- U.S. prosecutors are examining whether Tesla committed securities or wire fraud by misleading investors and consumers about its electric vehicles’ self-driving capabilities, three people familiar with the matter told Reuters.
The Securities and Exchange Commission is also investigating Tesla’s representations about driver-assistance systems to investors, one of the people said. The SEC declined to comment. In a conference call with reporters in 2016, Musk described Autopilot as “probably better” than a human driver. During an October 2022 call, Musk addressed a forthcoming FSD upgrade he said would allow customers to travel “to your work, your friend’s house, to the grocery store without you touching the wheel.”
They will need to demonstrate that Tesla’s claims crossed a line from legal salesmanship to material and knowingly false statements that unlawfully harmed consumers or investors, three legal experts uninvolved in the probe told Reuters. In April, the Washington State Patrol arrested a man on suspicion of vehicular homicide after his Tesla, with Autopilot engaged, struck and killed a motorcyclist while the driver looked at his phone, police records show. In a probable-cause statement, a trooper cited the driver’s “admitted inattention to driving, while on autopilot mode ... putting trust in the machine to drive for him.”
The NHTSA investigation found “a critical safety gap between drivers’ expectations” of Tesla’s technology “and the system’s true capabilities,” according to agency records. “This gap led to foreseeable misuse and avoidable crashes.”