Elon Musk just found out that the California Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) is much harder to navigate than deep space. Tesla has officially agreed to stop using the term “Autopilot” in its California advertisements. This tactical retreat comes after the DMV threatened the company with a one-month sales ban in the Golden State, which would have been about as fun for Tesla’s quarterly earnings as a flat tire on a dark freeway.
The dispute wasn’t just a petty squabble over vocabulary. It was a full-blown regulatory cage match. The DMV, led by Director Steve Gordon, made it clear that “false statements” about vehicle autonomy aren’t just creative marketing. They are a threat to public safety.
By suggesting that a Tesla can handle the commute entirely on its own, the company was accused of jeopardizing lives. A court recently backed this up, leading to the threat of a 30-day sales freeze and even the suspension of Tesla’s production license. Faced with a 60-day deadline to clean up its act, Tesla decided that the word “Autopilot” wasn’t a hill worth dying on.
The rebranding effort is already in full swing. Full Self-Driving (FSD), a name that cheekily implies you can take a nap while your car does the heavy lifting, has been demoted to the much more legally-vetted “FSD Supervised”. It’s a bit like calling a “free lunch” a “lunch you pay for later”, but it satisfies the bureaucrats. The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) has long warned that drivers were over-relying on the software, ignoring the manual’s fine print while treating their steering wheels like optional accessories.
For Tesla, the stakes couldn’t be higher. California is the company’s most vital territory, accounting for a massive one-third of its total US sales as of early 2025. Losing that market for 30 days would have been a catastrophic blow to its dominance in the electric vehicle sector.
By yielding to the DMV’s consumer protection laws, Tesla keeps its showrooms open, even if it has to be a little more honest about what its software can actually do. It turns out that in the land of Hollywood, even Elon Musk eventually has to follow the script.
