Review: Tesla's “Full Self-Driving Capability” option, which offers some advanced features, still requires significant driver attention to mitigate safety risks
Mike Monticello / Consumer Reports : Tweets: @paulconstant and @consumerreports Tweets: Paul Constant / @paulconstant : Uhhhhh, shouldn't it be illegal for Tesla to just release self-driving cars when they're obviously not safe? https://www.consumerreports.org/ ... @consumerreports : Tesla's $8,000 ‘Full Self-Driving Capability’ option falls short of its name. Although the added option doesn't make the car self-driving, it does offer a host of advanced features. We evaluated all of them. https://www.consumerreports.org/ ...
Context & Ripple Effects
This Consumer Reports evaluation lands mid-arc in Tesla's autonomy story. A year earlier, the outlet's testing of the updated Autopilot lane-change feature found it did not work well and could create safety risks, while Ars Technica argued Tesla was managing its failure to deliver full self-driving by shifting goalposts and using customers as unpaid safety drivers.
The review matters because it independently documents what the $8,000 option actually delivers — advanced features, not self-driving — giving regulators and safety advocates a documented basis for the scrutiny that followed, including the California DMV's review of whether Tesla's advertising misleads customers and criticism of the later FSD beta opening to driver requests.
First-order effects
- Buyers paying $8,000 for the "Full Self-Driving Capability" option receive a suite of advanced assistance features that still demands significant driver attention — the name does not match the product they purchased.
Second-order effects
- Independent evaluations like this one feed directly into regulator action: the California DMV's misleading-advertising review treats the gap between the option's label and its tested performance as a consumer-protection question, not just a product-review quibble.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds — marketing claims ahead of verified capability, with customers absorbing the safety-monitoring burden — driver-assistance branding becomes a regulated surface, forcing automakers to substantiate autonomy labels rather than treat them as aspirational.
The trend: Driver-assistance marketing is outrunning independently verified capability, pulling state regulators into policing how autonomy features are named and sold.