California DMV accuses Tesla of making false claims about Autopilot and Full-Self Driving - The Verge
The California DMV accuses Tesla of making misleading claims about its vehicles’ Autopilot and Full Self-Driving features. The agency alleges Tesla’s description of the features implies that they make vehicles fully autonomous.
California’s Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) has accused Tesla of falsely advertising its Autopilot and Full Self-Driving (FSD) features, as reported earlier by the Los Angeles Times (via CNBC). The agency filed two separate complaints with the state’s Office of Administrative Hearings on July 28th, alleging Tesla made “untrue or misleading” claims about its vehicles’ autonomous driving capabilities.
In the filings, the DMV claims the names of Tesla’s Autopilot and FSD features, as well as the language the company uses to describe them, wrongly imply that cars equipped with the technology can operate autonomously. The DMV specifically points to the information on Tesla’s Autopilot page, which states its FSD system “is designed to be able to conduct short and long distance trips with no action required by the person in the driver’s seat” and is capable of “navigating urban streets, complex intersections and freeways.”
Tesla includes Autopilot in all of its vehicles, which comes with features like traffic-aware cruise control and autosteer. Drivers have to pay $12,000 extra for Tesla’s FSD system, an option that adds auto-parking, auto lane changing, the ability for drivers to summon a vehicle from a parking space to where they’re standing, and access to a beta program to test upcoming features. Tesla’s FSD and Autopilot don’t make vehicles fully autonomous, though, and still require drivers to pay attention to the road and keep their hands on the wheel at all times.
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