Tesla faces a ban on the sale of its vehicles in California. “Elon Musk's company has 90 days to correct advertising about autonomous driving and Autopilot features that the state says are misleading,” officials with the California Department of Motor Vehicles announced Tuesday, with the ruling cited by the San Francisco Chronicle.
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The California office postponed the introduction of the sales ban for 60 days to allow Tesla to make the necessary changes. If this does not happen, after this deadline the dealer's license will be suspended for 30 days, the institution informed.
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During the first nine months of this year, Tesla sold less than 135,000 cars in California, according to the dealers' association. 500 vehicles – a decrease of 15 percent. The company thus took third place behind Toyota and Honda.
The court hits Tesla. Elon Musk is threatened with a ban on selling cars
As the San Francisco Chronicle explains, the court also suggested suspending Tesla's production license in California for 30 days. However, the transport office has temporarily suspended this decision.
The decision follows a long-running case heard by Administrative Judge Juliet Cox in Oakland. Last month, a judge ruled in favor of a more sweeping suspension of Tesla's operations, barring it from both producing and selling vehicles for a period of 30 days.
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“We are asking Tesla to do their job, as they have done in other markets, and label these vehicles appropriately,” said Steve Gordon of the California Department of Motor Vehicles.
As the San Francisco Chronicle explains, at the heart of the case are four phrases or product descriptions on Tesla's website that state officials consider ambiguous or constitute false advertising.
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These include: “autopilot”; “full self-driving (FSD) capability”; the promise that the system “has been designed to enable short and long trips without the need for any action by the person sitting in the driver's seat”; and the claim that Tesla can effectively get people to their destination by navigating streets, highways and intersections, and then parking automatically.
The discussion emphasizes that, among others, Using the phrase Full Self-Driving does not make Tesla a fully autonomous car. The person behind the wheel must always be ready to take control and be responsible for doing so.
