View all comments First, the claim that Autopilot should be treated as a driver assist system, like in airplanes, feels sound, especially since Tesla has been clear about that since the start. But Full Self-Driving is a different beast with a different name. And Tesla has been saying its cars would be capable of extreme unmanned feats for quite some time now – for example, that you’d be able to summon your car across the country by 2018 (this would be level 5 on the SAE scale). Or that Tesla would have its own unmanned ride-sharing service that would turn your car into an “appreciating asset”, to the point where Tesla would stop selling cars and instead keep them all as taxis – so you better buy one now, cause it’ll be your last chance. Those could be impressive things that people might pay money for, and did, and Tesla has all of that money and has been using it for years, without delivering the promised capabilities to the buyers. And it has walked back some of those promises – whereas originally the Model 3 was supposed to be usable as a robotaxi, now Tesla is about to unveil a model it’s been calling “robotaxi”, suggesting that the Model 3 and other Tesla vehicles will not be usable in the manner in which they were sold – which sounds a lot like false advertising. It’s one thing to do this when a technology is new and taking time to work out, but Tesla still makes buyers think that this software is just around the corner. So if the court feels like stepping in and stopping Tesla from doing that, or potentially adding monetary damages for owners who have been slighted by the untimely delivery of the software they bought, that seems like it would be a reasonable action for a court to take. Add Electrek to your Google News feed.