Tesla fails to convince judge to throw out self-driving complaint; Musk issues Apple ban

Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) failed to convince an administrative judge to dismiss a complaint from the California Department of Motor Vehicles accusing the carmaker of overstating the abilities of its Advanced Driver Assistance System (ADAS). The ruling gives ammunition to a proposed class action lawsuit for false advertising.

California’s DMV says Tesla’s claims that vehicles were capable of “conducting short and long-distance trips with no action required by the person in the driver’s seat,” were misleading when in fact neither Autopilot nor the Full Self-Driving Mode can complete either task. In addition, the company charged customers as much as $12K more for a service it could not deliver.

Attorneys for Tesla (TSLA) argued that not only is the statute of limitations for the DMV’s complaint expired, but since the regulator allowed the company to make such claims for so long without protest was “implicit approval of these brand names” and Tesla (TSLA) should be allowed to keep using it.

The DMV complaint also violates Tesla’s right to free speech, Tesla lawyers argued, as the DMV’s rules on false advertising for autonomous vehicles “impermissibly restrict constitutionally protected speech that is truthful and nonmisleading.”

Separately, Tesla (TSLA) CEO Elon Musk said on the social platform X that Apple (AAPL) devices will be banned at all his companies if Apple (AAPL) integrates OpenAI at the OS level.

At Monday’s Worldwide Developers Conference, the tech giant said it would include the chatbot as part of AI tools the company calls “Apple Intelligence.”

Musk’s strong reaction is not surprising, considering the history between Musk and OpenAI/Sam Altman. The two co-founded the non-profit AI research lab OpenAI in 2015 with the intention of making open source software and to develop safe AI. Unable to convince Altman that OpenAI was falling behind Google’s (GOOG) DeepMind and should be folded into Tesla (TSLA), Altman broke from Musk, placing himself as president of the now for-profit OpenAI, leaving Musk to develop his own AI technology, later called X.AI. Musk subsequently hired away top engineers from OpenAI.

"Visitors will have to check their Apple devices at the door, where they will be stored in a Faraday cage," Musk elaborated.