Thousands of Tesla owners join class action lawsuit over ‘Full Self-Driving’ in Australia

Thousands of Tesla owners have reportedly joined a class action lawsuit against the automaker in Australia over false claims about its ‘Full Self-Driving’ (FSD) package.

Tesla is facing mounting legal pressure over its advanced driver assistance (ADAS) features: Autopilot and Full Self-Driving.

The company has been embroiled in lawsuits related to crashes involving its ADAS features, including losing its first trial and settling several other similar lawsuits.

Furthermore, Tesla has been facing several class-action lawsuits and regulatory scrutiny over allegations of misrepresenting its features.

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These have been mounting since CEO Elon Musk admitted that its Hardware 3 self-driving computer (HW3) will not be capable of unsupervised self-driving.

In 2016, Tesla claimed that all vehicles produced from this point forward would have “all the hardware for full self-driving” and the company described full self-driving as level 4-5 fully autonomous driving.

Musk initially claimed that Tesla would retrofit vehicles with new hardware capable of full self-driving, but it has been 10 months, and there’s been no word about an upgrade or even a significant software update for HW3 owners.

This situation has led to several class action lawsuits. A judge recently shut down Tesla’s attempt to block a HW3 class action in the US.

Last month, a similar lawsuit was launched against Tesla in China.

In February, shortly after Musk admitted that HW3 won’t support autonomous driving, a class action was launched in Australia related to the matter and other allegations of problems with Tesla’s ADAS features not delivering the promised capabilities.

Now, Rebecca Jancauskas, a director at the firm leading the class action, told News Corp Australia “thousands of Australians” have joined the lawsuit.

She said:

“Tesla made promises about their vehicles’ safety, performance and features such as their ‘Full Self-Driving,’ but we have found a lot of these promises are falling flat.”

The lawsuit seeks “a financial settlement that adequately compensates Australian consumers for what they thought they were getting, but haven’t, in fact, received”.

Unlike Musk’s claim that only Tesla owners who bought the FSD package would get an upgrade, the class action in Australia covers Tesla Model 3 and Model Y owners who purchased or leased their vehicles between May 2021 and February 2025.

Electrek’s Take

The sharks are circling. Lawyers are all over this because, at least in my opinion, it is a fairly straightforward case.

Tesla claimed vehicles had capabilities that it didn’t have. Period.

It is dragging its feet to make things right, and I have no hope that it will unless forced to.

It also affects not only people who bought FSD. Tesla claimed that all cars were equipped with the hardware capable of full self-driving.

Even if the software package had not been purchased, it would affect the value and, therefore, all owners.