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Tesla Is Facing US Criminal Probe Over Elon Musk Statements (bloomberg.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: Tesla is under investigation by the Justice Department over public statements made by the company and Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk. The criminal probe is running alongside a previously reported civil inquiry by securities regulators. Federal prosecutors opened a fraud investigation after Musk tweeted last month that he was contemplating taking Tesla private and had "funding secured" for the deal. The tweet initially sent the company's shares higher. Tesla confirmed it has been contacted by the Justice Department. The investigation by the U.S. attorney's office in the Northern District of California follows a subpoena issued by the Securities and Exchange Commission seeking information from the electric-car maker about Musk's plans to go private, which he has since abandoned. Tesla said in a statement following Bloomberg's report: "Last month, following Elon's announcement that he was considering taking the company private, Tesla received a voluntary request for documents from the DOJ and has been cooperative in responding to it. We have not received a subpoena, a request for testimony, or any other formal process. We respect the DOJ's desire to get information about this and believe that the matter should be quickly resolved as they review the information they have received."
It's a simple rule. Many people follow it and avoid being investigated by the DOJ.
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
Actually if he were smoking marijuana he'd probably be able to de-stress and get needed rest, get better control of his emotions. It would be a strong net positive in his case compared to his stress-meth lashing out on Twitter.
the promise of clean(er) vehicle emissions does not need him fucking it up. there has been enough hate on battery tech without this douche making it worse.
why doesn't the board just fire him or something... just focus on the business.
I'm not one to say I told you so, but everybody made fun of me a few weeks ago when I said that Elon was going to face some serious consequences for his phony tweet about taking Tesla public.
https://youtu.be/lTXoA-QTbJw
You are welcome on my lawn.
A rich person has to accept repercussions for his behavior? This isn't Trump's America!
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Because they already admitted they did not have funding and are no longer pursuing the transaction?
World war III will start with a tweet.
(yes I know the sandwich thing is a myth)
Just do it on Slash Dot as an Anonymous Coward?
Said the Anonymous Coward.
This is just a takedown by Big Oil, the Saudis, and the "shorts" Rei
No, this is the SEC doing it's job, opening a criminal probe into Musk. Tesla will face a class action suit for this little tweet too.
The problem here is Musk has a *responsibility* to be both truthful AND he must make announcements that have a material bearing on the stock price though proper channels, which is NOT Twitter. So if he was just goofing around on Twitter, says something stupid that is untrue but has anything to do with the stock or could possibly be inside information, it was criminal misleading investors with false information. IF the information was true, but improperly released though Twitter, it was again criminal as it wasn't properly released though standard PR statements. Either way, it was criminal.
The SEC will likely just levy a fine on Musk and or Tesla. Nobody is going to jail or trial. However, investors WILL sue as a class and get both actual and punitive damages, which will be bigger than the SEC fines.
Even if found guilty, he'll never see the inside of a jail cell.
One law for the rich, and one law for everyone else.
Sadly they were brutally raped to death by large black inmates in Federal prison just like Trump, the end.
Having actually been to Africa, Musk is more of an "African American" than almost every American black person.
If they deny him African-American status because he is white, that would be discrimination based on skin color which should be illegal.
I am curious if a movie were to be made about Musk, how would it be portrayed? i.e. the movie about Howard Hughes "The Aviator" and would it then be called "The Rocketman?" I find it interesting some of the parallels (though not many) however you got to admit Tesla has affected the car market and SpaceX the space market.
mfwright@batnet.com
How is Musk able to keep a clearance and do business with the gov't after blatantly and publicly violating federal law? US is a lawless country for anyone with a billion stashed. I see no reason average people should obey any federal law, given what we've seen over the last 15 years.
I applaud Teslas accomplishments and the main one is showing EVs can work with todays battery technology. But moving forward I think Chevy is rolling out the EV properly with the Bolt. It doesnt have funky styling and it operates just like a regular car. More or less. The majority going forward want a $25k EV that doesnâ(TM)t make a statement but just gets them to work and home. Tesla has to do this. The high end EV market will be dominated by Mercedes and Porsche in the near future.
IANAL, but I can see Musk's lawyer arguing that for Tesla and Musk that Twitter is more universal and instantaneous than Bloomburg or PR Newswire for making market-moving announcements. Of course, that would leave him with the problem of whether or not the announcement so made was true...
Technically a hydrogen fuel cell vehicle is an EV the same as any other EV. The fuel cell is the battery.
Thank you for that reminder. I remember watching the documentary "Who killed the electric car?" which explained the CARB situation. So where is that EV1 research now? Time to dust-off those old manuals, or spin-off another company to bring it back.
he should have taken it private earlier.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
AND in the last two weeks both Audi and Mercedes have announced luxury Full Electric models
Slower than a Tesla. No battery technology company behind it. No existing nationwide supercharger infrastructure.
What they have done is validated Tesla's market while being only a vague threat.
Meanwhile Tesla has ramped up to producing 8000 cars a week... Tesla has figured out scale, do you seriously think the large car makers can crack full electric luxury autos as rapidly? They are missing some really huge components of the story.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
He was prescient enough to see a Moore's law for batteries, with a 7 year period for power density and price. His prediction is coming exactly. He was charismatic enough to persuade enough VCs to fund a company that can make a no-compromise EV, not some compliance vehicle. But the company is stable now. The production hell has been debugged out. Now they are going through the delivery hell, and are talking about parts and repairs etc like a regular car company. At this point Elon is hurting more than helping Tesla.
Tesla Model 3 is the fifth best selling car by volume and the number one car by revenue in August.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
These are not ZEV credit market numbers. These are what a no-compromise EV can do. There is no special technology or patents with Tesla. All it needs is a will to let the ICEV sales by cannibalized by the EV divisions, the traditional car makers can all make cars like the Tesla.
Tesla is not selling Model 3 in negative gross margin and survives by ZEV credits. Three independent tear downs estimated positive gross margin for both the high end Model 3 above 50K and for the low end 35 K model. The most negative report came from UBS, that first gagged Monroe who did the teardown with a law suite, conceded 50 K model 3 has a gross margin of 9000$, then switched to net margin while talking about the 35 K version, while giving the impression it is still talking about gross margin. The German teardown priced it 28K per unit for the 50K car at 10,000 cars a week. Monroe admitted he is going eat crow and estimated 18% gross margin for the model 3.
Tesla is NOT selling cars at a loss hoping to sell ZEV credits.
I don't think there is a big conspiracy against Tesla, but it is an unfortunate confluence of click bait journalism, negative stories about Musk having better ratings play etc. And Musk shooting his mouth off and smoking pot on tv helps them a lot too.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Solandri with a vested solar competitor to Tesla is bagging on them? How bizarre!?!
Maybe GM should have did what Tesla did according to your story, or were they too stupid? Why would they do that?
There is a reason TESLA has a waiting list a mile long and GM doesn’t, one of them is making something Hong people want and one was throwing forth a mastubatorial project at best.
Tesla did something no legislation could do, make people actually want a full EV.
I hate Tesla as much as the nest shorting fool but I have to hand it to them on that. I just hope Elon clubs a baby seal or something.
When did twitter become the equivalent of a PR release to a financial magazine?
How about "when the CEO of a company reveals plans for that company"? Doesn't really matter what medium the announcement is made on does it?
EV1 used batteries that are way behind the state of the art now (lead-acid with 16 kWh, later NiMH with 25 kWh capacity). To get enough range, it used high-tech, expensive manufacturing to get a low weight and low Cd, and it had only 2 seats.
GM might be able to reuse the motor and its electronics, but they didn't do that for the Bolt (has a 150 kW motor where EV1 had 100 kW). And speaking of the Bolt: GM went with a from-scratch design for the Bolt rather than digging up their EV1 archive. That should say someting about the present-day value of the EV1 research.
There are thousands of model 3s wasting away in dirt fields in California and around the country.
Pics or it didn't happen.
The pre-orders distort the sales figures for the Model 3. We shall see how it does when the years of backlog are cleared. I'm sure it will sell well, but not as well as it is now.
Tesla definitely helped popularize the concept of EVs and demonstrate that with big batteries and decent charging range wasn't an issue. But they are mostly a US thing, and a lot of progress has been made by other manufacturers, especially in Europe and China.
Nissan was the first to market with affordable, practical EVs, and rolled out their own charging networks. Korean and Chinese companies have done more than anyone to really push battery prices down - for all the hype that the Panasonic/Tesla gigafactory gets they are far from the only game in town, and their packs are more expensive than the competition.
There is also a lot of unseen R&D that other companies have done which goes unnoticed. Again, Nissan deserves a lot of credit here for building a drive system that felt familiar and easy for drivers used to fossil cars. They figured out a lot of the EV specific usability issues early on too, something Tesla continues to struggle with.
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SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
It is unfortunate Musk gets the company into trouble.
But has he? What is currently underway is a probe. Not a prosecution, not a judgement, but a probe. It's like you getting yourself in trouble because I decide to sue you for the comment you just made. It could happen, but let's face it you won't be in trouble as a result.
Come on, Tesla Model 3 is the fifth best selling car by units and the number 1 selling car by revenue in August.
Revenue is vanity, profit is sanity.
Sure they made less than Honda or Toyota, but Honda and Toyota made money from their sales.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
Financial reports! Take a look. Check the revenue minus COGM minus the selling costs (SG&A). Already negative. That doesn't include interest on debt required to build those cars, either. They lose money on each unit - before any R&D or other expenditures. Cold, hard facts from Tesla's own financial reports.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
I take it you didn’t read anything past his first paragraph?
I don't think it would matter if Elon Musk cured cancer tomorrow. There's a group of people out there who truly despise what the guy is accomplishing, because they don't want to see things change from cars running on gasoline and working the way they've always worked.
I would agree that it's not one big conspiracy, so much as several groups with anti-Tesla agendas for different reasons.
You've got, on one hand, the stereotypical blue-collar auto mechanic who always works on his own vehicles and makes a living repairing others at small garages or as a mobile mechanic or what-not. Tesla may be seen as a threat to his living. He doesn't want a bunch of vehicles running around that he doesn't understand and can't repair.
On the other end of the spectrum, you've got the investors who kept sinking money into bets against Tesla's success. They have the ability to seed Internet blogs and to influence bigger publications to print negative articles, in attempts to scare people away from holding Tesla stock.
Somewhere between that, you've got some people with a political agenda against Musk succeeding. They may be ultra-conservatives who see what he does as part of the "Green agenda" they're fighting against. Or they may take issue with the fact the Federal government extended loans to him. Maybe both. I've talked to a few of these people and I think half the time? It's just rooted in jealousy. They tend to be small business owners themselves who are struggling, and say things like, "If people gave ME the kind of loans they threw at Elon Musk, I'd have an amazing business too ... probably better than his!"
All I can say is this: Space-X alone should be a company you rally behind if you don't like big government. They're taking a whole industry that was the sole domain of Federal government for decades, because it was believed it was "too big an undertaking for private industry to accomplish" and taking it private.
I thought that was the entire purpose of Twitter...
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
Yeah, because they'd never want to use all that oil money to hedge against the inevitable.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
Depending on the month in question, it's postulated that Tesla held back deliveries at the end of June in order to push the tax credit phase-out to 1Q2019. If the numbers quoted above are for June, then that could be your 2k cars.
Otherwise, it's the thing where cars are produced, but the revenue isn't booked until delivery accepted by the buyer. It's conceivable that they have 2,000 on trains, trucks, and in parking spots at any given time awaiting delivery. Every car company does. Most have far more than that in transit, especially if they ship them overseas on huge ships that are crossing oceans for weeks.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
Now only if the company you're trying to "cripple" could control the output of their factories.
Oh wait, they can. And do.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
You mean Elon hasn't invented a way to teleport the car from the factory in Fremont directly to the buyer's driveway anywhere in the world?
That looks a whole lot like logistics lots where cars are taken off trains, and loaded onto trucks for delivery.
OH NO HERE'S A LOT FULL OF CARS AT THE PORT OF PORTLAND! HYUNDAI MUST BE GOING OUT OF BUSINESS BECAUSE THERE ARE HUNDREDS OF CARS SITTING THERE!
Seriously, if this is the best you've got, just give up.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
Tesla fans love to talk about gross margin - and completely ignore the mandatory costs such as sales and general administration costs REQUIRED to make those sales (yeah, we sold 40K cars! We're not going to count the cost of sales people, or showrooms, or delivery of vehicles in those costs - just the money coming in and the cost of the build of the car!)
Or even servicing the debt (even if just interest) on the money borrowed to make those cars. Never mind they borrowed billions of dollars to make those vehicles in the first place, they don't want to count the interest on that money as part of the cost of production of the cars. It all stemps from pre-IPO Tesla using non-GAAP for all its reporting. Fake, Enron-esque numbers.
It's TRIVIAL to make big gross margin; it's hard to make net margin. And that's really what matters. When they HAVE to increase costs of the vehicles because they are running out of cash, AND the Government is no longer giving the buyer $7500 to purchase the car, we'll see what their sales really are. My guess is, when a Tesla buyer has to fork over another $25,000 to buy that car (the $35K mythical M3 becomes a $60K car), their sales will dry up like an Otter pop in a parking lot in Barstow in the summer.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
personally i don't care much about TSLA as a business, and Elon not at all.
i liked their original roadster, but it was way out of my range back in the day.
what TSLA has done, is moved the needle on battery tech. without TSLA pushing the buttons, chances are battery powered vehicles would not be a priority of all manufacturers at all. not just the car business, but rather also pushed for better battery tech.
credit where credit is due, heck i consider TSLA basically a giant gofundme campaign, a lot of people "invested" on the promise of clean cars. pretty much all of them don't care if the company is making money or not. heck they probably prefer if at the end its a zero sum game from a profit making and environment destroying point of view.
Cody Wilson — accused of having sex with a young prostitute who registered on SugarDaddySomething.com — is just as much a "pedophile", as Julian Assange — accused of deliberately ripping a condom in an otherwise consensual encounter — is a rapist.
In addition to the actual accusations being far from from what's normally associated with the terms used ("assault", "rape"), both men have another thing in common: their infamous crimes have surfaced shortly after they greatly inconvenienced the US government.
Had you really been a Liberal, you wouldn't have parroted these accusations... But you aren't... Maybe, it is the tenure track — rather than a gun — that "makes jack-offs into bigger jack-offs", uhm?
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.