The DoJ Is Closing In On Tesla
The DoJ Is Closing In On Tesla
Is karma about to bite Musk?
Do you remember how much Musk over-exaggerated how good Tesla’s self-driving abilities were? For years, it felt like he would claim Teslas are self-driving in all but name and safer than human drivers on a daily basis. Do you also remember how the number of Teslas crashing while using Autopilot/FSD has ballooned over the years? There have been quite a few high-profile fatal crashes in which Tesla’s AI has been strongly incriminated as the incident’s root cause. Well, this hasn’t gone unnoticed, and Tesla has been under criminal investigation by the Department of Justice (DoJ) for a while now. In fact, we just got a little peek into where they are taking this case, and it seems Tesla might face charges of securities and wire fraud. But why? And will these charges stick?
When I say Musk and Tesla have been over-exaggerating Autopilot & FSD, I mean it. For example, back in 2016, Tesla released a video of the interior of a Model 3 self-driving through junctions and windy roads without the driver touching any of the controls, and Musk claimed this video showed how advanced and capable their self-driving AI was. Tesla engineers have since testified that the video was faked and the car was actually driven by an unseen human driver. Musk also claimed back in 2016 that their self-driving AI is “probably better” than a human driver. Recent investigations have found that Tesla’s safety reports on Autopilot, which find it to be twice as safe as human drivers, use flawed analysis methods to reach this conclusion. Despite this, Musk claimed that the FSD software will allow drivers to travel “to your work, your friend’s house, to the grocery store without you touching the wheel.” This goes against the user instruction, which states that hands should always be on the wheel. Tesla’s website has even claimed that “The person in the driver’s seat is only there for legal reasons. He is not doing anything. The car is driving itself.” in videos of Teslas using FSD and Autopilot, despite legally that not being the case, as the systems are classified as driver assistance systems and the driver legally having to be paying attention and ready to take over any time.
These are just a few cases of Tesla and Musk claiming that their cars are practically already self-driving and alluding to the fact that customers can use them as such already, despite that really not legally being the case. In fact, the opposite is true. Tesla engineers actually came forward in 2021 and told the press that FSD is not safe for use by the public. Since then, scant data released by Tesla suggests that FSD actually causes at least twice as many deaths per mile driven than a human driver and that FSD customers distrust the system so much that they only use it 15% of the time.
There were so many suspicious crashes and fatalities involving Autopilot and FSD that the DoJ opened up a criminal investigation into Tesla in 2022. They felt that Musk and Tesla had misled the public about Tesla’s self-driving capability, leading to rampant misuse and countless incidents. Since then, we have heard very little from the DoJ, other than the fact that they subpoenaed Tesla to get the FSD and Autopilot safety data. Even then, we only found this out through an SEC filing by Tesla, in which they had to admit they complied with the DoJ subpoena and that this investigation could damage the company’s value.
Now, such accusations from the DoJ are incredibly serious! They could end with charges of fraud, criminal negligence or even manslaughter, considering tens of people have died in the incidents the DoJ has investigated.
Well, “people familiar with the matter” recently told Reuters that DoJ prosecutors are currently investigating whether Tesla committed securities fraud by deceiving investors or wire fraud by misleading customers. It’s not surprising they are taking this angle; it is a far easier bar to pass than manslaughter or criminal negligence, and these charges have been levied against Tesla before. What’s more, if they can charge Tesla with fraud, they can follow up with these more severe accusations later.
So, Will Tesla be charged? Well, there is a lot of evidence against Tesla here, but it is subjective. From my point of view, Tesla has absolutely misled customers and investors and is guilty of far more than fraud. However, Tesla’s crack team of lawyers could easily spin Musk’s claims as irrelevant or use Tesla’s arguably flawed safety analysis to back up some of Musk’s outlandish claims. So, I hope the DoJ can successfully charge Tesla; it would send a clear signal to any self-driving company that transparency and the public’s safety are paramount. But I’m not holding my breath.
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Sources: Reuters, The Telegraph, Teslarati, Will Lockett, Will Lockett