Monitoring Desk
ISLAMABAD/CALIFORNIA: Shareholders have sued American automaker Tesla and its Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk, accusing him of overstating the effectiveness and safety of the electric cars’ autopilot and full self-driving instruments.
In a lawsuit filed in the federal court in San Francisco, the shareholders said that Tesla defrauded them for four years with wrong and misleading claims that concealed how its technologies, suspected of possible causes of numerous fatal crashes, “created a risk of accidents and wounds.”
They said that Tesla’s share price fell after the truth became known after the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) started investigating the technologies amidst reports that the US Securities and Exchange Commission was investigating Musk’s autopilot’s claims.
The share price fell by 5.7 per cent on February 16 after the US NHTSA forced a recall of more than 362,000 Tesla cars equipped with full self-driving beta software because they could be risky around intersections.
Tesla’s stance
Tesla said it consented to the recall, though it disagreed with NHTSA’s analysis.
The complainants said, “due to Tesla’s wrongful acts and omissions, and precipitous decline in the market worth of the company’s shares, they suffered important losses and damages.”
Tesla, which doesn’t have a media relations department, did not immediately respond to requests from Reuters for comments.
