Elon Musk promotes Tesla FSD misuse via 98-year-old driver's video
The CEO's endorsement of a driver who ignores road intersections contradicts Tesla's own safety terms and could jeopardize billions in legal defenses.
Elon Musk has amplified a video of a 98-year-old Tesla owner who admits to ignoring the road while using Full Self-Driving (Supervised). The promotion creates a stark contradiction between the CEO's public endorsements and the company's strict legal requirements for driver oversight.
Musk quote-tweeted a clip of Larry, a Tesla owner from New Mexico, adding a heart emoji to the post. The video, which has reached over 9 million views, features Larry stating, "I trust it 100%," and explaining, "I don’t want to look at every intersection and see, ‘Is this intersection clear, and is that one clear? Is there anybody behind me?’ I don’t want any of that, and I don’t have any of it."
The Supervision Gap
This endorsement directly clashes with Tesla's official safety documentation. The company's terms for "FSD (Supervised)" explicitly state that the features "require active driver supervision and do not make the vehicle autonomous." To further emphasize this need for human oversight, Tesla recently rebranded the software to include the "Supervised" qualifier.
Despite these warnings, the company and Musk have a history of promoting the system in ways that imply autonomy. This includes official marketing materials that have shown drivers distracted by unrelated tasks, such as making espresso, while the vehicle is in motion.
Legal Implications
The promotion of Larry's behavior arrives as Tesla faces significant legal headwinds. The company is currently navigating roughly two dozen lawsuits related to Autopilot and FSD, with potential liabilities reaching up to $14.5 billion. The tension between marketing and safety terms has already had tangible consequences in court; a Florida jury previously found Tesla partly liable in a fatal Autopilot crash, resulting in a $243 million judgment.
By personally endorsing a driver who openly brags about not supervising the vehicle, Musk provides a potential goldmine for plaintiffs' attorneys. Lawyers can now argue that Tesla's own leadership encourages the exact type of misuse that the company typically blames on drivers during litigation. This undermines the primary defense that drivers are responsible for crashes because they failed to follow supervision guidelines.
What's Next
Industry observers are now watching to see if this public endorsement will be cited in the ongoing $14.5 billion worth of pending litigation. While Tesla maintains that its software is not autonomous, the gap between the CEO's social media activity and the company's legal strategy remains a critical vulnerability. It remains to be seen if Tesla will issue further clarifications to distance its official safety policy from Musk's personal endorsements.