Tesla, Musk sued for misleading consumers over Autopilot: FSD

SAN FRANCISCO: A Tesla owner has sued the electric car maker, saying the company and its CEO Elon Musk are “deceptively and misleadingly” marketing the Autopilot and “Full Self-Driving” software.

Briggs Matsko from California said that he paid a $5,000 premium for his 2018 Tesla Model X to get ‘Enhanced Autopilot’, which was sold as a precursor to FSD software that now costs $15,000 but is still in Beta phase.

“Plaintiff brings this consumer class action lawsuit to hold Tesla and its representatives, including CEO Elon Musk, accountable for years of making misleading and deceptive statements regarding the company’s advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) technology,” read the lawsuit that was filed in the federal court in San Francisco.

For years, “Tesla has deceptively and misleadingly marketed its ADAS technology” as autonomous driving technology under various names, including “Autopilot,” “Enhanced Autopilot,” and “Full Self-Driving Capability”, the latter two of which Tesla charges consumers thousands of additional dollars to add to their new vehicle, the lawsuit claimed.

The Tesla owner said that Tesla has deceived and misled consumers regarding the current abilities of its ADAS technology and by representing that it was perpetually on the cusp of perfecting that technology and finally fulfilling its promise of producing a fully self-driving car.

Tesla has come under heavy scrutiny on the controversial Autopilot advanced driver assistance system that has allegedly killed many, with both the US federal and state regulators turning up the heat on electric car-maker.

Last month, the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) in California accused Musk-run Tesla of running fake claims about its Autopilot and FSD features.

“Tesla has yet to produce anything even remotely approaching a fully self-driving car,” Matsko said.