Tesla's Full Self-Driving technology seemingly isn't what the company claims it to be — and a lawsuit about that branding could change the company forever.
What's happening?
In a deep dive posted to its YouTube channel, nonprofit news channel More Perfect Union looked into the autonomous-driving claims made by Tesla and the actual capabilities of its electric vehicles.
In particular, the investigation looked at how the company touts its self-driving features as "autopilot" and "self-driving" even though, in most cases, they still need a human to sit at the steering wheel. And even with those failsafes, the features have had several hiccups.
The biggest problem, one expert said, is that the way Tesla operates its autonomous capabilities is heavily flawed.
"What Tesla is doing with this single sensor flies in the face of what you are going to be taught at every university with a robotics program," Missy Cummings, director of George Mason University's Autonomy and Robotics Center, told More Perfect Union.
Cummings pointed to the different technologies used by competitors such as Waymo, whose vehicles include a combination of radar, lasers, and sensors to create a map of their surroundings. Tesla, meanwhile, uses just cameras, or "computer vision."
"The best that computer vision can do is 97%, meaning that three out of 100 situations that they're confronted with, they get wrong," Cummings told More Perfect Union.
Cummings speculated that Tesla doesn't use additional sensors because they cost tens of thousands of dollars, and CEO Elon Musk doesn't want to raise prices by that much.
Why is this important?
This has been a shaky year for Tesla.
The company's stock price plummeted at the start of the year. Despite climbing back, it still entered September more than 10% down from where it started 2025. Its sales numbers globally have also seen large drops.
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No way 👎 But all of that could pale in comparison to a lawsuit it faces from the California Department of Motor Vehicles, which alleges the automaker misled customers over its FSD capabilities.
What's next for Tesla?
"[If Tesla loses this case], they are going to get walloped with a whole bunch of more legal actions against them," Eric Goldman, a Santa Clara University law professor, told More Perfect Union. "It seems like they would be writing very, very large checks to a lot of different people for having misled them."
Losing the case would also result in a one-month ban for Tesla in California, meaning the automaker wouldn't be able to sell its cars there during that time. And it would put on the record that the company lied about its autonomous driving capabilities — the same capabilities that Musk frequently ties to Tesla's future.
"Never before have I seen a CEO get away with straight up lying to investors so often," the top YouTube comment says. "Many other CEOs would have … been ousted."
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