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

This article analyses the increasingly influential role of tech companies in designing and deploying smart surveillance in private vehicles. Using the case of Tesla, a company that makes optimistic promises and has a hopeful vision for more sustainable electric cars by decreasing the ecological footprint, the article will discuss the problematic aspects of artificial intelligence, big data and al- gorithms for total surveillance by private companies. In particular, light will be shed on the issue of discourses on sustainable and smart vehicles that dim the light on the problematic aspects of luxury surveillance. As will be made clear, Tesla’s green and lean – aspirational – ambitions through different technological and surveillance advancements revive old forms of control and introduce a new set of power/knowledge relations.