8 ms·

Tesla is being investigated for securities and wire fraud for self-driving claim

172 points by chollida1 2y ago

_akhe 2y ago
Securities fraud again, funny that the guy who "bought Twitter" and shut down free speech ended up getting sued himself due to his own tweet (lying about # of Teslas being produced). It's like a bully trying to chase someone but tripping over their shoelace in the first step, love it. On self-driving: For several years the guy has been saying "next month" "next year" it's been like 10+ years at this point. He's a bigger grifter than the Ashes of Creation guy (8 year long Kickstarter MMO that never launched and still collects payments to this day). Wonder why anyone falls for it, feel bad for the gullible.
- nullorempty 2y ago
  I think Musk is just relaying the promises he receives from ML/AI guys he employes. As far as I know FSD has always been a paid option.
  - jajko 2y ago
    This is irrelevant, he is public CEO and has tons of responsibilities. Basically lying to millions of customers in very public manner is a serious issue.
  - mikestew 2y ago
    And after years of publicly looking like a lying car salesman, why would he still listen to those employees? I don’t think it’s the line employees that are lying here.
    - lolc 2y ago
      The way I understood it went down for the CEO: 1. Made optimistic claims about future product. 2. Some of the people tasked with implementation disagreed about optimistic claim. 3. Those people got fired for underperforming. 4. All people on the team tasked with implementation agree with optimistic claim. 5. Doubled down on the promise. Repeat every year. I can't see how a CEO could be blamed in this scenario, as clearly they were lied to by their subordinates.
      - _akhe 2y ago
        The CEO is still responsible for their own employees, CEO hired them or directed them to be hired, the CEO (especially this CEO) runs the company. Lying about features or the number of cars being produced etc. can't be limited to mere optimism because they mentioned specific numbers in a public way that were not true. > fired for underperforming The irony, since Musk destroys every brand and product he's ever touched. I've never seen a more polar opposite to the Midas effect at work. It has to be intentional.
        lolc 2y ago
        Why should a CEO be responsible for their employees if they could instead take a huge pay package which they are obviously entitled to given they have to work around their lying employees? That too was sarcasm :-) You shouldn't be too hard on Musk regarding the "destroys" though: Many people are so incompetent you don't even get to hear about their failures! And others loot professionally without you ever getting to know about it. You have to ignore a lot to state "it has to be intentional".
        deleted 2y ago
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      - danaris 2y ago
        Satire requires a clarity of purpose and target, lest it be mistaken for, and contribute to, that which it intends to criticize. See also: Poe's Law. Unless you include some clear indicator that you are being sarcastic, posts like this will be seen as fully sincere by many, many people.
        lolc 2y ago
        True. Sometimes the disconnect bothers me more, sometimes less. There's the hilarity of having fanboys agree with me, which happens sometimes when Tesla's on the menu.
  - deleted 2y ago
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  - kube-system 2y ago
    Given what I've read about his management style, I doubt it's like that. Probably more like: Musk: Hey get your shit together I want this done by the end of the year Team: Okay we'll try Musk: Okay we'll plan on that
  - adrr 2y ago
    I am sure if he allowed customers to get refunds on FSD, the DOJ wouldn't open a criminal case.
  - windexh8er 2y ago
    FSD, in its current iteration, is not what Musk has promised since 2016. FSD is not autonomous or even remotely close to driverless operation as he's claimed it would be. FSD is ultimately a marketing gimmick.
- stronglikedan 2y ago
  > "bought Twitter" and shut down free speech Citation needed. The platform is more open and vibrant than ever, even going so far as to reinstate free speech that old Twitter shut down at the request of the US government. If anything, he liberated free speech and it shows.
  - _akhe 2y ago
    > The platform is more open and vibrant than ever You reveal your lack of experience with Twitter, it's declined a lot. Pretty sure you can't even link to a tweet (a xweet?) from a news article or blog post - they totally killed the platform, not sure where you've been.
    - MisterDizzy 2y ago
      A lot of people are really defensive about this. What's the big deal if X does well? Why are people so personally invested in pretending like Elon didn't do the world a huge service by removing Twitter from the control of possibly the most politically extreme and anti-constitutional subculture in the entire country?
      - _akhe 2y ago
        I can tell by the upvote/downvote dance on the parent comment - people love their celebrities. They get really mad if you talk bad about Elon Musk lol I find it quite pathetic personally. I of course disagree - I don't see the "huge service". Everything from defrauding investors, customers, speaking out of school (saying he's a physicist in the early days), hanging out with Ghislaine Maxwell, stealing then tanking Tesla, destroying Twitter, he's a walking disaster to the point I believe it's intentional.
        erikerikson 2y ago
        I'm not sure how you'd see the "dance" but anyway... I'd hold the "visited decisive politics" hypothesis at a much higher probability over "celebrity parasocial loyalties" for down and up voting in this case. That said, trying to guess at the motivations of the diverse crowd here is fraught at best.
- neglesaks 2y ago
  I believe you can summarize Mr. Musk's persona (including his speech and promises made or hinted at) as "unreliable".
- slashdev 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - _akhe 2y ago
    [flagged]
- slashdev 2y ago
  1) Linking to Tweets still exists, and doesn't require that you're logged in to view them. 2) According to their own released numbers (which you may or may not trust), the usage of the platform is at a record high. 3) They've unbanned many accounts that were previously banned and seem to display a wider tolerance for free speech on the platform. The innovative community notes feature is sometimes helpful to point out misinformation, but misinformation thrives on the platform. 4) They've pushed back on various foriegn governments requesting data on users and requesting users or posts be banned (see the ongoing dispute with Brazil.) It seems more free, not less free.
  - ceejayoz 2y ago
    > The innovative community notes feature... ... was built and released pre-Musk, when it was called "Birdwatch". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_Notes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_Notes As for government requests, for every Brazil there's an India. https://theintercept.com/2023/03/28/twitter-modi-india-punjab-amritpal-singh/ https://theintercept.com/2023/03/28/twitter-modi-india-punja... "Twitter accounts from over 100 prominent politicians, activists, and journalists in India and abroad have been blocked in India at the request of the government. On Monday, the account of the BBC News Punjabi was also blocked — the second time in a few months that the Indian government has used Twitter to throttle BBC services in its country." "At the time that Musk took charge of the company, it had a mere 20 percent compliance rate with Indian government requests. Following massive layoffs that reduced 90 percent of Twitter India’s staff, the platform appears to have become far more obliging in the face of government pressure, as its actions to censor its critics now show."
  - piva00 2y ago
    > 4) They've pushed back on various foriegn governments requesting data on users and requesting users or posts be banned (see the ongoing dispute with Brazil.) But not in India, nor Turkey, there Twitter under Musk has abided by the requests to silence people. Why is that is a good question, it could be political alignment (Modi and Erdogan are from a different political stance than Lula), it could be because Musk seeks to exploit Brazil's lithium, we can't know but he's been pretty selective in where to pick a fight so we can only assume is due to other circumstances than anything to do with freedom of speech.
williamsmj 2y ago
This is just the Verge regurgitating a Reuters article that has already been posted https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40297126 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40297126.
glitchc 2y ago
About time.
- Lendal 2y ago
  I had a feeling this was coming. I bought FSD in 2020. It was $10K, and they were claiming in one year you could summon the car to come to you from across town or rent it out as a self-driving taxi service. I figured it might work, and in the meantime would be a fun toy, so I bought into it as a speculation. On an individual basis this was just poor judgement on my part, but when you multiply that by how many other customers thought similarly to how I did, maybe it does become a government issue then. Unfortunately for me, I soon discovered that I did not like the car driving me around. No matter how good it got, I would almost always have made a different decision in most traffic situations. So it was a huge loss, but for me it doesn't even have to do with the fact the technology doesn't do what their hype claimed. It has to do with the fact that letting FSD drive is more stressful than if I just drive the car myself.
  - jaxomlotus 2y ago
    There isn't even a point to it if it requires you to keep your hands on the wheel and not look at your phone. I would want to use it so I could conduct business while the car took care of driving. If it still requires me to pay strict attention to the road and keep both hands on the wheel, then it's just a novelty to show off to passengers for a quick giggle, but not actually solving a problem.
  - Sparyjerry 2y ago
    None of those claims were claims by them, they were claims you hoped for. If you look at what was actually said it was all at random interview or podcasts, rarely if ever even at a Tesla release or event. PLus it was all "I Think.." if you want to fault a CEO for being optimistic, literally every CEO in the world should be in jail. Do you know how many "World's Best Burger" restaurants there are? The only actual claims that could be considered valid are those by the website when the purchase of the car was actually taking place, which promised exactly none of that.
louwrentius 2y ago
I’ve seen the same meme over and over again in many different youtube videos: Elon musk assuring self-driving is just around the corner, just another few months… The investigation doesn’t interest me much. He has gotten slaps on the wrist before. Wake me up when he gets jail time.
- Firaxus 2y ago
  As someone with a tesla and with a parent who bought the fsd beta package, I’d be very interested if there’s some kind of payout for consumers/customers!
  - lolc 2y ago
    There was this thread[0] around here about one buyer of FSD who took Tesla to small claims court and Tesla settled with them. Looks like it's easy enough to do. It's just that Tesla demands gag clauses in the settlement which may be accepted by many people and we might never know how many settlements are out there. Thankfully the author in this instance knew they were going to win and there would be no gag clauses then. So why accept them in the settlement? Tesla caved, because they knew this too. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38146676 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38146676
    - trog 2y ago
      I don't know if there are still a lot of Tesla shorts, but I wonder if they could offer to fund one of these settlements and then pay for any fines for the person to then breach the gag order. Maybe there are not enough FSD customers for this to have a material impact in terms of dollars but I'd have to think it would impact reputation.
chollida1 2y ago
This is about defrauding people who bought a tesla, not investors. > In 2020, Musk told a crowd in Shanghai that he remains “confident” that Tesla will achieve “basic functionality for level five autonomy this year,” referring to the SAE’s rankings of autonomy. Tesla’s technology, in 2024, is still at level 2. This reminds me alot of the Thernos case where she tried to make the case not about fraud but about an overly optimistic CEO promising something and being wrong about that. here Musk has clearly said that full self driving would be available many years ago. So I guess we're trying to figure out how much lying is ok by a CEO before it becomes fraud to the buyer.
- bunderbunder 2y ago
  As the article explains, wire fraud is about defrauding consumers, and securities fraud is about deceiving investors. Tesla is under investigation for both.
  - paxys 2y ago
    Wire fraud is nowadays just a catch-all for "crime involving money". Regardless of all other specifics of the case, it is a certainty that at some point someone sent a text message or used a computer, so that's what the feds will go after. Ran a scammy crypto exchange out of the Bahamas? Took money from investors for a failed blood testing company? Raised money for a political campaign but spent it on hookers? Paid a hitman to kill your spouse? All wire fraud.
    - bryanlarsen 2y ago
      And pretty much everything a public company does is securities fraud: [1] To oversimplify, a company is required to disclose risks, and everything is a risk, so it's security fraud if it's not in the disclosure, or if it's misrepresented in the disclosure. 1: https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-06-26/everything-everywhere-is-securities-fraud https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-06-26/everyt...
    - rtkwe 2y ago
      Not just a computer but just using the phone is also a wire fraud trigger too. It is basically any fraud these days though given how much communication happens through some 'wire'.
MisterDizzy 2y ago
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animex 2y ago
Absolutely. If Martha Stewart went to jail for much less, a certain CEO[1] should be doing some hard time for ludicrous claims over the past 8 years. Some back-of-the-napkin-math: If we focus on the 4m Model 3 (& Y) vehicles sold that had these claims attached and assume that there was a peak uptake rate of 46% declining to 11% as these claims became obviously untrue. On FSD @ an ever-increasing price of $6000-$12000 USD per vehicle. Let's say take the declining rate difference as indicative of the group that was misled. 35% of those taking FSD took the feature because of erroneous claims, generating about 2Bn in high-margin revenue collected pumping the stock and causing investors to pile on creating even more validation of this claim. Pumping the stock also created massive tranche payouts for Musk for hitting certain valuations that should only have been hit when the automaker was truly a runaway success. Musk is incentivized to use this reality-distortion field & cult-like persona to continue lying about Tesla's future for personal and corporate gain. [1] Edit: Founder -> CEO
- _akhe 2y ago
  I agree 100% he should be prosecuted at this point. He should have been the first time.
- deegles 2y ago
  This could have been avoided just by calling it "Partial Self Driving" and then everything would be above board.
  - dawnerd 2y ago
    That’s only part of the problem. They’re specifically investigating claims Elon made himself where he said the car drove itself without human input. He’s repeatedly made claims like this.
  - mensetmanusman 2y ago
    That’s what they call it in the aerospace industry /s
    - kube-system 2y ago
perihelions 2y ago
- "The investigation, which was first reported in October 2022 but has been going on since at least late 2021, involves federal prosecutors in Washington and San Francisco who..." Just to clarify, this is the same one as this HN thread from October 2022, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33348388 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33348388 ("Tesla faces U.S. criminal probe over self-driving claims (reuters.com)", 469 comments)
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bilsbie 2y ago
The latest self driving is getting really good. My main problem is being a front seat driver and taking action because I’m not sure of it’s thought process but it ends up getting things correct. I think all these systems* could benefit from earlier braking to give the “supervisor” more piece of mind. * including my wife in this.
- misiti3780 2y ago
  agree, half the people in this thread havnt used it. i think it's probably clear to most FSD testers that end-to-end NN trained on video will get you L5 eventually.
  - ceejayoz 2y ago
    I've used it (this weekend, in fact). It's very impressive. It remains a far cry from this, which Musk tweeted (https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/686279251293777920 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/686279251293777920) eight years ago: > In ~2 years, summon should work anywhere connected by land & not blocked by borders, eg you're in LA and the car is in NY.
    - misiti3780 2y ago
      agreed. so his prediction was wrong. who cares. think about how much has changed in AI in the past 1.5 years. The timeline is off, but Tesla will achieve autonomy first.
  - adrr 2y ago
    I have it. I don’t know how it can be L5 when the cameras get blinded by the sun in the morning and evening. Or when it rains too hard. It also picked up the mannerisms of human drivers like hitting the brakes at a yellow light and then accelerating and in my case tried to run a red.
  - itsoktocry 2y ago
    >will get you L5 eventually. "Eventually" wasn't the sales pitch. Is FSD an awesome technology? Yes. But I've watched enough YouTube videos of it, including by superfans, that I know if you set the navigation and climbed in the back seat, that car is not making it to its destination without getting in an accident. That's why the safety vs no FSD comparisons are so silly: you have a person intervening. How would it look if you didn't? Guess we'll find out!
IshKebab 2y ago
I'm surprised it's taken this long, though I supposed you needed some technical knowledge to know that it was obviously a fraud a while ago. Without that you might believe it was actually possible (hence people actually buying FSD).
klodolph 2y ago
“Everything everywhere is securities fraud” —Matt Levine https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-06-26/everything-everywhere-is-securities-fraud https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-06-26/everyt... The basic idea here is that you lied, the share price went up because of your lies, and that makes it security fraud. From one viewpoint it’s a useful tool to punish fraudsters and con men, and from another view it’s an overreach by the FTC. Maybe a more reasonable view is somewhere in the middle—it’s both a good tool and an overreach.
- malfist 2y ago
  How is it possibly overreach? If you lie to investors to get them to give you more money, that is absolutely fraud.
mensetmanusman 2y ago
Fly by wire fraud?
ryandrake 2y ago
This site[1], which is a pretty comprehensive list of claims Musk has made and how long it’s been, made the rounds on HN a few times. It’s really incredible how much exaggeration comes out of the guy’s mouth. I don’t think it all counts as fraud, but at some point you gotta say Dude, Stop Talking. 1: https://elonmusk.today/ https://elonmusk.today/
- bagels 2y ago
  I was trying to find the same thing to post. Thank you!
- kemotep 2y ago
  Last month he stood before the SpaceX staff in Boca Chica and outlined how he still believes that he will get 1 million people on Mars by the 2050s. U til they can start producing 100’s of Starships, this is not even remotely realistic. Sending thousands of people to Mars in the next 5 years is not a serious or realistic idea.
  - TheLoafOfBread 2y ago
    I mean, what those 1 million people would be even doing there? What would be their purpose there? Definitely not resources, because getting anything from Mars would not be economical. I do understand to have an international base of few dozens to few hundred scientists on Mars who will be studying it 24/7. But that's about it.
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ChrisArchitect 2y ago
[dupe] Actual article: https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/tesla-autopilot-probe-us-prosecutors-focus-securities-wire-fraud-2024-05-08/ https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/tesla-... (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40297126 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40297126)
MisterDizzy 2y ago
[flagged]
- ceejayoz 2y ago
  Spare me with this; one of Musk's very first major actions was removing an account he didn't like (and had previously committed to leaving alone! https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1589414958508691456 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1589414958508691456) because it was tweeting publicly available ADS-B data his plane was broadcasting... and then went on a tear banning journalists tweeting about it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/December_2022_Twitter_suspensions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/December_2022_Twitter_suspensi...
  - MisterDizzy 2y ago
    [flagged]
    - ceejayoz 2y ago
      > "It was fine when we did it, and cooperated with intel agencies to do it, but HE shouldn't be able to!!" He has every right to do it. He promised not to, and you're still claiming he isn't. That hypocrisy is very apparent.
      - MisterDizzy 2y ago
        [flagged]
        ceejayoz 2y ago
        If silencing dissent is not acceptable, you should demonstrably be mad at Musk.
      - MisterDizzy 2y ago
        [flagged]
unwound7115 2y ago
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bigtex 2y ago
This means the stock goes up 10%, right?

172 points by chollida1 2y ago

Securities fraud again, funny that the guy who "bought Twitter" and shut down free speech ended up getting sued himself due to his own tweet (lying about # of Teslas being produced). It's like a bully trying to chase someone but tripping over their shoelace in the first step, love it. On self-driving: For several years the guy has been saying "next month" "next year" it's been like 10+ years at this point. He's a bigger grifter than the Ashes of Creation guy (8 year long Kickstarter MMO that never launched and still collects payments to this day). Wonder why anyone falls for it, feel bad for the gullible.

nullorempty 2y ago
I think Musk is just relaying the promises he receives from ML/AI guys he employes. As far as I know FSD has always been a paid option.
- jajko 2y ago
  This is irrelevant, he is public CEO and has tons of responsibilities. Basically lying to millions of customers in very public manner is a serious issue.
- mikestew 2y ago
  And after years of publicly looking like a lying car salesman, why would he still listen to those employees? I don’t think it’s the line employees that are lying here.
  - lolc 2y ago
    The way I understood it went down for the CEO: 1. Made optimistic claims about future product. 2. Some of the people tasked with implementation disagreed about optimistic claim. 3. Those people got fired for underperforming. 4. All people on the team tasked with implementation agree with optimistic claim. 5. Doubled down on the promise. Repeat every year. I can't see how a CEO could be blamed in this scenario, as clearly they were lied to by their subordinates.
    - _akhe 2y ago
      The CEO is still responsible for their own employees, CEO hired them or directed them to be hired, the CEO (especially this CEO) runs the company. Lying about features or the number of cars being produced etc. can't be limited to mere optimism because they mentioned specific numbers in a public way that were not true. > fired for underperforming The irony, since Musk destroys every brand and product he's ever touched. I've never seen a more polar opposite to the Midas effect at work. It has to be intentional.
      - lolc 2y ago
        Why should a CEO be responsible for their employees if they could instead take a huge pay package which they are obviously entitled to given they have to work around their lying employees? That too was sarcasm :-) You shouldn't be too hard on Musk regarding the "destroys" though: Many people are so incompetent you don't even get to hear about their failures! And others loot professionally without you ever getting to know about it. You have to ignore a lot to state "it has to be intentional".
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    - danaris 2y ago
      Satire requires a clarity of purpose and target, lest it be mistaken for, and contribute to, that which it intends to criticize. See also: Poe's Law. Unless you include some clear indicator that you are being sarcastic, posts like this will be seen as fully sincere by many, many people.
      - lolc 2y ago
        True. Sometimes the disconnect bothers me more, sometimes less. There's the hilarity of having fanboys agree with me, which happens sometimes when Tesla's on the menu.
- deleted 2y ago
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- kube-system 2y ago
  Given what I've read about his management style, I doubt it's like that. Probably more like: Musk: Hey get your shit together I want this done by the end of the year Team: Okay we'll try Musk: Okay we'll plan on that
- adrr 2y ago
  I am sure if he allowed customers to get refunds on FSD, the DOJ wouldn't open a criminal case.
- windexh8er 2y ago
  FSD, in its current iteration, is not what Musk has promised since 2016. FSD is not autonomous or even remotely close to driverless operation as he's claimed it would be. FSD is ultimately a marketing gimmick.
stronglikedan 2y ago
> "bought Twitter" and shut down free speech Citation needed. The platform is more open and vibrant than ever, even going so far as to reinstate free speech that old Twitter shut down at the request of the US government. If anything, he liberated free speech and it shows.
- _akhe 2y ago
  > The platform is more open and vibrant than ever You reveal your lack of experience with Twitter, it's declined a lot. Pretty sure you can't even link to a tweet (a xweet?) from a news article or blog post - they totally killed the platform, not sure where you've been.
  - MisterDizzy 2y ago
    A lot of people are really defensive about this. What's the big deal if X does well? Why are people so personally invested in pretending like Elon didn't do the world a huge service by removing Twitter from the control of possibly the most politically extreme and anti-constitutional subculture in the entire country?
    - _akhe 2y ago
      I can tell by the upvote/downvote dance on the parent comment - people love their celebrities. They get really mad if you talk bad about Elon Musk lol I find it quite pathetic personally. I of course disagree - I don't see the "huge service". Everything from defrauding investors, customers, speaking out of school (saying he's a physicist in the early days), hanging out with Ghislaine Maxwell, stealing then tanking Tesla, destroying Twitter, he's a walking disaster to the point I believe it's intentional.
      - erikerikson 2y ago
        I'm not sure how you'd see the "dance" but anyway... I'd hold the "visited decisive politics" hypothesis at a much higher probability over "celebrity parasocial loyalties" for down and up voting in this case. That said, trying to guess at the motivations of the diverse crowd here is fraught at best.
neglesaks 2y ago
I believe you can summarize Mr. Musk's persona (including his speech and promises made or hinted at) as "unreliable".
slashdev 2y ago
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- _akhe 2y ago
  [flagged]
slashdev 2y ago
1) Linking to Tweets still exists, and doesn't require that you're logged in to view them. 2) According to their own released numbers (which you may or may not trust), the usage of the platform is at a record high. 3) They've unbanned many accounts that were previously banned and seem to display a wider tolerance for free speech on the platform. The innovative community notes feature is sometimes helpful to point out misinformation, but misinformation thrives on the platform. 4) They've pushed back on various foriegn governments requesting data on users and requesting users or posts be banned (see the ongoing dispute with Brazil.) It seems more free, not less free.
- ceejayoz 2y ago
  > The innovative community notes feature... ... was built and released pre-Musk, when it was called "Birdwatch". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_Notes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_Notes As for government requests, for every Brazil there's an India. https://theintercept.com/2023/03/28/twitter-modi-india-punjab-amritpal-singh/ https://theintercept.com/2023/03/28/twitter-modi-india-punja... "Twitter accounts from over 100 prominent politicians, activists, and journalists in India and abroad have been blocked in India at the request of the government. On Monday, the account of the BBC News Punjabi was also blocked — the second time in a few months that the Indian government has used Twitter to throttle BBC services in its country." "At the time that Musk took charge of the company, it had a mere 20 percent compliance rate with Indian government requests. Following massive layoffs that reduced 90 percent of Twitter India’s staff, the platform appears to have become far more obliging in the face of government pressure, as its actions to censor its critics now show."
- piva00 2y ago
  > 4) They've pushed back on various foriegn governments requesting data on users and requesting users or posts be banned (see the ongoing dispute with Brazil.) But not in India, nor Turkey, there Twitter under Musk has abided by the requests to silence people. Why is that is a good question, it could be political alignment (Modi and Erdogan are from a different political stance than Lula), it could be because Musk seeks to exploit Brazil's lithium, we can't know but he's been pretty selective in where to pick a fight so we can only assume is due to other circumstances than anything to do with freedom of speech.

williamsmj 2y ago

This is just the Verge regurgitating a Reuters article that has already been posted https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40297126 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40297126.

glitchc 2y ago

About time.

Lendal 2y ago
I had a feeling this was coming. I bought FSD in 2020. It was $10K, and they were claiming in one year you could summon the car to come to you from across town or rent it out as a self-driving taxi service. I figured it might work, and in the meantime would be a fun toy, so I bought into it as a speculation. On an individual basis this was just poor judgement on my part, but when you multiply that by how many other customers thought similarly to how I did, maybe it does become a government issue then. Unfortunately for me, I soon discovered that I did not like the car driving me around. No matter how good it got, I would almost always have made a different decision in most traffic situations. So it was a huge loss, but for me it doesn't even have to do with the fact the technology doesn't do what their hype claimed. It has to do with the fact that letting FSD drive is more stressful than if I just drive the car myself.
- jaxomlotus 2y ago
  There isn't even a point to it if it requires you to keep your hands on the wheel and not look at your phone. I would want to use it so I could conduct business while the car took care of driving. If it still requires me to pay strict attention to the road and keep both hands on the wheel, then it's just a novelty to show off to passengers for a quick giggle, but not actually solving a problem.
- Sparyjerry 2y ago
  None of those claims were claims by them, they were claims you hoped for. If you look at what was actually said it was all at random interview or podcasts, rarely if ever even at a Tesla release or event. PLus it was all "I Think.." if you want to fault a CEO for being optimistic, literally every CEO in the world should be in jail. Do you know how many "World's Best Burger" restaurants there are? The only actual claims that could be considered valid are those by the website when the purchase of the car was actually taking place, which promised exactly none of that.

louwrentius 2y ago

I’ve seen the same meme over and over again in many different youtube videos: Elon musk assuring self-driving is just around the corner, just another few months… The investigation doesn’t interest me much. He has gotten slaps on the wrist before. Wake me up when he gets jail time.

Firaxus 2y ago
As someone with a tesla and with a parent who bought the fsd beta package, I’d be very interested if there’s some kind of payout for consumers/customers!
- lolc 2y ago
  There was this thread[0] around here about one buyer of FSD who took Tesla to small claims court and Tesla settled with them. Looks like it's easy enough to do. It's just that Tesla demands gag clauses in the settlement which may be accepted by many people and we might never know how many settlements are out there. Thankfully the author in this instance knew they were going to win and there would be no gag clauses then. So why accept them in the settlement? Tesla caved, because they knew this too. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38146676 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38146676
  - trog 2y ago
    I don't know if there are still a lot of Tesla shorts, but I wonder if they could offer to fund one of these settlements and then pay for any fines for the person to then breach the gag order. Maybe there are not enough FSD customers for this to have a material impact in terms of dollars but I'd have to think it would impact reputation.

chollida1 2y ago

This is about defrauding people who bought a tesla, not investors. > In 2020, Musk told a crowd in Shanghai that he remains “confident” that Tesla will achieve “basic functionality for level five autonomy this year,” referring to the SAE’s rankings of autonomy. Tesla’s technology, in 2024, is still at level 2. This reminds me alot of the Thernos case where she tried to make the case not about fraud but about an overly optimistic CEO promising something and being wrong about that. here Musk has clearly said that full self driving would be available many years ago. So I guess we're trying to figure out how much lying is ok by a CEO before it becomes fraud to the buyer.

bunderbunder 2y ago
As the article explains, wire fraud is about defrauding consumers, and securities fraud is about deceiving investors. Tesla is under investigation for both.
- paxys 2y ago
  Wire fraud is nowadays just a catch-all for "crime involving money". Regardless of all other specifics of the case, it is a certainty that at some point someone sent a text message or used a computer, so that's what the feds will go after. Ran a scammy crypto exchange out of the Bahamas? Took money from investors for a failed blood testing company? Raised money for a political campaign but spent it on hookers? Paid a hitman to kill your spouse? All wire fraud.
  - bryanlarsen 2y ago
    And pretty much everything a public company does is securities fraud: [1] To oversimplify, a company is required to disclose risks, and everything is a risk, so it's security fraud if it's not in the disclosure, or if it's misrepresented in the disclosure. 1: https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-06-26/everything-everywhere-is-securities-fraud https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-06-26/everyt...
  - rtkwe 2y ago
    Not just a computer but just using the phone is also a wire fraud trigger too. It is basically any fraud these days though given how much communication happens through some 'wire'.

MisterDizzy 2y ago

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animex 2y ago

Absolutely. If Martha Stewart went to jail for much less, a certain CEO[1] should be doing some hard time for ludicrous claims over the past 8 years. Some back-of-the-napkin-math: If we focus on the 4m Model 3 (& Y) vehicles sold that had these claims attached and assume that there was a peak uptake rate of 46% declining to 11% as these claims became obviously untrue. On FSD @ an ever-increasing price of $6000-$12000 USD per vehicle. Let's say take the declining rate difference as indicative of the group that was misled. 35% of those taking FSD took the feature because of erroneous claims, generating about 2Bn in high-margin revenue collected pumping the stock and causing investors to pile on creating even more validation of this claim. Pumping the stock also created massive tranche payouts for Musk for hitting certain valuations that should only have been hit when the automaker was truly a runaway success. Musk is incentivized to use this reality-distortion field & cult-like persona to continue lying about Tesla's future for personal and corporate gain. [1] Edit: Founder -> CEO

_akhe 2y ago
I agree 100% he should be prosecuted at this point. He should have been the first time.
deegles 2y ago
This could have been avoided just by calling it "Partial Self Driving" and then everything would be above board.
- dawnerd 2y ago
  That’s only part of the problem. They’re specifically investigating claims Elon made himself where he said the car drove itself without human input. He’s repeatedly made claims like this.
- mensetmanusman 2y ago
  That’s what they call it in the aerospace industry /s
  - kube-system 2y ago

perihelions 2y ago

- "The investigation, which was first reported in October 2022 but has been going on since at least late 2021, involves federal prosecutors in Washington and San Francisco who..." Just to clarify, this is the same one as this HN thread from October 2022, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33348388 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33348388 ("Tesla faces U.S. criminal probe over self-driving claims (reuters.com)", 469 comments)

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bilsbie 2y ago

The latest self driving is getting really good. My main problem is being a front seat driver and taking action because I’m not sure of it’s thought process but it ends up getting things correct. I think all these systems* could benefit from earlier braking to give the “supervisor” more piece of mind. * including my wife in this.

misiti3780 2y ago
agree, half the people in this thread havnt used it. i think it's probably clear to most FSD testers that end-to-end NN trained on video will get you L5 eventually.
- ceejayoz 2y ago
  I've used it (this weekend, in fact). It's very impressive. It remains a far cry from this, which Musk tweeted (https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/686279251293777920 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/686279251293777920) eight years ago: > In ~2 years, summon should work anywhere connected by land & not blocked by borders, eg you're in LA and the car is in NY.
  - misiti3780 2y ago
    agreed. so his prediction was wrong. who cares. think about how much has changed in AI in the past 1.5 years. The timeline is off, but Tesla will achieve autonomy first.
- adrr 2y ago
  I have it. I don’t know how it can be L5 when the cameras get blinded by the sun in the morning and evening. Or when it rains too hard. It also picked up the mannerisms of human drivers like hitting the brakes at a yellow light and then accelerating and in my case tried to run a red.
- itsoktocry 2y ago
  >will get you L5 eventually. "Eventually" wasn't the sales pitch. Is FSD an awesome technology? Yes. But I've watched enough YouTube videos of it, including by superfans, that I know if you set the navigation and climbed in the back seat, that car is not making it to its destination without getting in an accident. That's why the safety vs no FSD comparisons are so silly: you have a person intervening. How would it look if you didn't? Guess we'll find out!

IshKebab 2y ago

I'm surprised it's taken this long, though I supposed you needed some technical knowledge to know that it was obviously a fraud a while ago. Without that you might believe it was actually possible (hence people actually buying FSD).

klodolph 2y ago

“Everything everywhere is securities fraud” —Matt Levine https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-06-26/everything-everywhere-is-securities-fraud https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-06-26/everyt... The basic idea here is that you lied, the share price went up because of your lies, and that makes it security fraud. From one viewpoint it’s a useful tool to punish fraudsters and con men, and from another view it’s an overreach by the FTC. Maybe a more reasonable view is somewhere in the middle—it’s both a good tool and an overreach.

malfist 2y ago
How is it possibly overreach? If you lie to investors to get them to give you more money, that is absolutely fraud.

mensetmanusman 2y ago

Fly by wire fraud?

ryandrake 2y ago

This site[1], which is a pretty comprehensive list of claims Musk has made and how long it’s been, made the rounds on HN a few times. It’s really incredible how much exaggeration comes out of the guy’s mouth. I don’t think it all counts as fraud, but at some point you gotta say Dude, Stop Talking. 1: https://elonmusk.today/ https://elonmusk.today/

bagels 2y ago
I was trying to find the same thing to post. Thank you!
kemotep 2y ago
Last month he stood before the SpaceX staff in Boca Chica and outlined how he still believes that he will get 1 million people on Mars by the 2050s. U til they can start producing 100’s of Starships, this is not even remotely realistic. Sending thousands of people to Mars in the next 5 years is not a serious or realistic idea.
- TheLoafOfBread 2y ago
  I mean, what those 1 million people would be even doing there? What would be their purpose there? Definitely not resources, because getting anything from Mars would not be economical. I do understand to have an international base of few dozens to few hundred scientists on Mars who will be studying it 24/7. But that's about it.

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ChrisArchitect 2y ago

[dupe] Actual article: https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/tesla-autopilot-probe-us-prosecutors-focus-securities-wire-fraud-2024-05-08/ https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/tesla-... (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40297126 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40297126)

MisterDizzy 2y ago

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ceejayoz 2y ago
Spare me with this; one of Musk's very first major actions was removing an account he didn't like (and had previously committed to leaving alone! https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1589414958508691456 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1589414958508691456) because it was tweeting publicly available ADS-B data his plane was broadcasting... and then went on a tear banning journalists tweeting about it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/December_2022_Twitter_suspensions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/December_2022_Twitter_suspensi...
- MisterDizzy 2y ago
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  - ceejayoz 2y ago
    > "It was fine when we did it, and cooperated with intel agencies to do it, but HE shouldn't be able to!!" He has every right to do it. He promised not to, and you're still claiming he isn't. That hypocrisy is very apparent.
    - MisterDizzy 2y ago
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      - ceejayoz 2y ago
        If silencing dissent is not acceptable, you should demonstrably be mad at Musk.
    - MisterDizzy 2y ago
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unwound7115 2y ago

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bigtex 2y ago

This means the stock goes up 10%, right?