When does a 1,400x safety gap become criminal negligence?
Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (FSD) technology has been the subject of dangerously failed promises every year since 2022 (unless you count it as part of the Autopilot failed promises repeatedly since 2016, shamelessly rebranded with a FSD fork of 2022). According to TeslaDeaths.com over 50 people have died during Tesla’s eight years of false safety promises. For those who have been asleep at their keyboard:
The latest Electrek data shows FSD has struggled to get above 200 miles between critical disengagements, achieving 400 at best.
For comparison, using Tesla’s own benchmark from the NHTSA for true self-driving capability, 700,000 miles between interventions is an equivalent to human driver safety levels.
This isn’t just a small gap to bridge. We’re talking about an improvement of 1,400 times better is required before Tesla could even begin to be considered as close to or safe as a human. With that in mind, Elon Musk has very prominently stated that this year Tesla will eliminate all crashes.
Imagine if a pharmaceutical company announced they had a revolutionary cancer cure “ready for market” and going onto people’s bloodstream already, yet tests showed it was only 0.07% as effective as existing treatments.
Imagine boarding a plane advertised as “full self flying” that actually has a 99.93% chance of requiring an emergency intervention by the pilot during flight.
For six consecutive years, Elon Musk has promised FSD would achieve full self-driving “by the end of this year.”
Each deadline has passed without delivery. Now, instead of admitting the technical challenges, Tesla appears to be pivoting to attempting a 1950s concept of driverless. Their limited geo-fenced service – essentially adopting the same approach as RCA and GM before Musk was even born – has until now been criticized by Musk as “too difficult to scale.”
This matters because consumers have paid thousands of dollars for FSD capabilities based on these promises. Many purchased vehicles with the expectation that their cars would soon drive themselves, potentially increasing in value as “robotaxis.”
When examining the data and pattern of promises versus reality, it becomes difficult to view such Frank Abignale-like claims as unmoored optimism or detatched goal-setting. A 1400x performance gap isn’t something for patching over the air – it represents a fundamental chasm between current capabilities and promised functionality.
The Tesla brand promised an endless summer but has only delivered a colder and colder winter – a frozen wasteland of discontent, deception, and death
Regulators must recognize that a 1,400x gap between promise and reality isn’t just misleading marketing—it’s a public safety crisis demanding immediate intervention. Oh, I forgot, Elon Musk is using DOGE to get rid of the regulators who have said this already for years.