But then Tesla deployed a legal strategy that has allowed it to avoid the kind of attention-grabbing lawsuits other carmakers regularly contend with.Tesla’s gambit is likely to succeed because of a provision in the contracts that the company’s customers agree to when they buy electric cars from the company.Established carmakers like General Motors, Ford Motor and Toyota sell through dealers and are less likely to have a direct contractual relationship with buyers.But he and other owners say the technology never delivered the level of autonomous driving promised by Elon Musk, the Tesla chief executive.Arbitration prevents the public from learning which vehicles have quality problems, said Gretchen Freeman Cappio, a partner at Keller Rohrback, a firm that has been involved in many lawsuits against automakers."