A few months back, China banned Tesla cars from entering the military area. Since then Tesla has been working towards ensuring car data confidentiality. Finally coming up with a platform having data of the Tesla cars in China.
The need to show data
It isn’t just in China, but whenever there are Tesla car accidents there is pressure to give information. However, Elon Musk always assured that Tesla Autonomous software is not in use with those accidents.
But with China being Tesla’s largest market, there is a need to address the local issues. Especially when the company is being targeted by the state media and regulators.
Interestingly this time the company is going to allow the customers to have and cess to the data. It is plausible that this is the result of a recent incident where a customer protest on a car. Then accused brake failure as Tesla’s manufacturing defect.
As the data includes camera data, sensors capturing images, and other such stored data. It isn’t clear how much access will be given.
China’s Tesla’s car data is kept in China
A few weeks back, the company assured that the data collected from the Tesla cars in China would not go out of the country. And that, they are only for research purposes.
Furthermore, Tesla’s vice president Tao Ling said to media in Beijing,
“Tesla as a company with operations in China must abide by China’s laws and regulations. Our data is very well protected. Chinese data is stored in China.”
Also, the company is working towards sharing its data protection regulations with the government.
The data collected from the cars
Basically, the information collected can be categorized into three types.
- Data from or about the user or their device.
- The Data from or about the user’s Tesla vehicle
- Data from or about user’s Tesla energy product
This would enable a more precise usage-based insurance program. Also, such data allows the company to know if the driver was drunk or asleep and other such precise info.
After analyzing the complete information about how much the company has access to, it includes everything like contacts, location history, browsing history. Also radio listening history, and many others.
This also includes technical data like vehicle connectivity data, remote services data, data related to accidents. Also road segment data, and short video clips from the Tesla camera.
In the end, no matter how much of the data is taken. The company is obliged to follow certain rules and regulations. With this database access platform, Tesla is once again going ahead of the time.
