You're almost certainly right that the part about this being a "criminal probe" seems wrong, but there are possible legal issues from a civil perspective. Whil

You're almost certainly right that the part about this being a "criminal probe" seems wrong, but there are possible legal issues from a civil perspective. While it's not enforced that tightly by the SEC, it's common knowledge in banking that, for instance in the process of an IPO (or in the offering of any security to the public, i.e. quarterly reports), you should always show pessimism in your outlook. Take Snap's S-1 [1], for an example-- I linked to the Risk Factors section, and you can see a huge amount of bullet points of everything that could possibly go wrong for Snap, even going into how Google could raise prices on cloud storage and screw them over. While, again, I totally agree with you it isn't criminal, Tesla could be in trouble if they gave very idealistic estimates. [1] https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1564408/000119312517029199/d270216ds1.htm#rom270216_2 https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1564408/000119312517...