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Tesla owner, ACLU win injunction against DMV in ‘offensive’ vanity plate dispute
A Tesla Model 3 owner won a preliminary injunction on Friday against the Rhode Island DMV in a dispute involving the use of a vanity plate displaying the message “FKGAS.” In response to an anonymous complaint earlier this year, the agency belatedly determined the messaging was offensive and that the plate must be returned. However, a lawsuit was filed in partnership with the state’s American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) branch contesting the decision on constitutional grounds.
The “very essence of vanity plates is personal expression,” wrote U.S. District Judge Mary McElroy in the decision granting the injunction, agreeing that the lawsuit’s case was likely to succeed on the merits. “The revocation of the license plate, which would prohibit Mr. Carroll from expressing his views on fossil fuel propulsion of motor vehicles, would stifle him in an irreparable way.” The judge also suggested the overall authority of DMVs to reject “offensive” vanity plates was unconstitutional, according to a report on the case in the publication The Providence Journal.
This initial victory ensures that the owner, Sean Carroll, may continue displaying the vanity tag until a full case decision is made. “I am thrilled with Judge McElroy’s decision on my First Amendment right allowing me to express my views through my vanity plate,” Carroll said in a statement published by the Rhode Island ACLU. The Model 3 owner also acknowledged that, while the plate’s full translation was intended as “fake gas,” it could also be perceived as conveying the message “fuck gas,” a meaning he supported as well.
In a significant decision for free speech advocates and vanity plate enthusiasts alike, a federal judge said a Scituate man can keep the "FKGAS" plate on his Tesla for now. The RI DMV has tried to cancel it. https://t.co/WEogyg9EGZ
— Brian Amaral (@bamaral44) October 4, 2020
In the lawsuit, Carroll’s motivation for obtaining the vanity plate was “because he wished to convey, through the license plate, a personal philosophical and political message concerning his views about gasoline-powered automobiles and the environment.” He previously explained that the idea came after a conversation with his daughter during which he described how the all-electric vehicle was powered by their home’s solar panels. His daughter remarked that the car runs on “fake gas,” and thereby the “FKGAS” vanity plate was born.
“‘FKGAS’ is my personal statement challenging everyone to look at the world differently. Gas isn’t the only option when it comes to powering your vehicle,” Carroll said in a statement to The Providence Journal. “My choice for a vanity plate has already brought more attention to alternative fuel sources and electric vehicles.”
As another important part of Carroll’s case, the DMV already issued the Model 3’s plate twice before deciding to recall it, citing “inappropriate language.” The Tesla owner had driven with the message on his vehicle for at least five months before the agency reneged in response to an anonymous complaint. A key point of the arguments of the case filed with the ACLU was the arbitrary nature of the DMVs decision making process on vanity plates, ultimately pitting those decisions against first amendment protections such as Carroll’s views.
“[T]he DMV has prohibited such combinations as AIDS, CHRIST, GAY, JESUS, LESBIAN, REDNECK and YANKEE. But it has issued plates that read CHRIST, JEWISH, REDNEC, and REDNEK. It has prohibited words that are typically denigrating, such as CHUBBY and SLOB, but allowed FATT and OLDFRT,” Judge McElroy detailed in her decision.
The full lawsuit will be reviewed and decided in the coming months.
Tesla has expanded the operational geofence for its driverless Robotaxi service in Austin, Texas, marking the first such increase in some time. The updated Service Area for Robotaxi in Austin now spans about 288 square miles and is roughly 9 percent larger than the previous boundary.
This incremental growth adds approximately 24 square miles of coverage, bringing the prior zone of roughly 264 square miles into a broader footprint that better serves northern suburbs.
The expansion extends the geofence northward toward Pflugerville along the US 183 corridor, incorporating additional neighborhoods north of the Domain and areas such as Mesa Park. These additions include higher-end residential and commercial districts that previously sat just outside the allowed operating zone.
Riders can now request unsupervised trips that begin or end in these newly included locations, provided the entire route remains inside the digital boundary:
Tesla has just expanded its Robotaxi service area in Austin, Texas for the first time in 10 months.
The new service area is roughly 9% larger than the old one, and is about 288 square miles in total. pic.twitter.com/i4oBM1KfWS
— Sawyer Merritt (@SawyerMerritt) August 31, 2026
Tesla first launched public Robotaxi operations in Austin in mid-2025 with a modest initial zone of about 20 square miles. Subsequent enlargements in 2025 and early 2026 steadily grew the map until it covered much of the metropolitan area.
After the last major update roughly ten months earlier, the company held the boundary steady while it collected additional miles and refined the FSD suite.
The modest nine percent increase still matters for daily utility. Longer trips become possible, more residents gain access, and the fleet can accumulate more diverse real-world data across new road types and traffic patterns. Observers note that the added territory aligns with existing Tesla service infrastructure, which could support more efficient vehicle staging in the North end of Austin.
Although the geofence has grown, Tesla continues to operate a relatively small unsupervised fleet in the city. The company has emphasized safety and software readiness over rapid geographic scaling. This latest map update signals that Tesla remains committed to expanding Robotaxi availability in its home market as it prepares for further software improvements and potential Cybercab deployments.
The 288-square-mile zone now gives Austin riders one of the larger driverless service areas currently available in the United States.
Tesla’s 2026 Summer Update turns Grok from a talking companion into a true in-car controller, with considerably expanded capabilities. Where the assistant once answered questions and handled navigation, it can now operate hardware and software through ordinary speech, including several requests at the same time.
Grok has become incredibly robust over the past few quarters, and this new ability that Tesla has included with its Summer Update is perhaps the clearest sign of just how capable it has become.
You can issue many commands to Grok at once, and each will be taken care of: anything from headlight control to climate adjustments to mirror folding can now all be taken care of with a simple sentence spoken toward Grok:
This is cool, you can now give Grok a ton of commands at once in your Tesla and it’ll do them all together.
The commands I gave:
• Fold mirrors
• Turn on wipers to fastest setting
• Change temp to 65°
• Open self-driving app
• Open gloveboxComes with Tesla’s 2026 Summer… pic.twitter.com/drZxoHrknv
— Sawyer Merritt (@SawyerMerritt) August 26, 2026
Here’s another example I used in my Model Y:
🚨 Using Grok to control the cabin temperature and turn on headlights in 2026 Model Y on FSD v14.3.8 and 2026.26.6.5 pic.twitter.com/7clgQkGABk
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) August 27, 2026
Tesla’s official Release Notes list the core powers of Grok’s new capabilities: Grok can place phone calls from a paired phone, search a streaming service and queue music, adjust climate, and search the Controls panel. Drivers can also ask it questions about the vehicle or the latest features included in a recent software update.
It can also take care of driving settings, dynamics, and other relevant preferences that deal with how the car operates and handles.
Tesla Summer Update begins rolling out: a look at the new features
It’s also more of a use case than a novelty feature. Grok was great for learning about something that was being pondered while Full Self-Driving was taking care of the major automotive responsibilities, but it did have some useful functionality when it came to navigation.
Another less-noted improvement is the swift transition that Grok has from thinking of its answer to giving you one. In the past, it would take a few seconds for Grok to truly come up with a valuable response. It now seems that it is improving, at least slightly.
Tesla Full Self-Driving is set to get a major fix with pothole avoidance, a feature that CEO Elon Musk said recently was “coming soon.” The feature has been included within the FSD v14 release notes for some time as an upcoming improvement.
Potholes come in all shapes and sizes, but one thing is universal about them, and that is the fact that every driver wants to avoid them. Driving into or over a pothole can cause tire and wheel damage, alignment issues, and even, in some more severe instances, injury to occupants or major damage to a vehicle in despair.
Tesla Cybercab uses a unique strategy for picking up the right rider
Musk said late last night in a post that pothole avoidance while utilizing the Full Self-Driving suite is “coming soon.”
Coming soon
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 31, 2026
Full Self-Driving, even in its most recent and robust forms, still has its shortcomings. While the suite has performed exceptionally well with avoiding on-road obstacles like cardboard boxes, horse droppings, car parts, and other debris, it still seems to struggle with recognizing certain things.
Potholes and other abrupt changes in a road’s layout are things that FSD still tends to struggle with. Perhaps the suite’s 3D modeling is still in need of some additional data or some sort of script that will help it to avoid a potentially destructive pothole or bump in the road that would be easily recognizable by the human eye.
Musk has mentioned pothole avoidance for some time, with the initial idea coming in April 2019 when an owner first requested the feature. Musk said that Tesla would “definitely” develop pothole avoidance.
In August 2020, Musk said Tesla was in the process of labeling bumps and potholes so cars can either slow down or steer around them altogether.
Tesla to utilize micro maps for pothole-detection in future update
Avoiding major disturbances in the road is a necessary feature for Full Self-Driving to have, especially as Tesla is working toward a fully autonomous program that will eventually allow every occupant in the vehicle to sleep, work, or enjoy leisure time while traveling.
That truly begins this week with the launch of Cybercab on Thursday.
Tesla expands driverless Robotaxi geofence in Austin
Elon Musk’s Grok can basically control anything in your Tesla now
