‘Tis the season to determine who’s been naughty or nice. I’ll give you the facts, you decide.
This holiday story is about an SEC investigation that ended in May 2017. It was wrapped in plain, brown paper and just found under our tree, opened by Probes Reporter (“Independent Investment Research Focused on Public Company Interaction with the SECâ€) and Dealbreaker.
The three major players in this holiday tale are Tesla Inc. (Nasdaq: TSLA), Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (NYSE: GS), and the SEC itself.
What makes this a holiday story is that it’s about gifting. Who gifted what to whom, how much, and, most importantly, why.
You decide who’s naughty: Goldman Sachs, Tesla, the SEC, or all of the above?
Here are the unwrapped details…
What Tesla Knew vs. What Tesla Did
The story starts back on May 7, 2016. That’s when a Tesla Model S electric car in partial, self-driving autopilot mode plowed into the side of a truck on a divided highway in Florida, killing the driver of the Tesla.
Tesla brass found out about the crash that day but didn’t alert regulators until May 16, nine days later.
“Tesla then provided NHTSA with additional details about the accident over the following weeks as it worked to complete its [Tesla’s] investigation, which it ultimately concluded during the last week of May,†a spokeswoman for Tesla said.
Fortunately for Tesla, The U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which doesn’t comment on its own investigations, waited until June 2016 to formally announce it was investigating.
It took until January 2017, but the NHTSA “found that the owner of a Tesla Motors Inc. Model S sedan that drove itself into the side of a truck in May had ignored the manufacturer’s warnings to maintain control even while using the driver-assist function.â€
The agency said it found no defect in the vehicle and wouldn’t issue a recall.
