#TeslaFsd

Tesla has been involved in multiple court cases alleging that its Autopilot system was responsible for sometimes-deadly crashes, but it recently settled a similar case before it could reach the courtroom. Even with its track record of success, the automaker’s attorneys settled with Walter Huang’s family’s legal team, which could be related to the unique angle it took in approaching the case.

Last week, reports surfaced that Tesla had canceled its affordable car project as CEO Elon Musk pivoted to focus on autonomous taxis. Though he called the reports fake news, Musk is pressing ahead with his plan to develop Robotaxis, but said the company would reveal the taxi project on August 8.

Tesla’s “Full Self-Driving” (FSD) tech might be under scrutiny from several angles, but the automaker is pushing forward with a plan to bring the system out of beta and into the mainstream. The latest FSD release, version 12, included a name change for the feature, from Full Self-Driving Beta to Full Self-Driving (Supervised), but Tesla’s lack of a public relations department means we don’t have much to go on outside of the name.

Tesla has long faced questions about the driver monitoring systems it employs to keep people in line when using its advanced assistance systems. Despite that, CEO Elon Musk has mandated that all new Tesla models come with a Full Self-Driving (FSD) Beta demo, seemingly ignoring the scrutiny in favor of selling more services to customers.

Tesla has seemed to be in constant legal peril over the last couple of years, as several high-profile crashes involving its semi-autonomous driving functions have led to investigations and lawsuits. Even so, the automaker was victorious in one of its first trials, which ended earlier this week.

Marketing buzzwords and questionable advertising practices have led many to believe that self-driving cars are a real thing that people can go out and buy today. However, despite the fact that some automakers literally call their driver assistance tech “self-driving,” there are precisely zero fully autonomous cars on sale. While it will be years before truly self-driving cars become a reality, automakers are developing more advanced systems that have much of the autonomous experience with some caveats. Mercedes is set to be the first company to offer a Level 3 system, which enables hands-free driving in most situations but requires a human’s attention at all times.

If you want to add what Tesla calls full self-driving capability (FSD) to one of its new vehicles, you’re looking at up to $15,000 on top of the price of a new model. In an effort to juice sales this quarter, the automaker is letting existing FSD customers transfer their services to a new model, but only in the next couple of months. 

While we’re on the subject of Super Bowl commercials, there wasn’t just one, but two, that irritated me on Sunday.

This one has little, if anything, to do with politics, so you can relax and cancel out that angry email you were about to send me.

Nope, this one has to do with the misinformation circulating about autonomous cars.