On Tesla: Balancing sustainable car connectivity, silent lethality and smart surveillance

This article analyzes the increasingly influential role of tech companies in designing and deploying smart surveillance in private vehicles. In using the case of Tesla, a company that makes optimistic promises and hopeful visions for more sustainable electric cars by decreasing the ecological footprint, the problematical aspects of artificial intelligence (AI), big data and algorithms as total-surveillance by a private companies will be discussed. Moreover, in particular the issue of discourses on sustainable and smart vehicles that dim the light on smart surveillance, will be shed light on. As will be made clear, Tesla’s green and lean – aspirational (Currid-Halkett 2017) – ambitions through different technological and surveillance advancement, make old forms of control revive and introduce a new set of power/knowledge relations. Beyond the question of privacy and personal data harvesting, this article shall discuss the wider social and political consequences of smart car surveillance by private companies such as Tesla.