Tesla has filed a lawsuit against the California Department of Motor Vehicles, seeking to reverse an administrative ruling that found the automaker engaged in false advertising with its "Autopilot" and "Full Self-Driving" marketing. The move comes just days after Tesla complied with the DMV's demands to clean up its marketing language. This raises questions about why the company is fighting a ruling it already capitulated to.
['The DMV\'s decision was made after a five-day hearing in 2025, during which an administrative law judge sided with the agency. The court found that Tesla\'s use of "Autopilot" follows a long but unlawful tradition of using ambiguity to mislead consumers. On "Full Self-Driving," the court ruled that the name is actually unambiguously false and counterfactual.', ["The DMV gave Tesla 60 days to fix its marketing or face a 30-day suspension of its dealer and manufacturer licenses, which would have temporarily halted Tesla's ability to sell or build cars in the state. However, by February 17, the DMV confirmed that Tesla had taken appropriate corrective action and no license suspension would be necessary.", ["Tesla killed Autopilot as a standalone product in the U.S. and Canada in January, added the '(Supervised)' qualifier to 'Full Self-Driving,' and moved FSD to a subscription-only model at $99 per month, eliminating the $8,000 one-time purchase option. These changes were made in an effort to comply with the DMV's demands.", ["Despite complying with every DMV demand, Tesla wants the 'false advertiser' label removed from its record. The company is banking its entire future on robotaxis and autonomous driving, and a formal finding that it lied about 'Full Self-Driving' for nearly a decade is not exactly helpful for that narrative.", ['This lawsuit does not exist in a vacuum. Tesla is facing an avalanche of legal consequences tied to its autonomous driving claims. Just last week, a federal judge upheld the historic $243 million verdict against Tesla in a fatal Autopilot crash case, the first major plaintiff victory in an Autopilot wrongful death suit.', ['Tesla has quietly settled at least four additional Autopilot crash lawsuits rather than risk more jury decisions. The cash amounts of those settlements are still unknown. Meanwhile, NHTSA launched a broad investigation into 2.88 million Tesla vehicles after connecting 58 incidents to FSD, including 14 crashes and 23 injuries.', ["The audacity of this lawsuit is remarkable. Tesla spent nearly a decade selling driver-assistance software under the name 'Full Self-Driving' despite that software never making any Tesla capable of driving itself. A court reviewed the evidence and concluded Tesla's marketing was unambiguously false and counterfactual.", ["Tesla's motivation for suing to erase a ruling it already complied with is transparent. The company told investors it has 1.1 million 'FSD subscribers' and its entire valuation thesis rests on becoming a robotaxi company. A formal, on-the-record finding that the company engaged in false advertising about self-driving directly undermines that pitch.", ["However, removing the label does not remove the decade of misleading customers, and the $243 million verdict that just survived Tesla's challenge suggests juries agree. Furthermore, Tesla's own polling data confirmed that roughly a third of buyers were at least partly confused by the capabilities of the systems based on their names."]]]]]]]]]
