Tesla faces lawsuits over FSD safety claims and data practices
Tesla faces lawsuits in China and investigations in the US over Full Self-Driving marketing claims. Former employees told Reuters the system fails to detect obstacles and strikes animals, while data comparisons using incompatible metrics made it appear far safer than it operates. Ten Chinese car owners sued for misleading claims of "complete autonomous driving capability."
What happened
Former Tesla employees told Reuters that the FSD system fails to identify obstacles and has struck animals including cats, dogs and deer, with footage showing vehicles not braking before impact and near-misses with children in residential areas.
Tesla presented safety data comparing FSD's airbag-deployment accident rate with all U.S. trailer accident rates including minor collisions, and compared newer Tesla vehicles averaging 4 years old to the national fleet average of 12 years, making the system appear ten times safer than actual performance.
Before robotaxi demonstrations in Austin, Texas, employees spent months manually annotating data and optimizing routes to make the technology appear more mature than it was, contrary to Elon Musk's claims that FSD requires no high-definition maps.
Reported impact
Ten Chinese car owners filed a class action lawsuit in Beijing Daxing District People's Court on May 29, 2025, claiming Tesla misled them with false marketing of 'complete autonomous driving capability' and seeking 3.95 million yuan in compensation.
Nine of the ten Chinese plaintiffs demanded a refund and triple damages for the FSD feature itself; one sought the same for the entire vehicle, claiming complete autonomous driving was the sole, decisive factor in the purchase decision.
Index analysis
The safety data comparison used methodologically incompatible metrics, comparing collisions severe enough to deploy airbags against minor crashes in a much older vehicle fleet with less active safety technology.
Tesla employees expressed skepticism about the system's readiness in complex conditions despite public claims of full autonomy capability.
Governance controls
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration opened investigations into multiple FSD-related accidents to clarify the system's safety in poor visibility and complex driving conditions.
Classification
Sources and evidence
This record was researched and written by the Index, based on the following original reporting.