Bulletins

Senators want the FTC to probe Tesla's claims about Autopilot

The Tesla logo on a yellow background.
Tesla has designed cars for the self-driving era.
Image: Protocol

Two Democratic senators wrote to the U.S. Federal Trade Commission chair, urging her to investigate "potentially deceptive and unfair practices in Tesla's advertising and marketing of its driving automation systems."

The letter to Lina Khan from Sens. Richard Blumenthal and Ed Markey follows the announcement of U.S. highway regulators' safety probe into Tesla's Autopilot performance around scenes with first responders in them.

That investigation, which will look into the systems that monitor whether humans are actually in control of the cars even when driver-assistance technologies are engaged, dented the carmaker's stock price when it was announced on Monday.

Blumenthal and Markey highlighted what they said were instances of Tesla and its CEO Elon Musk over-hyping the cars' capabilities at self-driving, even though the technologies are only supposed to assist human drivers with cruise control, staying in lanes and other tasks.

"Their claims put Tesla drivers — and all of the traveling public — at risk of serious injury or death," the lawmakers wrote.

Ben Brody

Ben Brody (@ BenBrodyDC) is a senior reporter at Protocol focusing on how Congress, courts and agencies affect the online world we live in. He formerly covered tech policy and lobbying (including antitrust, Section 230 and privacy) at Bloomberg News, where he previously reported on the influence industry, government ethics and the 2016 presidential election. Before that, Ben covered business news at CNNMoney and AdAge, and all manner of stories in and around New York. He still loves appearing on the New York news radio he grew up with.

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Bulletins