Elon Musk arrives at the inauguration of Donald Trump as president in January.
Getty pictures
A federal judge in San Francisco just Greenlit a Category lawsuit by Tesla owners To sue the automotive industry for excessive claims by CEO ELON MUSK and the company on the ability to self-guide the electric vehicles extending until 2016.
Nine years ago, Elon Musk told reporters that Tesla took a bold jump in the future by equipping his electric composition with all the technology that would ever need to one day act as truly autonomous vehicles.
“The full suite of autonomy material will be standard in all Tesla vehicles from now on,” Musk said. When used fully on a later date, as AI software has been refined, a series of digital cameras, ultrasonic sensors and radar would give Teslas complete “level 5” autonomy-a name showing a robotic ability to lead under all conditions.
It wasn’t true then and it’s not yet.
From Hyperloops to Solar Roofs to Trillion -saving dollars from Doge federal budget cuts, Musk has developed a reputation for excessively boasting and saying completely whoppers. For years, this habit has not been a big problem for his companies, image or wealth, but is shaped to be one for Tesla, who was already injured by 13% in EV world sales in the first half of 2025.
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The Class-Perissance Costume comes to the heels of a separate Miami federal case this month, where a jury found that Tesla brought some responsibility for a deadly 2019 crash that happened while Automatic pilot The feature was involved and ordered the company to pay $ 243 million in compensation. Meanwhile, the company could temporarily lose its ability to sell cars in California, its leading US market, if a judge in a case was filed by the state’s car department determines that it was misleading consumers of super-supervisory capacity.
“The primary thing is none of them is new.” We are a bit seeing the pieces fall into their place now, but they are not out of blue from any stretch. “
Neither Musk nor Tesla responded to a request for comments.
“At the moment, there are real robbers who bring real people on real roads. None of them are tesla.”
Legal failures are not a huge financial problem, at least so far, but a reputation, as they underestimate Musk’s ongoing rhetoric about Tesla being a leader in autonomous driving, despite the hard evidence to support her. Alphabet’s Waymo, which takes advantage of commercial robbery in five major US cities and tests in 10 more, has established his position as a dominant player during this time. Musk told Tesla’s results to call that the company will eventually surpass Waymo, because its system is much cheaper, though a Tesla Robbie Pilot started in Austin in June, with human security guides in the front seat, indicating a long way to go.
“At the moment, there are real robots carrying real people on real roads,” said Bryant Walker Smith, researcher AV and professor at the University of South Carolina. In July, Smith served as an expert witness for California’s DMV in his case against Tesla. “None of them are tesla.”
Before starting his Austin test program, where Tesla is based, the company’s engineers had said regulators that, despite the names automatic pilot and full self-guidance, its system is technically classified as level 2 autonomy, providing a driver help, but requires people to be ready to be ready. In the current pilot of Robotaxi, in addition to a security technology sitting in front of the vehicle, Tesla is also based on remote operators to monitor his fleet and providing helping to drive when problems arise Almost runs on an upcoming train.
Smith, who recently published a study comparing the performance of Robotia worked by Waymo in USA to those of the Baidu Technological Giant in ChinaHe noted that the insistence on the non-Musk self-guiding objectives is somewhat unique. “There were many excessive optimistic claims in early 2010,” he said. “But other companies have either delivered or mitigated their claims.”
A man comes out of a Robotaxi Tesla in Austin on June 27.
Houston Chronicle through Getty Images
In 2019, at Tesla’s ”Day of autonomy“Musk expected that the company would have a million romance on the road by 2020. This was not the case, nor does it claim it in the same fact that Teslas with the FSD would become more valuable over time, creating up to $ 30,000 in addition This year, 5.3% in July.
Musk also interrupted the dojo supercomputer chip on 2019 Autonomous Technological Information that said it would give Tesla a great advantage over competitors for processing power. This month Musk said the The company has abandoned this effort.
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In court cases, lawyers for Tesla argued that Musk’s comments are “puffry”, boasting exaggeration that is not meant to be literally taken. However, this is not something that is usually ever observed with car companies, as inappropriate concerns about customer safety can lead to massive costs of responsibility and legal implications. Tesla has largely avoided so much until recently, despite the fact that about 59 deaths have been linked to the use of the automatic pilot and FSD, according to data drawn up Tesladeaths.com.
“Innocent people have paid for Elon Musk’s lies for Tesla’s self-guiding software with their lives”, Dan O’Dowd, long time Criticist of Musk’s Autonomous Driving Requirements Who has passed his own money Super Bowl ads To call automatic pilot and FSD security imperfections, Tower. “Miami’s jury was right to punish Musk and Tesla for their relentless lies and false promises of Tesla’s self-guidance software.”
In this case, the judges found that most of the responsibility for a fatal accident that killed Naibel Benavides Leon was with George McGee, the human driver, although Tesla was 33% responsible for the role of Autopilot. The company is aimed at the decision, but opens the door to more such costumes in the future.
“Tesla wants to have both ways,” said Missy Cummings, a professor at George Mason University and AI expert who informed NHTSA on autonomous vehicles. He was also a witness or consultant on cases in Miami, San Francisco and for DMV, California. “They want to sell cars by telling people that they can be driven to automatic pilot and full self-driving, but then when someone dies, they want to say that it was all the driver’s mistake and that Tesla only claimed that the car was driving” tech, he said.
The decision in Miami “was a rebuke of this foolish approach,” he said. “The jury saw and listened to data on the Tesla test program that clearly proved that it did not do due diligence. If you are going to claim your car it may have been self-guarantee, then you should certainly be able to show test results that provide fixed elements in this claim.”
Tesla’s shares dropped about 2.5% to $ 321.12 in the afternoon on Tuesday. 20% has been reduced this year.
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