This is an interesting 1st Amendment discussion (relating to the article...I am not touching the separate FDA/drug issue). The most analogous case that comes t

This is an interesting 1st Amendment discussion (relating to the article...I am not touching the separate FDA/drug issue). The most analogous case that comes to mind, is the recent California small claims case against Honda. Facts: According to the EPA (who independently tests vehicles fuel efficiency) the Prius gets an average of 51 MPG. The Plaintiff claimed she only got an average of approximately 30 MPG. The Plaintiff won the lawsuit against Honda for fraudulent misrepresentation winning $10K the small claims limit in the jurisdiction. However, one of the most interesting arguments (and legitimate) was that while Honda does advertise the 51 MPG, that Honda could not be fraudulently misrepresenting the MPG, because Honda had no control over the testing or findings handled by the EPA, and going further Honda does not have a right (1st amendment) to contradict the "EPA sticker". Ergo according to the argument Honda should not be liable, rather the EPA - nevertheless the Court found Honda liable for fraudulent misrepresentation. Assuming this law is on point and controlling, for example, if the Tesla were to under perform in a real crash and Tesla was sued, Tesla may be liable despite having no control over the NHTSA test or findings. Going further, if the dicta from the Honda case is also on point, if Tesla's internal crash tests contradict NHTSA's ratings, Tesla would not have a 1st Amendment right to contradict the NHTSA findings publicly. Note: That SCOTUS makes a distinction between "commercial speech" and other forms of speech, and the government has a lot more power to regulate commercial speech than say political speech.