The rise of Elon Musk’s ground-breaking electric car operation serves as a fascinating backdrop for Andreas Pichler’s jarring and revealing featured documentary, as a fatal accident in Florida triggers a protracted lawsuit to hold the company accountable, bringing into serious doubt the company’s much-hyped “autopilot” function.
A series of talking-head interviews offer insight into the stringent working practices inside Tesla; how Musk drives his workers but rarely seems to understand what they might be doing, and just why a series of whistleblowers decide it is in everyone’s best interests to open up about the company. The film is also brutally punctuated by shocking footage from dashcams and security cameras that show Tesla cars suddenly braking or accelerating—and the terrifying crashes that follow.
The film opens in 2014 as tech billionaire Musk unveils his plans for a self-driving car in front of an enthusiastic audience. What consumers don’t know, however, is that Tesla’s “autopilot” function is far from road-ready, and new owners are essentially ‘beta’ subjects, being used to improve the software by providing their own data.
It quickly cuts to a hospital where Dillon Angulo recalls how his car was smashed into by a Tesla and how his 22-year-old girlfriend Naibel Benavides died in the incident. He and her sister Neima Benavidas feature prominently throughout the film as they and their lawyers doggedly try and get Tesla to provide details of what actually happened in the crash.
Intermittently, the film features extracts from television coverage of Musk as he builds the company, at one stage claiming autonomous cars can become ten times safer than any human. His claims seem more than ambitious when set alongside contributions from various ex-Tesla employees and whistleblowers.
These include former Tesla engineer and whistleblower Cristina Balan; Rachel Konrad, former Director of Communications at Tesla USA, and most revealingly Lukasz Krupski, a former Service Technician in Germany who says he “realised that these are dangerous people,” and set about downloading data files that revealed issues with the cars in terms of phantom braking, unexpected acceleration, and problems with driver assistance.
The death of Tesla driver Joshua Brown in a July 2016 crash prompted Musk to claim in September of that year that the company had fixed things, only for there to be a string of similar crashes. The final sections of the film dwell on various investigations during the Joe Biden presidency – “not the friendliest of administrations,” the Tesla boss comments in a television clip – and Musk’s subsequent acquisition of Twitter and cash-spend of some $250 million to help get Trump back into office. Though in truth this aspect could make for a whole film in itself.
Elon Musk Unveiled – The Tesla Experiment makes for striking viewing, especially when it comes to the often-harrowing dashcam and traffic camera footage as cars are seen barrelling along roads and smashing into buildings and other vehicles. What is also clear is that while Tesla is a key part of his empire, Musk has his sights set on the stars, and it’s his space programme which really drives him.
Germany, 2025, 90mins
Dir: Andreas Pichler
Production: Beetz Brothers Film Production
International sales: Mediawan Rights
Producer: Christian BeetzScr: Anne von Petersdorff, Christian Beetz, Andreas Pichler
Cinematography: Jakob Stark, Tom Bergmann
Editors: Johannes Hiroshi Nakajima, Beatrice Segolini, Nicolas Nørgaard Staffolani
Music: Henning Fuchs
