Is Elon Musk trying to commit ‘suicide by SEC’ by taunting the agency?

Knowing nothing but chatter on the internet I'd say Musk goes through manic episodes.

I liked Matt Levine's analysis:

> probably what will happen is that Musk will go to court and the judge will yell at him and he will say he’s sorry and then six minutes later he’ll tweet “my fingers were crossed and I am NOT sorry” and he’ll go on TV that night and be like “you know what I have contempt for? Court,” and everyone will just be like “ehhhhhhhhhh good enough.”

( https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-02-26/elon-m... )

He wants attention. Good, bad or otherwise.

>Of more concern to Tesla investors: What if he knows something they don’t know about the company’s financial future — and is hoping to hang any failure on the nasty, overreaching regulators rather than his own dubious management skills?

That seems very possible.

I think the reality of scaling up Tesla to live up to its valuation might be too daunting for Elon to handle. It might even be impossible. EV sales as a % of total vehicle sales is surprisingly low. If EV's do take off, it's likely to be the established car manufacturers who are good at making cars at scale who eventually capitalize on the opportunity. And the most likely to drive the S-curve adoption.

Being taken out by the SEC would be a way to keep confidence in Elon Musk Inc going which would obviously be beneficial to his other companies. He could even team up with Mark Cuban to rail against them on Twitter.

How many people haven't heard of Coca Cola? How much do they spend on advertising regardless?

Brand awareness requires upkeep.