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Comment by fallingknife | Hacker News Reader

I think that's a stretch. FSD is a product name. There seems to be no expectation or legal requirement that product names be literal descriptions of the functionality. So long as everybody knows what they are paying for is not an actual fully autonomous driving system, it wouldn't be fraud IMO. And I'm pretty sure everybody knows it, especially given the safety features that don't allow you to take your hands off the wheel.

Would you call all of these "unbreakable wine glasses" fraud? https://www.amazon.com/s?k=unbreakable+wine+glasses I think we would all agree that not one of them is actually unbreakable. But if someone sued for fraud because they were able to break one, they would probably be laughed out of court.

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It's an even bigger stretch to pretend that FSD is just some sort of jokey trademark and not something which the CEO has repeatedly insisted is the intended purpose of the feature and a forthcoming release to drivers who purchase that option, probably by $currentyear+1, something confirmed in only slightly more cautious terms by the product marketing pages.

I imagine the vendors of unbreakable wine glasses would probably be in trouble if they charged $15k and argued that they'd receive over the air updates to Kevlar as soon as the regulatory approvals had gone through...

If the wine glasses were sold with the promise that in one year I'd receive a solution to apply to them that would truly make them unbreakable? Yes, I would call it fraud.

It is also possible that the wine glasses are unbreakable in the context of being used as a wine glass, i.e. they will not break if they fall from a the height where they would normally be used or stored, which is a reasonable assumption to make.

Whereas for a "full" self driving car, Tesla obviously has not (and probably will not) deliver a car that can fully drive itself in the context of normal car usage.

>FSD is a product name

So you think the Justice Dept. has a formal investigation ongoing for which the main argument hinges around the name Full Self Driving? Umm..okay.

>So long as everybody knows what they are paying for is not an actual fully autonomous driving system

The expectation is that it will be. And, I admit, it might be, one day. But at what point is selling some potential future promise fraud? Over an infinite horizon, you could get away with any claim.

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