Connect with us
CA wants to make it illegal for Tesla to label FSD as FSD CA wants to make it illegal for Tesla to label FSD as FSD

News

CA wants to make it illegal for Tesla to label FSD as FSD

Credit: Whole Mars Catalog

Published

on

The California state legislature passed a bill today that would make it illegal for Tesla to label its software Full Self-Driving (FSD). The bill was inspired by the California Department of Motor Vehicle’s claim that Tesla’s FSD is “false advertising.”

The DMV would revoke Tesla’s license to make and sell EVs in the state if it got its way and said that Tesla would be “required to advertise to consumers and better educate Tesla drivers about the capabilities of its ‘Autopilot’ and ‘Full Self-Driving’ features, including cautionary warnings regarding the limitations of the features, and for other actions as appropriate given the violations.”

In other words, Tesla would have to pay for traditional advertising for its products to please the DMV. The DMV is conducting a review and Tesla plans to fight back. Tesla asked for a hearing to present its defense but the state legislator has lost patience so it decided to try to make the DMV’s rule a new state law.

The bill was sponsored by Senate Transportation Committee Chair Lena Gonzalez and passed by the Senate. The next step is for Governor Gavin Newsom to either sign it into law or veto it. Gonzalez said that Tesla’s false advertising of its technology is a safety issue and told the LA Times that she and her fellow legislators were puzzled at the DMV’s slow response to Tesla’s claims.

It should be noted that Tesla has never said FSD was fully autonomous and requires drivers to be alert and ready to take over at all times when engaging either FSD or Autopilot. For FSD Beta testers, Tesla has a strike system that will kick out a beta tester for unsafe driving once they reach five strikes.

“Are we just going to wait for another person to be killed in California?” Gonzalez said.

Advertisement
-

 

My 2.5¢

I think that Gonzalez is exaggerating, with her question. Clearly, Tesla is not responsible for all of the deaths in California.

So far, there haven’t been any deaths as a result of FSD and although the National Highway Safety Transporation Administration is investigating several accidents involving Tesla and Autopilot, those investigations are still ongoing.

So unless the NHTSA comes out and says, “Hey Tesla actually did kill those people,” Gonzalez can not say that Tesla was responsible for those deaths. I mean, she can but it wouldn’t be true.

Advertisement
-

Also, this whole thing started with the DMV wanting Tesla to traditionally advertise its products and services. If this becomes state law, would Tesla have to traditionally advertise in the state of California to be able to make and sell its vehicles in the state?  Or would the lawmakers require a name change?

Perhaps California is tired of Tesla and the prosperity that Tesla has brought to the state. Perhaps the state doesn’t want Tesla to be a job provider there.

This isn’t a safety issue, but an issue, I think, where the politicians hate Elon Musk and are letting their bias get in the way. And when politicians make decisions, it’s the people who have to suffer the consequences.

If Tesla were to decide to leave California altogether, it would hurt the state’s economy and Tesla’s employees living in the state.  I don’t think Tesla would actually do that but it might, especially if it’s banned from selling cars because the state doesn’t like the name FSD.

Advertisement
-

Also, Elon could just rebrand it to not-FSD or not-FSD-yet.

Note: Johnna is a Tesla shareholder and supports its mission. 

Your feedback is important. If you have any comments, or concerns, or see a typo, you can email me at johnna@teslarati.com. You can also reach me on Twitter @JohnnaCrider1

 

Johnna Crider is a Baton Rouge writer covering Tesla, Elon Musk, EVs, and clean energy & supports Tesla's mission. Johnna also interviewed Elon Musk and you can listen here

Advertisement
Comments

Elon Musk

Elon Musk’s Boring Company has big plans for Las Vegas by year’s end

Elon Musk’s Boring Company says Vegas Loop stations will double by year end once again.

Published

on

By

the boring company's vegas loop entrance

The Boring Company says the Vegas Loop’s station count will double by the end of the year, tying the target to a hiring push for drivers and operations managers in Las Vegas. “Vegas Loop is getting bigger – the station count will double by end of year!” the company wrote in a post on X, attaching listings for a Loop driver and a senior Loop operations manager.

The number checks out against what’s already public, with the Vegas Loop currently running 14 operational stations, while the Boring Company’s own project page lists 28 as the target for the end of 2026.

Much of that growth is tied to tunnels that are already built and waiting on an opening date. A roughly two-mile dual tunnel system under Paradise Road, connecting Westgate to a planned station at 4744 Paradise Road, is expected to open in stages over the coming weeks, Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority chief executive Steve Hill told the Review-Journal last week. New stations at 4744 Paradise, Virgin Hotels Las Vegas, and the former Gordon Biersch site would come online with it, several of them built to speed up rides to Harry Reid International Airport ahead of Formula 1’s Las Vegas Grand Prix.

Clark County entitled Vegas Loop for 123 stations after approving 19 more in August, as Teslarati reported at the time. Entitlement and construction move at different speeds on this project, so county approval alone does not guarantee a station opens on any particular schedule.

Clark County approved 18 additional stations back in 2023, part of a plan that pushed the system’s target to 69 stations across 65 miles, doubling the network on paper for the first time. The target kept climbing after that, to roughly 93 stations by the end of that year and 104 by last year, before August’s vote pushed it to 123. This week’s announcement is the first time that doubling language has been attached to stations actually running rather than stations merely approved on a county map.

Ridership gives some sense of what a denser network could carry. Boring Company executive Mike Baier said in July that the Vegas Loop already moves around 40,000 passengers on busy convention days, a total that tops most light rail systems in the country despite the system running on a fraction of its planned tunnel mileage. Company leadership has projected ridership could triple or quadruple once the airport connector tunnels fully open.

Advertisement
-

Boring Company did not say which stations beyond those already under construction would open by year end, or whether the hiring push points to a fleet expansion alongside the new stops.

Continue Reading

News

Tesla looks to expand into new Asian market, strengthening presence

Published

on

Credit: Tesla Asia | X

Tesla is looking to expand into a new Asian market, strengthening its presence in a region that has been bullish on electric vehicles as a whole.

Tesla officially filed to establish a subsidiary of its business in Vietnam, a report from Reuters suggests. Tesla named the entity “Tesla Motors Vietnam Limited Liability Company.”

The planned entrance into the Vietnamese market is a good sign and move for Tesla, as it has become one of the fastest-growing EV markets in Southeast Asia. It is already among the leaders in the region in both volume and electrification rate. In the first half of this year, Vietnam led Southeast Asia in battery-electric passenger car sales at about 116,000 units, up about 71 percent year over year.

Currently, Vietnamese EV drivers rely on VinFast’s V-Green network, which has about 150,000 ports, but these are primarily reserved for VinFast vehicles. Public third-party charging is fragmented and unreliable for those who do not own chargers that are dedicated to a certain manufacturer’s vehicles.

Tesla has had mixed results in Asia as a whole, and as China remains the core part of its story in Asia, the company is evidently working on expanding its footprint on the continent. Tesla’s domestic retail deliveries fell about 12 percent year over year through the first eight months of 2026.

Model Y remains a standout individual product, holding its position as one of, if not the, best-selling vehicles in the world. However, Model 3 has been weaker than it has been in past years.

Advertisement
-

Gigafactory Shanghai, the company’s Chinese production facility, still performs very well. Wholesale volumes in terms of exports have more than doubled and now exceed domestic retail sales; Giga Shanghai builds vehicles for Europe, South Korea, Japan, Australia, and other markets. South Korea has been an explicit bright spot, with registrations doubling year-to-date and Tesla frequently appearing as the top imported brand.

Tesla just did something in South Korea that no foreign carmaker has ever done

Tesla’s entrance into Vietnam signals a broader effort to take over the Asian market and grab more market share from rivals.

Continue Reading

Elon Musk

Elon Musk’s companies made up with Apple but OpenAI still on the hook

Elon Musk’s X Corp and SpaceXAI dropped their Apple antitrust suit, leaving OpenAI as defendant.

Published

on

By

X Corp and SpaceXAI, Elon Musk’s social platform and AI venture, have dropped Apple from the antitrust lawsuit that they filed against the iPhone maker and OpenAI last year. In a filing in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas, attorneys for X and SpaceXAI moved to dismiss the Apple portion of the case, first reported by Reuters. The filing does not explain why the companies are dropping Apple or say whether a settlement was reached.

X and SpaceXAI say they intend to keep pursuing the case against OpenAI, which remains a defendant. That resolves the dispute with one company while leaving the core allegation intact against the other, with no public accounting of what changed in between.

The lawsuit dates to August 2025, when xAI and X sued Apple and OpenAI, arguing that Apple’s decision to make ChatGPT the only generative AI chatbot built into iOS gave OpenAI an unfair structural advantage. The complaint claimed ChatGPT controlled roughly 80 percent of the chatbot market at the time, while Grok held only a few percent. It sought billions of dollars in damages and asked the court to unwind the arrangement.

Elon Musk’s xAI and X file antitrust suit against Apple and OpenAI over AI exclusivity

The filing followed weeks of Musk publicly complaining that Grok and X weren’t appearing in Apple’s “Must Have” App Store section, though Grok ranked second in the Productivity category and X ranked first in News at the time. He accused Apple of “playing politics” and warned of immediate legal action before following through days later.

Apple and OpenAI tried to get the case thrown out, but a federal judge denied both motions in November, ruling the dispute was better suited to summary judgment than an early dismissal. That decision sent the case into discovery, which is presumably what led to Monday’s filing.

Advertisement
-

The timing is notable given how Musk’s sentiment toward Apple has shifted, with Musk noting that he was open to letting Grok power a revamped Siri after a user suggested Apple replace its aging assistant with xAI’s model.

xAI, the AI venture Musk folded into X Corp last year, has since combined with SpaceX under the SpaceXAI brand. That structure now puts X, Grok and SpaceX’s rocket and satellite businesses under one roof as Musk pushes his AI ambitions beyond chatbots.

OpenAI remains the sole defendant going forward, and Musk’s companies have not said if there’s any changes to those original claims. Apple and OpenAI did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the filing.

Advertisement
-
Continue Reading