California regulators are threatening to suspend Tesla’s license to sell its electric cars in the state early next year unless the automaker tones down its marketing tactics for its self-driving features after a judge concluded the Elon Musk-led company has been misleading consumers about the techno

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — California regulators are threatening to suspend Tesla’s license to sell its electric cars in the state early next year unless the automaker tones down its marketing tactics for its self-driving features after a judge concluded the Elon Musk-led company has been misleading consumers about the technology’s capabilities.

The potential 30-day blackout of Tesla’s California sales is the primary punishment being recommended to the state’s Department of Motor Vehicles in a decision released late Tuesday. The ruling by Administrative Law Judge Juliet Cox determined that Tesla had for years engaged in deceptive marketing practices by using the terms “Autopilot” and “Full Self-Driving” to promote the autonomous technology available in many of its cars.

After presiding over five days of hearings held in Oakland, California in July, Cox also recommended suspending Tesla’s license to manufacture cars at its plant in Fremont, California. But California regulators aren’t going to impose that part of the judge’s proposed penalty.

Tesla will have a 90-day window to make changes that more clearly convey the limits of its self-driving technology to avoid having its California sales license suspended. After California regulators filed its action against Tesla in 2023, the Austin, Texas, company already made one significant change by putting in wording that made it clear its Full Self-Driving package still required supervision by a human driver while it’s deployed.

  • NuXCOM_90Percent@lemmy.zip
    161·
    2 days ago

    With stuff like this, you do a relatively short ban as a “warning”. In theory that is telling the company being penalized to get their shit together. In practice, it is when you silently document all the ways they are working around the ban. Then you effectively take it back to the courts, say “nothing changed”, and ramp up massively. And now you know what loopholes to REALLY rake them over the coals on.

    In theory, this is effective. In practice, this is why so many of those EU protections are a complete joke to international companies since it is easier to do damage mitigation than actual compliance.