Elon Musk’s posting habits are putting Tesla under the microscope — again.
Regulators looking into Tesla’s Full Self-Driving have asked the company for more information about a series of X posts in which CEO Elon Musk said drivers could text and make an espresso while using the automated driving assist technology.
In a request for information sent to Tesla on July 2, officials at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) asked the company to clarify posts made on Musk and Tesla’s accounts.
These include a post from December 2025 in which Musk said FSD users could text and drive “depending on [the] context of surrounding traffic.”
“This is so cool. Make your espresso on the road while your Tesla drives itself,” Musk wrote in another post cited by the document. The billionaire was responding to a video showing a Tesla owner using an espresso machine and reclining his seat while FSD was engaged.
The NHTSA also cited posts from Musk saying that FSD can “operate in all conditions” and that an FSD update will “substantially reduce” the need for driver attention, as well as posts from Tesla promoting the technology.
The regulator asked Tesla to clarify whether these examples were “accurate and consistent” with FSD’s capabilities, and if the company has done anything to reduce the potential for “misunderstanding or misuse.”
On its website and in owner manuals, Tesla makes it clear that drivers using Full Self-Driving (Supervised) should pay attention to the road and be ready to take over at all times.
It’s not the first time Tesla has faced legal and regulatory scrutiny over the way it promotes FSD.
The Model Y maker was ordered to pay $242 million in damages last year over a wrongful-death lawsuit that alleged Tesla’s advertising exaggerated the capabilities of Autopilot, FSD’s predecessor, and the company struck a deal to avoid a ban in California in February after a judge ruled that its “Autopilot” and “Full Self-Driving” branding was misleading.
The NHTSA investigation, which was opened in October 2024 and upgraded to an engineering analysis in March, is looking into FSD’s ability to alert the driver in low-visibility conditions. The probe was opened following several reports of Tesla’s crashing in areas where visibility was reduced by “sun glare, fog, or airborne dust.”
Tesla did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
