Tesla failed to persuade an administrative judge to dismiss claims by a California regulator that the company overstated its vehicles\u2019 self-driving capabilities \u2014 one of several ongoing regulatory investigations of the electric car maker\u2019s marketing.<\/p>\n
The California Department of Motor Vehicles has\u00a0alleged\u00a0that Tesla disseminated false statements about its \u201cAutopilot\u201d and \u201cFull Self-Driving\u201d driver-assistance features, leading customers to believe they are more advanced than they are.<\/p>\n
Monday\u2019s ruling comes less than a month after a federal judge in San Francisco ruled that Tesla must face a proposed class-action lawsuit by consumers making similar claims.<\/p>\n
While neither ruling addressed the merits of claims against Tesla, they represent a fresh setback for the carmaker just as chief executive officer Elon Musk has staked the company\u2019s future on autonomy.<\/p>\n
Musk declared in April that Tesla is \u201cgoing balls to the wall for autonomy\u201d while committing the car maker to a next-generation, self-driving vehicle concept called the robotaxi.<\/p>\n
The billionaire entrepreneur has talked a big game about autonomy for over a decade, and has persuaded customers to pay thousands of dollars for its Full Self-Driving, or FSD, feature.<\/p>\n
The name is a misnomer \u2014 FSD requires constant supervision and doesn\u2019t render vehicles autonomous \u2014 but Musk has repeatedly predicted it\u2019s on the verge of measuring up to the branding.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, the company faces federal probes into whether defects in Autopilot have contributed to fatal crashes, as well as investigations by federal prosecutors and the Securities and Exchange Commission into whether Tesla made misleading claims about the feature to the public.<\/p>\n
In the DMV case, Tesla\u2019s attorneys argued at a June 7 hearing that the statements at issue aren\u2019t misleading given numerous disclosures that the features require active supervision from drivers.<\/p>\n
Tesla\u2019s lawyers also contended that marketing its vehicles as having full self-driving \u201ccapabilities\u201d is not an assertion that the cars are currently fully autonomous, but rather a statement that they will be capable of driving themselves in the future after software updates.<\/p>\n
Administrative Law Judge Juliet Cox sided with the DMV\u2019s lawyer, Greg Call, who argued that the case shouldn\u2019t be thrown out before the DMV has had a chance to introduce its evidence at a hearing later this year.<\/p>\n
Tesla didn\u2019t show that the California DMV \u201cnecessarily will be unable to present any relevant evidence,\u201d Cox wrote in the order.<\/p>\n
Tesla and the California Department of Motor Vehicles didn\u2019t immediately respond to requests for comment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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