Investors have filed a lawsuit against Tesla and Elon Musk. The plaintiffs are accused of securities fraud for concealing the risks of self-driving cars, including Robotaxi.
According to Ruters, the class action lawsuit was filed on Monday night following the the first public test of the Tesla Robotaxi in late June in Austin, Texas, USA. During the launch, the cars exceeded speed, braked sharply, drove to the curb, drove into the wrong lane, and dropped off passengers in the middle of multi-lane highways. Tesla’s share price fell by 6.1% within two trading days after the start of the tests, which equates to a $68 billion drop in the company’s value.
A new class action lawsuit was filed by Tesla shareholder Denise Moran. It seeks damages to shareholders for the period from April 19, 2023, to June 22, 2025. The plaintiffs accused the automaker and its owner of repeatedly exaggerating the effectiveness and prospects of its autonomous driving technology, overstating its financial prospects and Tesla’s share price.
In particular, they claimed Musk’s assurances during a conference call on April 22 that Tesla was «focused on launching Robotaxi in Austin in June» and Tesla’s statement on the same day that its approach to autonomous driving would provide «scalable and safe deployment in different geographical regions and with various applications».
In January 2024, according to Futurism, Musk promised that the company would launch «more than a million» robotaxis this year. The overall situation is complicated by a court decision in Florida that ordered Tesla to pay about $329 million in fines and compensation to victims The company’s driver assistance software called Autopilot was partially to blame for the accident. This decision could have serious implications for the company’s plans to introduce an autonomous transportation service.
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