>A Miami jury ordered Elon Musk’s car company on Friday to pay $329 million to victims of a deadly crash involving its Autopilot driver assist technology Good. >Tesla has vastly improved its technology since the crash on a dark, rural road in Key Largo, Florida, in 2019 Citation required. >Tesla has previously faced criticism that it is slow to cough up crucial data by relatives of other victims in Tesla crashes, accusations that the car company has denied. In this case, the plaintiffs showed Tesla had the evidence all along, despite its repeated denials, by hiring a forensic data expert who dug it up. Tesla said it made a mistake after being shown the evidence and honestly hadn’t thought it was there. Typical scumbag shit from TSLA
Unfortunately Tesla will most likely appeal again and again and again and it will take the whole life to get that payment. Sadly
Stock is gonna up on this news. It's not a car company, stock price doesn't care. You look at Google amazon that always beat earnings and their stock is down. Tesla EPS is going to trash, pulls future guidance, says few quarters be tough, but stock goes up. Where is tesla getting investment money from?
Don’t worry I’m sure musks friends in high places will work to resolve this for him. It would be awful if companies actually faced repercussions for bad behavior.
It’s like the Ford Pinto.
Statistically, it's *far* worse than the Pinto.
Key largo, antigo, baby why don't we go
My god I would have wet dreams for a decade if this bastard has to start paying out from all the false promises he's made. This is a big day.
Stock flat....sigh.
They have the money they just don't want to admit that FSD was the cause because that would destroy the empire and open them up to endless legal battles. If they do settle... I'd be absolutely shocked as it would be admission of so much more.
It's going to take several more of these lawsuits for it to have an impact on the general car buyer. But this is a great start.
As they should, thus is a joke. The retard driver is crawling on the floor while driving.
I’m so glad the plaintiffs didn’t settle. Elon has been getting away with criminal negligence by paying off families to keep quiet
Forensic data expert was able to find it but Tesla who owns the data had no idea where it was
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Don't really think they have the money either right now. Earningsreport showed they're low on cash.
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The Tesla gave the impression that the car could handle the situation itself. They marketed it as Self-Driving, their CEO claimed huge success stories of autonomous driving. These claims lead directly to the death of a woman. The families deserve every penny. And hopefully other victims find also the courage to fight against Tesla to get justice, too.
Huzzah!
They have tons of cash, this was just the first earnings report in a long time where they have *less* cash than they did at the start of the quarter.
Neglected the charging network when elmo fired the whole department in a rage when the vp questioned why they needed to fire anyone when the devision was profitable and successful. The fall out from that was contractors were not paid, new projects faltered and people lost confidence in Tesla being able to go forward with new projects in a competent mannee
I hate Musk and Tesla by association but this may be a bit excessive. For starters, if any accident happened with waymo, are they going to be fined the same amount? Would this strangle any self driving development in the US? One more win for China? Pretty sure we will never fine any person that amount for killing someone with a car - even if they were a billionaire and could afford it. It's easy to hate self driving cars but they are already somewhat safer on average vs human drivers. They don't get distracted, they don't get tired, they don't drink and drive, they can react much faster than humans etc. They will only get better from here. The goal is to get to good self driving and save lives. We need to hold bad actors accountable but make sure that we do not stop the process entirely. Imagine if every train incident had to pay that much per person killed. You can bet that train investments would stop quickly. Remember, thousands of humans kill people with cars each year. As more cars become self driving - even if they are 10x better than human drivers, they will kill hundreds of people. Does that mean self driving companies are paying 30 billion + each year in lawsuits? How long before companies quit this market?
They can always settle without admission of fault. Which is how most settlements are
It’s a civil case, not like they can appeal in perpetuity. There has to be some kind of legal error done, not just “I don’t like the outcome”
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Tesla has some deep pockets.
Yeah, and it's only a matter of time before more big law firms catch on to that fact.
Wow. This firm likely has a blueprint that can be used on dozens, perhaps hundreds of other case. Relatedly, something that is rarely discussed about TSLA stock by any analyst is the possible liabilities the company has that could, if not totally bring the company down, cripple any profitability for the foreseeable future. The possible liabilities include: \- Wrongful death lawsuits for the "full self driving" accidents; \- Wrongful death lawsuits for the people who die in Tesla vehicles entirely because they are unable to get escape. \- Liability from government investigations of Musk and Tesla on a whole host of issues. \- Class Action lawsuit liability based on the certainty that HW3 and the high likelihood that HW4 will never achieve true autonomy. This one is particularly concerning, because if Tesla achieves autonomy with more advanced HW5 (or something), how much do they owe to all previous purchasers? Wouldn't every buyer of every Tesla ever be able to say "Wait a minute, since 2016 you said that my car would get your autonomy once you figured it out, and you eventually figured it out, but only for new cars with new hardware?"
They also aren’t paying their bills according to another Reddit posted news article.
And what's next... a billion-dollar judgement against GM because people broke their ignition cylinders by hanging heavy keychains on them, despite a clear warning from GM not to do that? Bet you didn't have a problem with that one.
I thought monopolies were illegal goddamn.
Nobody was fined anything what are you talking about?
The public opinion would take it as admission of fault.
So, the big thing here is the $200 million in punitive damages was awarded by the jury not to compensate the victims but to punish the bad guy (Tesla) for knowing and intentional bad behavior, as a deterrent. You don't generally award any punitive damages for negligence. None of us sat through the evidence at the trial, so we don't know what they saw, and exactly why they felt that $200 million was warranted. But it is safe to say that the behavior that was presented to the jury was really, really bad. Have some faith in our system.
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That's the wild part to me cus like... They shud know that will never be allowed. If that happens the economy suffers tremendously.
They were paid by the insurance company of the driver already. This is a separate action with the intent of sending a message which is why they didn’t settle and went for huge dollars.
>One more win for China? Yeah let's keep dangerous cars in beta testing on the road. Who cares if some people have to die. >It's easy to hate self driving cars but they are already somewhat safer on average vs human drivers Citation required. Maybe Waymo, but Tesla sure as shit is not better at driving then a human. Even if you believe their data it's human + FSD/Autopilot it's not Autopilot/FSD standing on it's own. >We need to hold bad actors accountable That's what happened here. A bullshitter got caught for spewing bullshit about their product. >Does that mean self driving companies are paying 30 billion + each year in lawsuits I'm sure they will/do have insurance for these instances. Also notice this problem is almost exclusive to Tesla because of their false advertising of their products capabilities. Why did they add **Supervised** to FSD's name?
The article states how Tesla was deceptive in withholding telemetry data and 'pretending' they didn't know the data existed. That's worthy of punishment. I'm sure they do this all the time.
Burn baby burn
How do you think they have the cash?
That is like 30 seconds of interest for Elon
There's no settling. Tesla already lost the case. They can try to appeal
It wasnt fsd it was autopilot
If he had wealth in the form of cash, then certainly. But I suspect it is much more likely that he has $300 billion in illiquid companies (Tesla, SpaceX, Twitter/xAi, etc.) and negative $5-15 billion in the form of a loan from a bank. And he can draw on this money as much as he wants, provided Tesla shares stay high enough. Still a net worth of \~$290 billion, which is insane.
how is the 330 mil getting divy'ed up, thats way too much money to award 1 family. To Elon, our peasant lives dont matter
i dont know what the settlement was. But that payout could have just been the bare minimum the state requires the insurance to cover. Which will certainly be less than a serious injury let alone the death warrants.
Me too, and especially the bets against the stock that I have. making money on TSLA dropping is more satisfying then damn near anything else.
Yeah, probably because this is just the autopilot software which you dont need to use, to be fair. I wouldn't be dissuaded from buying any car brand if their optional-to-use software didnt work. I just wouldnt use it
Does that mean the insurance company can turn around and sue Tesla for the money they gave the family. I'm not a legal scholar (or legal anything) so please forgive me if this doesn't make sense, but if an insurance company pays something following the death of a customer and the death is later found to have been caused by a defective product, can't the insurance demand that the manufacturer reimburses them ?
American laws are not my area of expertise unfortunately.
This is such a tragedy but this could cause some legal precedence that I believe is fundamentally wrong. How can someone who is completely responsible, and has to click boxes saying yes I am responsible for supervision, admit that they weren’t supervising, allowing the car to speed, and distracted by their phone kill someone and blame the car, and the car company is liable? How is this different from me saying I’m not responsible for any frontal collision because my car has emergency braking?
The ruling was that Tesla was only found to be 33% responsible for the crash. So I would expect the insurance would still need to cover 66% and I doubt they paid enough to get there. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/aug/01/tesla-fatal-autopilot-crash-verdict
Calls on Tesla
Just to clarify, this one was auto pilot not FSD. Both are severly flawed, but if you're telling someone about it i want you to be as accurate as possible ;)
Do your read and understand every click-through license that you have to agree to in order to use every service out there?
For the agreement to use fsd I read every word, it’s telling you how to supervise a 2 ton moving object But to your point a lot of people don’t read it I imagine, which is dumb. How we got the humancentipad
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0WlmScgbdws&t=135s The end of this is basically Tesla.
Tesla is apparently so incompetent that third party data experts can pull out the information easier then Tesla employees. And they suggest they have the knowledge to build FSD.
Make you question their competence.
> Tesla is apparently so incompetent that third party data experts can ~~pull out the information~~ uncover what Tesla has attempted to hide. FTFY
Right… just like pleading the Fifth *totally* isn’t an admission of guilt.
Yes… because *that’s* the important detail.
That actually is about 2 weeks interest for Elon.
Well it is one or the other...
If you don’t think that Tesla was trying to hide damning evidence, you haven’t been paying attention to Tesla for the last 15 years.
Who says I do not think that. Point is. Either they are too incompetent to be writing code or they are hiding damning evidence. Both are equally bad. It is probably both.
to a place called Kokomo...
The Royal “you”…
Majority of it is penalty related as Tesla intentionally hid data. Typically CEO would go to jail for that
Well I agree but the problem is that the person that was presented as the new Einstein by the media lied to tell everyone how safe and autonomous it was - for massive profits.
Sooo…criminal negligence is the best excuse they have?
Sure. But Tesla will start to see a lot of similar cases showing up on their docket. I have to wonder if people are less likely to take Musk and Tesla in a favorable light after how cozy Musk got with Trump.
Love this, sue em dry
Go on Tesla's twitter page and read their posts over the past couple of days claiming how you don't have to drive, the car will.... and..... it's safer. That's why.
What a weird ruling, 33% liable? Does this occur more often?
Public opinion never damages Tesla, probably the opposite
A number of people have been killed because they believed their Tesla was safe to drive itself
I’m an automotive safety engineer who works on Emergency brake systems and it is not allowed under the international standards to use nomenclature for those systems that could trick users into thinking a level 2 SAE system could be higher SAE number. Most other companies abide by that rule except Tesla that names it’s system « Autopilot » giving the impression they are more advanced/reliable than they are. It’s shocking to see how at scale automotive international safety standards are disregarded by Tesla in the name of « advancement » when it’s actually just greed. They gaslight the verdict saying it’s not fair, yeah sure !
I have no real legal knowledge. So I don't know, but with multiple parties to blame this feels logical? Whether it is valid that Tesla is 33% responsible, I don't know. But with Tesla's advertising and how Elon Musk talks about autopilot and FSD there is certainly some blame.
I guess criminal stupidity isn’t a legal defense.
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There's no more settling. Tesla lost in court. Appeals only win when there was something severely wrong. It isn't supposed to be "I don't like the outcome so I want a retrial"
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> Citation required. Maybe Waymo, but Tesla sure as shit is not better at driving then a human. Even if you believe their data it's human + FSD/Autopilot it's not Autopilot/FSD standing on it's own. To reinforce your point. There has been some research done that shows human+autopilot is worse than just human. Tesla's numbers bragging about autopilot don't correct for the fact that autopilot is mostly used on highways in good weather conditions. Highways have a lot less crashes per mile and autopilot tends to not work in bad visibility conditions (fog, heavy rain, sun blinding the cameras).
You can theoretically could settle but the plaintiffs already won the judgement. They have the upper hand. The appeal isn't a do over. You can only appeal on certain grounds (like misapplied laws, procedural issues, etc), not the entire case. There's 0 reason for plaintiffs to settle. Time for settlement was before the jury ruled. They've already won the judgement. Also companies like tesla never settle. They would have already if they were going to.
Yeah I love the classic Silicon Valley logic -- disregard completely the words of the CEO, but everyone should study and completely understand the 10,000 word "user agreement".....
So it's actually "Autopilot (Supervised)"?
It isn't. You can easily make a mistake when asked multiple times to recall past events in detail when talking to the FBI. Then they hit you with a charge of lying to them. Never talk to the police or FBI.
That’s your right to remain silent, not your right to refuse to answer in court.
You can and should remain silent. That's what I meant.
So is the stock going to double now?
Recently talked to my ex co-workers at the Fremont facility. Saying productions has been cut. Things are slowly doing big time. Majority of the employees are afraid that they be next to be cut.
They shouldn’t be able to label something FSD (even if they did trademark the name), if it is not in fact “Full Self Driving”
This has the Tesla stans furiously typing lol
I predict that Musk will quit Tesla, dump his Tesla stock and call it a day.
Not just Musk, but imagine how many demon engineer/IT work there that know how to access the data, and they just helped him cover it up.
A TSLA whistleblower could solve that issue, but of course employees there are probably weasels hoping to gain favor by helping him.
You mean the crucial data that the accelerator was pressed?
This case was about Enhanced Autopilot, not Full Self-Driving; they are two different systems.
OK. But Autopilot is not the ideal name, either.
At least he’s got government contracts to offset those losses! (/s)
The verdict has more to do with punitive damages from tesla trying to hide data and facts during the investigation If something like this happens its a warning to other companies that you must open your books and let everyone understand how and why it happened. Instead tesla shutdown and become super defensive and cagey and fought every motion the defense filed for information. It is a perfect lesson in how not to behave when your product is involved in human death.
Yeah, I am wondering if they are going to do anything about Tesla trying to hide the data, I don't believe they didn't know where it was
This year the tide has turned
Why not? Works for airplanes.
Are you seriously comparing airplanes to a car? You’re the reason why there are warnings labels printed behind shampoo bottles.
And that is why the punitive damages were so high.
They will never see a dime. At least not for many years. They should have settled.
Just wait for the lawsuit when Tesla (and their customers) realize that HW3/HW4 MCUs can never achieve full autonomy. Literally every Tesla customer since 2019 could claim that Musk promised that their car had all the hardware for autonomy, and they bought the car based on Musk's material statements, and so now they want to return the car and get their money back. $45k per vehicle on average \* 5 million vehicles sold since 2019 = $225 billion. Tesla cash on hand = $37 billion.
Now just keep it going.
Move over Camp LeJuene, we have a new deeper pocket to mine.
Airplanes have actual autopilot systems that rely on infrastructure to support the capability. They are able to fly on a predetermined trajectory, respond to other aircraft fitted with appropriate transponders, and even take certain remediation steps to correct for unforseen circumstances in the air. The difference is that aircraft autopilot handles the vast majority of all situations when the aircraft is above the autopilot floor (and it won't engage autopilot when below this limit). There are just less hazards in the air, partially due to us literally designing our air transport system to enable autopilot from very early on.
Musk continuously over promises and under delivers. Calling that feature “Autopilot” and “Fully Self Driving” (which costs extra) sends a completely false message about the capabilities of their systems. Damn right they should pay up for duping some idiot into believing the car would drive safely while he looked for his cell phone.
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