By Becky Peterson | Photography by Jason Henry for WSJ
When Tom LoSavio bought his Tesla Model S in 2017, he thought he was buying a car that would one day drive itself.
The retired attorney and self-described early adopter paid more than $100,000 for the luxury sedan, including $8,000 for lifetime access to its most advanced driver-assistance features. Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk said that the hardware in the company's cars would eventually allow all of its cars to drive themselves.
"My wife and I talked about what a great thing it would be if we could just get in a car and have it drive us places," LoSavio told The Wall Street Journal.
In the nine years since, LoSavio said it has become clear that Tesla took him for a ride. He is the lead plaintiff in a class-action lawsuit that alleges that Tesla charged customers thousands of dollars in pricey upgrades for a product that didn't, and still doesn't, exist.
LoSavio alleges that Musk and Tesla have made repeated claims that were false about the self-driving capabilities of these vehicles and misled consumers who paid extra because they believed the company's marketing. His lawsuit is one of several ongoing efforts by Tesla owners looking to hold the company accountable for overpromising and under-delivering on its Full Self-Driving (Supervised) product.
In the Netherlands, a Tesla owner launched a campaign last week to organize European buyers, some who paid thousands for automated-driving technology but still lack access because of local regulations. A law firm in Australia has also assembled a class-action case accusing the company of misleading customers about the cars' capabilities.
The matter calls into question Musk's decadelong marketing pitch that Tesla's autonomous vehicles were just around the corner. That promise kept Tesla's stock near all-time highs -- and with a market cap that exceeds most other automakers combined -- even as its share of the electric-vehicle market has eroded.
Tesla and its lawyers didn't respond to requests for comment.
The issue of Hardware 3, as the outdated hardware is known, has taken on a life of its own online, with owners taking to Reddit and Facebook to complain about Tesla's inaction. Investors also frequently ask Tesla executives about the matter on quarterly earnings calls.
The lawsuits and European campaign represent just thousands of Tesla customers. Wall Street analysts, however, estimate that there are millions of Teslas on the road with the outdated hardware no longer capable of running the most sophisticated version of Tesla's Full Self-Driving (Supervised) software.
By all appearances, the company is closer than ever to its goal. Its new robotaxi ride-hailing service offers a small number of driverless rides in Austin, Texas. Tesla claims it will come to more cities in the coming months. The company has also said it plans to start production on the Cybercab, a two-seat coupe that Musk has said won't need a steering wheel or pedals.
Still, for drivers like LoSavio, it isn't clear how or when Tesla will make good on the most ambitious of its promises: that most Teslas on the road today will one day be capable of autonomy.
"You want to believe that you're not a fool," LoSavio said.
Full Self-Driving, eventually
LoSavio, 80 years old, lives in a tony suburb on the San Francisco Peninsula. He is seeking a refund for himself and other Tesla customers who bought or leased new Teslas between 2016 and 2024, and paid extra for add-ons with the expectation that the cars would eventually become autonomous. The lawsuit also aims to bar Tesla from marketing its products as self-driving.
LoSavio won class-action status for his lawsuit in September. The class represents approximately 3,000 people in California, a figure that excludes the many Tesla owners who have signed arbitration agreements with the company that prevent them from suing.
Now Tesla is appealing the suit's class-action certification, leaving it up to a Ninth Circuit judge as to whether LoSavio can represent the class as is, with modifications, or whether he will have to pursue the lawsuit alone.
At the center of the lawsuit are the hardware within Tesla vehicles that automates certain driving tasks such as steering, braking and acceleration under close human supervision and the claims Tesla made for years about those capabilities.
Tesla's vehicles are equipped with cameras and onboard computers -- and previously, ultrasonic sensors and radar -- that enable those functions. Today, Tesla's most advanced driver-assist features are sold as a $99 monthly subscription under the name Full Self-Driving (Supervised). FSD can navigate most streets, change lanes and park while supervised by a driver who must keep eyes on the road and periodically touch the steering wheel.
Tesla started including early versions of this tech in its vehicles in 2014. By 2015, Musk was publicly claiming that Tesla vehicles could drive themselves entirely within two years.
Then in 2016, Tesla announced that all new cars built from then on had the hardware required for full self-driving. Musk told the press that a Tesla would drive itself from Los Angeles to New York City by the end of 2017.
"I feel pretty good about this goal," he said. "We'll be able to do a demonstration drive of full autonomy all the way from L.A. to New York."
That prediction didn't come true. Eventually Tesla's plans required a more sophisticated computer and cameras than were installed in LoSavio's car. In 2020 and 2021, it started offering customers upgrades to the third edition of its computer and camera set. Some customers like LoSavio, who paid upfront for lifetime access, got complimentary upgrades from Tesla. Others who wanted to use FSD but paid monthly could pay $1,000 for the upgrade.
Then in 2023, it upgraded its hardware for the fourth time and started selling new cars with its latest chip. That meant that customers like LoSavio, who got updated to the third edition computer a few years prior, once again had outdated equipment.
'I believed they would make it happen'
Tesla faces a similar class action in the Australian federal court, where it is accused of marketing and selling defective vehicles "incapable of supporting fully autonomous or close to autonomous driving, " according to the law firm's website.
Last week, after the Netherlands approved the use of FSD in the country for the first time, a Dutch Tesla owner named Mischa Sigtermans announced his own campaign to organize European drivers for a legal fight against the carmaker.
Sigtermans, the head of product at a venture studio in the Netherlands, paid EUR68,000 in 2019 for a Model 3 Performance, and an additional EUR6,400 for the upgraded Full Self-Driving capability. He said he still can't use FSD in his car because Dutch regulators only approved its use for the latest version of Tesla's hardware.
"Why did I buy it? Because I believed they would make it happen," Sigtermans said. "I just didn't think it would take them seven years, and still they wouldn't deliver."
The company hasn't made any moves since January 2025, when Musk told investors that the company would have to upgrade the computer for customers who bought the lifetime Full Self-Driving package.
"That is the honest answer and that's going to be painful and difficult. But we'll get it done," Musk said on the earnings call. "Now, I'm kind of glad that not that many people bought the FSD package."
The matter came up again on the earnings call in October, when Tesla executives said they wanted to finish the unsupervised version of the company's software before updating the hardware on older vehicles. They also discussed releasing different versions of the software to accommodate vehicles with the older hardware.
Earlier that month, Tesla had released its first major update to FSD in a year. Musk teased further updates to the software, saying that soon "your car will feel like it is sentient." The update, however, only worked on cars with the latest hardware, leaving some U.S. customers with older versions of the system.
Already, Musk has started talking up the potential of new generations of hardware.
Write to Becky Peterson at becky.peterson@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
April 20, 2026 05:30 ET (09:30 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2026 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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