Who referenced LIDAR in the FSD class action?

[MarkDave]

(moderator note: This document. referenced in full below, is the judge’s response to Tesla’s (the defendant’s) motion to dismiss. It will be interesting to see the actual language Tesla counsel used. Follow the lawsuit here.)

 

[APotatoGod]

This is meaningless without far more context. Who is LoSavio? Who exactly is representing Tesla in claiming that LoSaivo's car, in particular, obviously needs LiDAR it does not have? Is that person an authority on autonomous driving at Tesla? Or is it a lawyer? Or Elon?

 

[mgs333]

This is meaningless without far more context. Who is LoSavio? Who exactly is representing Tesla in claiming that LoSaivo's car, in particular, obviously needs LiDAR it does not have? Is that person an authority on autonomous driving at Tesla? Or is it a lawyer? Or Elon?

Tesla Advanced Driver Assistance Systems Litigation, U.S. District Court, Northern District of California, No. 22-05240

The proposed nationwide class action…led by Thomas LoSavio, a retired California lawyer who said he paid an $8,000 premium in 2017 for Full Self-Driving capabilities on a Tesla Model S, believing it would make driving safer if his reflexes deteriorated as he aged…

teslamotorsclub.com

 

[azred]

If that was an admission by Tesla as it seems, Elon will probably fire his entire legal team.

 

[JB47394]

Who exactly is representing Tesla in claiming that LoSaivo's car, in particular, obviously needs LiDAR it does not have?

It sounds like a service tech shooting from the hip to put off an irate old guy.

At the end of the page image (where's the document link?), note that he's "bringing in" his Tesla for updates. Did Tesla ever require service appointments for software updates? If so, that would set the timeframe for this. If not, then LoSaivo has an odd perception of his vehicle.

Edit: Here's a link to a copy of the document.

https://regmedia.co.uk/2024/05/16/teslaamendedcomplaint.pdf

Trying to stay on topic, here are the two LIDAR references (see the document for full context):

Page 3:

Those statements were allegedly false because the cars lacked the combination of sensors, including lidar, needed to achieve SAE Level 4 (“High Automation”) and Level 5 (“Full Automation”), i.e., full autonomy. (Id. ¶¶ 30–36.)

Page 5:

Although Tesla contends that it should have been obvious to LoSavio that his car needed lidar to self-drive and that his car did not have it, LoSavio plausibly alleges that he reasonably believed Tesla’s claims that it could achieve self-driving with the car’s existing hardware and that, if he diligently brought his car in for the required updates, the car would soon achieve the promised results.

 

[gsmith123]

I'm confused, the quotes about LIDAR written by the plaintiff, not Tesla. These are at best second hand representations of what Tesla said, and at worst making things up.

"Although Tesla contends that it should have been obvious to LoSavio that his car needed lidar"

Lets see what Tesla actually said.

 

[gsmith123]

(And another possibility is someone typo'd LIDAR when they meant radar - after all Tesla has included radar in some vehicles but not all, so they may be trying to make some argument about that)

 

[Krash]

I changed the title to more accurately reflect who is doing the admitting and the fact that we haven’t seen the original motion to dismiss yet. “Judge says Tesla counsel says…” seemed a little long.

Then I changed the title again to something much less click-bait and more about what I think is the mystery: Who said LIDAR?

 

[stopcrazypp]

It sounds like a service tech shooting from the hip to put off an irate old guy.

Yep, it sounds exactly like what a service rep would say to shoo the guy away. Haven't seen anywhere that Tesla officially says or even suggests the car needs Lidar. It's also paraphrasing, which is many times even journalists get wrong when they are doing it from a recording (much less memory as this seems to be).

 

[aronth5]

This is meaningless without far more context. Who is LoSavio? Who exactly is representing Tesla in claiming that LoSaivo's car, in particular, obviously needs LiDAR it does not have? Is that person an authority on autonomous driving at Tesla? Or is it a lawyer? Or Elon?

Agree. Meaningless is being kind.

 

[kabin]

If that was an admission by Tesla as it seems, Elon will probably fire his entire legal team.

Yep, it's not a thoughtful admission from what was suppose to be a crack legal team.

 

[kabin]

Yep, it sounds exactly like what a service rep would say to shoo the guy away. Haven't seen anywhere that Tesla officially says or even suggests the car needs Lidar. It's also paraphrasing, which is many times even journalists get wrong when they are doing it from a recording (much less memory as this seems to be).

No, about everyone in the the entire industry says that minus Tesla. Pretty interesting for Tesla counsel to admit it.

 

[enemji]

No, about everyone in the the entire industry says that minus Tesla. Pretty interesting for Tesla counsel to admit it.

Tesla counsel admitted nothing

 

[CyberGus]

 

[stopcrazypp]

No, about everyone in the the entire industry says that minus Tesla. Pretty interesting for Tesla counsel to admit it.

They didn't say it was "Tesla counsel" that said it, it's a claim by the plaintiff that "Tesla" said it, but at the moment we don't know who he meant by "Tesla" (it could be as service rep as I suspect, it could be a sales rep, it could be counsel, we don't know). Read the actual statement, don't go by the title of this thread, which is inaccurate.

 

[Krash]

They didn't say it was "Tesla counsel" that said it, it's a claim by the plaintiff that "Tesla" said it, but at the moment we don't know who he meant by "Tesla" (it could be as service rep as I suspect, it could be a sales rep, it could be counsel, we don't know). Read the actual statement, don't go by the title of this thread, which is inaccurate.

We don’t know. It might be a claim by the plaintiff that Tesla said it. Or it might be a claim by Tesla counsel. Or Tesla counsel response to a plaintiff claim. But we should be able to figure that out if someone can get us the preceding documents.

What we do know, thanks to @JB47394 is that the judge references LIDAR relative to the statute of limitations, and discoverability about whether the plaintiff’s vehicle is capable of FSD and how that might affect the statute of limitations. Meaning when it was discoverable that the car wasn’t capable of FSD is a question of fact. If it were a question of law, the case could be dismissed if the judge would rule on the question. But as a question of fact, it can’t be dismissed, so the case goes on.

I think the plaintiff is going to argue that it is a fair assumption that if Tesla sold the car as FSD capable, and Tesla learned that the car needed LIDAR to make that happen, that the plaintiff could assume that Tesla would add the LIDAR, because of course Tesla said it was capable.

My attorney friends, that I am quoting, are not surprised by this document by the way. They think the fraud case is obvious.

Also, the title is a working title. I can change it to whatever we agree. Sorry @MarkDave, we’re hijacking your thread. Nice catch by the way.