Tesla has been caught hiding details of three separate robotaxi accidents that happened since the launch of the service.
As Electrek reports, the Elon Musk-led company reported the three crashes, which occurred in the early days of its pilot robotaxi service in Austin, to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA.)
At the time, the company's robotaxi fleet of modified Model Y vehicles only consisted of "ten to 20" vehicles, according to Musk, which even had safety drivers sitting in the passenger's seat.
In other words, while three crashes may not sound like a huge number, it's a considerable proportion, judging by how few vehicles were actually on the road at the time that were only giving rides to a handpicked selection of Tesla shareholders and friendly influencers.
Worse yet, most of the details of the crashes, as they appear in the NHTSA's required reports for any crashes involving advanced driver assistance software, are redacted — indicating Tesla is trying to obscure what exactly happened.
All we know is that there was one "minor" injury and that none of the three crashes are being investigated.
Which naturally raises the question: what else is Tesla hiding? Could the EV maker be trying to fudge the dangers of its new robotaxi fleet? We've already seen the vehicles acting erratically, running stop signs, and veering into oncoming traffic.
The company recently expanded its fleet by 50 percent, and opened the service up to the general public in Austin earlier this month — albeit with a safety driver now in the driver's seat, ready to take control and effectively defeating the purpose of a robotaxi.
The company's misleadingly-named "Full Self-Driving" and "Autopilot" software has already been linked by regulators to hundreds of crashes and dozens of deaths. How the former, an expensive, $8,000 add-on, differs from the system its robotaxis use remains unclear.
Tesla has yet to share any data demonstrating that its robotaxi software is safe and ready for public use. So far, the carmaker has only revealed the total number of miles its fleet of cars has driven using driver assistance software — albeit, again, with a driver behind the wheel.
Whether the regulatory requirements will change over time is dubious at best. Musk has spent hundreds of millions of dollars to get president Donald Trump elected.
In April, Trump's transportation department made changes to Biden-era rules about reporting crashes that involve fully or partially autonomous vehicles.
The change directly benefited Tesla as the rules now only concern Level 3 to Level 5 driver-assist systems. The EV maker only offers Level 2 systems for its fleet of consumer-facing cars.
However, that situation changed with the advent of its robotaxi fleet, as Electrek points out, which are Level 4.
Musk recently vowed to remove safety drivers "by end of year." He has also promised that Teslas will fully drive themselves "next year" — every year since 2014.
More on robotaxis: Tesla Rolling Out Robotaxis With Human Drivers in the Driver's Seat, Defeating the Purpose of a Robotaxi