Tesla Prevails in Lawsuit Alleging Autopilot Fraud

Tesla has beaten a lawsuit alleging the company and its top officials misled the public and investors over the state of its autopilot systems.

Plaintiffs in the case failed to show Tesla CEO Elon Musk and other officials committed fraud with statements such as the autopilot on average being safer than normal drivers, U.S. District Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín said in a Sept. 30 ruling.

Musk said during a 2019 investor event that “we publish accidents per mile every quarter, and what we see right now is that autopilot is about twice as safe as a normal driver on average.” That same year, he wrote on Twitter (now X) that “buying a car in 2019 that can’t upgrade to full self-driving is like buying a horse instead of a car in 1919.”

Those and other statements were false and misleading because they overstated the effectiveness of autopilot and omitted key information, according to the suit, brought by investor Thomas Lamontagne. The Securities Exchange Act prohibits making business-related statements that are manipulative or deceptive.

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