Tesla’s carefully crafted bogus image is finally unraveling. For over a decade, what many critics have called out as a calculated deception has managed to maintain its hold on the American market all the way into the corrupt DOGE breach of federal regulations. But China has had enough.

What many Americans still may not realize is that the first “driverless” Tesla fatality actually occurred in China, not the US. A brand new Tesla with autopilot engaged killed a young Chinese driver by accelerating directly into a clearly visible, bright yellow service vehicle displaying flashing caution lights.

This tragedy preceded the widely reported death of Josh Brown in Florida in April 2016, whose Tesla drove into the side of a truck. Following Brown’s death, Elon Musk boldly promised to eliminate crashes completely and enable coast-to-coast hands-free driving by 2017.

Fast forward to 2025, and Tesla vehicles appear more dangerous than ever. The alarming spike in Tesla-related fatalities during late 2024 and early 2025 tells its own story.

China has now taken decisive action. According to Motor Trend, Chinese authorities are effectively banning Tesla’s misleading autonomous driving claims:

…affected will be Tesla, which in the U.S. has long marketed its buggy and alarmingly inconsistent Level 2 driver assistance system as Full Self-Driving (now with “Supervised” appended to the name) and has routinely conducted beta testing of the technology on public roads.

“Part of the MIIT directive as we read it was a call to action to the OEMs to clean up the communication,” said Mercedes-Benz chairman and CEO Ola Källenius at Auto Shanghai 2025, where Mercedes unveiled a new, AI-powered, point-to-point advanced navigation and Level 2+ driver assistance system that requires drivers only to touch the steering wheel as the vehicle pretty much drives itself through city centers.

“I think that we have for the past 30 years been pretty straightforward to say what we can do and be very clear about what we can’t,” said Källenius, who pointed out Mercedes was the first automaker in China approved to conduct Level 3 autonomous driving testing on roads in Beijing. “So, it has not had any major effect on us.”

Consider the implications of Källenius’s statement: “No major effect on Mercedes.” This is particularly telling when you realize Mercedes not only secured Level 3 autonomous driving approval first but had already demonstrated such capabilities back in the 1980s.

The contrast couldn’t be clearer. While one “bad boy” company built its reputation on grandiose promises getting hundreds killed unnecessarily, everyone else in the market quietly delivered actual progress through honest engineering and transparent communication.