Remember back in April, when the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration told Tesla it could no longer call its semi-autonomous software “Full Self-Driving,” and that it had to throw a “supervised” in there to cover its ass? Well it seems no one told Tesla’s social media team, because the company’s tweets continue to imply FSD is truly “fully” self-driving — at least, according to emails from the NHTSA. This raises a very interesting question: What happens when Musk becomes necessary for those regulators’ operation?
Emails from NHTSA to Tesla sent this spring but only recently made public detail the administration’s concerns about the automaker’s messaging. The emails list exemplary tweets from Tesla, all of which imply that FSD is truly fully self-driving:
In the meantime, Tesla’s X (Twitter) account has re-posted or endorsed postings that exhibit disengaged driver behavior. Similar to our remarks in the April 15, 2024 meeting about the April 10, 2024 “Heart Attack” post from @MAXPAULFRANKLIN, we believe that Tesla’s postings conflict with its stated messaging that the driver is to maintain continued control over the dynamic driving task. We similarly observe that these postings may encourage viewers to see FSD-Supervised as a Chauffer or “Robotaxi” rather than a partial automation / driver assist system that requires persistent attention and intermittent intervention by the driver. Example postings are listed below for your information.
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Social media platforms furnish a valuable means of timely communication with the public- certainly to a greater extent than owner’s manuals- and, while Tesla has the discretion to communicate with the public as it sees fit, we note that these posts show lost opportunities to temper enthusiasm for a new product with cautions on its proper use with the points that Tesla has made to us.
True to the emails, posts from that period did heavily imply that Teslas could operate without human intervention. One even garnered comments claiming that FSD could be used as a drunk driving aid, which we in the biz would call a “terrible idea, Jesus Christ, do not do that.”
Tweets from Tesla since NHTSA’s letter have been more measured in their promotion, saying things like “all you have to do is supervise.” Still, there’s question as to whether video retweets in particular are measured enough. NHTSA called out a video on Tesla’s YouTube channel as being particularly kosher due to “the driver […] hav[ing] their hands very closely positioned on the steering wheel while driving in a manner that indicates a readiness to intervene.” Yet, videos promoted by Tesla’s Twitter account often show drivers without their hands even on-camera, let alone hovering above the steering wheel.
While Tesla’s promotion of functionality that FSD simply doesn’t have has cooled recently, the company still seems to be edging as close to its fully autonomous fiction as possible without angering regulators. With Musk poised to control those regulators’ purse strings come January, one has to wonder what effect that’ll have on agencies like NHTSA that regulate Musk’s companies. The CEO has already promised cuts, and agencies that receive federal funding are incentivized to get on Musk’s good side to avoid being stripped to the bone in search of that magic, impossible $2 trillion number. If regulatory pressure is the only thing keeping even Tesla’s Twitter account in check, what happens when regulators need Musk’s sign-off for their budgets?