Contract Alterations Discovered
Tesla is facing scrutiny after reports emerged that the company has retroactively modified Full Self Driving (FSD) purchase agreements for some owners, inserting the word “supervised” into contracts that originally contained no such qualifier. According to a report from Electrek, multiple owners who purchased FSD years ago have found that their original signed agreements now link to invalid or inaccessible pages on Tesla’s system. One owner who bought FSD for a 2018 Model 3 in August 2019 reported that his contract, which lacked any “supervised” language, now returns an error when accessed. Other non-FSD documents linked from the same account open normally.
Impact on Owners and Legal Exposure
This issue follows a broader shift in Tesla’s marketing of its self-driving technology. From 2016 through early 2024, the company sold “Full Self Driving Capability” for up to $15,000, with CEO Elon Musk repeatedly promising that fully unsupervised autonomy was imminent. In March 2024, the product was rebranded to “Full Self Driving (Supervised)” with the release of FSD v12.3.3. By September 2025, Tesla had redefined the product entirely, with language in Musk’s revised compensation package allowing the existing supervised system to satisfy FSD delivery thresholds. The apparent alteration of past contracts raises serious spoliation concerns and could expose Tesla to legal risks, as owners who paid for a feature that was promised to eventually be fully autonomous may now lack the original documentation to prove what they were actually sold. For automotive cybersecurity engineers and OEM legal teams, this case highlights the importance of immutable contract records in an era of over the air updates and evolving feature definitions.
Source: Automotiveworld
