In the early morning on May 13th, 2023, a Tesla Model Y taxi crashed through a busy public square in Bergen, Norway.
Dashcam footage obtained by Motor.no showed the driver suddenly lurching forward onto the sidewalk while attempting to reverse into a parking spot, crashing into the outdoor seating of an otherwise peaceful road. Like a horror movie, the dashcam captured two unsuspecting women standing on the sidewalk in front of the Tesla. After a short pause, the vehicle lunges forward, racing down the sidewalk toward the women at 56 miles per hour. The women run into a supermarket to get away.
The driver appears to try to take control of the vehicle, with the Tesla hitting a monument, lurching up some stone steps, and crashing into a kiosk.
The incident has been under investigation, and it has now come to the public’s attention that the Model Y’s network card — which stores and transmits crash data to Tesla’s servers — was stolen.
The initial investigation into the Tesla Model Y crash in Norway
The man behind the wheel of the runaway Tesla Model Y was a taxi operator with over 10 years of experience. He wasn’t intoxicated. He wasn’t asleep. At the time of the crash, he was charged with negligent driving and had his license suspended, but he has continued to claim that “something was wrong with the car.”
Is it Tesla’s fault? Unfortunately, it’s hard to say without all of the information. Tesla’s event data recorder (EDR) shows that the accelerator pedal was pressed down throughout the harrowing crash. The EDR also shows no brake pedal activity until the final impact, when the Model Y hit the stairs. However, the dashcam footage shows the brake lights illuminated during multiple collisions. Norway’s Road Authority said this can happen when Tesla’s automatic collision-avoidance braking system is being overridden by the continued accelerator input. But others involved in the investigation have stated that the driver doesn’t need to physically press the pedal for the accelerator signal to go off. This could happen due to malfunctions or software issues.
So… Was he stepping on the gas or wasn’t he?
You would probably need the network card data to know for sure. Strangely enough, Tesla has claimed it doesn’t have the six seconds of data between the first and second impact because the vehicle stopped uploading. Without sufficient evidence in either direction, the driver was declared innocent, and the case was dismissed in December 2024.
Did the taxi driver press on the gas, or was this another malfunctioning incident?
While it seemed like that was the end, the case of the runaway Tesla Model Y just became even stranger. Motor.no recently reported on an independent investigation by data analyst Simen Huse, revealing something possibly even more concerning than the initial crash.
The vehicle was transported from Bergen’s Road Administration facility to Huse’s lab about 311 miles away. When Huse received the car, he opened it up and realized that the dashboard area had been stripped, with plastic fittings removed, loose screws strewn about, and some electrical wiring severed. He said: “I couldn’t believe my eyes.”
A closer examination of the computer inside found that the network card was missing. This is what would have been needed to see those six seconds that Tesla apparently never received.
The police have decided to investigate the situation, but we currently have no clue who stole the network card. Although we can make some educated guesses. Electrek noted that this wasn’t the only incident involving a Tesla seemingly speeding up at random around 2024. It was often found to be the driver’s fault — maybe they confused the accelerator and brake pedals. But why haven’t drivers been doing that in the years that followed? Electrek noted that Tesla could have likely found a software bug and silently fixed it after getting so much scrutiny for this acceleration issue.
Of course, there is no proof that Tesla stole the network card. But it feels a bit like “the EV that cried bad driver.” Tesla has been caught hiding evidence during previous investigations, including the time it refused to hand over collision information from its servers after its questionable Full Self-Driving mode resulted in a fatal crash in 2025. When investigators asked for the data, Tesla claimed it was corrupted. The forensic analysis that followed showed that the data was intact. Tesla was eventually found 33% liable and had to pay around $240 million. When the automaker is willing to hide evidence and make false claims, it’s hard not to wonder whether Tesla stole the network card.
I would personally find it quite likely that it’s Tesla in the Gigafactory with a screwdriver. But I haven’t crossed out enough other possibilities to make a confident accusation. On X, you’ll find plenty of Tesla supporters calling this new information “fake news” due to some false images floating around, and claiming that Tesla has no reason to remove the network card since it doesn’t have data (it does). There are also plenty of people who say, “If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck.” In other words, Tesla remains a highly controversial topic in the car industry, with plenty of supporters and haters alike.
Situations like this don’t really help.
