It's a Scam

It looks like people are finally looking into Elon Musk's repeated lies about the self-driving capabilities of Tesla vehicles.

He's been promising that self driving were 18-24 months away for over a decade.

It's clear that he has been lying just as much as Elizabeth Holmes at Theranos, but he wasn't stealing from rich people, so it's alright:

A growing number of investigations and legal complaints are targeting Tesla’s claims that its cars are “Full Self-Driving,” scrutinizing the company’s decisions to brand and market its suite of driver-assistance technologies for evidence of potential fraud.

The U.S. Justice Department is probing the company’s marketing of both Full Self-Driving and Autopilot, Tesla’s advanced driver-assistance systems. California’s Department of Motor Vehicles is also reviewing those features in light of provisions including a 2022 law prohibiting companies from using marketing and language that would “lead a reasonable person to believe that the feature allows the vehicle to function as an autonomous vehicle.” Tesla has received inquiries from the Securities and Exchange Commission related to its claims to investors, according to news reports and public filings. And a civil lawsuit in California represents drivers who say they were defrauded by the company’s claims and are seeking refunds and damages over their purchases.

At issue is whether the term Full Self-Driving implies that the cars are autonomous — meaning drivers don’t need to pay attention. In recent court filings, Tesla says the cars are not “autonomous” and that its user manuals and sensors alert drivers to the need to hold the wheel and keep their eyes on the road. Yet in a post on X last month, Tesla’s head of Autopilot, Ashok Elluswamy, used the word, writing that the cars “have the most autonomous capability compared to any production car.”

Musk has promised full autonomy.  Not only has he promised full autonomy, he has promised that Tesla owners would be able to make money by using their fully autonomous cars as taxis to generate money.

………

Tesla promised customers years ago that this upgrade would turn cars into an appreciable asset — meaning their value would increase over time — after they one day become autonomous through a software update. That has yet to happen, and that’s what the California lawsuit is about.

“Contrary to Tesla’s repeated promises that it would have a fully self-driving car within months or a year, Tesla has never been remotely close to achieving that goal,” reads the civil complaint in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, which is seeking class-action certification. In addition to financial remedies, it asks for an injunction prohibiting Tesla from continuing to market its technology in “deceptive and misleading” ways.

“One of the arguments we make is you can’t get more self-driving than fully self-driving,” said attorney Andrew Kirtley, who is representing customers in the Autopilot class-action suit.

Among the statements under scrutiny, according to interviews and documents: Musk’s 2019 pronouncement that Tesla would put 1 million robotaxis on the road by 2020 and Tesla’s assertions that its vehicles have all the hardware needed to deploy the Full Self-Driving feature. The Northern California civil lawsuit specifically cites Musk’s assertion on a 2016 conference call that a Tesla would be able to drive itself from Los Angeles to New York City “by the end of next year without the need for a single touch.”

Yeah, that's an explicit and specific promise of a car driving on its own.

Throw his flabby white ass into jail.

Federal officials have focused at least in part on a 2016 Tesla marketing video, set to the Rolling Stones song “Paint It Black,” that purported to show a Tesla maneuvering near the company’s headquarters on its own, which came up repeatedly in the interview with Bernal. “The person in the driver’s seat is only there for legal reasons,” the 2016 video’s opening slide reads. “He is not doing anything. The car is driving itself.”

A Tesla official later acknowledged, after reporting by the New York Times, that the video was staged and the car in fact crashed during filming.

Yeah, that's an explicit and specific promise of a car driving on its own.

Throw his flabby white ass into jail.

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Tesla, in response to another lawsuit, called the video an “aspirational” demonstration of its software’s potential capabilities.

Similar videos have been used in other cases — even against another electric vehicle manufacturer. Trevor Milton, the founder of electric truck start-up Nikola, was found guilty of misleading investors in a federal fraud case that alleged a video demonstration of its truck’s capabilities, in reality, showed the truck rolling downhill rather than propelling itself on its own.

Yeah, that's an explicit and specific promise of a car driving on its own.

Throw his flabby white ass into jail.

………

In 2019, Musk made another audacious promise: to put 1 million robotaxis on the road by 2020, in part by utilizing the privately owned Teslas sitting in people’s driveways. “The fleet wakes up with an over-the-air update,” Musk said at the time. 

Yeah, that's an explicit and specific promise of a car driving on its own.

Throw his flabby white ass into jail.