Crime: The Tesla Experiment with Autonomous Driving
Nothing is as important to Tesla as mastering autonomous driving, says Elon Musk. A new documentary shows just how far the company is from that goal – and who is paying the price.
A Tesla Model S with Autopilot enabled crashed in Key Largo, Florida, killing 22-year-old Naibel Benavides in April 2019. A jury in Miami awarded $243 million in damages in August 2025. The case is featured in the documentary "Elon Musk Uncovered – Das Tesla-Experiment" by Andreas Pichler, which draws on the Tesla-Files, a cache of internal data leaked to Handelsblatt in 2022.
The data includes thousands of customer complaints about issues with Autopilot and sudden acceleration. The Dutch authority RDW approved Full Self-Driving in Europe in April 2026, but the software is not compatible with around four million older Teslas.
Written by urgent.news from Handelsblatt's report — not a translation of it. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
