Model Y

Make
Tesla
Segment
SUV

Following a report about Tesla employees sharing photos and video footage from customer cars for entertainment, a California Tesla owner sued the carmaker in a prospective class action lawsuit. It's filed with the US District Court for the Northern District of California following the Reuters report about groups of Tesla employees sharing invasive videos and images recorded by customers' car cameras via internal messaging systems.

San Francisco resident and Tesla Model Y owner Henry Yeh's lawsuit uses the language "tasteless and tortious entertainment" and "the humiliation of those surreptitiously recorded."

It goes on to say, "Indeed, parents' interest in their children's privacy is one of the most fundamental liberty interests society recognizes."

"Like anyone would be, Mr. Yeh was outraged at the idea that Tesla's cameras can be used to violate his family's privacy, which the California Constitution scrupulously protects," Jack Fitzgerald, an attorney representing Yeh, said. "Tesla needs to be held accountable for these invasions and for misrepresenting its lax privacy practices to him and other Tesla owners," said Fitzgerald.

The lawsuit makes the complaint "against Tesla on behalf of himself, similarly-situated class members, and the general public." The prospective class action would include individuals who owned or leased a Tesla within the past four years.

The result the lawsuit aims to achieve is "to enjoin (instruct or urge [someone] to do something) Tesla from engaging in its wrongful behavior, including violating the privacy of customers and others, and to recover actual and punitive damages."

While the original report points to the behavior being engaged in between 2019 and 2022, that doesn't mean that staff hasn't carried on sharing photos and footage for their entertainment. Or that the behavior isn't happening in Tesla business locations elsewhere.

The report states that Tesla didn't immediately respond to a request to comment. Although reaching out is due diligence, Tesla hasn't had a press relations department for a while.