Hagens Berman, one of the law firms leading a class action lawsuit against VW and Mercedes for the emissions-cheating software, is attempting to start a class action against Tesla over the claims made for Autopilot 2.0 features: Enhanced Autopilot and Full Self-Driving capabilities.
They wrongly claim that Tesla marketed the vehicle has “Full Self-Driving” and that those claims “now appear to be false.”
The firm has been paying for targeted advertising with potential Tesla owners to bring them on a page pitching the class action. On that page they wrote:
“Hagens Berman believes that consumers have the right to reimbursement for the premium price they paid for what they thought was a “full self-driving” automobile. According to the firm’s investigation, Tesla charged consumers high prices for vehicles that it claimed had “full self-driving capability.” Those claims now appear to be false.”
It’s not clear what the investigation is based on for them to determine that customers “thought” they were buying a self-driving car. The ordering page for the both the Model S and X has a warning written in bold font saying that the feature is “dependent on extensive software validation and regulatory approval”.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk warned when releasing the feature that he thought the first version would be ready around the end of the year for a demonstration, but he didn’t even say when he expected the regulatory approval to be ready, which Tesla also warns that it depends upon jurisdiction.
Furthermore, the firm seems to be misinformed about the current features of Enhanced Autopilot:
“The AP2 was also supposed to include safety features such as automatic emergency braking, collision warnings, lane holding and active cruise control, but these features remain unavailable, despite being available on AP1 cars.”
The new Autopilot has “lane holding and active cruise control” features activated. They may not be quite on par with AP1 yet, but they are available.
What is clear here, and it is something that we have often reported over the past 3 months, Tesla is late to make the features of AP2 reach parity with the features of AP1. Musk first said that it should happen in December and it’s now March. Maybe Tesla owners who don’t want to wait anymore are entitled to a reimbursement for the Enhanced Autopilot option, but Hagens Berman seems to be more concerned with the “Full Self-Driving” option, which is weird since this one isn’t even technically “late” yet.
What do you think? A frivolous lawsuit from ambulance chasing lawyers or legitimate attempt to right a wrong? Let us know in the comment section below.
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