Tesla is slowly starting to advertise, and it has now done a rare ad on a billboard in Los Angeles. It’s pathetically misleading about its “self-driving” capabilities.
Just last month, Tesla was in court in California being sued by the DMV over its alleged misleading communications around its ‘Autopilot’ and ‘Full Self-Driving’ advanced driver assist (ADAS) systems.
The judge hasn’t released their verdict on this case yet, but Tesla doesn’t seem deterred whatsoever.
At their North Hollywood location, Tesla put up a billboard advertising demo drives for its ‘Full Self-Driving (FSD) Supervised’ system:
The billboard beautifully illustrates Tesla’s approach to its FSD system.
When it’s time to market and sell the system, Tesla emphasizes the “Full Self-Driving” part. Still, when it’s time to take responsability, like in a court room after a crash for example, then Tesla focuses on the “supervised” part and shout loud and clear that its “Full Self-Driving” system is not an autonomous driving system but a level 2 driver assistance system just like a cruise control and the driver is always responsible.
On the billboard, Tesla wrote the ‘supervised’ part more than twice as small as the “Experience Full Self-Driving” part:
Interestingly, the ad appears to feature an old Model 3 interior, but the advertised feature is “Full Self-Driving” with demo drives, which aligns with Tesla’s strategy to promote its $8,000 Full Self-Driving package.
Despite its name, the system is not fully self-driving. It is considered a level 2 driver assistance system as the driver is always responsible for the vehicle, unlike level 3-5 autonomous systems.
Tesla has been promising that it will become “unsupervised” in the future through new software update, but CEO Elon Musk said it would happen by the end of every year for the last 6 years and it never happened.
The current best data available, since Tesla doesn’t release any, indicates that Tesla’s most advanced publicly available Full Self-Driving Supervised update, FSD 13.9, achieves approximately 340 miles between critical disengagements.
According to NHTSA, humans drive about 700,000 miles between crashes.
Electrek’s Take
One of the main criticisms of Tesla in its self-driving approach has always been: is it doing enough to prevent people from becoming overconfident and abusing its ADAS systems?
I think the answer to that question is a clear no, and this billboard is a beautiful illustration of that.
Whenever it’s time to market the feature, it’s always about the promise of full self-driving, and whenever it’s time to take responsibilities, FSD is just a poor little level 2 ADAS system.
It’s becoming old.
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