German Court Overrules “Tesla Autopilot” Marketing Ban
The short news update on a case that extends back to 2019 is that an appeals court has overturned a regional court ruling from 2019 that determined Tesla could not use the term “Autopilot” on its website and in other marketing materials in Germany. In other words, Tesla is indeed allowed to use the term “Autopilot” on its website and in other marketing materials in Germany. This is reportedly a final ruling.
There’s a series of arguments for why Tesla should be allowed to use the term Autopilot for its semi-autonomous driving features, and there’s a series of arguments for why it shouldn’t. I personally side with the former, but I’ll present both of them below before coming back to the news and a similar such case stateside.
As far as why Tesla Autopilot is completely legitimate and fine terminology for Tesla’s ADAS (advanced driver-assistance system) features, the arguments are:
- Autopilot, as used in the aircraft world, does not allow the pilots to just go to sleep or put on a movie and stop watching what is happening. (Notably, Elon Musk has a pilot license and used to fly a jet around — plus, he founded and is CEO of SpaceX — so he has extensive real-world experience of the tech.)
- Nowhere does Tesla say that Autopilot can completely drive a person around or that drivers don’t need to pay attention.
- In fact, there are numerous notifications and warnings of all sorts that indicate that drivers must stay alert, monitor the road and the car, and take over from Autopilot whenever needed; and that also inform the driver he/she is fully responsible for driving the car.
- Extra Autopilot features cost several thousand dollars, and the “Full Self Driving” suite now costs $12,000. Assuming that people would buy these extra features and not be aware of what they can and cannot do is a bit of a wild assumption.
Taking all of those points together, I don’t see the problem with the term “Tesla Autopilot,” and I think it’s sensible the judge in the appeals court in Germany came to the same conclusion.
Arguments on the other side include the following:
- “Autopilot” makes it sound like the car drives completely autonomously, and some people may assume they can go to sleep, watch a movie, or simply not pay attention to the road.
- A lot of hype around future completely self-driving Tesla cars and even robotaxis may make some consumers think those exist today. (Again, I really just find this bends the imagination far too far.)
- Some people have posted videos on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, reddit, etc. of themselves or others sleeping while Teslas drive themselves, sitting in the backseat, or doing other ridiculous things.
I know that plenty of people come down on both sides of this issue, but I honestly have a hard time seeing the latter series of arguments as more sensible as the former.
The term “Full Self Driving” (FSD) is a bit of a different matter. Naturally, it implies … full self driving. However, the point of the suite is that it will eventually be able to provide full self driving once the software gets to that level, and I think anyone who buys it knows (or should know) that Teslas are not capable of full self driving or robotaxi service at this point. The one thing on this matter that the judge in that case in Germany reportedly sided with the critics on was that Tesla could not say on its website that additional FSD features would be “by the end of the year” (with the year in the original case being 2019). Instead, Tesla has been using the phrase “in the near future” for a while now — which seems more sensible anyway given that Tesla has had a hard time predicting when it would roll out new features.