Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

theverge.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 189 posts

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

#31

Post by deegles »

animex wrote: post #20

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…

This could have been avoided just by calling it "Partial Self Driving" and then everything would be above board.

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

#32

Post by IshKebab »

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).

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

#33

Post by [deleted] »

MisterDizzy wrote: post #18
_akhe wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

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?

[deleted]

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

#34

Post by boolemancer »

NoMoreNicksLeft wrote: post #27
chollida1 wrote: post #6

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 overl…

Shouldn't fraud (for the end user/customer) be determined by claims made about the product at the time of sale, and not promises of what might be possible a few years from now? If you want to say promises of future features is fraud, then surely that would only be in relation to investors?

When you are charging people extra for the features you're promising will exist in the future, it seems reasonable to call that fraud if you never deliver.

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

#35

Post by Lendal »

glitchc wrote: post #4

About time.

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.

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

#36

Post by 91bananas »

MisterDizzy wrote: post #18
_akhe wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

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?

I personally preferred the original politically extreme and anti-constitutional subculture better.

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

#37

Post by [deleted] »

MisterDizzy wrote: post #18
_akhe wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

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?

[deleted]

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

#38

Post by itsoktocry »

animex wrote: post #20

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…

>A certain founder should be doing some hard time for ludicrous claims over the past 8 years.

I don't think "hard time" is appropriate for white collar crimes. Money is how you speak to these people. Martha Stewart is still worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

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

#39

Post by dawnerd »

deegles wrote: post #31
animex wrote: post #20

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…

This could have been avoided just by calling it "Partial Self Driving" and then everything would be above board.

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.

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

#40

Post by klodolph »

“Everything everywhere is securities fraud”

—Matt Levine

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.

Post reply on HN