Back in September, a hacker found code in Tesla vehicles that was linked to different safety organizations from around the globe. This raised questions about whether Tesla had been using the code to cheat on safety tests. The Euro NCAP opened up an investigation into the matter. A new report has been released commenting that Tesla showed no effort to cheat on previous tests.
When first spotted by Green on Twitter (@GreenTheOnly), the code cast down on whether or not Tesla was playing by the rules during safety testing. Tesla vehicles do exceptionally well in safety testing across the world. Tesla went so far as to claim that it had set a new combined score of 5.4 stars in NHTSA testing back in 2013.
Speaking to CNN, Euro NCAP (New Car Assessment Program) program director Aled Williams said that "So far, Euro NCAP's investigations have not revealed any evidence of an attempt to 'cheat' the tests by Tesla." He also confirmed that Euro NCAP had reviewed recent software updates to Tesla test vehicles and found no faults.
Williams did say that the organization had been told that "the software code references to particular test programs like the Australian and Asian one - known as ANCAP - are used only to identify the region for which the car is configured."
From that information he surmised that "Different regions (such as Europe, Australasia etc.) differ in terms of legislation as well as road conditions/markings etc... The recent addition of ANCAP to the code of Model Y coincides with the start of sales of that vehicle in Australasia."
Green tells CNN that he's not totally satisfied with that answer because Japan, which has its own unique signage and markings, isn't listed in the software.
Tesla told the agency that it was not using GPS tracking to identify when a vehicle is at a specific testing facility. So it seems that Tesla is in the clear for now. But the investigation is still ongoing.
