for higher risks on city streets.
Philip Koopman, an autonomous vehicle expert at Carnegie Mellon University, praised the separation of highway and non-highway miles as “a good start.” However, he critiqued the comparisons on his Substack, arguing that Tesla equates new vehicles with advanced safety tech to the entire US fleet, including older cars without such features—akin to claiming a high school produces top athletes by comparing its students to the general population, including the unfit and elderly. The report omits data on injuries and fatalities, which Tesla attributes to privacy laws and voluntary reporting. Koopman noted that Tesla could estimate fatalities from incoming lawsuits. He concluded, “Tesla has released a document full of marketing puffery, and not a serious safety analysis.”
In contrast, Waymo publishes peer-reviewed studies supporting its driverless vehicles' safety advantages. Goodall added that independent verification is absent from Tesla's data, making trust difficult given the company's history.