Tesla Inc. (NASDAQ:TSLA) is suing the California Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) after the automaker dropped the “Autopilot” term from its marketing activities amid the false advertising row.
Baselessly Labeling Tesla A False Advertiser, Court Filing Says
Lawyers representing the automaker have claimed that the DMV had “wrongfully and baselessly” called Tesla a false advertiser for marketing its driving assistance technologies under Autopilot and Full-Self Driving, court filings from February 13 obtained by CNBC showed on Monday. “The DMV Order is deeply flawed,” the filing said.
Lawyers representing Elon Musk’s EV giant claim that the agency did not prove there was confusion among customers about the technologies’ capabilities. “DMV presented no consumer witnesses and instead relied almost entirely on the testimony of a single law professor,” the filing said, also adding that the brand had made it clear that the Autopilot and FSD Supervised technologies do not make vehicles autonomous.
California DMV Vs. Tesla
The news comes as the California DMV sued the automaker and sought a 30-day suspension of Tesla’s sales and manufacturing operations in the state, alleging that the automaker had misled consumers about its systems’ capabilities.
While a court ruled in favor of the agency, the DMV did not go through with the suspension and ultimately provided Tesla a 90-day period to rectify its marketing practices and Tesla avoided a suspension.
Tesla’s FSD
Meanwhile, Tesla’s Supervised FSD system, which utilizes a vision-only approach as opposed to rival systems that favor LiDAR, recently logged more than 8.2 billion miles of driving. However, questions still remain about its capabilities as the automaker reported 5 additional Robotaxi crashes in Austin during January 2026.
Benzinga Edge Rankings show that Tesla scores well on the Momentum metric and offers a favorable price trend in the Long Term.
Price Action: TSLA slid 2.91% to $399.83 at Market close on Monday, and surged 0.19% to $400.57 during the overnight session.
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