#fullselfdriving

Stop me if you've heard this before -- Elon Musk tweeted something that has him and/or one of his companies in trouble with regulators.

There are no fully self-driving cars on the market. That's a simple truth. The Society of Automotive Engineers has determined that there are five levels of autonomous driving, with level five being fully autonomous. As of last year, there were no cars that went beyond Level 2 -- a few potential Level 3 systems were awaiting regulatory approval.

Many, including the federal government, are concerned that Tesla’s claims of working with Full Self-Driving (FSD) technology aren’t entirely accurate. The automaker’s semi-autonomous feature is still in the beta testing stage, but it uses customers as test subjects, which doesn’t sit well with regulators. Customers are beginning to lose interest, too, especially when they’re told to pay more for features they thought already came with their car. One man sued Tesla in small claims court and won, but the most interesting part of the story is the precedent this could set for other owners. 

News broke Wednesday that Tesla was under investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice, regarding the company’s claims about the self-driving nature of its vehicles. The DOJ has been working on the investigation for some time, as it was launched in 2021 but was not disclosed at that time. Turns out it might be time for a government evaluation of whether “Full Self-Driving” Teslas are misleading.