A Facebook co-founder’s attacks on Tesla continue, and they come with one of his boldest allegations against the company yet: Tesla is the next Enron.
Dustin Moskovitz, the Facebook co-founder who later launched Asana, claimed in a Threads post on Wednesday that the electric vehicle maker misled consumers “on a massive scale,” accusing Tesla of lying about its driving software fully autonomous and on the autonomy of the vehicle. .
Spokespeople for Tesla and Asana did not respond to a request for comment.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk did not directly respond to Moskovitz’s allegations, but instead hurled insults and insults at the Facebook co-founder on X on Friday.
Musk then added another message: “I would like to apologize to Dustin Moskovitz for calling him ‘retarded’. That was wrong. What I meant was that he is a pompous idiot who head is so high up his own ass he’s legally blind I wish him the best and hope one day we can be friends.
Moskovitz had not yet responded to Musk’s messages as of Friday.
On Wednesday, the Facebook co-founder acknowledged the seriousness of his comments in his social media post.
“I know I look crazy to most people who don’t follow $TSLA closely, but at this point it really needs to be said,” he wrote. “It’s Enron now, folks.”
To recap this twenty-year-old scandal, Enron, the energy giant, filed for bankruptcy in 2001 after being caught using creative accounting to hide billions of dollars in debt and lying about its sources of income. The company’s executives were convicted of fraud and conspiracy in 2006.
Moskovitz did not present detailed evidence for each of his claims, but he shared graphics from Tesla that he said reveal how the automaker is trying to show an increase in miles driven with FSD, the technology of Tesla driving assistance which is essential for the company. path towards autonomous driving and robotaxis.
The tech founder went so far as to predict that people would end up in prison.
No Tesla executive has been charged with a crime, and the company has never been found responsible for consumer or securities fraud.
The company has faced lawsuits and investigations from federal regulators over Tesla’s FSD or Autopilot technology and its lineup of vehicles, but there are no legal challenges related to the automaker’s misleads people about using mileage with Tesla’s driver assist feature.
Most of the lawsuits come from drivers who allege Tesla misleads customers about FSD’s capabilities. So far, the company has either fixed the problem or been found not responsible.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said Friday it was investigating whether Tesla sufficiently fixed problems with the company’s Autopilot software after recalling 2 million vehicles in December.
Tesla is also under investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission. Bloomberg reported last year that federal regulators were investigating how Tesla’s driver assistance software was marketed and whether Musk was involved in promoting the technology.
Drivers also accused Tesla of inflating the range of its vehicles, filing a class-action lawsuit against the company. A judge ruled in March that the plaintiffs will have to go through individual arbitrations.
In the company’s third quarter of 2023 earnings report, Tesla revealed that the Justice Department had subpoenaed the company for information related to “vehicle autonomy” and other matters.
Moskovitz has also long been skeptical of Elon Musk and his plans.
Last year, Asana’s founder suggested that Tesla and SpaceX were overvalued and that too much credit was being given to the company’s leader.
“The thing is, I don’t really see these companies as delivering impact, or at least don’t give it as much credit as others,” Moskovitz said on Threads. “If they were truly built on outward lies, rather than mere illusions (rose-colored glasses), then we should really view them as scams that he got away with.”
Moskovitz even called on Musk to resign his leadership position at all of his companies after Musk called an anti-Semitic post on X the “real truth.”
“I’m calling on Elon Musk to resign,” Moskovitz said on Threads last year, adding that he should resign “(from everything).”
businessinsider
