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SAN FRANCISCO — San Francisco police Sergeant David Radford contacted Tesla in May 2020 with a request on a case: Could the automaker provide data on an alleged stalker's remote access to a vehicle?
A woman had come into the station visibly shaken, according to a police report. She told police that her abusive husband, in violation of a restraining order, was stalking and harassing her using the technology in their 2016 Tesla Model X, the police report stated.
The SUV allows owners to remotely access its location and control other features through a smartphone app. She told police she had discovered a metal baseball bat in the back seat — the same bat the husband had previously used to threaten her, the police report stated.
Weeks later, Sergeant Radford asked Tesla for data that might help the investigation. A Tesla service manager replied that remote-access logs were only available within seven days of the events recorded, according to records in a lawsuit the woman later filed. Radford's investigation stalled.
Reuters examined the details of the San Francisco case and another one involving alleged stalking through Tesla technology but could not quantify the scope of such abuse. Tesla has encountered at least one other case of stalking through its vehicle app, according to a Tesla employee's testimony in the San Francisco woman's lawsuit.
Tesla did not respond to requests for comment. Radford and the San Francisco Police Department did not comment on the investigation.
The San Francisco case offers insight into the complex considerations these technologies pose for auto companies and law enforcement. An industry group has acknowledged the need for protections to ensure car technology doesn't become a tool for abuse.
The Alliance for Automotive Innovation, a technology-focused trade group for automakers and suppliers, in 2021 cited spousal violence as a reason why California regulators should not require carmakers to release location or other personal data in most cases under a new state privacy law. The law sought to give consumers broadly the right to access their personal data being tracked by companies. The auto group argued some car owners might improperly request personal data on other drivers of the same vehicle.
Disclosing location-tracking data to an abuser could create "the potential for significant harm," wrote the automotive alliance. The group's membership includes many major automakers, but not Tesla.
Some automakers have taken steps to prevent the misuse of data their vehicles track. General Motors spokesperson Kelly Cusinato said GM's OnStar mobile system allows all drivers to mask their location, even if they are not the vehicle's owner or primary user. Rivian, which makes electric trucks and SUVs, is working on a similar function, said Wassym Bensaid, senior vice president of software development.
Rivian hasn't encountered a case of domestic abuse through its vehicle technology, according to Bensaid, but believes "users should have a right to control where that information goes."
GM declined to comment on whether its technology had been involved in any alleged domestic abuse.
Request denied
The San Francisco woman sued her husband in state Superior Court in 2020 on claims including assault and sexual battery. She later named Tesla as a defendant, accusing the automaker of negligence for continuing to provide the husband access to the car despite the restraining order against him. Her lawsuit sought monetary damages from Tesla.
The woman made multiple requests to Tesla in writing and in person, according to her lawsuit, seeking remote data logs and asking Tesla to disable her husband's account. The requests started in 2018, more than a year before Radford, the police investigator, sought data from Tesla.
Tesla told the woman that it could not remove her husband's access to the car's technology because his name remained on the vehicle's title as a co-owner, along with hers, according to records she filed in her lawsuit.
Tesla prevailed in the lawsuit. After denying the San Francisco police request for evidence, the automaker argued she had no proof that her husband used the car's features to stalk her. Tesla also argued the restraining order against the woman's husband never specifically ordered the automaker to act.
The woman and her husband settled the lawsuit in 2023 on undisclosed terms. Their divorce case is pending. The restraining order against the husband remains in effect.
The husband, in a deposition, denied tracking or harassing his wife through the vehicle's technology. His attorney declined to comment.
'Less credible'
When the San Francisco woman and her husband bought the Tesla Model X in January 2016, he set himself up as the administrator on the account and listed her as an additional driver, her lawsuit said. That meant she could not remove his access without his password.
After they separated in August 2018, a family law judge found she had suffered repeated physical abuse during the marriage, which the husband acknowledged, as well as sexual abuse, which he denied, court records show. The judge found her version of events credible and his "less credible."
Over the next several months, the woman alleged, she regularly returned to the car to find that its settings and features appeared to have been manipulated. She found the doors open, the suspension settings changed, and the vehicle's ability to charge turned off. When she asked service center employees for help, they tried to disconnect the car from the Internet, but those attempts failed, she said in court records.
Two letters, one of them dated in 2018, to Tesla's legal department by anti-domestic abuse advocates on the woman's behalf asked the company to preserve data logs and remove the husband's access. Tesla told the court it could not find these letters in its files.
Eventually, a Tesla service center manager contacted Tesla deputy general counsel Ryan McCarthy for advice, the manager said in a deposition reviewed by Reuters. McCarthy said the woman needed to have her husband removed from the vehicle's title in order for the company to disable his account, the service manager testified.
McCarthy did not respond to requests for comment.
In its successful defense against the woman's lawsuit, Tesla cited the husband's denials and said she had "no proof other than her "belief and imagination" that her husband used the car's technology to stalk her.
San Francisco Superior Court Judge Curtis Karnow agreed with Tesla, writing in a 2022 opinion that both the woman and her husband "had a right" to use the car technology. It is unclear how Tesla was supposed to determine whether her allegations were legitimate, he wrote.
"A jilted partner might fabricate misuse charges to punish the other," Karnow wrote, adding that the consequences of imposing liability for car manufacturers "would be broad and incalculable."
In late 2020, the San Francisco woman was allowed by a family court judge to sell the jointly owned Tesla.
