You must remember our article about the strange code changes Tesla performed to support some advanced driver assistance system (ADAS) testing. We tried to contact two of the traffic safety organizations included in the code: Euro NCAP and the Australasian New Car Assessment Program, which goes by the dubious ANCAP acronym. None of them answered us so far. However, Drive managed to talk to ANCAP, and the entity replied.
According to Drive, ANCAP is aware of the support included in the Tesla software to deal with its ADAS testing. The code changes were discovered by the white-hat hacker GreenTheOnly. The traffic safety organization said that it was “looking into it.”
That makes at least one of the allegations from Tesla apologists and investors go down the drain. These guys claimed that these organizations might have asked Tesla to introduce these code changes to make testing easier. Under test conditions, the vehicles would deactivate some sensors to allow the cars to crash without the need to cover these sensors.
The excuse was destined to fail from the very beginning. GreenTheOnly said that the code changes were related solely to ADAS testing, not to crash tests. According to the white-hat hacker, “there's now Autopilot code that's aware of different ADAS testing protocols.” GreenTheOnly also said that he “can confidently say they are running non-production code.” That comes in a pretty bad moment for Euro NCAP, which has praised the Tesla Model Y precisely for its amazing performance in such tests.
Drive tried to contact Tesla. However, the company has chosen to ignore the subject, probably hoping that people will forget about it and just keep repeating the now suspect results it obtained with Euro NCAP. We’ll insist on hearing from the organization, as talking to Tesla is now impossible.
As I said in an editorial, we are past the days when crash tests only consisted of checking body damage and passenger protection. These traffic safety organizations now have to make sure the tested vehicles present standard computers and the same software present in production vehicles. Preventing over-the-air (OTA) updates before running the tests is also mandatory to ensure the cars do not change after being inspected.
That makes at least one of the allegations from Tesla apologists and investors go down the drain. These guys claimed that these organizations might have asked Tesla to introduce these code changes to make testing easier. Under test conditions, the vehicles would deactivate some sensors to allow the cars to crash without the need to cover these sensors.
The excuse was destined to fail from the very beginning. GreenTheOnly said that the code changes were related solely to ADAS testing, not to crash tests. According to the white-hat hacker, “there's now Autopilot code that's aware of different ADAS testing protocols.” GreenTheOnly also said that he “can confidently say they are running non-production code.” That comes in a pretty bad moment for Euro NCAP, which has praised the Tesla Model Y precisely for its amazing performance in such tests.
Drive tried to contact Tesla. However, the company has chosen to ignore the subject, probably hoping that people will forget about it and just keep repeating the now suspect results it obtained with Euro NCAP. We’ll insist on hearing from the organization, as talking to Tesla is now impossible.
As I said in an editorial, we are past the days when crash tests only consisted of checking body damage and passenger protection. These traffic safety organizations now have to make sure the tested vehicles present standard computers and the same software present in production vehicles. Preventing over-the-air (OTA) updates before running the tests is also mandatory to ensure the cars do not change after being inspected.
there are two aspects in play here:
— green (@greentheonly) September 12, 2022
1. 100% of observed crash/adas tested cars in EU/US have one-off builds on specially provisioned computers
2. Relatively recently there's now autopilot code that's aware of different adas testing protocols.
I have not specifically compared the differences between production code and code that's deployed on these cars to be crash tested because it's not all that easy, I can confidently say they are running non-production code though.
— green (@greentheonly) September 11, 2022