One may think that the image that Elon Musk is building keeping him at the center of the media and the social chatter will help boost his ventures. But, the reality is different in lieu. The billionaire completed his Twitter deal in October 2022. It was a tempestuous journey to purchase the company. From information discrepancies to a lawsuit, he faced numerous hurdles. But, after buying the microblogging site, the problems persist.
Since the buy, Musk has taken on the grueling task of revamping the platform. He brought forward many policy and technical changes on Twitter. The foremost step was to sack the larger workforce due to increasing cost which was not in tandem with the profits. Then on, he made many policy changes to broaden the horizon of the free speech space on Twitter. However, this new endeavor is not proving useful for his electric vehicle venture Tesla. The new purchase has overshadowed it. After a couple of complaints and lawsuits, the EV venture is again in hot waters.
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Tweet Of Elon Musk Sparked A Probe In Tesla
The popularity of Tesla has receded since Elon Musk has been actively persuading to buy Twitter. The problem persisted even after purchasing the platform. Morning Consult, in November 2022, ran a survey to gauge consumerism based on people’s political inclinations. It helped to know how consumers base their trust in a company based on their political leanings. In January 2022, Tesla surprisingly had 22% of Democrats buying the car with only 17% Republicans.
But, after the Twitter purchase, in November 2022, the number of Democrats sharply decreased with only a marginal increase of the Republican buyers. Tesla has been inundated with many technical complaints regarding weak construction. The self-driving technology has also come under fire due to safety hazards. Musk will appear in court for misleading the shareholders by announcing that Tesla is going private. The self-driving beta feature is also slammed with a lawsuit. Now, it has again come under scrutiny after Musk’s tweet.
Agreed, update coming in Jan
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 31, 2022
On December 31st, 2022, a user page @WholeMarsBlog requested Elon“Users with more than 10,000 miles on FSD Beta should be given the option to turn off the steering wheel nag”. He replied, “Agreed, update coming in Jan”. The tweet has now landed him in trouble with The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) probing into the issue. The Tesla owner has agreed to disable the alerting system during the “Full Self Driving” (FSD) mode. But, it is still in a beta testing mode which does not fully make the vehicle a self-driving one.
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The Investigation Comes After The Existing Probe Into Its Driver Assist System
The NHTSA board is already investigating the self-driving system. It said in its statement, “The investigation opening was motivated by an accumulation of crashes in which Tesla vehicles, operating with Autopilot engaged, struck stationary in-road or roadside first responder vehicles tending to pre-existing collision scene”.
The new probe comes after Elon Musk pleaded to the Federal Court in San Francisco to transfer the shareholders’ trial to Austin Texas. In 2018, Musk created volatility in the market with a tweet declaring that Tesla has secured funding to go private at $420 a share.
However, it was a falsified claim, and Musk and Tesla got penalized with $20 million fines each. His lawyer, Alex Spiro said, “For the last several months, the local media have saturated this district with biased and negative stories about Mr. Musk”. So, they asked the court to transfer it to Texas or postponed the jury trial.
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