A California administrative law judge has ruled that Tesla was deceptive in the marketing of its vehicles’ Autopilot and Full Self-Driving systems. As a result, the California Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) says Tesla could have its licenses to sell and manufacture cars in the state suspended.

Tesla now has 60 days to comply and fix its marketing issues. If it doesn’t, the California DMV will go ahead with a 30-day suspension of Tesla’s licenses to sell cars in the state.

According to a statement issued by the California DMV following the ruling, “Tesla made and disseminated statements that were misleading in advertising their vehicles as equipped, or potentially equipped, with features tantamount to autonomous driving capability.”

The DMV took particular issue with Tesla’s claim that its advanced driver assistance system (ADAS) “is designed to be able to conduct short and long-distance trips with no action required by the person in the driver’s seat.”

As the DMV pointed out, “vehicles equipped with those ADAS features could not, at the time of those advertisements, and cannot now, operate as autonomous vehicles.” Tesla has since changed to using the term Full Self Driving (Supervised). However, the software in question still does not make Tesla vehicles able to drive themselves without some assistance.

“A reasonable consumer likely would believe that a vehicle with Full Self-Driving Capability can travel safely without a human driver’s constant, undivided attention,” CNBC reports the judge wrote in the proposed order. “This belief is wrong — both as a technological matter and as a legal matter — which makes the name Full Self-Driving Capability misleading.”

The fight between the California DMV and Tesla has been going on for years

In 2023, the Los Angeles Times obtained Tesla’s response to the California DMV’s complaint about the misleading marketing of its Full Self-Driving system. Essentially, Tesla said that they had been lying for years, and no one stopped them, so why now?

The DMV “has been aware that Tesla has been using the brand names Autopilot and Full Self-Driving Capability since Tesla started using those names in 2014 and 2016, respectively,” the company stated.

The company “relied upon [the DMV’s] implicit approval of these brand names” and “the DMV chose not to take any action against Tesla or otherwise communicate to Tesla that its advertising or use of these brand names was or might be problematic.”

Tesla seems unconcerned with a potential sales ban in California

″This was a ‘consumer protection’ order about the use of the term ‘Autopilot’ in a case where not one single customer came forward to say there’s a problem,” public relations firm FGS Global said in an emailed statement from Tesla. “Sales in California will continue uninterrupted.”

The statement that “not one single customer came forward to say there’s a problem” seems a little dubious. In September, a California judge certified a class-action lawsuit over Tesla’s claims of full self-driving autonomy.

Meanwhile, as all of this is happening, Tesla has begun testing its Model Y robotaxis in Austin, Texas, with no occupants.