Musk would not be in prison if Trump hadn't won - these claims happened before, and failed before, Trump lost to Biden, after all - because nobody really gives a shit about the sort of false advertising/bullshit that Musk spews. There's a general "good faith" assumption that you have to REALLY blatantly be breaking like Theranos to get in trouble. Being irrationally stupidly optimistic is seen as OK compared to knowingly dishonest.
Hell, Trump isn't in prison and he's had more failed businesses than Elon, and made just as many or more political enemies.
But maybe we should care more about that. Irrationally optimistic claims that people believe - cause how would they know you're full of shit before the second, third, fourth, fifth time around - still influence a ton of decisions, and it would be easy to not make them until the tech is actually there.
A world where lying has no consequences only increases the burden on everyone.
Well, if the CEO of a company says that the product is being released by the end of the year, we can reasonably expect that it is, or at most the next year. We can definitely assume that they are really close.
He said such things since 2016. This is almost 10 years, and they are nowhere near close to have a Full Self-Driving. In the meantime, they sold milions of cars who supposedly have all the hardware necessary for FSD. Except they already admitted twice that it's not the case and they will need to upgrade them once they solve FSD. But that's not an issue, since it will take another 10 years.
But yeah, this is not 'blantantly lying'.
PS. He's so optimistic about Tesla's future, that he sold $40B worth of shares at the peak in 2022, and so did most of the board.
> Well, if the CEO of a company says that the product is being released by the end of the year, we can reasonably expect that it is, or at most the next year. We can definitely assume that they are really close.
Vaporware was a thing long before Tesla, it's not been a prison thing.
Is he deluded and/or full of shit about Tesla and self-driving? Definitely. Is he actually at risk of prison? No. None of his actions from 2016-2022 that you're talking about here were undertaken with an assumption of "boy, this is illegal, Trump better win in two years or I'm screwed!"
He just says that shit to rile up the base and get voters motivated. Stirring fear and anger at big-bad-government has been a reliable Republican staple for over forty years now. He's fully committed to the bit.
If I promise the public next year can buy a car that will fly you to mars, well, that's not prosecutable unless particular people enter into a business contract.
If I promise the public that if you pay me $50k now for a car and make statements that next year it will fly you to mars "once they get the bugs worked out". Well, that borders closer to fraud.
Hell, Trump isn't in prison and he's had more failed businesses than Elon, and made just as many or more political enemies.
But maybe we should care more about that. Irrationally optimistic claims that people believe - cause how would they know you're full of shit before the second, third, fourth, fifth time around - still influence a ton of decisions, and it would be easy to not make them until the tech is actually there.
A world where lying has no consequences only increases the burden on everyone.