Toronto, Ontario — Tesla has responded to allegations of fraud levelled against it as part of a class-action lawsuit, with Tesla’s lawyers writing “mere failure to realize a long-term, aspirational goal is not fraud.”
This follows a string of lawsuits across multiple states and countries, where consumers and lawmakers allege that the company’s advertising of their Full-Self Driving (FSD) autonomous vehicle add-on was deliberately misleading, wrote CNN in an article published on Monday.
While some lawsuits allege that FSD and Tesla’s autopilot systems were unsafe and did not fulfill its purpose, Tesla’s website explains that these systems are closer to driver assistance programs than fully self-driving software or the autopilot systems featured on aircraft.
Unsurprisingly, this has resulted in several class-action lawsuits alleging that the electric vehicle manufacturer misled customers—Tesla CEO, Elon Musk’s claims that Tesla’s would be fully self driving date back to 2015. One particular tweet from 2016 claims that a Tesla car would be able to drive itself across the United States “by next year.”
Since then, Tesla has continued to market its driving assistance systems under the FSD and Autopilot brand names, despite never producing a vehicle that can legally drive itself.
According to CNN, the September lawsuit was initially filed by the California law firm, Cotchett, Pitre & McCarthy. It cited misleading advertising by the company, crashes involving Tesla’s driving assistance technology and tweets by Musk promising advances to FSD technology that were not true.
Other legal defences employed by Tesla include a terms and conditions agreement, where those who ordered Tesla vehicles could not file their claims in public courts or class-action lawsuits.
Ironically, Tesla’s lawyers argued that the plaintiffs were not directly harmed by Tesla’s vehicles as they could not drive themselves, despite installing and using the company’s US$15,000 Full Self-Driving system.
