Photo: Tesla/edited by autoevolution
First, the Autopilot director confirmed that a 2016 video about the system was staged. After that, Bloomberg learned that Elon Musk said the footage had to “feel like one continuous take” and dictated misleading sentences about what it presented. It was weird that none of that caught U.S. authorities' attention, but that may be about to change. Bloomberg learned that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is investigating Musk – again. This time, it has to do with his allegations about Autopilot.
Although the media outlet stressed that it was not possible to determine exactly which statements or activities led to this new investigation, it probably relates to the recent revelations about the 2016 Autopilot video. According to Bloomberg, Elon Musk determined that the video should have these remarks: “The person in the driver’s seat is only there for legal reasons. He is not doing anything. The car is driving itself.”
That went against everything Musk told the Autopilot team when he ordered a demonstration drive of the system’s capabilities. The episode was revealed by internal emails Bloomberg obtained. The Tesla CEO wrote there that he would “be telling the world that this is what the car *will* be able to do, not that it can do this upon receipt.”
The footage presents an apparently flawless drive from a house in Menlo Park to Tesla’s headquarters at the time – in Palo Auto – where it self-parked. In a deposition under oath in the lawsuit Wei “Walter” Huang’s wife filed against Tesla, Ashok Elluswamy confirmed the video was edited, something The New York Times revealed in a 2021 story.
According to the Autopilot director, the engineer behind the wheel had to overtake control several times during the shooting despite Tesla mapping the way. Company investors now make fun of any automaker geofencing their advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) because Autopilot and Full Self-Driving would not need that. To make matters worse, the Model X used in the video crashed when it was trying to park by itself.
Bloomberg learned that the SEC is investigating whether Musk may have inappropriately made forward-looking statements. In American business law, a forward-looking statement or safe harbor statement is a protected form of speculation when it is correctly identified as such. If they are mistaken as factual statements and not as an attempt to predict future outcomes, the SEC can take measures to prevent investors from making poorly informed decisions based on such speculation.
In Tesla’s case, that boat sailed long ago. Investments made in the company due to autonomous driving promises have been occurring since 2016. Musk once said that all Tesla vehicles would become “appreciating assets” when they turned into robotaxis by 2020. That never happened, and prices for Tesla vehicles have never been so low. More recently, Musk said that “solving Full Self-Driving (FSD) was the difference between Tesla being worth a lot of money and being worth basically zero.”
As Bloomberg notes, an investigation conducted by SEC may not result in direct consequences but may lead to fines and lawsuits. Neither Tesla nor the SEC wanted to comment on the story.
Besides the SEC, Tesla is also under investigation due to Autopilot and FSD by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) and the U.S. Department of Justice. Lawsuits such as the one the company is facing due to Huang’s death also tend to become more frequent: 26 people have already died while using the ADAS until now.
That went against everything Musk told the Autopilot team when he ordered a demonstration drive of the system’s capabilities. The episode was revealed by internal emails Bloomberg obtained. The Tesla CEO wrote there that he would “be telling the world that this is what the car *will* be able to do, not that it can do this upon receipt.”
The footage presents an apparently flawless drive from a house in Menlo Park to Tesla’s headquarters at the time – in Palo Auto – where it self-parked. In a deposition under oath in the lawsuit Wei “Walter” Huang’s wife filed against Tesla, Ashok Elluswamy confirmed the video was edited, something The New York Times revealed in a 2021 story.
According to the Autopilot director, the engineer behind the wheel had to overtake control several times during the shooting despite Tesla mapping the way. Company investors now make fun of any automaker geofencing their advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) because Autopilot and Full Self-Driving would not need that. To make matters worse, the Model X used in the video crashed when it was trying to park by itself.
Bloomberg learned that the SEC is investigating whether Musk may have inappropriately made forward-looking statements. In American business law, a forward-looking statement or safe harbor statement is a protected form of speculation when it is correctly identified as such. If they are mistaken as factual statements and not as an attempt to predict future outcomes, the SEC can take measures to prevent investors from making poorly informed decisions based on such speculation.
In Tesla’s case, that boat sailed long ago. Investments made in the company due to autonomous driving promises have been occurring since 2016. Musk once said that all Tesla vehicles would become “appreciating assets” when they turned into robotaxis by 2020. That never happened, and prices for Tesla vehicles have never been so low. More recently, Musk said that “solving Full Self-Driving (FSD) was the difference between Tesla being worth a lot of money and being worth basically zero.”
As Bloomberg notes, an investigation conducted by SEC may not result in direct consequences but may lead to fines and lawsuits. Neither Tesla nor the SEC wanted to comment on the story.
Besides the SEC, Tesla is also under investigation due to Autopilot and FSD by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) and the U.S. Department of Justice. Lawsuits such as the one the company is facing due to Huang’s death also tend to become more frequent: 26 people have already died while using the ADAS until now.
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