A new complaint, this time from a former Tesla employee, comes to add to a series of others that raise concerns about the safety of the company’s vehicles regarding the autonomy technology that is the main criterion for interested buyers.

Lukas Krupski, a former Tesla employee, told the BBC that believes the technology powering the company’s autonomous vehicles is not safe enough to be used on public roads.

Krupski leaked data, including customer complaints for Tesla’s braking and self-driving software; in the German newspaper Handelsblatt in May.

He said that efforts to highlight his concerns internally had been ignored. Tesla, for its part, did not respond to requests for clarification on the claims of its former employee.

Elon Muskthe CEO of Tesla, defended self-driving technology on Saturday in a post on X saying that “Tesla has by far the best AI in the real world.”

But in his first interview in the UK, Mr Krupsky told the BBC he was concerned about how artificial intelligence was being used – to power Tesla’s Autopilot service.

Its autopilot function, for example, includes power steering and parking – but, despite its name, it still requires someone in the driver’s seat with their hands on the wheel.

“I don’t think the hardware and software are ready”he argued and added that “it affects all of us because we are essentially experiments on public roads. So even if you don’t have a Tesla, your kids are walking down the street.”

In particular, Krupski reported that found evidence in the company’s data suggesting that requirements regarding the safe operation of vehicles that had a certain level of autonomous or driver assistance technology were not met.

He added that even Tesla employees had spoken to him for vehicles that brake randomly on non-existent obstacles, known as “phantom braking”. This also came out in the data it collected on customer complaints.

According to Tesla’s own data, at the end of 2022 US customers using Autopilot had an average of one accident where the airbag deployed approximately every 5 million miles.

The US Department of Justice has been investigating Tesla since January regarding the company’s own data on assisted driving.

Tesla has also faced similar investigations and questions from agencies including the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration about its Autopilot system.

German newspaper Handelsblatt published the “Tesla Files” discovered by Krupsky, which are about 100 GB of internal data.

The data protection authority in the Netherlands, where Tesla’s European headquarters are based, confirmed to the BBC that it had been notified of the data breach and was looking into the claim.

“I barely sleep”

Krupski said the past six months and the experience of being a whistleblower have been “terrifying.” “Sometimes I hardly sleep at night,” he told the BBC.

Jack Stilgoe, an associate professor at University College London who researches autonomous vehicles, said Mr Krupski’s claims raised wider concerns about the technology.

“This is a kind of artificial intelligence test in the wild, on the open road, that includes all the rest of us,” he said.

The UK government has announced that it is considering a bill on automated vehicles that would set a legal framework.