Angry Tesla owners are mounting a legal battle against the electric vehicle giant, accusing billionaire CEO Elon Musk of misleading them about the cars’ self-driving capacity.
Tom LoSavio – an 80-year-old retired attorney living near San Francisco and leading a class-action lawsuit against Tesla – paid more than $100,000 for a Tesla Model S in 2017.
He also shelled out an extra $8,000 for lifetime access to the company’s self-driving tech – but he’s accusing Tesla of flaking on its promise that the hardware in older models would eventually be compatible with fully autonomous software.
“My wife and I talked about what a great thing it would be if we could just get in a car and have it drive us places,” LoSavio told the Wall Street Journal.
“You want to believe that you’re not a fool,” he added.
Nine years after LoSavio’s initial purchase, his rideand many other early Tesla autos still aren’t capable of true autopilot, according to the lawsuit, which includes a class of roughly 3,000 people in California.
It excludes many Tesla owners who signed agreements with the company that prevent them from suing, and Tesla is appealing the case’s class-action status.
Tesla and Musk’s lawyer did not immediately respond to The Post’s requests for comment.
Musk has been promising that fully autonomous capabilities are within reach for years, keeping Tesla’s stock price high even as Chinese rivals take a bite out of the EV seller’s market share.
The company has launched pilot programs of driverless robotaxis and is eyeing Cybercab volume production this month – but it appears to have no path to full self-driving technology in the millions of Tesla vehicles that are estimated to be on the road with outdated hardware, according to the suit.
LoSavio’s lawsuit is seeking a refund for customers who bought or leased new Tesla vehicles between 2016 and 2024 and paid extra with the expectation that the cars would eventually be fully self-driving.
It is also seeking to ban Tesla from marketing its products as fully autonomous.
An Australian law firm has also assembled a class-action case accusing Tesla of misleading consumers about its self-driving technology, while a Tesla owner in the Netherlands is attempting to organize a legal battle involving European customers.
The Netherlands last week approved the use of Tesla’s self-driving technology for the first time – but only for the latest version of its software, meaning early Tesla adopters are out of luck.
Tesla’s “Full Self-Driving (Supervised)” technology is available as a $99 monthly subscription that allows cars to navigate most roads, change lanes and park as long as a driver supervises the journey and periodically touches the steering wheel.
The company’s vehicles are equipped with cameras and computers that allow the use of the self-driving tech. But earlier models have required repeated updates to use the autonomous features.
By 2020 to 2021, Tesla’s older models needed new equipment to handle its self-driving technologies, so the company offered free upgrades to some customers and charged others a one-time fee of $1,000.
In 2023, Tesla upgraded its hardware for the fourth time – meaning customers like LoSavio found themselves once again with outdated equipment.
In January 2025, Musk said customers who bought the lifetime Full Self-Driving guarantee would need their computers updated again.
“That is the honest answer and that’s going to be painful and difficult. But we’ll get it done,” he said during an earnings call.
“Now, I’m kind of glad that not that many people bought the FSD package.”
Meanwhile, the tech titan has repeatedly pushed back his deadlines for the firm’s driverless ambitions.
He promised in October 2015 that “full autonomy” would happen in three years. Just a few months later in December, he said it would take just two years.
And in 2016, he said a fully autonomous Tesla would be able to drive from Los Angeles to New York City by 2017. None of those timelines were met.
“Yea, no matter where they actually thought they were going in the beginning, Tesla is living on the fumes of their hype machine and it’s just about exhausted that,” one user wrote on Reddit.
“I have no illusions there will ever be real repercussions for the decade plus of absolute bulls–t lies that they knew they could never live up to but hopefully the consumer side is wising up and will quit paying money for vaporware that will never fulfill even 10% of the promise.”
Another user sarcastically wrote: “Oh, c’mon, folks! Have more patience. FSD [Full Self-Driving] should be here as soon as humanoid robots go into mass production next week.”
