The average person does not know how to fly a plane or what a plane autopilot does. It's a ridiculous superficial comparison. Planes have professional pilots who understand the capabilities and limits of aviation autopilot technology.

Tesla has had it both ways for ages - their stock price was based on "self-driving cars" and their liability was based on "asterisk asterisk the car cannot drive itself".

Not sure what "autopilot" means in a car. Is the self-parking feature called "landing gear"?

The original judgement held that the driver was 2/3 responsible, Tesla 1/3 responsible, which seems reasonable. The $243 million wasn't for causing the accident, but was a punitive amount for doing things that looked an awful lot like lying to the court and withholding evidence.

A “reasonable person” in a cockpit is not the same as a “reasonable person” behind the steering wheel.

Pilots undergo rigorous training with exam after exam they must pass.

No one is handed the keys to a Boeing 747 after some weekly evening course and an hours driving test.

Fight Club 2.0: You pay to retrain it only if the AI will kill more people than our settlement fund can pay out.

If I read the article it says autopilot, not FSD.

well the other person in the comments said the guy literally held his accelerator to the floor the entire time. is that actually a reasonable standard, or are you preemptively out for blood because you would never let reality get in the way of a good agenda? ironic, given that you go out of your way to accuse others of this. methinks you doth protest too much?

Companies that roll it out responsibly aren’t having issues. Tesla deserves these judgments and should not be allowed to roll this software out in the irresponsible way they have been.

Possibly, but this wasn't a self-driving car. The ruling gave Tesla some blame for falsely marketing it as one.

> self driving software is already ~10x safer than a human.

This is, technically speaking, pure bullshit. You have no proof because none exists.

100% correct. Also, with 40,000 deaths due to car crashes each year in the U.S. (and 2 million+ severe injuries not resulting in death), I'd consider it drop in the bucket.

Developing, no, but once companies start releasing vehicles onto our shared public streets I have a lot less tolerance for launching science experiments that end up killing bystanders.

I can understand the argument that in the abstract over-regulation kills innovation but at the same time in the US the pendulum has swung so far in the other direction that it’s time for a correction.

That's an old argument by corporations against liability. Should they not be fully liable?

It should discourage them from making unsafe products. If it's not economical for them to make safe products, it's good that they go bankrupt and the economic resources - talent, money - go to someone else. Bankruptcy and business failure are just as fundamental to capitalism as profit.

I've always thought of it more as "Co-Pilot", but formally: "Autopilot" might truly be the better definition (lane-keeping, distance-keeping), whereas a "Co-Pilot" (in aviation) implies more active control, ie: pulling you up from a nose dive.

So... informally, "Tesla Co-Pilot" => "You're still the pilot but you have a helper", vs "Tesla Autopilot" => "Whelp, guess I can wash my hands and walk away b/c it's AuToMaTiC!"

...it's tough messaging for sure, especially putting these powertools into peoples hands with no formal training required. Woulda-coulda-shoulda, similar to the 737MAX crashes, should "pilots" of Teslas required training in the safety and navigation systems before they were "licensed" to use them?

Right! We demand engineering perfection! No autopilot until we guarantee it will NEVER kill a soul. Don't worry that human drivers kill humans all the time. The rubric is not better than a human driver, it is an Angelic Driver. Perfection is what we demand.

Too true. Just a few days ago it was determined it was unsafe at 0 speed. I'm not joking: https://electrek.co/2026/02/17/tesla-robotaxi-adds-5-more-cr...

Ask the CEO? Based on recent incentives and acquisitions, are they planning to remain a car company?

By which metrics has Tesla been left in the dust wrt autonomous driving? Right now they are the only brand where you can buy a car and have it do basically 90% (or sometimes 100%) of your daily driving. Sure, it's supervised, but the alternatives are literally extremely geogated taxis

Yet Tesla is trading near its all time high.

And as the lunar new year demo dance shows, China is leaving them in the dust building humanoid robots.

My question too.

though they did update the model y (looks like a duck), they just cancelled the model S and X

Optimus robots!

In 2 years Tesla will be replacing most factory workers with fully autonomous robots that will do most of the work. This will generate trillions in revenue and is totally definitely trust me bro possible.

Expect huge updates on this coming in the near future, soon. Tesla will be the most valuable company on Earth. Get in the stock now.

(cars, solar panels, energy storage, and robotaxis are no longer part of the roadmap because optimus bots will bring in so much money in 2 years definitiely that these things won't matter so don't ask about them or think about them thanks.)

https://www.jdpower.com/business/press-releases/2026-us-elec...

Tesla Model 3 highest overall in owner satisfaction.

"Left in the dust?"

> It's an absurd judgement.

> Consider also how many lives have been saved by the autopilot.

> Be careful what you wish for.

How many? Tell me.

Their stock would crash to $10 without the hype machine

Tesla has made some great cars, but their CEO is not making sound decisions . I really think a new CEO could turn around Tesla. It doesn't need to hit rock bottom first. Every major auto company has been through this.

They claim have a pretrial agreement to reduce it to 3x compensatory damages (which would make the total judgemnet 160 million instead of 243 million).

Appealing is expensive because they have to post a bond with 100% collateral, and you pay for it yearly. In this case, probably around 8 million a year.

So in general its not worth appealing for 5 years unless they think they will knock off 25-30% of the judgement.

Here it's the first case of it's kind so i'm sure they will appeal, but if they lose those appeals, most companies that aren't insane would cut their losses instead of trying to fight everything.

This was the appeal.

Why the f this was downvoted? Literally from the article:

> Tesla has indicated it will appeal the verdict to a higher court.

Does the American legal system have infinite appeals?

Not sure if it’s using the same FSD decision matrix but my model S chimed at me to drive into the intersection while sitting at a red light Last night with absolutely zero possibility it saw a green light anywhere in the intersection.

Perfectly isn’t a descriptor I would use. But this is just anecdotal.

> Why the hate , because of some false promise ?

Another name for "false promise" when made for capital gain is "fraud". And when the fraud is in the context of vehicular autonomy, it becomes "fraud with reckless endangerment". And when it leads to someone's death, that makes it "proximate cause to manslaughter".

As the source article says, the jury did agree that the driver was mostly liable. They found Tesla partially liable because they felt that Tesla's false promise led to the driver picking up his phone. If they'd been more honest about the limitations of their Autopilot system, as other companies are about their assisted driving functionalities, the driver might have realized that he needed to stop the car before picking up his phone.