The Securities and Exchange Commission is investigating Tesla Motors for a possible securities law breach, according to a published report. Tesla learned of and alerted auto-safety investigators at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) of the death on May 16th, but didn’t alert its investors until after a $2 billion stock sale – including almost 2.8 billion shares of stock sold by Tesla CEO Elon Musk – on May 18-19th. And they may want some reassurances that Tesla’s Autopilot system is safe after OH resident Joshua Brown was killed in May when his Model S sedan crashed into a truck despite having the partially self-driving system activated.
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That was intensified as the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, already investigating the Florida crash, is now also gathering information on a nonfatal autopilot-related crash in Pennsylvania.
The death of Mr Brown has lead to heightened scrutiny of self-driving cars.
Tesla’s shares rose 3.7% Monday to close at 224.78 on news that Musk plans to unveil another new “Master Plan” for the company later this week. Helping the American automaker’s case is the fact that Tesla shares didn’t drop following the public report of the fatality and have actually continued to rise since then.
The issue first arose last week when Fortune reporter Carol J. Loomis tied Tesla’s $2.3 billion secondary offering announced on May 18 with the recent fatal accident in a Model S on Autopilot.
The tantalizing tweet – “Working on Top Secret Tesla Masterplan, Part 2”.
It’s pretty fair to say that Elon Musk is having himself quite a summer.
Track Elon Musk’s Landscape to stay on top of the industry. Musk expects the deal will help Tesla get into the market for sustainable energy for homes and businesses.
Tesla stock has also taken a hit recently.
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Tesla has said Autopilot should be used as a backup and not as a replacement for the driver, who should keep hands on the wheel all the time, and it has cautioned that the system is in beta, or test, mode.
