The currently enabled features require active driver supervision and do not make the vehicle autonomous. The activation and use of these features are dependent on achieving reliability far in excess of human drivers as demonstrated by billions of miles of experience, as well as regulatory approval, which may take longer in some jurisdictions. As these self-driving features evolve, your car will be continuously upgraded through over-the-air software updates.
That doesn't matter. You don't get claim something which is clearly false in commonsensical interpretation, but get away with it because the fine print.
You can't say "the sky is green[1]" and then in footnote [1] say "by green, we mean blue." That's not allowed, and the FTC is supposed to prosecute this. You can say "the sky is cerulean[1]" and then note that although cerulean can be categorized as either green or blue, in this context you mean blue. But calling the feature "full self driving" when it is not full self driving is more akin to outright calling the sky green.
I understand it. That is why I have emphasized above ("in terms of the naming / use of the FSD term, not the actual feature set") that, regardless of the small print / legalese / disclaimers / clarifications etc., I believe that using confusing and not matching current capabilities terms should not be allowed. I might be wrong (as I'm not a lawyer), but I think that it is well within FTC's jurisdiction and power to enforce both truthfulness and clarity of advertising in the U.S.
I wonder if they could try to switch to something like "Fully-assisted Self Driving" to keep the original FSD accronym, if the term ends up being regulated.
Use of an acronym requires a prior use of a relevant definition (spell out), which is the term. The expression "Fully-assisted Self Driving" is no less incorrect / ambiguous than the original one. Therefore, Tesla would continue violating the same principle of truth and clarity in advertising as well as, perhaps, some policies and/or laws.
Not to mention the Term “Full Self Driving” was originally created to disambiguate “self driving”, which may still require driver assistance. FSD was sold as a robotaxi software that could make you money while you sleep, while it has always been nothing more than a level 2 system, as Tesla admits in the fine print and to regulators. Musk on Twitter contradicts this consistently.
FSD also mentioned/implied that driver assistance could be required, but did mention/omply that it should be good enough for someone to take a trip without intervention. Practically speaking it's just a larger feature set than EAP/AP.
Edit - Here's a link to the old FSD fine print. They say the system is designed to take trips with no input from the driver, but they don't guarantee that, which to implies FSD is just meant to be good level 2 driver assistance.
To be fair, Tesla could consider stuff like TACC to be level 3+ (no beta status, no disclaimer about always paying attention, etc), but it's definitely not level 4 because they require driver input and nag then disable without it.
The robotaxi/Tesla network idea was separate from EAP/AP and FSD and was only mentioned on the Tesla website for a short period of time with even more fine print/legalese (it was pie in the sky, which I imagine is why they took it down).
Someone can successfully sue Subway for advertising a footlong sub that isn't always 12"...but Tesla and FSD...slapping fine print lets them off the hook...
I’m shocked they even settled. Probably they felt it was the cheapest action, but such a lawsuit feels quite predatory. An important legal concept is harms done, and as this Forbes article points out, there really weren’t any material harms done.
Now Tesla on the other hand, absolutely falls into the realm of material harms done…
And that was immediately followed up by a sentence talking very reasonably about slight loaf-to-loaf variation, which is the real argument being made there and elsewhere and in court.
The actual lawsuit never went to court, they settled and then the settlement was overturned, and my claim was just that this definition was part of the reason the suit didn't work. What more are you expecting out of this?
>judge ruled on it, so there were definitely things being said in court
The judge ruled on the settlement, nor the actual merits of the case.
I only called it their legal argument as you did not understand what I was saying, I probably could have worded that better. It was their stated position on the issue, and is very similar to the "fully self driving" being discussed.
I am done with this, if you want to think I oversold Subway's claim, I disagree but fine.
> It was their stated position on the issue, and is very similar to the "fully self driving" being discussed.
I think if people were pulling "fully self driving" out of some random facebook post that discusses the capabilities in the next sentence, then the complaint would be something to sigh at and ignore.
The currently enabled features require active driver supervision and do not make the vehicle autonomous. The activation and use of these features are dependent on achieving reliability far in excess of human drivers as demonstrated by billions of miles of experience, as well as regulatory approval, which may take longer in some jurisdictions. As these self-driving features evolve, your car will be continuously upgraded through over-the-air software updates.