Tesla owner won $10k in court for Tesla's FSD lies. Tesla is still fighting him

I (also in CA) lemon returned a Mercedes EV. Same kind of thing, they could not fix repeated software issues w/ the collision avoidance features.

I called them up, gave a short explanation, and they sent me to their vendor who handles the returns, no issues. Full price (including tax etc) back.

AIUI, they know not to fight, since in CA when they loose, they pay your legal fees.

At this point I want basically no driver assistance features except maybe an automatic cruise control speed adjustment to vehicle directly in the lane ahead based on forward facing radar data. Many of them seem to be much more troublesome or buggy than they're worth.

One reason I love my mid-00s Lexus SUV. All the luxury features you want, but clean instrument cluster with no driving assistance tech to break or get in the way. Great visual clarity on the road, 300K miles on original drivetrain without issues, and a beast in the snow/inclement weather. Only downside is mileage, but I legit wouldn't trade it for a new car.

Right, I've also heard your (1) above expressed as "she basically stole from the wrong set of people -- rich and powerful".

Kinda-sorta off-topic (but not really), it reminds me of Charlie Javice. She sold a database of college loan applicants to JP Morgan for $175 million -- it later turned out that she had fabricated most of that data.

There's a corpus of work that could help there. Tesla was forced to add disclaimers like "Elon's statements are aspirational and do not necessarily represent engineering reality", as well as quotes from him on investor calls where he's described (in 2009, I believe) FSD as a "solved problem, we're just implementing", and five years later, "Our highest priority is solving the problem of FSD". But it seems possible that there comes a time when an ambitious prosecuting attorney or attorney general pushes for this and the discovery that comes with (though I have near zero confidence that even then, that discovery won't already be thoroughly crippled by document retention policies or outright fuckery by Elon).

"Yeah, so they won't be giving the Bank of America any more trouble, capisce?" -- Bank of America

Yea you are right. Google failed me once again.

Even then they're playing fuck fuck games. People have pushed on this and been told "We won't actually upgrade your hardware until you pay for FSD first" which is also horseshit. It wasn't "contains all the hardware necessary for FSD, provided you've bought it", it was "contains all the hardware necessary for FSD, full stop".

I get why Tesla will resist this, but a part of me admires the pettiness (but reasonableness) of a bunch of owners demanding the hardware upgrade and then never buying FSD.

I'm reminded of the adage about getting 80% of the way through shipping a product, and then doing the other 80%...

I live in a suburban area in a cold climate. Based on what I've seen of "FSD," it's essentially unusable on most of the roads near me, and doubly so in winter. This is even true on larger highways/freeways, as when snow falls the camera systems can't see the lane markings. Not to mention the fact that some of those roads are so badly maintained that the lane markings are faint to nonexistent.

I don't think Tesla can honestly claim 99%, or 95%, or even 50% of the way to FSD until they solve these issues. Until they do, it's just a fun toy. After all, years ago they were claiming that you'd be able to "summon" a Tesla sans driver from LA to NYC. What happens if there's a winter storm on the way?

> HW4 as 99% of the way to true FSD

If we describe current LLMs 99% of the way to AGI and full sentience then https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ELIZA was probably 90% of the way.

> If we describe HW4 as 99% of the way to true FSD

What part of that final one per cent includes "will not blow through railroad crossing gates when a train is approaching"?

Or "will work in a Pittsburgh winter's night on a snow covered, poorly line marked road"?

Mhm. Yeah I'd definitely trust the opinion of someone who has never driven a HW4 Tesla over someone who has, because (checks notes) all owners of one of the top 3 best selling vehicles on the planet over the past four years are nazis.

This is a solved problem. They have plenty of bagholders willing to donate to the cause.

You're right, thanks for the catch.

I'm of the opinion that it'd be fair to treat that money as an investment in Tesla at that time. In my case, the $8K in Dec 2016 would translate to them being on the hook for ~$260K today.

Which is why I think Tesla shouldn't be slow-rolling their doing whatever is necessary to get those of us who pre-bought FSD up to the HW4 level. HW4 won't physically fit in a 2016 Model S? Give us a 2026 Model X (they dropped Model S), and you're still $160K ahead.

I've been surprised that there hasn't been a major class action about the FSD. I've been very happy with the car, but the FSD was outright fraud.

Inflation is part of interest; you don't get reimbursed for both separately.

It starts from the day of judgement

The point is that if you have to say it's made with real cheese, the food is complete junk. Even though the cheese may technically be real.

They even banned the term "soy milk"

It's now called "non dairy soy beverage" on every carton.

It may be real cheese, but the cheese may not be where you expected it to be. A friend of mine was served a snack pack on a flight that had some breadsticks and a cheese dip, and the box said it was made with real cheese.

She read the ingredients list and found that the real cheese was part of the breadsticks. The cheese dip had no cheese.

No, you see, if it says "cheese" then I would assume it's real cheese. If it says "real cheese" I'm immediately suspicious.

I don't think they can, but at the same time they can appeal a judgement that's unfavorable to them. Appeals in small claims allow for having attorneys present, at least in California, and it's another day in court that you'll have to argue your case.

>Is there a fuck-you option by which a large company can force escalating costs on you through small claims?

It'll vary by state, in general I don't think so? Or at least not if (as apparently was the case here) they don't have anything preventing it in some contractual agreement. In some states a party can appeal to a superior court, but that's not a new trial redo, the judge simply reviews what happened and see if it looks reasonably kosher. If it was they still lose.

The big check on small claims cases is, well, that they're small claims. Nobody could go after a full refund for the cost of a vehicle there for example. If you look at the maximum amounts by state [0], in lots of them even the $10k here would be above the limit (Kentucky is still at $2500 max). My state also was quite low until fairly recently, just because there's no automatic adjustment for inflation and $2500 in 1980 went a lot further than now and state legislature hadn't gotten around to adjusting it up for decades.

And in small claims the winner can generally recover reasonable costs and fees on top of damages (as happened here). And it's 50 different states a company with a national problem would have to get separate attorneys for to deal with. It's one of the few places where the asymmetry is somewhat more towards companies, without any need for the plaintiff to get a lawyer themselves and given that they're almost always going to be physically much closer, it's just a lot more costly for a company to drag it out. They're not going to be setting any useful precedent vs any other small claims, and the max amount is small enough that it's rarely going to be worth it if their claims are weak. Someone angry enough to go to small claims is much more likely to stick to it through sheer bloody mindedness, which is basically all they actually need.

I think normally companies simply just don't create enough of a small claims problem for themselves for any of this to be more than a rounding error. Elon Musk may have somehow managed it though?

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0: https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/small-claims-suits-h...

Some people only bought the sandwich because of the chips. If chips weren't offered they would have bought lunch from someone else across the street.

> Gawiser filed a “writ of execution” (another $240 in court fees) just yesterday, which would allow Texas law enforcement to seize and sell off enough of Tesla’s property as would be required to pay the judgment against them.

Since they probably won't do business with anyone who owns that car anymore, take a battery and run.

Tesla FSD is vulnerable to RoadRunner and Wile E. Coyote style tricks.

Well ... yes. By that logic it is the case. It applies to humans too - if a human slams their car into a concrete wall then the human was still driving the car. They did a bad job of it, but they were in fact driving.

A car being driven autonomously doesn't imply much about the quality of that driving. They're still going to make bad decisions and have accidents, just like humans do (a friend of mine died slamming their car into a tree). There is probably some minimum where we'd say that it isn't really driving because it can't do anything right, but modern self driving systems are past that.

Both statements can be true. Human vs self driving cars is a different classification between good and bad driving. Humans can slam into a wall too.

Here's more than a decade of claims from Tesla on self driving vehicles summarized in one handy table:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_predictions_for_autono...

>Also a school zone is one of the most basic things the car should be able to handle. If it can’t do that, it’s not ready for public use.

Humans don't always follow the law driving through school zones. And when humans speed through a school zone, the human is definitely driving the car. Are we ready to let humans drive on public roads?

The argument has to go into the magnitude of the problem to get anywhere meaningful.

Sort of how programming isn't the same as writing code — it also involves a bunch of other thing like all the design and planning work.

It's a common misconception because the thing is called "full self driving."

So if the law says that a human in the car has to be responsible then it is impossible for a self driving car to exist. I do not think tying the definition to legal liability is right.

I don't see why self driving couldn't just be steering and pedals. It would be pretty limiting but it would be able to drive itself in a circle at least.

The bottom line is, no one else is even remotely close to that experience for the driver, liable or not. Probably with good reason, as every other car company actually listen to their lawyers.

Mercedes-Benz accepts full liability when their Drive Pilot autonomous system is active.

https://www.mbusa.com/en/drive-pilot

That is self driving, but a basic implementation of it. It's like a chess AI that plays random moves. It is able to play chess, but its performance is very limited.