Ahead of its Cybercab launch, Tesla told a grieving family that a self-driving car’s fatal crash data was gone — a hacker proved every car keeps it

Tesla was required to pay $243 million in damages. It also changed the name of its Autopilot and Full-Self Driving features to make it clear that humans shouldn’t actually let their cars drive without supervision.

But the car company might have avoided a guilty ruling entirely if not for one key piece of evidence. Here’s how that evidence came to light — and what the lawsuit tells us about Musk’s upcoming cybercab rollout.

A Russian hacker turned a software vulnerability gig with Tesla into a $243 million payout for the grieving family

As part of the lawsuit, the jury was asked to figure out what percent of Angulo and Benavides Leon’s fatal crash was Tesla’s fault, and what percent of it was the Tesla driver’s fault.

Theoretically, Tesla Autopilot records crash data that would make determining fault easier. Autopilot is designed to send video of the five seconds leading up to any crash directly to Tesla headquarters if the car gets into a wreck.

Tesla said they didn’t have it.

“The data transmitted to Tesla does not include either the crash video or snapshot data,” said Thomas Branigan, Tesla’s Outside Council, in a letter to the plaintiff’s attorney. “Tesla cannot produce an ‘augmented’ clip.”

That’s where hacker, known by his X handle as @greentheonly, comes into play. The hacker had been working for Tesla through its Bug Bounty program, reporting software vulnerabilities to the company for a $15,000 reward. He was able to recover the crash data and prove that Tesla did actually have access to it, which he alleges Tesla knew, the Washington Post reported.

“For any reasonable person, it was obvious the data was there,” Green told the Washington Post.

He also said Tesla has beefed up vehicle crash data security in the time since.

“If an accident happened today like this, I won’t be able to extract the data,” he said in his interview with the Washington Post.

Self-driving Teslas are still getting into high-profile crashes

Self-driving Teslas are still getting into crashes. Tesla and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) reported that Teslas with active driver-assist systems got into 207 wrecks in May — the highest number on record.

Just this month, San Francisco 49ers head coach Kyle Shanahan was injured in a Tesla that he said was in autopilot mode. His car swerved into oncoming traffic at low speed when he turned around to retrieve his phone from the backseat.