- California judge refuses to dismiss claims by California’s DMV that Tesla had overstated its cars self-driving powers.
- The DMV has accused Tesla of misleading customers by making false statements about the capabilities of its EVs’ Autopilot and Full-Self Driving systems.
- Ruling comes a month after Tesla failed to have a class action also centered around self-driving claims dismissed.
Tesla’s attempts to have a judge dismiss claims from the California DMV that it exaggerated its cars’ self-driving abilities have failed, opening the door to a formal hearing.
The legal battle dates back to July 2022 when the DMV accused Tesla of misleading car buyers by overstating the effectiveness of its Autopilot and Full Self-Driving assistance systems. It claimed at the time that Tesla was promoting its driver aids cars so-equipped “could not…and cannot now, operate as autonomous vehicles,” and suggested that punishments for the automaker could include suspending its license to sell cars, or handing over compensation to drivers.
Related: Tesla Fights DMV’s Autopilot Case, Cites Free Speech Violations And Prior Approval
Tesla had wanted Judge Juliet Cox to dismiss the accusations based on the information already available to her, but Cox decided that the case shouldn’t be dismissed until a formal hearing has taken place, Reuters reports.
The ruling by Judge Cox comes less than a month after Tesla failed to have a similar case dropped. In May a federal judge in San Francisco gave the go-ahead for a class-action lawsuit which contends that Tesla hoodwinked buyers into paying for FSD with the promise that their cars would at some point in the near future have true self-driving abilities.
Tesla is going “balls to the wall for autonomy,” CEO Elon Musk said in April, and this August will reveal its highly anticipated robotaxi. But Tesla’s self-driving ambitions are constantly under fire. In addition to dealing with the DMV case and the class action, Tesla is the subject of federal investigations looking at whether Autopilot contributed to fatal accidents, and a Securities and Exchange Commission probe considering whether Tesla defrauded investors by overstating self-driving abilities.
Text on Tesla’s retail website states that both Autopilot and FSD require drivers to pay attention to the road and do not make the EVs capable of driving by themselves.