# PSA: Tesla's "Bug Report" feature probably doesn't do what you expect



## garsh (Apr 4, 2016)

Back in May 2018, Elon told us all about the "Bug Report" feature available in Tesla cars.


__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1001870372403167232
Well, this is great, right? All I have to do is talk to my car, it will generate a bug report, and Tesla staff will get to work on fixing all of these bugs we find!

Yeah, well, not so much. Either Elon didn't really understand how the feature worked, or Tesla quickly realized that they were getting inundated with everybody's various problems and immediately changed how the feature worked. We had various inklings about how it _actually _works from Tesla Service Center technicians. They would tell people to take a "bug report" after reproducing some issue, and then tell their technician the approximate time of when the bug report was taken. Then they are able to look through the car's logs to see the information that was saved for that report.

To clarify, *"bug report" saves some vehicle state to a file. That information can later be brought up and examined by a Tesla service technician to help diagnose problems.* It does not send anything to the mothership. Tesla engineers never see these reports. It just saves some system state to a file on the car itself - it doesn't get transmitted to Tesla or anywhere else.

We've got confirmation from @greentheonly that not only is this the case, but it also does not record any autopilot information. So don't bother taking bug reports for autopilot issues.


__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1418571133561999367


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## canadiandriver (Sep 17, 2019)

Thanks @garsh ! no wonder none of my reported bug reports actually got fixed... sigh


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## skygraff (Jun 2, 2017)

Yeah, old news on the part about it staying in the car and not having any kind of organization structure other than time stamps but the bit about it being only infotainment is disappointing news to me.

It really is a severely lost opportunity for this company with a software package wrapped in a car. With all their interest in machine learning and neural nets, they could've easily used training one how to sort through bug reports pulled from the fleet on a regular basis (you know, the same time they supposedly pull edge case AP data for that machine learning project) as a way to improve voice recognition, develop machine learning shorthand for the other projects, anticipate failure trends, expand upon heavily used features, and, of course, improve the overall system thanks to global day-to-day user feedback. Not to mention, position repair parts where most likely needed and even proactively schedule service calls.

Well, eventually, the other manufacturers who are lagging behind on OTA updates will catch up then surpass Tesla by taking advantage of two way communication so they can do marketing analysis and pricing changes on service events based on all sorts of retrieved data (including bug reports made by their loyal customers). Let's face it, while the cars are great, the charging network is unmatched, and the mission is laudable, communications will be Tesla's Achille's heal and will greatly diminish loyalty (both with repeat buyers and with participation in the Tesla Network from either side of that equation).

My $.02. Thanks for sharing that tweet from green!


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