Tesla owners lose FSD lawsuit as court rules name doesn't mean full autonomy

Tesla vehicle owners who purchased the Full Self-Driving (FSD) option have lost a lawsuit against Tesla Korea in which they sought to cancel their purchase contracts and recover payments, arguing the promised functionality was never delivered.

The 30th Civil Division of the Seoul Central District Court, presided over by Judge Kim Seok-beom, ruled against the plaintiffs Thursday in the suit filed against Tesla Korea LLC seeking a refund of purchase payments.

The court found that the FSD option does not refer to Level 5 full automation. The panel determined that the FSD purchase contract is an open-ended agreement under which the option would be provided once regulatory approval and technological development allow — meaning it covers only partial automation requiring driver intervention, and includes basic Autopilot features (lane keeping, adaptive cruise control, etc.) and Enhanced Autopilot functions such as auto-parking.

The court also found that the absence of full automation did not constitute an impossibility of performance. Tesla Korea bears an obligation to provide autonomous driving functions that are technically feasible within domestic and international regulatory and legal constraints, the court said, noting that the plaintiffs had received the features included in the option and that the recent rollout of FSD v14 Lite had added in-city autonomous driving capabilities to vehicles equipped with Hardware 3.0.

Because the purchased FSD option was meant to apply to Hardware 3.0, the court said the plaintiffs could not claim impossibility of performance simply because they did not receive a version identical to the FSD features implemented on Hardware 4.0. The court also rejected the plaintiffs' argument that Tesla Korea was in delay of performance, and denied any warranty liability.

The plaintiffs, who purchased the FSD option on Tesla vehicles between 2019 and 2022, filed the lawsuit in December 2024. They argued that FSD was marketed to mean fully driverless operation under all conditions, yet more than nine years after the option went on sale the capability had not been realized. They also contended that Tesla had effectively abandoned the goal of full autonomy by renaming the option "Supervised FSD" and shifting to a subscription model, and that full self-driving was technically impossible on Hardware 3.0.

The plaintiffs further argued that even if the FSD contract were treated as an open-ended agreement, more than nine years having passed since the option went on sale meant the performance deadline had already arrived. On that basis, they said Tesla Korea's delay in performance entitled them to cancel the option contracts and receive refunds.

The plaintiffs also argued that if Tesla Korea was unable to deliver the FSD functionality due to domestic and international laws and regulations, that amounted to a case in which part of the contracted right belonged to a third party, obligating Tesla Korea to bear warranty liability for vehicle defects.