Tesla's website statement about self-driving hardware became the center of three California customer classes. The Ninth Circuit vacated them because buying Tesla's Full Self-Driving package did not establish that every buyer saw that statement.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk said in October 2016 that about 2,000 cars a week were shipping with hardware capable of full self-driving; buyer Thomas J. LoSavio later paid Tesla $8,000. The Northern District of California's certification order records Musk promising a coast-to-coast trip without “a single touch including the charger” and says Tesla did not dispute that it had yet to deliver that capability. On October 16, the Ninth Circuit's memorandum in *LoSavio v. Tesla* vacated three California buyer classes because the trial judge could not presume every buyer saw Tesla's challenged hardware statement. Two classes sought money, and one sought relief concerning future advertising. All three return to District Judge Rita F. Lin without class certification, the order that let the buyers sue as groups; the panel's reasoning turned on whether a buyer had to pass the page carrying the claim.
Tesla denies the buyers' allegations, according to a report published by Claims Journal. The appellate panel decided whether the buyers could proceed together. It did not decide whether the hardware claim was false or whether LoSavio suffered a loss.
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Musk's proposed coast-to-coast drive gave the dispute its most vivid image. LoSavio alleges he relied on both that promise and Tesla's statement that its cars had hardware capable of full self-driving. He says he saw the hardware statement on Tesla's website and in a newsletter before buying a Model S in early 2017. The district court recorded his payments separately: $5,000 for Enhanced Autopilot and $3,000 for Full Self-Driving.
Those details also mark the limits of the group case. Judge Lin's order certified classes of people who separately paid for Full Self-Driving. It excluded people who bought only Enhanced Autopilot. And although the coast-to-coast promise remained part of LoSavio's allegations, Judge Lin found insufficient evidence that buyers as a group had encountered it. The classes rested on exposure to the hardware statement.
For that statement, Judge Lin saw a path to common proof. Tesla sold vehicles directly, without independent dealers or traditional mass advertising. Its Autopilot webpage was the principal source of detailed marketing information from Tesla about the packages. The hardware message appeared there, on other Tesla pages at various times, and in other company communications. Judge Lin reasoned that buyers considering Full Self-Driving were highly likely to visit Tesla's website and inferred that almost all would review its package description, although they did not have to visit the Autopilot page to buy.
The Ninth Circuit found the gap in that last step. A product label sits in front of every purchaser when it is consistently used. Tesla's Autopilot page did not. A buyer could purchase Full Self-Driving without passing through it. As the panel noted, quoting Judge Lin, there was “no specific requirement forcing” purchasers through that page.
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That distinction defeated two assumptions on which the classes depended: that buyers reached the Autopilot page, and that they saw the hardware statement once there. The panel said the statement's prominence could support the second assumption. It could not establish the first. Other Tesla messages reinforcing the hardware claim did not fix the problem, the panel held, because they were neither provided to every prospective buyer nor part of an advertising campaign extensive enough to presume exposure across the classes.
The website traffic evidence sharpened the disagreement. Judge Lin had found the figures consistent with a finding of classwide exposure, reasoning that overall site visits said little about the proportion of Full Self-Driving purchasers who viewed the Autopilot page. The appellate panel held that the traffic figures alone could not show all class members must have seen the statement. The split between the two courts was over what the shared evidence proved about *each buyer's opportunity to see the claim*.
Exposure also affected Tesla's time-limit defense. Judge Lin had treated that dispute as largely common to the buyers. The Ninth Circuit said whether a buyer discovered a claim in time could depend on which Tesla statements that buyer encountered, including language on the Autopilot page saying self-driving functionality depended on software validation and regulatory approval. Individual questions therefore ran through both the buyers' claims and Tesla's defense.
The first two vacated classes covered different groups of California Full Self-Driving buyers, divided by purchase period and arbitration status. The third covered a subset who said they wanted to buy or subscribe again but could not rely on future advertising. Because Judge Lin had defined that future-buyer group through the first two classes, the Ninth Circuit held that it fell with them.
**Analysis:** Tesla faces the pending lawsuit without three certified groups pressing claims together, which may reduce settlement pressure. In this case, the panel rejected the inference of classwide exposure because buyers were not required to visit the Autopilot page to purchase Full Self-Driving. Claims Journal reported that the vacated certification had grouped thousands of California buyers. The appellate panel left LoSavio's proposed damages model undecided, and its unpublished memorandum is not precedent except as the Ninth Circuit's rules provide.
The plaintiffs' lawyers said in a statement published by Claims Journal that the panel had not fully appreciated the hardware statement's place in Tesla's marketing. The Ninth Circuit remanded for further proceedings after rejecting the inference of classwide exposure used to certify the classes. Musk's coast-to-coast promise remains in the case history. The classes stood or fell on the less cinematic hardware statement.
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