Feds told Tesla to stop making “misleading statements” on Model 3 safety

"Your company has issued a number of misleading statements," NHTSA wrote to Musk.

Read the whole story

 

[CommentatorForNow]

Let's level set here. Tesla's Model 3 performed better on NHTSA's "Vehicle Safety Score" than any other car ever. NHTSA does not dispute that fact.

NHTSA disputes comparison claims using VSS when those claims can be interpreted to suggest that a better VSS for Vehicle A than Vehicle B supports the conclusion that Vehicle A will be safer than Vehicle B in all scenarios. Tesla's claims don't clarify that there are specific circumstances where comparison using VSS won't be valid.

The specific circumstance NHSTA cites as an example where VSS comparisons are dubious is where Vehicle A has a crash with a significantly heavier vehicle, Vehicle B.

Tesla counters with two solid points in their response to NHTSA:

(1) As a matter of law, Tesla's claims only make the generic statement about overall likelihood of injury - they make no claims (implied or otherwise) about performance in specific crash scenarios (with a heavier vehicle, rolling over, setting on fire, etc.), AND

(2) the basis for taking the overall VSS score and applying it to real-life crash scenarios OVERALL, is that most crashes involving death or serious injury are not the weight-mismatch scenario that NHTSA highlighted.

Something around half of serious injuries/deaths occur in crashes that are single-vehicle , and, among multi-vehicle crashes, a significant percentage will involve vehicles that are going to be of similar or lesser weight than the Model 3 (which is about average in weight among light duty cars and trucks).

I appreciate NHTSA wanting to police the use of their data for representations made to consumers. And I also think it's appropriate for a consumer protection agency to confirm the validity of the evidence Tesla uses to support, in particular, Point 2 above (that their VSS comparison is valid for the majority of crash-types that result in serious injury or death).

But this is not the same, for example, as Musk's statement about having secured the funding for Tesla to be bought out or making irresponsible claims about when FSD will be truly available. Teslas really are exceptionally safe vehicles, and at least on certain tests, have outperformed all others, and - frankly - I think leaders in safety should be able to take credit for having done so.

 

[CommentatorForNow]

Let's level set here. Tesla's Model 3 performed better on NHTSA's "Vehicle Safety Score" than any other car ever. NHTSA does not dispute that fact.

NHTSA disputes comparison claims using VSS when those claims can be interpreted to suggest that a better VSS for Vehicle A than Vehicle B supports the conclusion that Vehicle A will be safer than Vehicle B in all scenarios. Tesla's claims don't clarify that there are specific circumstances where comparison using VSS won't be valid.

The specific circumstance NHSTA cites as an example where VSS comparisons are dubious is where Vehicle A has a crash with a significantly heavier vehicle, Vehicle B.

Tesla counters with two solid points in their response to NHTSA:

(1) As a matter of law, Tesla's claims only make the generic statement about overall likelihood of injury - they make no claims (implied or otherwise) about performance in specific crash scenarios (with a heavier vehicle, rolling over, setting on fire, etc.), AND

(2) the basis for taking the overall VSS score and applying it to real-life crash scenarios OVERALL, is that most crashes involving death or serious injury are not the weight-mismatch scenario that NHTSA highlighted.

Something around half of serious injuries/deaths occur in crashes that are single-vehicle , and, among multi-vehicle crashes, a significant percentage will involve vehicles that are going to be of similar or lesser weight than the Model 3 (which is about average in weight among light duty cars and trucks).

I appreciate NHTSA wanting to police the use of their data for representations made to consumers. And I also think it's appropriate for a consumer protection agency to confirm the validity of the evidence Tesla uses to support, in particular, Point 2 above (that their VSS comparison is valid for the majority of crash-types that result in serious injury or death).

But this is not the same, for example, as Musk's statement about having secured the funding for Tesla to be bought out or making irresponsible claims about when FSD will be truly available. Teslas really are exceptionally safe vehicles, and at least on certain tests, have outperformed all others, and - frankly - I think leaders in safety should be able to take credit for having done so.

So the fact that the VSS was not even designed to make the kind of comparison Tesla is trying to make is irrelevant in your analysis? The test is basically only designed to sort vehicles into one of five categories.

Why does NHTSA sort vehicles into safety categories, other than to allow consumers to determine which cars are safer than others? Of course NHTSA's studies are designed to produce conclusions that consumers can use to compare vehicle safety.

What NHSTA doesn't want is for those conclusions to be taken out of context, and it has taken a broad position (here) that any statement that implies a safety comparison of vehicles in different weight classes is problematic. Its stated reasoning for that position is that in crashes between vehicles with different weights, passengers in the lighter vehicle are likely to suffer greater injury.

Tesla's response is essentially to take NHSTA's reasoning (concern about crashes with heavier vehicles) and explain why that doesn't pose a problem to the overall safety comparison.

They've taken weight of vehicles into consideration and don't think it affects the conclusion of overall safety. Those heavier cars (big SUVs/trucks) are still less safe because the most likely incidents to result in death or serious injury are single-vehicle accidents, and big SUVs and trucks are notorious for rolling over / struggling in high-wind/weather etc.. And then, among the remainder of accidents, the Model 3 is going to be the same or heavier than the car it hits much of the time.

As I said, Tesla will need to have strong data to support its logic and it is appropriate for a consumer protection agency to vet that data.

But the uproar about a company with the actual best VSS score from NHTSA laying claim to having the safest vehicle is not something I'm going to lose sleep over.

[Now, if they have hard data showing they are NOT the safest, then that would be a huge issue. But that is not alleged.]

 

[CommentatorForNow]

Let's level set here. Tesla's Model 3 performed better on NHTSA's "Vehicle Safety Score" than any other car ever. NHTSA does not dispute that fact.

NHTSA disputes comparison claims using VSS when those claims can be interpreted to suggest that a better VSS for Vehicle A than Vehicle B supports the conclusion that Vehicle A will be safer than Vehicle B in all scenarios. Tesla's claims don't clarify that there are specific circumstances where comparison using VSS won't be valid.

The specific circumstance NHSTA cites as an example where VSS comparisons are dubious is where Vehicle A has a crash with a significantly heavier vehicle, Vehicle B.

Tesla counters with two solid points in their response to NHTSA:

(1) As a matter of law, Tesla's claims only make the generic statement about overall likelihood of injury - they make no claims (implied or otherwise) about performance in specific crash scenarios (with a heavier vehicle, rolling over, setting on fire, etc.), AND

(2) the basis for taking the overall VSS score and applying it to real-life crash scenarios OVERALL, is that most crashes involving death or serious injury are not the weight-mismatch scenario that NHTSA highlighted.

Something around half of serious injuries/deaths occur in crashes that are single-vehicle , and, among multi-vehicle crashes, a significant percentage will involve vehicles that are going to be of similar or lesser weight than the Model 3 (which is about average in weight among light duty cars and trucks).

I appreciate NHTSA wanting to police the use of their data for representations made to consumers. And I also think it's appropriate for a consumer protection agency to confirm the validity of the evidence Tesla uses to support, in particular, Point 2 above (that their VSS comparison is valid for the majority of crash-types that result in serious injury or death).

But this is not the same, for example, as Musk's statement about having secured the funding for Tesla to be bought out or making irresponsible claims about when FSD will be truly available. Teslas really are exceptionally safe vehicles, and at least on certain tests, have outperformed all others, and - frankly - I think leaders in safety should be able to take credit for having done so.

To be clear, Tesla's claims may not specify circumstances where VSS may be invalid, but an absence of such a clarification tends to make the reader think there are no exceptions to the claim, not that the claim is valid for specific circumstances.

Honestly, I would think that actual empiric data - namely IIHS type data - would be a better talking point than NHTSA testing.

Heck, rollover scores are done as a static tilt test. Low-slung sports cars do well on this test, but empiric data clearly demonstrates that sports cars frequently roll over due to driver behavior.

Fortunately, businesses are not required to enumerate all specific instances where the general rule (i.e. so-and-so product is the safest) does not hold, so long as the general rule is true and supported by evidence and there are no clearly implied specific applications. Else, we would have a very difficult time communicating generally applicable rules.

It would be different if, in the context of any claim of being generally safer than other vehicles, Tesla implied that Model 3s would fair better than a heavier vehicle in a head on collision between the two (for example, if a commercial showed a Model 3 about to get into a collision with a bigger car/SUV). But that didn't happen here.

And I certainly agree that there are likely other stats/tests that car companies may want to rely on other than NHTSA's VSS.

 

[CommentatorForNow]

I have a couple of questions for the group:

1) Does violating 'Guidelines' in this case actually mean anything in a real and legal manner? I note that in the letter from the NHTSA they are forwarding their complaint to the FTC. Does the NHTSA have any legal standing itself?

2) The FTC received this ~10 months ago. I certainly understand government departments take a while to respond, but isn't this a little long to go without some response? Or is this one of those cases of a department being able to hold something over a company. "You know, we'e still reviewing that complaint we received."


{ And not to inflame the fire going on, but I'd love to see the upvote/downvote reasoning breakdown. I've seen some (what I consider) interesting posts downvoted to oblivion and some remarkably useless ones left completely unvoted. Maybe it's a case where coming back in 12 hours will generate a clearer picture. }

1. Their job is to create not to enforce. They do not have any real power over anybody. They can easily refer your case to whoever has relevant power, in this case the Federal Trade Commission, but also the Department of Transportation, the Federal Aviation Administration and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. There is no purpose to employing an enforcement body inside of the NHTSA.

2. Ten months is not super long for this kind of thing. The FTC takes time. If a punishment comes out of this it will be retroactive to the date of the issue. If it takes them two years and they come back and determine that Tesla must pay a fine to coincide with a percentage of earnings, the earnings number they use will be from now, not from two years from now. If Tesla is circling the drain in 2021, but in 2019 they were worth $60 billion, the FTC will calculate based on $60 billion and force Tesla to go bankrupt paying their fine.

You'd probably expect a disclosure in the 10-K about an ongoing FTC investigation...