A prominent Tesla critic believes the automaker may have used manipulated graphics to mislead investors
- Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz accused Tesla of committing “large-scale consumer fraud” in threads.
- Moskovitz pointed to the graphics presented by Tesla AI, which he said were aimed at misleading users and investors.
- Tesla CEO Elon Musk responded with several tweets insulting Moskovitz and sharing offensive memes.
Facebook co-founder and Asana CEO Dustin Moskovitz compared Tesla to Enron, an American energy company that became a poster child for corporate wrongdoing in the 2000s, sparking a firestorm of offensive tweets from the electric vehicle maker’s CEO Elon Musk. The billionaire’s complaints revolved around recent information that the automaker had provided to its investors.
In threads, Moskovitz accused Tesla AI of manipulating graphics to show exponential growth in miles driven by its driver assistance technology and that the automaker’s deception was “presumably done explicitly in support of the robotaxi announcement.” Moskovitz further claimed that “Tesla has committed consumer fraud on a massive scale.”
Read: Tesla Posts Biggest Sales Drop Since 2012, Yet Stocks Rise on ‘Affordable Models’ News
Moskovitz pointed to the charts released by Tesla, which he said are misleading and use “very surgical graph foo” (the practice of designing charts to confuse readers) to create the illusion of progress in the autonomous driving department to maintain. The automaker’s driver assistance technology is often cited as one of the main reasons for its high rating.
Although Moskovitz predicted that Tesla’s actions would result in people going to prison, it is not clear that a crime was committed, and none of the automaker’s executives have been charged with a crime.
Post by @moskov
Show in threads
Over on Although the owner of [sic] His head is so far up his own ass he’s legally blind.”
Moskovitz has long been critical of Tesla’s divisive CEO, calling on the billionaire to step down from his leadership positions after Musk promoted an anti-Semitic post on X.
Tesla is facing investigations from both the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration over the effectiveness of a recall of its driver-assistance software and the Securities and Exchange Commission over the way the software was marketed.
I would like to apologize to Dustin Moskowitz for calling him a “retard.” That was wrong.
What I meant to say is that he’s a pompous idiot with his head so far up his own ass that he’s legally blind.
I wish him all the best and hope we can be friends one day.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 26, 2024