Earlier this year, Reuters reported that Tesla had created a special “diversions team” to avoid dealing with complaints from customers about their vehicle ranges.
  • AutoTL;DR@lemmings.worldBEnglish
    2·
    1 year ago

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    Tesla says it has received requests for information and subpoenas from the US Department of Justice related to potential personal benefits violations, the advertised range of its vehicles and personnel decisions.

    The Wall Street Journal in September reported that federal prosecutors are investigating perks provided to Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk going back as far back as 2017, including a project described as a glass house for Musk.

    Earlier this year, Reuters reported that Tesla had created a special “diversions team” to avoid dealing with complaints from customers about their vehicle ranges.

    The filing warned of “the possibility of a material adverse impact on our business” should the government pursue an enforcement action.

    The subpoenas add to a mounting number of government probes into the electric-vehicle maker.

    In September, the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission sued Tesla alleging that it has been “tolerating widespread and ongoing racial harassment of its Black employees” at its Fremont, California, plant.

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  • towerful@programming.dev
    45·
    1 year ago

    I guess this is approaching the “find out” phase.
    VW/Audi group fucked around with emission tests, and they found out.

    • Stillhart@lemm.ee
      12·
      1 year ago

      They found out what? Their business wasn’t affected at all as far as I can tell. They should have been broken up and shut down but instead they got caught doing the same thing AGAIN.

      So yeah, not sure what Tesla is going to find out other than “money means you can get away with anything”, which Musk already knows well.

      And just to be clear, I own a Tesla. I just got it back from the shop after ELEVEN MONTHS because those fucking tools would rather sell more cars on false promises than divert some parts to repair the cars they’ve already sold. I love that car but I’m selling it. Nobody should go anywhere near Tesla cars until they get their supply chain shit together.

      • Turun@feddit.de
        2·
        1 year ago

        A lot of businesses get away with shit, but the emissions scandal did lead to some big fines and criminal investigations into the upper most management level.

      • SokathHisEyesOpen@lemmy.mlEnglish
        5·
        1 year ago

        Did they loan you another car during that time, or were you stuck paying on a car you couldn’t use for 11 months? I’d consider suing if it was the latter.

        • Stillhart@lemm.ee
          8·
          1 year ago

          It was absolutely the latter. And I absolutely would sue if I didn’t have serious health issues (hello, cancer!) to deal with instead. It takes a lot of time and effort to deal with something like that, and that’s just not in the cards right now.

  • frog 🐸@beehaw.orgEnglish
    24·
    1 year ago

    So, basically… “an investigation into whether we lied to customers in order to sell them stuff would have an impact on our business”. Well, yeah, that’s true. Shockingly, customers don’t like being lied to about the quality of the goods they’re buying, and hearing that there’s enough indication of lying to warrant a full probe into it would make future customers hesitant to buy. While wrongdoing hasn’t been proven yet, I can’t imagine this probe would be happening “just in case” Tesla lied - there must have been a high volume of complaints from customers who aren’t happy. The precedent set by not investigating would be awful. It’d basically say businesses can claim whatever they like about their products, because being caught lying about them would always have the consequence of “material adverse impact on our business”.

  • b0rlax@beehaw.org
    21·
    1 year ago

    If the truth about your business hurts your business, you don’t have a good business.

    • UnspecificGravity@lemmings.world
      5·
      1 year ago

      Are you seriously suggesting that a company (tesla) that does 50 billion in sales is NOT worth three times the value a company that does 250 billion (toyota)?

      The Tesla valuation is such a fucking joke. They are a “bigger” company that Toyota, Honda, or Ford despite not even doing a fraction of their outright sales, and likely making less on every single one of those sales. Their only advantage is that they were making electric cars before it made economic sense to make them. Now that everyone else is jumping in they are going to die on the vine because people can get a real EV that costs half of a Tesla and actually works.

      Tesla DID have a chance of leveraging their early market presence by either introducing a higher quality or cheaper vehicle that could compete with their new competitors. Their existing presence could have captured enough of the market to stand against them if they had a product that was in the same league. Instead they made the fucking Cybertruck.

  • mayooooo@beehaw.org
    15·
    1 year ago

    He warns? Does he now? I know that bashing journalists is a rightwing ting, but these dudes are really complicit in all of this shit. How the hell do you come up with that kind of headline? He warns