An Oracle software executive secured a default judgment against Tesla after suing the automaker for failing to deliver promised unsupervised Full Self-Driving (FSD) capabilities.
According to reports by Business Insider and court records viewed by Business Insider, a Travis County, Texas, judge awarded Ben Gawiser $10,600 plus $72.88 in court costs after Tesla did not appear at an April 1 hearing.
Tesla later filed a motion to extend the appeal deadline, saying it had been unaware of the hearing and the default judgment; the judge denied that motion, court records show. Tesla did not respond to a Business Insider request for comment.
Gawiser bought a Tesla Model 3 Long Range in August 2021 and paid roughly $10,000 for FSD at purchase. He told Business Insider he sued after repeated attempts to obtain information from Tesla failed and after CEO Elon Musk said older vehicles would likely require major upgrades to run unsupervised FSD.
Gawiser has told Business Insider he wants a refund and has sent Tesla’s lawyers a letter asking how the company intends to pay the judgment. He said that if Tesla refuses, he will seek a writ of execution to seize assets from one of Tesla’s showrooms.
The dispute reflects a broader problem for owners who purchased Teslas before 2023: Musk has said pre-2023 hardware lacks the sensors and compute to support unsupervised FSD. He has offered discounted trade-ins or full overhauls of vehicles — work Tesla described as requiring new “micro-factories.”
Tesla has already faced multiple U.S. lawsuits over FSD advertising and could see legal action in Europe after the supervised version of the software rolled out in the Netherlands. Tesla executives have said a “lite” version of the latest FSD update for older cars is expected in June and will be offered internationally, but fully unsupervised driving remains unavailable to pre-2023 owners.
Gawiser told Business Insider he largely stopped using FSD after incidents including failures to slow in school zones and unexpected stops. Still, he described his Model 3 as the best car he has owned and said he intends to keep it despite the dispute.
This case underscores tensions between long-promised autonomous driving capabilities and the technical and legal challenges automakers face delivering them to earlier-model customers.
