S&P has two revenue sources: "issuer pay" is when a company requests a credit rating for themselves, and pays for it. The other source is "subscription based" p

S&P has two revenue sources: "issuer pay" is when a company requests a credit rating for themselves, and pays for it. The other source is "subscription based" paid for by investors. They could want to "create access to a market" or "complete their coverage"* So it's possible an investor requested a review of Tesla for their own information and S&P decided to publish the opinion publicly or S&P just wanted to. Blackmail seems unlikely. * http://lexicon.ft.com/Term?term=unsolicited-rating http://lexicon.ft.com/Term?term=unsolicited-rating