June 4 (Reuters) - Tesla has asked a judge to

reject a demand for some of its vehicle crash data held by the

U.S. National Highway Transportation Safety Administration,

saying that public disclosure of the information could cause

competitive harm.

Tesla, the electric carmaker owned by billionaire

entrepreneur Elon Musk, said in a federal court filing in

Washington, D.C., on Tuesday that the requested information is

confidential and could be used by rival companies to assess

Tesla's technology.

Tesla was responding to a lawsuit filed by The Washington

Post last year against the NHTSA seeking records about crashes

that occurred while driver-assistance systems were in use.

Tesla is widely known for its so-called advanced

driver-assistance systems, including Autopilot and Full

Self-Driving (FSD).

Tesla has defended its technology and said that its

self-driving software requires active driver supervision and

does not make vehicles autonomous.

Tesla and the safety agency did not immediately respond to

requests for comment, and neither did a lawyer for The

Washington Post.

The highway safety agency in a separate filing also argued

that the Post's demand sought information that is exempt from

the federal public records laws.

The Post has said that the NHTSA releases some crash report

information, "but it withholds critical details about the

technologies in use and the circumstances and locations of the

crashes."

Tesla in its court filing said it and the auto safety agency

should be allowed to keep secret certain crash-related narrative

information, including road conditions and driver behavior.

Tesla also said the agency cannot be forced to share

information about the hardware and software versions of the

driver assistance programs that may have been in use at the time

of a vehicle crash.

Public release of the information would allow Tesla's

competitors to assess the efficacy of each version and also

allow them to calculate how many crashes are associated with

different systems, Tesla said.

Lawyers for the Post have argued that the version

information of the Tesla software and hardware is not kept

private, since Tesla drivers can access that information on

their own within their vehicle.

In October, NHTSA opened an investigation into 2.4 million

Tesla vehicles featuring full self-driving technology after four

reported collisions, including a 2023 fatal crash.

Tesla in 2023 recalled more than 2 million U.S. vehicles to

install safeguards in its Autopilot advanced driver-assistance

system.

The case is WP Co LLC v. National Highway Traffic Safety

Administration, U.S. District Court for the District of

Columbia, No. 1:24-cv-01353.

For Wp Co: Charles Tobin of Ballard Spahr

For NHTSA: Kartik Venguswamy of the U.S. Attorney's Office

For Tesla: Taylor McConkie of Tesla

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