Tesla self-driving claims parked in court Tesla is facing a lawsuit over claims made about its self-driving technology after a US judge rejected the company's motion to dismiss the case. Although Judge Rita Lin dismissed some of the claims, the order [PDF] clears the way for disgruntled Tesla owners to pursue action based on the company's increasingly specific boasts …
There is a mandatory arbitration clause. Many unhappy customers must have spotted it and realized the effort required to go through it was not worth the theoretical maximum reward. A few did go through arbitration and settled. If only one in ten thousand get as far as arbitration Tesla can afford a generous offer contingent on an NDA. LoSavio rejected the arbitration result and got to court. Courts do not move at the speed of a Tesla approaching a parked emergency vehicle.
Healthcare isn't a 'purchase' in the context, i.e. something solid and tangible. Yes, healthcare is expensive, immorally so in the USA, but it covers a multitude of different things. Most costs are for drugs, minor treatment etc. which are comparable to oil, petrol, maintenance for a vehicle. So the human body and a vehicle are equivalences not the maintenance and running costs.
Not just high cost things like cars. But they shouldn't be allowed for anything where there isn't sufficient competition on offer. Internet service is usually a monopoly/duopoly in most areas. We're down to what, three major mobile phone providers in the US? If any company (including others under the same owners, or subsidiaries, etc) has >25% market share, forced arbitration shouldn't be an option, and existing agreements to that effect need to become null and void if that threshold (or whatever number) is reached.
"We're down to what, three major mobile phone providers in the US?
It's not "down" to 3, it's been no more than three nationwide carriers that own and operate the towers. AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile. Other than some smaller regional companies, every other provider is a subsidiary or reseller.
Does that opt-out request end up in the same mailbox as emails to Tesla's PR department?
It is an increasing trend in all things these days that people just lie with impunity.
I mean, politicians have ALWAYS been known for it, but have you seen the nonsense they spout nowadays?
For years, I have been telling employers that they want things in writing, that a salesman's promise (no matter how friendly, well-established, how many of our competitors use them etc.) is worth nothing and they would never listen.
But yet whenever it turns out that they WERE lying, they have absolutely zero basis to do anything about it because it was all verbal and "face to face" etc. Strangely, they are then ultra-grateful when I *DID* keep records, do have things in writing and have - in the past - screwed several vendors to the wall for lying and/or trying not to deliver things they promised (sometimes in the range of £10,000's of equipment that they said wasn't in a quote, for example, when it was... and I was the only person in the company with a copy of that. Even vendors lying outright about what their software does / does not support on £100,000+ contracts... and I told them from the start it wasn't true, they stuck to their guns, and 2 years later it turns out I was right. And only *I* have the documents and research to prove it. This has included such doozies as: "Yes, our cloud-based thin-client office solution can run 100% of your software perfectly, including those AD-based Windows-only software-restriction-enforcing security softwares. By the way, everything runs on Wine." and "Smoothwall is 100% incompatible with Chromebooks and can never work with them". These were £100,000+ consultancies trying to sell us their stuff and berate their competitors and/or existing systems. Strangely I proved both wrong in the space of 10 minutes each time. But it was based on 18 months of lying in each case and nobody believing little old me because I wasn't a multi-million pound consultancy firm, right?.
I cannot get through to them how RIDICULOUS it is that they rely on these "in-person" representations in any way, and that unless it's literally in an email or on paper, we cannot assume it's going to ever happen no matter how nice the guy seemed. All those "Yes, we could add that feature", etc. promises mean nothing. And often you're in those meetings BECAUSE they haven't delivered on what the initial sales promises were and now they promise to, but won't put anything in writing.
It seems I'm the only person in the world who actually makes records, keeps notes and demands things in writing. And guess what? If you're not willing to put it in writing, I'm just going to have to operate on the basis that it's never going to happen. There is no alternative. "Yes, we can add that." "Okay, so we won't have that feature, please take that into account when you plan projects and budgets around this software." They get miffed about that. Even when a decade later they still don't have that item.
I've had it with vendors, support providers, even employers doing it ("Well, sure, we can pay you that, and that's a good start date for us, but we can't put that in writing as we're still employing the other guy at the moment"... cool. Come back to me when you can and until then I'll operate on the assumption that this isn't going to happen. Somehow they seem to take offence at that).
I'm now at the point where, starting from being a very cynical teenager, my cynicism is at its peak. You won't put it in writing? Not interested. Simple as that. Politician says ANYTHING, and they're from any colour party? I honestly don't care. It means nothing to me. Whether that's something to my benefit or devastating, I can't act on that information with any reliability.
And its the way it's going the world over. Musk is a serial liar, without consequence. Trump. Most of the UK politicians (and though I'm sure there's a slim possibility that it's "not all", they are all working together and defending each other... it's like watching your co-worker lie through his teeth to a customer and not correcting them, so I treat them the same). The water industry.
As far as I'm concerned nothing said, quoted, aired, broadcast, promised or implied can be taken as the truth, and even when you have everything in writing they will try to wheedle their way out of it via every possible opportunity.
It's one of the reasons I intend to be utility-independent by retirement. I don't believe a word these companies are telling me about price-rises and diversifying and moving to green energy and cutting out internal combustion engines, and not profiteering, and all the rest. So I'm planning my future not to be reliant on ANY of them. Even if it costs more.
In the modern age, only those who have no position of responsibility are held to their words in court.
At a previous job, I once was looking for someone to host and manage an MS Sharepoint server.
During the initial conversation we were promised everything - they would provision, install, manage, and update the server all for one (amazingly low) price.
Then as time went on, the promises slowly dwindled to the point that when we finally got the SLA it was effectively renting us 2U of rack space with a single gigabit Ethernet connection.
Thank Jebus the project was canceled before it got much further.
I have had that too.
I had accumulated - in writing - two months of paid holiday because of various incidents where I went above and beyond and was permitted to "roll it over" to the next year, and so on.
The employer was completely baffled by it and "had no documentation". No problem, not only did I have the documentation, but so did my previous boss who had since left the company but had ALSO supplied the documents from his own emails to confirm it.
They ALSO managed to "lose" my contract, which stipulated my required notification period. Which turned out to be 2 months, not the three months they were claiming. Again - I had a signed, certified, encrypted document that proved otherwise, and an identical copy was eventually found in my previous boss's mailboxes when they bothered to look (which wasn't until AFTER I demonstrated that I had a copy of that document).
Which was fortunate... because I had just told them that I was done with their nonsense, lying, attempt to force me out, lay the blame on me, complete ignorance of my situation, and even that their OWN AUDIT had found them wanting but that I was doing everything I was supposed to. So when they continued to lie - about the outcome of that audit report, plus other things, plus trying (so, so, so badly) to catch me out, I was able to say "Fine. I quit."
With two month's notice to give.
And 8 weeks holiday owing.
Whoops. They later tried to claim that I "couldn't do that". And HR disagreed, once all the documents were actually in front of them.
I walked that afternoon, never went back, and had a replacement - better - job which I held for 10 years within 10 minutes of opening my front door that evening (partly thanks to my old boss who'd left for similar reasons).
I hate to think what later caused the organisation to be investigated, several scams to be revealed, the entire senior management sacked, and even government regulators to step in just days later on the basis of two simultaneous anonymous whistle-blower tip-offs... with documented evidence...
The top bods were never allowed to work in the industry again.
Much like his Commander In Chief aka The Orange Jesus.
Didn't he say loudly and on more than one occasion... that he was going to testify in the NYC Hush Money/Record falsification trial?
Now, his legal shambles is saying that he's not going to speak.
Elon The Tarnished, has like Trumpo, a track record of telling porkie-pies to his cult. The list is like that of Trump, is very long and goes back many years but FSD is one of his biggest fibs.
An aircraft autopilot is engaged when cruising. Similarly a ship. They are not used in busy areas, never mind harbours or airports. Automatic landing and takeoff is possible, but only under human supervision and ensuring flight path and runways are empty.
Trains logistically are the first terrestrial vehicle to automate.
The Victoria Line in London has had "drivers as decoration only" for many years - since 1968. The guard would check all doors closed, press two start buttons and the trrain would drive itself at safe speeds to the next station. However, there is a driver up front who can take control if necessary.
The DLR of course, is completely automatic, with provision for a human driver should one be required to, for example, rescue the train should a software/hardware fault occur.
There are aspects of the DLR provision that perhaps should not be recommended to Tesla ...
Hmm, don't know why the downvote given its an example of a fully automatic self driving train, but okay...
The "train" line that I mentioned doesn't have drivers, at all. Up front is a big window and sideways seats marked as intended for disabled people and pregnant women (though sadly it's often a free for all). Each "train" is made of two buggies connected together, and they run up and down endlessly so that a station is served by one roughly every three minutes. When they reach the end of the line, they switch sides and go back the other way. There's some built in monitoring so if a train has a lot of passengers and the doors are open for a while, the other active trains on that side will slow down/wait to maintain the cadence. All of this is handled by a central control station and a ton of monitoring equipment.
You can spot the tourists, they're up front with cameras. Granted, when it comes above ground by the hospital (they had no choice, underground is where nuclear medicine, MRI, etc hangs out, so not only does it come up, it goes up high on stilts) it's quite an interesting view.
Oh, and the tickets are little paper RFID/NFC things that look like credit cards. Just wave it over the reader, it'll do the rest.
When Intel launched the Arc GPU, it kind of sucked, with driver issues, etc.
They promised/stated that performance and stability will improve in the next few months with some upcoming updates.
And they did as they promised. Performance improved over the next few months until it came to be considered as worthy of purchase as low / mid range GPUs.
The promises about improvements were not in a spec sheet. And they did not specify that they will improve the performance by X%. So people who bought it knew they will get some improvement, not how much. And the improvements came. I think in some cases it even doubled the initial performance for some games.
Elon, as the CEO, and the main / only public representative for Tesla was making all sorts of claims on upcoming capabilities of his company's vehicles. If his claims were not expected to be met, nobody in Tesla corrected what he said.
If I bought anything, and the CEO of the company that made and sold the item is telling everyone that it will be able to certain features soon, it better happen unless the company wants some very unhappy customers. I know Sony is on my blacklist for many years since they made some claims about upcoming capabilities and it ended up costing me a bunch of money.
Sony is on my blacklist for supplying a device with a feature and then taking it away later (Playstation Linux option).
To me that was equivalent to selling me a car with alloys and then swapping them out for steel rims later, and although many thousands worth of disposable income in gear has entered the house since, none of it was made by Sony.
Forty years ago, the joke was, "What's the difference between a used car salesperson and a computer salesperson?"
A: "The used car salesperson knows when he's lying to you"
Now...considering the amount of computing power and control in the modern car, perhaps that joke flops because .. they are the same now?
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Tesla has been having people pay through the nose for "FSD" packages for a long time now yet keeps updating/changing the underlying hardware in later revisions. That means that EITHER the older specs aren't going to get FSD, even IF by some miracle they manage to achieve it (and imho it would take an act of god level of miracle) OR they've been having people pay them exorbitant amounts of money for an entirely empty promise they should have known they were never going to keep.
That's the Ozempic answer. Obese due to lifestyle choices and not medical reasons? Here, pay big pharma a stack of money and inject yourself every month for life! Exercise schmexercise.
Americans are shit drivers? Maybe teach them properly, enforce the laws and give them an opportunity to drive less.
That doesn't always work. In the Netherlands, driving schools are mandatory and what they get taught is up to some fairly reasonable standards.
Send a Dutch driver to Germany with a caravan and they have no problem pulling out in front of a speeding car. Send them to Switzerland and they will have no problem trying to drive up to a snowy region reachable by a single road on summer tires and get hopelessly stuck (and get subsequently charged the educational living daylight out of them by the Swiss who quite happily stack a massive fine on top of the towing costs).
And that's just one nation's trait - Europe has many..
"Americans are shit drivers". Not actually.
US fatality rate is 5.4 per billion passenger miles. (2022). https://injuryfacts.nsc.org/
UK fatality rate is 5.0 per billion passenger miles. (2022) https://www.gov.uk/
Every time I read the comments, no matter what the story, there is almost always some arse-fuck who smugly post how stupid the US is, and they are almost always is wrong.
Stats imho don't show just how fucking terrible US drivers are. But you can only experience that with lots driving time in non-terrible driver countries before comparing to the US. Most of that results in minor fender benders or minor injuries, not fatalities. But my experience really is that while most US drivers are fine-ish (in normal conditions), the stupid ones really are a special kind of stupid unrivaled in most other supposedly developed countries.
Some arse-fuck who smugly ignores that most accidents occur in multi occupancy vehicles in densely populated urban areas and that a much higher %age of passenger miles in the USA is on open toads with single or dual occupancy.
Although 20% of people in the U.S. live in rural areas and 32% of the vehicle miles traveled occur in rural areas,40% of crash deaths occur there. Most fatal accidents occur in rural areas and the USA has somewhat more 'rural' than the UK.
For the USA the rate of crash deaths per 100 million miles traveled was much higher in rural areas than in urban areas (1.72 in rural areas compared with 1.19 in urban areas). From 1977 to 2021, the rates decreased by 60% in rural areas (from 4.35 to 1.72) and 49% in urban areas (from 2.35 to 1.19).
<".....US fatality rate is 5.4 per billion passenger miles. (2022). https://injuryfacts.nsc.org/
UK fatality rate is 5.0 per billion passenger miles. (2022) https://www.gov.uk/.....">
I would suggest that those figures do not represent comparable situations - a much higher proportion of US roads operate at traffic levels which are best described as 'sparse' by comparison with the UK where a high proportion of the roads see much higher volumes of traffic. Rural roads in the UK are not as sparsely used as many in the US, and on the whole, many of them are a lot narrower, have more sharp corners and generally have more impeded visibility than rural roads in the greater proportion of the US appear to have.
As an older driver who may have to stop driving due to ill health at some point, self-driving cars would be a good thing, but I don't see it happening in my lifetime.
Ridiculous claims by manufacturers have been around for ever... as long as there are customers buying into their lies. I remember a tale from twenty odd years ago that someone bought an expensive motor home and somehow was under the impression that its "cruise control" meant it was fully capable of self driving. Apparently, the driver set the vehicle in motion then went into the back to make a beverage and was rudely shocked when his vehicle crashed. The incident ended up in court with the unhappy (and stupid?) driver trying to sue the manufacturer.
That type of story has kept popping up regularly ever since the early Cruise Controls started to be fitted in the 1970s - mainly told by stand-up comedians.
A look on snopes.com suggests such stories are just urban myth (unless of course there is verifiable evidence to the contrary). https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/cruise-uncontrol/
"As an older driver who may have to stop driving due to ill health at some point, self-driving cars would be a good thing"
The town I live in has a "dial-a-ride" service for people that can't drive or no longer can drive. It's pretty cheap and free for some people (blind, etc). The nominal fee is there to keep people from clogging up the service just to go for a ride and chat with the driver all day long.
I know a young person who decided during their driver's ed days, they didn't take driving instruction seriously, because of all the "self-driving cars are almost here!" hype. "I don't need to! The car will drive itself soon!"
Ten years later, this person is now a stunningly mediocre and indifferent driver, who for a number of years, was on a first-name basis with a traffic court lawyer and probably a few judges. I suspect this isn't the only person who did this.
I love my EV (Fiat 500e -- about as non-Tesla as you can get), I love my gas guzzlers. I appreciate what Tesla (and perhaps more -- their fanatical owners and investors that poured money into a money losing operation for years) did for the mainstreaming and advancement of EVs. I'm pretty sure it wouldn't have happened at the rate it has without them.. But the self-driving thing... that was just scary and wrong from the beginning, and in my mind, obviously so. And yet, the Tesla hype machine made lots of other companies invest in this misguided technology and unrealistic promises, and got the media chanting "self-driving cars are almost here!"
"I know a young person who decided during their driver's ed days, they didn't take driving instruction seriously, because of all the "self-driving cars are almost here!" hype. "I don't need to! The car will drive itself soon!""
There's also problems with policy makers that fall for all of this hype and fail to look at projects that can be done today since "something" is just around the corner. So often, that's not the case. Elon came out and admitted that part of the Hyperloop hype was to de-rail California's HSR project, as if it needed more than a cursory look to see what a boondoggle it is. Since the bribes, payoffs and kickbacks run deep with the CA-HSR, nobody paid attention to Vac-Train, I mean, Hyperloop. I know there are other instances where what can be done today is put on hold for something that will be here "tomorrow" and nothing is done.
"Is there any way to join the lawsuit ?"
If it's a Class-action suit, you may already have standing and should have been notified. If it hasn't been given class standing, you might still be allowed in and would need to contact the (blood sucking) lawyers representing the initial client.
Elon has stated multiple times that a Tesla vehicle is an "appreciating" asset due to FSD, upcoming robotaxi service, etc. You can even go back and replay the un-truths when he first started telling people that all Tesla vehicles being made have all of the hardware they'll need to be autonomous. Of course, some of those cars are quite old now.
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