A U.S. judge on Wednesday rejected Tesla’s bid to dismiss a lawsuit accusing Elon Musk’s electric car company of misleading owners into believing that their vehicles could soon have self-driving capabilities.
The proposed nationwide class action accused Tesla and Musk of having since 2016 falsely advertised Autopilot and other self-driving technology as functional or “just around the corner,” inducing drivers to pay more for their vehicles.
U.S. District Judge Rita Lin in San Francisco said owners could pursue negligence and fraud-based claims, to the extent they relied on Tesla’s representations regarding vehicles’ hardware and ability to drive coast-to-coast across the U.S.
Without ruling on the merits, Lin said that “if Tesla meant to convey that its hardware was sufficient to reach high or full automation, the plainly alleges sufficient falsity.”
Musk recently said they were removing the “nag”, and has said in the past they only have it due to pesky regulations. It seems apparent the system isn’t ready for that, though.
The nag is different. The nag is the thing that requires you to put a bit of turning pressure on the steering wheel. You can be actively paying attention and have the nag register as if you aren’t because you aren’t placing any turning pressure on the wheel when it wants. This is what those devices that bypass the autopilot safeguards do, they just place a weight on the side of the wheel so it’s constantly being pulled to one side just enough to trigger the nag sensor. That nag has been there since nearly day one, and predates the interior cameras entirely.
To be honest, the nag doesn’t do anything to actually guarantee driver attentiveness. And even an attentive driver watching the actual road can trigger a nag warning by not artificially putting turning pressure on the wheel and not responding to the blue pulse on the display for the like 10 seconds it gives you at semi-random intervals based on speed and road type.
The interior camera on the other hand can actively watch the driver for attentiveness and can register things like eyes being closed, direction being looked, etc. it is a much better option than a more passive system like the wheel being just slightly turned. Cameras actively watching the driver are what many of the anti-Tesla folks like to point to as superior in similar competitor vehicles.
From my experience in my Model 3, the camera does a lot more to actually check attentiveness from my own pseudo-experimentation than the nag ever did. The nag is just an annoying option that doesn’t work well, is easily bypassed and can get annoying requiring constant responses sometimes even more than once a minute on certain road types and speed limits.
oh, ok