{"id":182471,"date":"2026-02-18T04:42:07","date_gmt":"2026-02-18T04:42:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/182471\/"},"modified":"2026-02-18T04:42:07","modified_gmt":"2026-02-18T04:42:07","slug":"tesla-relents-reportedly-stops-using-the-term-autopilot-in-california","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/182471\/","title":{"rendered":"Tesla Relents, Reportedly Stops Using the Term ‘Autopilot’ in California"},"content":{"rendered":"

According to the San Francisco Chronicle, Tesla has ceased its use of \u201cAutopilot\u201d<\/a> in California as a marketing term for its driver assistance feature, rather than face the penalty of not being able to do business in the state<\/a>. Tesla would have been subject to a 30-day suspension by the California DMV if it kept using the term.<\/p>\n

Tesla had already moved last month to stop shipping Autopilot as standard equipment<\/a>, pushing customers toward its more advanced, subscription-based version of the system.<\/p>\n

As the Chronicle notes, this legal fight began in 2023, with the DMV taking issue not just with \u201cAutopilot\u201d but also with \u201cFull Self-Driving,\u201d which Tesla later apparently changed to \u201cfull self-driving (supervised).\u201d Instances of \u201cFull Self-Driving\u201d and \u201cFSD\u201d on the Tesla website<\/a> now have \u201c(Supervised)\u201d in parentheses.<\/p>\n

Steve Gordon, California DMV director, said Tesla has now taken \u201cthe required action to remain in compliance with the state of California\u2019s consumer protections.\u201d<\/p>\n

In a ranking last year from Consumer Reports<\/a>, Tesla\u2019s driver assistance was placed eighth, below similar systems from Ford, General Motors, Mercedes-Benz, BMW, Nissan, Toyota, and Volkswagen. Kelly Funkhouser of Consumer Reports called it \u201cnot nearly as good as what you might think it is,\u201d according to CNBC<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Recent NHTSA filings Tesla provided about the performance of its small number of robotaxis showed that Tesla apparently struggled throughout December and January<\/a>. It reported five crashes in that time, which amounts to four times the crashes of the average human driver across the same amount of driving.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"According to the San Francisco Chronicle, Tesla has ceased its use of \u201cAutopilot\u201d in California as a marketing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":182472,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[7,9,8,21336,1090,86372],"class_list":["post-182471","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-california","tag-california","tag-california-headlines","tag-california-news","tag-self-driving-cars","tag-tesla","tag-tesla-autopilot"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182471","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=182471"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182471\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/182472"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=182471"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=182471"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=182471"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}