Tesla is facing a new round of regulatory pressures for unintended braking by its electric vehicles, allegations of racism at its California factory and ongoing scrutiny of CEO Elon Musk by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for public comments that could affect the company’s stock price.
Tesla and Musk fired back last week, claiming the SEC “seems to be targeting Mr. Musk and Tesla for unrelenting investigation largely because Mr. Musk remains an outspoken critic of the government.”
The allegation by Tesla’s legal counsel was made to the judge who presided over a 2018 settlement between the automaker and the SEC.
“The SEC’s outsized efforts seem calculated to chill [Musk’s] exercise of First Amendment rights rather than to enforce generally applicable laws in an evenhanded fashion,” said the letter by Tesla lawyer Alex Shapiro to U.S. District Judge Alison Nathan, dated Thursday, Feb. 17.
In the 2018 settlement, Tesla agreed to put in place additional controls and procedures to oversee Musk’s communications after he wrote on Twitter that he had secured funding to take the company private, affecting the stock price. This month, Tesla said it had received an SEC subpoena about compliance with the 2018 settlement.
The back-and-forth between Musk and the SEC is part of a broader pattern of regulatory pushback by the Tesla CEO.
Over the past four months, Tesla has issued nearly a dozen recalls, some related to its “Full Self-Driving” software used by tens of thousands of Tesla owners as part of a beta testing program.
Musk has publicly pushed back on NHTSA, even after Tesla voluntarily agreed to the recalls.
In a recent example, Musk told his 74.1 million followers on Twitter that Tesla had to modify the “Boombox” feature — which allowed custom sounds on an external speaker — because of the “fun police.”
NHTSA said the feature could obscure the pedestrian warning system that is mandated on electric vehicles, which are often too quiet to hear.
Last week, NHTSA opened a new investigation into an ongoing issue regarding sudden, unintended “phantom braking” by Tesla’s Autopilot advanced driver-assistance system.
The safety agency’s Office of Defects Investigation said it had received 354 complaints alleging unexpected braking in 2021-2022 Tesla Model 3 and Model Y vehicles.
“The complaints allege that while utilizing the ADAS features, including adaptive cruise control, the vehicle unexpectedly applies its brakes while driving at highway speeds,” NHTSA said in a Wednesday, Feb. 16, notice.
“Complainants report that the rapid deceleration can occur without warning, at random, and often repeatedly in a single drive cycle.”
The agency said an estimated 416,000 Tesla vehicles could be affected.
While Tesla’s lawyer was alleging government interference with Musk’s free-speech rights last week, the controversial CEO was comparing Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to Adolf Hitler with a satirical meme on Twitter.
Musk has expressed support for Canadian truckers who have been protesting vaccine mandates, and the meme came in a reply to a Twitter post about financial sanctions against the “Freedom Convoy.”
The meme, with a picture of Hitler, read: “Stop comparing me to Justin Trudeau, I had a budget.”
Trudeau had struggled for two years to pass a federal budget.
Musk deleted the meme after complaints by the American Jewish Committee, the Auschwitz Memorial and public figures for disrespecting the memory of victims of the Nazis.
Musk later posted the comment, “Reasons to hate are remembered better than reasons to love,” but the Tesla CEO did not immediately post an apology.