Tesla is facing mounting legal pressure in Australia as thousands of owners rally behind a class action lawsuit over unfulfilled Full Self-Driving promises. The law firm behind the case has confirmed that thousands of drivers have now signed on, marking one of the largest actions of its kind against the automaker outside the United States.
The lawsuit, that we first reported on in February, alleges that Tesla misled consumers who purchased or leased Model 3 and Model Y vehicles between May 2021 and February 2025. The firm behind the class action confirmed this week that the case has grown rapidly, with “thousands of Australians” officially signed on.
According to JGA Saddler director Rebecca Jancauskas, the scale of participation shows how widespread owner frustration has become. “Tesla made promises about their vehicles’ safety, performance and features such as their ‘Full Self-Driving,’ but we have found a lot of these promises are falling flat,” she said in an interview with News.com.au.
The lawsuit also covers two other common complaints — Tesla’s advertised range figures, which allegedly overstate the vehicles’ maximum range, and “phantom braking,” where the Autopilot system applies emergency braking unexpectedly, potentially increasing the risk of accidents.
Tesla’s potential legal issues in Australia are not unique. The company is facing similar lawsuits in the United States and China over its driver-assistance technology and marketing practices. Regulators in several countries have also opened investigations into how Tesla describes its Autopilot and FSD systems, arguing that the language used may mislead consumers about their actual capabilities.
Since the class action was first announced in February, Tesla has released FSD (Supervised) in Australia and New Zealand. However, the software is still limited only to vehicles with the latest Hardware 4.0 (HW4/AI4) self-driving computers. There has been no timeline provided for when FSD will be released for HW3/AI3 vehicles, which only started appearing in cars for the Australian market less than 2 years ago.
