Tesla's Self-Driving Technology Faces False Advertising Lawsuits
TapTechNews, June 11th. A judge in California today rejected Tesla's attempt to dismiss the false advertising allegations against its self-driving technology, and the case will enter the formal trial stage.
The California Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) began investigating Tesla for alleged misleading self-driving advertising in 2021. It was found that what Tesla claimed publicly didn't match what was submitted to the DMV. In 2022, the DMV formally queried Tesla and asked it to respond to the allegation of exaggerating the capacity of its system.
Tesla argued that they have long been allowed to promote self-driving features, so they should be able to continue doing so. However, the court clearly didn't认可 this argument and ruled that the case would enter the court trial stage.
TapTechNews noted that this is also the second time this month that Tesla has lost in the self-driving advertising fraud case. In May, a federal judge ruled that another class action lawsuit could proceed, which accused Tesla of failing to fulfill its self-driving promises.
In addition, the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is also investigating whether there is securities fraud in Tesla's self-driving advertising.
The focus of the controversy lies in that Tesla has long called the assisted driving software 'Autopilot' and 'FullSelf-Driving (fully self-driving)'. Although these two systems are related, their functions and prices are different.
The plaintiff believes that the name 'Autopilot' is misleading, making people think that the driver doesn't need to pay attention to the road conditions when using it. However, Tesla has always insisted that 'Autopilot' refers to an airplane-like driving assistance system, and pilots still need to be vigilant at all times.
The name 'FullSelf-Driving' is more straightforward, directly indicating that the vehicle can achieve fully self-driving. Tesla CEO Elon Musk has been claiming for more than a decade that Tesla cars are about to achieve self-driving, but this promise has not been fulfilled yet. Although the FSD function is continuously improving and has more and more functions, it still cannot achieve fully self-driving, and the driver still needs to be vigilant at all times.
Although the FSD function is stronger than Autopilot, according to the self-driving level classification of the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE), these two systems and almost all other automotive manufacturers' assisted driving systems belong to the 'L2' level. Currently, there is only one consumer system on US roads that can reach the 'L3' level, that is, the DrivePilot system on the Mercedes EQS, and Waymo's self-driving taxis belong to the 'L4' level.
Tesla recently renamed the FSD system to 'FullSelf-Driving(Supervised, supervised fully self-driving)', emphasizing that even if the driver doesn't need to operate the vehicle frequently, they still need to sit in the driver's seat and take over at any time. Maybe Tesla's move is to emphasize to new users that they still need to be in the vehicle when using FSD, or maybe it is a change made to deal with the two false advertising lawsuits currently being heard.
It is still not clear what kind of judgment will be made in these cases against FSD eventually, but there have already been car owners who filed false advertising lawsuits against the FSD function and won. For example, a British car owner received about $10,000 in compensation for Tesla's failure to deliver the paid software function; an American car owner asked Tesla to upgrade its computer system for free because Tesla repeatedly charged for the hardware and won.