Seems like a pretty clearcut case of false advertising, but IANAL. Anyone care to explain it to me?
In: 0
There’s a grey area between legal definitions and marketing.
A couple of previous examples would be Subway advertising their “foot long sub” despite it being shorter than a foot, or the AT&T / Sprint case a few years back that advertised “5G e” which was actually just rebranded 4g and they only updated the icon in the status bar.
I don’t remember how either of those cases went, but one of the primary arguments in both were that the labels were marketing terms.
In your example (and [looking at their own explanation](https://www.tesla.com/support/autopilot#:%7E:text=Yes.,it%20make%20a%20car%20autonomous)) the most likely argument Tesla could make is “self driving” is a marketing term, people confusing their marketing with being autonomous is not their problem.
Personally I think it’s a shady practice, but it also took no effort to find their literature saying it’s not autonomous. Unlike the other examples, I really cannot fault them for someone not doing that tiny bit of research before spending way too much on one of their cars.
Latest Answers