On April 17, according to the automotive website Electrek, Tesla is currently dealing with more than 20 types of active lawsuits, ranging from wrongful death lawsuits caused by Autopilot to securities fraud and racial discrimination lawsuits. The overall potential financial loss can reach up to 14.5 billion US dollars.
Tesla is plagued by lawsuits
Tesla’s “tough litigation department” and its “exaggerated publicity” defense strategy have failed to prevent the continued increase in lawsuits.The situation has not stabilized but is accelerating its deterioration. The real concern for Tesla is that the most dangerous lawsuits are yet to come.
To understand the extent of the litigation Tesla faces, Electrek compiled an analysis of every major pending lawsuit and regulatory action against the company. The results were shocking: Tesla faced at least 21 different legal actions covering seven categories, with estimated financial losses ranging from a conservative $2.7 billion to a high of $14.5 billion.
These lawsuits range from class actions, individual wrongful death lawsuits, federal enforcement actions, regulatory investigations, and shareholder lawsuits.
Musk’s tough strategy fails
Tesla CEO Elon Musk has foreseen all this. In May 2022, he announced that Tesla was forming a "hard-line litigation department" to "directly initiate and enforce litigation." In 2023, Tesla hired Brian Jazaeri from law firm Morgan Lewis to lead the unit. The position of Tesla's general counsel is subject to frequent turnover, and the company has struggled to keep anyone in the position long-term.
Tesla faces 21 different types of lawsuits
Tesla's lawyers have repeatedly adopted a defense strategy of "corporate exaggeration."They argued in court that Musk's public statements about Autopilot and "FSD" should not be taken seriously because they were only "vague expressions of corporate optimism" and not objectively verifiable statements of fact.
In a shareholder fraud case, Tesla's lawyers even argued that statements such as safety being a "top priority," Tesla cars being "extremely safe," and Autopilot having "superhuman" abilities are just exaggerated propaganda, that is, optimistic statements made by the company itself that no rational person would seriously believe. When a California judge dismissed the case in October 2024, Musk was elated.
But since then, the “exaggerated propaganda” defense strategy has begun to unravel. In August 2025, a federal jury in Miami did not accept this statement. In the case of Benavidez v. Tesla, the jury found Tesla 33% responsible for a fatal Autopilot accident in 2019 and awarded US$243 million in damages, including US$200 million in punitive damages.
Plaintiff attorney Brett Schreiber told the jury that Musk effectively let the public participate in "a beta test they never signed up for." The jury agreed.
Litigation floodgates open
The Benavidez verdict made headlines, but the scariest part for Tesla was the numbers behind it.
There have been approximately 50 to 60 fatal crashes involving Autopilot or FSD, according to data compiled from National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) reports and the TeslaDeaths.com database. Many of these accidents occurred between 2016 and 2020, during the early stages of Autopilot's development, even before the "FSD" beta was publicly released in late 2020.
Litigation cases that are currently being handled or settled, such as the Benavidez case (2019 accident), the settlement involving Walter Huang, an Apple engineer who was killed in 2018, and other cases all stem from this first wave of accidents. These cases come from an era when Autopilot was less capable and its usage was lower than today. Today, the scale of use of Autopilot and FSD has expanded significantly.
FSD will become the hardest hit area for litigation
The scale of potential future litigation Tesla faces is much larger.Since the FSD beta version was released to the public in late 2020, there has been a significant increase in accident reports. NHTSA's October 2025 survey covered 2.88 million vehicles and identified 80 FSD-related traffic violations, including running red lights, entering the wrong lane, and driving the wrong way. Another engineering analysis, typically in the lead-up to a mandatory recall, looked at 3.2 million FSD-equipped vehicles, focusing on system performance in conditions of poor visibility, such as sunlight glare and fog.
Taking the Benavidez case as a reference, each fatal accident may result in a judgment of US$100 million to US$300 million in compensation. If Tesla wants to avoid a jury, the settlement could be between $20 million and $60 million. Calculated based on more than 50 fatal accidents, Tesla's cumulative potential financial losses may reach US$1 billion to US$5 billion in the category of Autopilot/FSD accidents alone.
In addition, Tesla also faces shareholder securities fraud lawsuits, more than 900 factory racial discrimination lawsuits, as well as consumer fraud, antitrust lawsuits and regulatory fines.