Tesla reported the crash, which killed 40-year-old Joshua Brown when he collided with a semi truck on a Florida road, to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA).
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The WS-J reported Monday that the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is investigating whether Tesla should have informed investors after a fatal crash on 7 May.
Elon Musk and Tesla may have had a rough few weeks, but apparently, all it takes is a single tweet from Musk himself to turn those fortunes around. The SEC had no immediate comment.
Moreover, Tesla says its investigators did not get the chance to recover the complete logs until May 18, when they inspected the auto and the crash site. In that post, Musk first discussed the cars that became the Tesla 3 sports sedan and Tesla S four-door auto.
Musk, who is co-founder and chairman of SolarCity, yesterday explained the merger deal was aimed at “creating a seamlessly integrated Tesla battery & solar power product that looks beautiful”.
Fortune later implied, using a boilerplate statement from Tesla, that Musk and the company previously considered the accident a material event, which would constitute a security fraud according to the Fortune reporter.
Tesla spokeswoman Alexis Georgeson said the company was aware of the Montana accident and is looking into it.
Tesla shares are down nearly 10% year-to-date, and down more than 16% in the past 12 months.
Telsa publicly disclosed in a June 30 blog post that the Autopilot feature was engaged during a fatal crash that occurred in Williston, Florida in May. It is therefore quite possible that an incident involving the company’s autopilot feature, a system created to keep the vehicle in its lane without human intervention when traveling on highways, could have an oversized impact on future sales if it causes consumers to question Tesla’s technical expertise.
The Consumer Watchdog letter also pointed to Tesla’s response to the non-fatal July 1 crash that stated: “Based on the information we have now, we have no reason to believe that Autopilot had anything to do with this accident”.
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That’s not the only point where Tesla made news but it also came to the spot light when the company offered to acquire SolarCity.
