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

 

[ImBitman]

Tesla noticed that the Model 3 had a better VSS score than any other vehicle on the market. That, in Tesla's view, means that a Model 3 driver is less likely to be injured in a crash than a driver of any other vehicle.

So would I. If NHTSA thinks the VSS isn't sufficient for such comparisons then the solution isn't to hammer Tesla's use. NHTSA needs to fix VSS then publish the scores.

This sort of thinking led to the oft-mocked 100-point video game review scores and the like.of yesteryear. As if the subjective reviewer could really draw a meaningful distinction between, say, a 93-point score and a 92-point score.

The position of the NHTSA, which knows a lot more than you or me about crashworthiness and auto safety, is that crash dynamics are so complex that there is no utility in offering more than a five-level (six? I don't know if there's a zero-star rating) scoring system. More verbose information is not necessarily better, especially when attempting to communicate to non-experts.

"People are too stupid to understand more data" is a pretty poor excuse for not having a more informative safety scoring system than 1-5.

It's not that people are too stupid to understand a more complex rating system. The point is that doing a handful of tests doesn't give you the breadth of data that would actually be necessary to give a more complex score.

clearly the problem isn't Tesla's claims being unfounded, clearly it's NHTSA's fault that their data doesn't support Tesla's claims.

Haha, it’s scary that Musk might actually think that. It’s crazy the mental gymnastics some do to rationalize how he might not have been straight-out lying. He’s straight-out lying. Almost every lie has some kernels of truth being twisted in, but it makes it no less a lie. Claiming the “lowest probability of injury” of any vehicle period, ever tested by the NHTSA is a lie implying their judgement of that. It’s their test he’s claiming says so, after all. He’s taking a tiny bit of data, twisting it and ignoring all kinds of other insufficiencies of the specific tests done to be making that broad judgement from. It’s a statement meant to mislead people, to give them a false impression of something. It’s a lie. Obviously, he thinks he’s immune from regulation though and doesn’t respect laws designed for investor or consumer protection. He knows better than any silly tests anyway.

 

[ImBitman]

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. }

What happened is an anti-Tesla groups (pick your poison: but probably Shorts or Oil lobby) got hold of this old and relatively irrelevant information from last year and started pushing it out.
I saw it first attributed to CNBC, but that probably wasn't the first place it appeared.

The pushers of this story rely on the laziness of journalists to just copy & paste their story without doing even simple verification. Timothy Lee appears fits that profile. Then all the trolls and haters jump in with both feet.

There is an actual point-by-point response from Tesla from last year, which has been mentioned in the comments, but that Mr. Lee was too lazy to obtain it, or to review once it had been found, or to update his article once other people had reviewed it for him.

Its just how this stuff works.

Omg. So rich, you actually went there. There’s rumors people like you exist but it’s hard to believe until you read it for yourself. Any criticism of Tesla or Musk, even if it’s him making false accusations, lying about production or even lying about a specific rating is just the evil oil companies or short-sellers making it up. Yup. That’s it

 

[ImBitman]

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.]

There is no support of this “logic”. It’s simply false. He’s saying it had the lowest probability of injury of any car ever tested by the NHTSA. He’s implying their credentials are behind a rating they’re not giving, based on a test that simply doesn’t say that. What Musk can do is give alternative rational as to why he thinks it’s the safest car to ever walk the earth, but that’s not what he’s doing. There’s just no rational he can provide to justify putting words in their mouth, or using their credibility to back his own opinion or even alternative data he might want to provide. This type of measurement just wan’t intended to test it’s probability of injury compared to any car they’ve ever tested, which is why they didn’t back the statement and politely asked him to stop “misleading” people about that.