Courtesy of ZeroHedge. View original post here.
Having promised the world more "Secret Master Plan" smoke and mirrors in a tweet, P.T.Musk now faces an SEC probe for possible securities law breach after Tesla failed to notify investors of the recent autopilot accident, according to The Wall Street Journal. The stock is sliding modestly after-hours.
From the WSJ:
The Securities and Exchange Commission is investigating whether Tesla Motors Inc. breached securities laws by failing to disclose a fatal crash in May involving an electric car that was driving itself, a person familiar with the matter said, heightening scrutiny of how the Silicon Valley company handled the information.The May 7 accident killed the driver, Joshua Brown, a 40-year old Tesla owner who collided with an 18-wheel semi-truck that pulled in front of him on a Florida highway.
The SEC is scrutinizing whether Tesla should have disclosed the accident as a “material” event, or a development a reasonable investor would consider important, according to a person familiar with the matter. The SEC’s inquiry is in a very early stage and may not lead to any enforcement action by regulators, the person added.
A Tesla spokeswoman pointed to a blog post by the Palo Alto, Calif., company, asserting that the May 7 crash didn’t require disclosure to investors. Tesla has said the fatal crash was the first in more than 130 million miles driven with Autopilot engaged since the technology made its debut in October. An SEC spokesman declined to comment.
esla learned of the crash soon after it happened and informed auto-safety regulators of the incident on May 16, when it had just begun investigating the accident, the company said last week. Tesla at that time hadn’t yet determined the car was using Autopilot. Tesla said it alerted regulators to the crash sooner than rules require.
And the stock is giving back some of it's secret master plan gains…
Ironically, les than a week ago, Elon Musk engaged in a twitter fight with Fortune which made a big deal of precisely this issue, leading to a furious response by Musk:
@alansmurray Yes, it was material to you — BS article increased your advertising revenue. Just wasn't material to TSLA, as shown by market.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 5, 2016
Additionally, Pennsylvania State Police have cited the driver of a Tesla Motors Inc. sport utility vehicle involved in a July 1 crash for careless driving, according to a report released Monday.
Michigan driver Albert Scaglione, 77, suffered injuries when his 2016 Tesla Model X SUV struck a concrete median strip on a Pennsylvania Turnpike in Bedford County and rolled onto its roof, coming to rest in the middle of the roadway.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said last week that it’s “collecting information” from state police, the automaker and the driver to ascertain “whether automated functions were in use at the time.” The Detroit Free Press had quoted a police officer saying the driver told him the so-called Autopilot system was engaged when the accident occurred. The state police on Monday doesn’t mention whether the system was in use.
At least 70,000 Tesla vehicles with Autopilot — Tesla’s name for its driver-assistance system that maintains a vehicle’s position in a well-marked lane and adjusts speed to match surrounding traffic — are on the road worldwide, though it is still in so-called beta testing. Drivers have to actively engage Autopilot, and the vehicles warn motorists to keep their hands on the wheel.
In May, 40-year-old Joshua Brown of Ohio was killed when his Tesla Model S drove under the trailer of an 18-wheeler on a highway near Williston, Florida. In a blog post, Tesla stressed that the crash was the first known fatality in more than 130 million miles of Autopilot driving, compared to 94 million miles for all cars.
