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Tesla Agrees To Settle Class Action Over Autopilot Billed As 'Safer' (reuters.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Tesla on Thursday reached an agreement to settle a class action lawsuit with buyers of its Model S and Model X cars who alleged that the company's assisted-driving Autopilot system was "essentially unusable and demonstrably dangerous." The lawsuit said Tesla misrepresented on its website that the cars came with capabilities designed to make highway driving "safer." The Tesla owners said they paid an extra $5,000 to have their cars equipped with the Autopilot software with additional safety features such as automated emergency braking and side collision warning. The features were "completely inoperable," according to the complaint. Under the proposed agreement, class members, who paid to get the Autopilot upgrade between 2016 and 2017, will receive between $20 and $280 in compensation. Tesla has agreed to place more than $5 million into a settlement fund, which will also cover attorney fees.
If you're a member of the class, you get $20 to $280, which is supposed to recompense you for the $5K you spent for the useless software...
The lawyers, of course, get the lion's share of the $5M....
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
The Tesla owners said they paid an extra $5,000 (...) will receive between $20 and $280 in compensation.
So between 0.4% and 5.6% of what they paid, if Tesla gets to keep 95% they're probably happy. The lawyers are happy because they "won" and get paid. But for any of the people in the class this is a joke, either they have a case and should get much more or they have no case and should get nothing. This is just lawyer busywork...
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
"The Tesla owners said they paid an extra $5,000 to have their cars equipped" "who paid to get the Autopilot upgrade between 2016 and 2017, will receive between $20 and $280 in compensation." Unless I misread something in that Tesla is on the winning end by 4720-4980$ per car it was installed on. Least in this summary people are getting a tiny amount back, .4% to hair over 5% of their money back for a defective system.
I don't wanna get into the business of defending Tesla. Probably they did overhype their technology but I have a peeve with one avenue of criticism.
That is Tesla shouldn't have called it "Autopilot" because it leads buyers to believe that they are buying a self-driving car.
If you buy an airplane these days chances it has an "Autopilot" as well. Any half-trained pilot knows:
1. Autopilots come with different levels of capability.
2. No current commercial autopilot will keep you from flying the plane into the ground. (Fighter jets have this.)
3. No current autopilot will help you if you run out of fuel. If you think it does you will probably die.
4. The autopilot will fly the plane into weather conditions beyond its capability and everybody aboard will die.
5. The autopilot will be perfectly happy flying you into another plane. When this happens you will die and take the other plane with you.
Yet in spite of all these deficiencies they still call it "Autopilot" and have for 50 years or more and I never heard of a class action suit screaming about misleading advertising. Why? Because pilots (and certainly their instructors) pay attention to the product specifications and assign responsibility to the pilot accordingly. They practice using it and don't just expect to punch a button and have everything taken care of.
I suppose this is too much for the flaccid minds of the American consumer to absorb. So we get lawsuits. Well if the product was actually defective then OK or if Telsa lied about what it could do (beyond calling it "Autopilot") then OK but if it just turns out that the purchasers had unrealistic expectations then I hope it gets thrown out of court.
This can't be read as anything other than a massive victory for Tesla. Even with a relatively small class, that's an incredibly cheap settlement, and the lawyers' share likely doesn't even come close to covering the investment they made in the case.
Most firms would laugh at a proposed class action suit against such a high profile and deep pocketed target if they thought $5M was the best settlement they could get.
This can't be read as anything but a massive failure for Tesla. Doesn't matter what the settlement was, finally they admit that their solution is not only dangerous at best, but also deliberately misleading people into buying an expensive car.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
hahahha, this is something I would say.
-=BeauHD=-
The Tesla owners said they paid an extra $5,000 (...) will receive between $20 and $280 in compensation.
So between 0.4% and 5.6% of what they paid, if Tesla gets to keep 95% they're probably happy. The lawyers are happy because they "won" and get paid. But for any of the people in the class this is a joke, either they have a case and should get much more or they have no case and should get nothing. This is just lawyer busywork...
Maybe and maybe not. Numbers lie all the time, and people have different valuations for things based in part on their point of view. You need to look into the details of a case much more to really figure out what's going on; we can just make guesses at this level of generality. It's like asking the court of public opinion to decide whether a murder defendant we hear about in the news is guilty.
Class actions used to be really bad about the kind of thing you're talking about, but things have gotten a little better because it's such a well-known problem, so there has been some reform.
Background on class actions generally: Class actions exist as to hold companies accountable for widespread bad behavior that causes only a little bit of harm to a lot of people. None of those people would sue without the class action and the company would otherwise have less *incentive* to prevent or fix similar bad behavior. So sometimes class actions are bad (when the company is hurt by the bad action anyway AND the rest of the industry would be hurt if they did the same thing AND the victims do not get anything meaningful) and sometimes they are good (when the company or industry would never reform a bad act without the worry about getting sued OR the victims get some meaningful recompense).
Real lawyers write in C++
The above comment can't be read as anything but a failure to read the linked article.
"The proposed settlement does not mention the safety allegations but focuses on the delay in making the promised features available to consumers."
The "completely inoperable" part of the claim appears then to refer to the system's status between the time of delivery of the vehicle and the time of the OTA update.
The article, and presumably the settlement, make no comment on the safety or efficacy of the autopilot or automatic braking systems. Nor does it mention Tesla admitting to delivering anything dangerous.
Booooo!
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
a poke in the eye.
Pay $5000 for it and get back $20 when it isn't delivered. We called it correctly when we called it vaporware. I can't wait to see what Rei has to say about this.
I'm a minority race. Save your vitriol for white people.
The Tesla owners said they paid an extra $5,000 to have their cars equipped with the Autopilot software with additional safety features such as automated emergency braking and side collision warning. The features were "completely inoperable," according to the complaint. Under the proposed agreement, class members, who paid to get the Autopilot upgrade between 2016 and 2017, will receive between $20 and $280 in compensation. Tesla has agreed to place more than $5 million into a settlement fund, which will also cover attorney fees.
$20-280 for a "completely inoperable" $5,000 set of upgrades?
Ken
I had posted a while back on how crappy their AP was, constantly sending me over double solid yellow lines I am glad I withdrew my reservation for one and sold off their stocks. Seems like they are 'boring' themselves deeper underground.
Tesla should give them eacvh $37.50 and a souvineer Tesla Autopilot Ball-point Pen. Seems only fair that they should get something "special" for their five thousand dollars.