Photo: Euro NCAP/GreenTheOnly/edited by autoevolution
The Euro NCAP results for the Germany-made Tesla Model Y were seen as evidence that Dan O’Dowd and The Dawn Project were dead wrong about Full Self-Driving. After all, a car that scores 97% in Safety Assist systems (98%, according to the video) is among the best in the industry, right? Not so fast. The white-hat hacker GreenTheOnly discovered that Tesla added ANCAP support in its codes. The company already had them for I VISTA (the Chinese testing grounds), Euro NCAP, and Korean NCAP.
Although it could be nothing, it is bizarre that Tesla has any sort of support for these tests. It could also help detect test conditions and locations, imposing another behavior from automatic emergency braking (AEB) and other safety assist systems. If that is the case, it could be comparable to what Volkswagen did with its cheat code in the EA-189 turbodiesel engines. You now know this episode as Dieselgate.
Paul Maric, from CarExpert, saw GreenTheOnly’s tweet only ten minutes after he posted it and broke the news following quite an interesting public conversation with the hacker. In it, GreenTheOnly reminded us that Euro NCAP testing methods might make things even easier for Tesla. He said that the entity receives cars directly from the manufacturers.
According to the organization, that only happens in a few cases, mostly when the vehicles are still not for sale. In that case, Euro NCAP will randomly select them at their manufacturing site or from a list provided by the manufacturer.
Photo: Euro NCAP
The safety assessment entity states on its website that it needs up to four cars for each test. When they are already for sale, it “will generally buy cars from dealers.” The issue is that Tesla does not have dealers: it sells vehicles directly to customers. It is very unlikely that Euro NCAP can buy them without Tesla learning about that. If the entity selects a few people to buy these cars in its name, they are probably people that the EV maker can connect to Euro NCAP.
Tesla does not have only that element to discover if one of its vehicles will end up in any testing ground. Euro NCAP informs the automakers about the vehicle identification numbers (VINs) to ask them to “confirm the specification.” If new cars present any changes compared to the ones Euro NCAP has, “the manufacturer may ask for the current part to be fitted to the vehicle.” Tesla vehicles are modified all the time, either in their software or hardware. They do not follow model year specifications with the excuse of “continuous improvement.”
On top of that, GreenTheOnly mentioned that Tesla can “enable/disable other things based on car location (like disable FSD Beta in Vancouver downtown) so the capability is there.” Anyway, he stressed he did not say that Tesla will use “GPS location to activate any of that” because he did not check if that is the case. We hope he may do so in the future if that is possible.
Photo: Euro NCAP
It is worth mentioning that none of these traffic safety assessment organizations has ever tested FSD. As far as we know, only Consumer Reports and The Dawn Project have tested the beta software in evaluations. Tesla has only released it in the U.S. to customers with a certain performance at Safety Score Beta. Last time we checked, the minimum was 95. Dan O’Dowd obtained a car with FSD to perform his tests, and it hit a mannequin representing a child in all three attempts.
Theoretically, AEB should perform the same way regardless of being used by other software, such as Autopilot or FSD. In practice, Tesla’s advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) may interfere with AEB. No safety entity has measured how or to which degree that happens.
Photo: Euro NCAP
What GreenTheOnly reported and the exceptional circumstances that involve Autopilot and FSD make it even more valid to conduct the public challenge The Dawn Project made to Elon Musk and Tesla. I VISTA, Euro NCAP, and Korean NCAP should participate and try to verify how the location, Autopilot, and FSD interfere with the test results. They probably won’t because the test will be in the U.S., with an American car. NCAP's representative in the U.S. is the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA).
What is clear is that the tests demand a software analyst to examine the code and to make sure it does not affect how the car reacts to obstacles and the other situations evaluated by the Safety Assist analysis. Making sure its software is the same as before Tesla learned about the location and the test cycle is also recommended.
Tesla just added ANCAP support in their code. This is in addition to already existing "I VISTA" (Chinese testing grounds), EuroNCAP and Korea NCAP
One wonders why do it (they also give testing houses one-off builds with the testing house in the name (with tweaked settings?) )
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