— A Tesla FSD (Full Self-Driving) and advanced driver assistance system (Autopilot) class action lawsuit alleges New York Tesla owners were misled into overpaying for their vehicles.
Those Tesla vehicles are equipped with Autopilot, Enhanced Autopilot or Full Self-Driving systems that allegedly don't perform as advertised.
The Tesla FSD lawsuit was filed by New York plaintiff Michael Nachman who purchased a Tesla Model S in December 2016.
"Plaintiff and the sales representative sat at a desk in the dealership and selected the features for Plaintiff’s Model S on the Tesla website. During the process, Plaintiff was shown ADAS and paid an additional approximately $8,000 for that system." — Tesla FSD lawsuit
According to the lawsuit, Tesla advertises the vehicles as self-driving without the need for driver supervision. But customers allegedly discover they must provide constant supervision which is the opposite of self-driving.
Tesla has allegedly spent years making deceptive and misleading statements regarding Autopilot and FSD, features that cost owners thousands of dollars.
What Tesla advertises about the FSD system and its abilities allegedly contradict reality at a greater expense to customers compared to vehicles without advanced driver systems.
Tesla Autopilot Promotional Video
The class action lawsuit references a 2016 video created by Tesla's engineers to promote the FSD and Autopilot systems. The video allegedly shows a Tesla vehicle driving itself and shows the message:
“The person in the driver’s seat is only there for legal reasons. He is not driving anything. The car is driving itself.” — Tesla video
But according to the Tesla class action lawsuit, employees later admitted the car had a lot of special help from commercial mapping software not available to Tesla customers. And the vehicle still allegedly performed poorly and even ran into a fence during filming.
The Tesla vehicle allegedly had to travel the same route several times before Tesla got the necessary promotional video footage. The video is still on Tesla's website even though the footage is allegedly deceptive.
Now it's 2022 and the FSD lawsuit asserts there are still no self-driving Tesla vehicles, only "updates" sent to vehicles as owners become untrained test engineers.
Those Tesla owners have allegedly found the Full Self-Driving and Autopilot systems fail in simple tasks such as the cars making mistakes during simple turns. The class action lawsuit also contends FSD vehicles run red lights, run into other vehicles and steer into oncoming traffic.
According to the plaintiff, advanced driver assistance systems installed in vehicles from other automakers work better than anything Tesla has released.
The Tesla class action lawsuit includes:
"All persons who purchased the Vehicles within New York for personal, family, or household and paid for ADAS and FSD."
The Tesla FSD lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York (Central Islip): Michael Nachman v. Tesla, Inc., et al.
The plaintiff is represented by Reese LLP.
