Last year, in the face of regulator pressure, Tesla added the word (Supervised) to the title of its FSD software. This month an administrative judge in California ordered the firm to change its name for Autopilot or face a temporary sales ban in the state.
The firm is also the target of lawsuits from customers and shareholders related to its self-driving systems, which allege violations from fraud to design defects. It has successfully fought some of those suits and settled others.
Separately, Tesla has come under scrutiny over what it does to prevent drivers from using its systems improperly.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is investigating, external changes to driver monitoring that Tesla promised in 2023, after a previous probe, external found “foreseeable” misuse of Autopilot had played a role in more than a dozen fatal accidents.
But the US does not currently have clear rules governing how much responsibility carmakers have to ensure that drivers remain attentive, leaving that question in contested legal territory.
In August, a Miami jury ordered Tesla to pay $243m million in damages over a fatal 2019 crash involving Autopilot after finding, in part, that the company did not have adequate guards in place to track driver attentiveness or prevent the system from being used on unsafe roads.
In its appeal, which is ongoing, Tesla says the fault lies with a reckless driver.
