News
Tesla FSD’s prolonged release doesn’t make it a ‘fraud,’ company says
Tesla Full Self-Driving’s prolonged release doesn’t make it a “fraud,” the company said in a motion to dismiss a case.
Tesla is currently involved in a class-action lawsuit from a few Autopilot and Full Self-Driving customers and has recently filed a motion to dismiss the case with the U.S. District Court in San Francisco. In that motion, a statement was made by Tesla’s attorneys that may have been taken out of context by some media reports.
Teslarati obtained a copy of the motion, and here is what we found.
After some background information on FSD, Tesla noted that each of the plaintiffs purchased a vehicle, and “all but one allegedly purchase the FSDC package.” (FSDC is an acronym for full self-driving capability.)
“Plaintiffs knew at the time of purchase that their cars were not completely autonomous. And they knew that the timeline towards more complete autonomy was contingent upon numerous factors, including software development and regulatory approval. Yet now they sue Tesla, complaining that their cars are not completely autonomous.”
The document noted that four out of five of the named plaintiffs have valid arbitration agreements with Tesla that should be enforced and cover all of their claims. The one plaintiff who opted out “advanced a consolidated complaint riddled with defects, and that should be dismissed.”
The plaintiff “sued too late–five years after he purchased his vehicle and the optional software package, well after any of his claims accrued. All of his claims are time-barred and should be dismissed. Moreover, the hundreds-of-paragraph, narrative complaint fails to support a single cognizable legal theory. The Complaint makes no mention of the parties’ written contract or Tesla’s car warranty. It instead cherry-picks numerous statements allegedly made by Tesla and attempts to manufacture claims for fraud and breach of warranty.”
-
Tesla’s attorneys made several statements, including that headline-worthy one regarding FSD and failure. However, the attorneys never claimed that FSD is a failure. In the document, the attorneys pointed out that the complaint “identifies no statement that Tesla made that was fraudulent.”
Additionally, it added that no there was no statement made that Tesla’s vehicles, including those equipped with the FSDC package, were fully autonomous at the time of the Plaintiff’s purchase. Tesla’s website also made it very clear that those vehicles were not.
Tesla’s attorneys noted that the plaintiff allegedly researched Tesla’s online and public statements and reviewed them before buying his vehicles. The labels of “Autopilot,” “Enhanced Autopilot,” or “Full Self-Driving Capability” didn’t mean that the vehicles were fully autonomous. Tesla’s attorneys also noted that Tesla’s user manuals plainly showed this as well.
“Nor would any reasonable consumer purchase a Tesla vehicle with the belief that it is fully autonomous based solely on these labels,” the attorneys said.
Instead, each of the plaintiffs alleged that they “decided to purchase [his or her] vehicle and the ADAS packages after researching, reviewing, and relying on Tesla’s online and other public statements.”
The plaintiff’s “assertion that Tesla promised the vehicles were already fully autonomous when they were sold rings hollow,” the attorneys stated.
“His assertion that Tesla promised to release completely autonomous capabilities ‘within a reasonable time after,’ his purchase fares no better.”
-
“No allegations show that Tesla promised that the FSDC package would enable full autonomy within a specified period of time. Many of the statements quoted in the Complaint did not even concern the FSDC package,” the attorneys said, adding that this makes it irrelevant to the plaintiff’s claims.
“In addition, the quoted statements were also often accompanied by and subject to the qualifier that a release of fully autonomous capabilities to the general public would require government approval, a variable over which Tesla had no control, and that any regulatory clearance would require a vast amount of data to show that completely autonomous driving is significantly safer than human driving.”
The attorneys cited another federal court that said similar statements “do not constitute fraud” because they indicate that Tesla wasn’t making the absolute representation the Plaintiff said he was.
“Same here. Especially under the heightened Rule 9(b) standard, no allegation suggests that the aspirational statements that Tesla did make were, somehow, false when made. See Richardson, 2000 WL.”
“To the contrary, allegations in the Complaint demonstrate that Tesla has been constantly improving its ADAS technology by releasing software updates, with a goal of achieving more and better autonomy capabilities in the future.”
“Mere failure to realize a long-term, aspirational goal is not fraud.“
In reference to the above statement, the attorneys pointed out that the courts often rejected the argument that a plaintiff can prove the fraudulent intent by pointing to Tesla’s “subsequent failure to perform under the agreement.”
-
Since launching the software in 2015, Tesla has made a lot of progress toward FSD and autonomous. Tesla has had two AI Day events explaining the technology being developed and used. And Tesla has since launched an FSD Beta testing program, and you can read the recent Tesla FSD Beta news here.
Disclosure: Johnna is a $TSLA shareholder and believes in Tesla’s mission.
Your feedback is welcome. 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 at @JohnnaCrider1.
Teslarati is now on TikTok. Follow us for interactive news & more. Teslarati is now on TikTok. Follow us for interactive news & more. You can also follow Teslarati on LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook.
-
News
The Boring Company’s newest Vegas Station has a permit quietly waiting behind it
Sahara Las Vegas opened a new Vegas Loop station, joining an exclusive two resort transit club.
Sahara Las Vegas opened a new Vegas Loop station Thursday, giving The Boring Company’s underground transit system its northernmost stop yet on the Strip. The station sits at Sahara’s Paradise Road entrance, on the southeast corner of Las Vegas Boulevard and Sahara Avenue, and connects riders to the Las Vegas Convention Center, other Strip resorts on the network and, eventually, Harry Reid International Airport.
The addition makes Sahara the second resort, after Fontainebleau opened its own station in January, to get a stop built at street level rather than tucked into the property itself. Sahara now joins Westgate as the only two Strip resorts offering both a Vegas Loop station and a stop on the Las Vegas Monorail, giving guests two separate ways to get around without leaving the property.
The Boring Company just doubled its tunneling power in Nashville
The bigger news buried in Thursday’s announcement is what comes next. Boring Company has already secured its first permit to tunnel north of Sahara Avenue, extending the network beyond where it currently ends, even though permits to push the Loop toward downtown Las Vegas still haven’t been granted. Crews are also working on a two mile dual tunnel line running from Westgate to a planned station at 4744 Paradise Road, just north of Tropicana Avenue, that Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority CEO Steve Hill has said the company hopes to open in time for November’s Las Vegas Grand Prix.
Ridership has grown alongside the buildout. The Loop moved roughly 82,000 passengers during CONEXPO in early March, a total the company highlighted on its own X account at the time, and the system has now carried more than 4 million passengers through 11 open stations since it began running in 2021. The airport connector tunnels, meant to give the Loop a direct link to Harry Reid, have slipped past their original first quarter target and remain under construction, with Boring Company director Mike Baier saying that a full opening is still a few months out.
For Sahara, the calculation is straightforward. Convention traffic drives a large share of Loop ridership, and a station at the property’s front door gives conventiongoers one more reason to book rooms on the Strip’s north end instead of closer to the convention center itself.
-
Elon Musk
Tesla’s mysterious Robovan makes a sneak peek with Optimus in Terafab video
Elon Musk shared a new Terafab video showing Optimus, Robovans, and a stunningly futuristic campus.
Elon Musk posted a new video of Terafab on X Thursday morning, and the most eye-catching details in it were not the building itself, but two products still awaiting production: Optimus and the Robovan.
The concept render, credited to SpaceX, shows Optimus robots working the grounds of the roughly 2.5-mile-long facility planned for the Gibbons Creek site in Grimes County, while a Robovan glides along an elevated roadway cutting through the building itself, sharing the frame with a Tesla Semi and a Cybercab.
Robovan is the boxy, driverless people and cargo mover Musk unveiled alongside Cybercab at Tesla’s “We, Robot” event in October 2024. He pitched it as a way to move up to 20 passengers at once, or handle freight instead, at a target cost he claimed could fall under a dollar a mile, with no steering wheel or pedals, the same layout as Cybercab. Nearly two years later, Robovan still has no confirmed production timeline and has not shown up in any factory footage, which makes Thursday’s render one of the only recent looks at the vehicle in any form.
Terafab Texas will be the largest and most valuable building on Earth by far.
And it will be stunningly beautiful. pic.twitter.com/4NweOqTL7y
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 6, 2026
Optimus has moved further along. Tesla began converting Fremont’s old Model S and Model X assembly line into a Gen 3 Optimus production line earlier this year, and Musk visited the site on July 1 to mark the changeover. A second, larger Optimus plant is under construction at Giga Texas, targeting volume production in summer 2027 and eventual capacity of 10 million units a year. Tesla AI lead Ashok Elluswamy said this month the robot has “big shoes to fill” in replacing the S and X line, while Musk has repeatedly called Optimus the company’s biggest product of any kind, with a long-term price he has pegged between $20,000 and $30,000.
-
Check out the “Robovan” from @Tesla
📸: @Teslarati pic.twitter.com/D4es2i9NUe
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) October 11, 2024
“Terafab Texas will be the largest and most valuable building on Earth by far,” Musk wrote alongside the clip. “And it will be stunningly beautiful.”
One quote post summed up the reaction: “Futuristic scene with RoboVan + Cybercab + Tesla Semi + Optimus.”
Beyond the vehicles, the architecture wrapped around them stands out too. The building’s facade is canted at sharp angles, with illuminated horizontal bands running through what appears to be a multi level interior visible from outside. Below the elevated roadway, pedestrians walk along a plaza next to a reflecting pool, and the skyline behind the campus is dotted with angular spires that read more like sculpture than infrastructure, a departure from the strictly utilitarian look of Gigafactory Texas or Starbase.
The timing tracks with what Terafab representative Riley Trennell told Grimes County residents on Wednesday, when he said renderings of the facility would be released “within days.” Musk’s post followed less than 24 hours later, and Texas Governor Greg Abbott’s office sent out its own release Thursday confirming the project. As Teslarati reported this morning, Terafab’s tax abatement agreements with Grimes County are now signed and active, and SpaceX has sent the county its first $10 million payment under that deal. The dollar figure tied to this phase of construction, per Reuters, is $16.8 billion, one of the first hard capital expenditure numbers attached to Terafab since Musk unveiled the joint Tesla-SpaceX-xAI venture in March.Reaction on X ranged from enthusiastic to skeptical. “God Bless Texas! Everything is bigger and better in Texas!” one reply read. Another was more measured: “Terafab in a decade…..”
Whether the finished building matches the render is a separate question from whether Musk wanted people talking about the render itself. Less than a day after posting, the video had already crossed 5.5 million views.
-
Cybertruck
Tesla Cybertruck production snaps back after ugly supplier fight
Cybertrucks are piling up again at Giga Texas after Tesla’s court win against a parts supplier.
Cybertruck production at Giga Texas is showing its first visible recovery since Tesla sued a supplier last month over withheld manufacturing tooling.
Aerial observer Joe Tegtmeyer flew over the Austin factory Wednesday morning and counted roughly 100 or more Cybertrucks filling the outbound lot, a sharp jump from the thin numbers seen in recent weeks. The flyover came a day after a judge granted Tesla a temporary restraining order against Angstrom Automotive Group, the parts supplier at the center of the dispute.
Tesla filed an emergency lawsuit in late July after Angstrom told the automaker it planned to close the Troy, Texas facility where Tesla’s die-cast tools, trim dies and other Cybertruck stamping equipment were housed. According to Tesla’s complaint, a shipment of 700 finished parts never left the building, and when Tesla sent representatives to retrieve its equipment, accompanied by law enforcement, they were turned away. Angstrom allegedly then asked for an extra $250,000 a week to keep operating, which Tesla’s filing described as holding its own property for ransom.
TESLA: U.S. District Judge Christopher R. Wolfe of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas, Waco Division granted Tesla a Temporary Restraining Order and Writ of Replevin in its dispute with Angstrom Automotive (Case No. 6:26-cv-00477).
The order authorizes… https://t.co/E1DKcQSxMn pic.twitter.com/LR8aAiV2Og
— S.E. Robinson, Jr. (@SERobinsonJr) August 5, 2026
-
The restraining order gives Tesla immediate right of entry to Angstrom’s facility to recover the tooling. It is temporary, with a fuller hearing still to come, but the speed of Wednesday’s rebound suggests the Angstrom shortage was indeed the main bottleneck limiting Cybertruck output. Outbound lot counts are an imperfect measure of actual production, since finished trucks can sit for days before shipping, but a lot that full after a lean stretch is a meaningful signal.
Cybertruck output at Giga Texas has fluctuated all year as Tesla worked through supply issues and introduced new trims, including a cheaper Dual Motor AWD version that drew strong early demand.
The Boring Company’s newest Vegas Station has a permit quietly waiting behind it
Tesla’s mysterious Robovan makes a sneak peek with Optimus in Terafab video
