Elon’s Game of Three Card Monte

[Swordsmyth]

"There Was No Crash": Tesla In Sweden Goes Up In Flames After Passenger Seat Catches Fire

[Swordsmyth]

The Most Bizarre Soundbites From Elon Musk's "Pedo Guy" Deposition

[Swordsmyth]

A Delaware judge ruled on Friday that Tesla Inc's <TSLA.O> board of directors must defend at a trial Chief Executive Elon Musk's multibillion dollar pay package, which a shareholder lawsuit said unjustly enriched the head of the electric vehicle company.Tesla estimated the 2018 compensation package was worth $2.6 billion when it received stockholder approval in March 2018, although stock analysts at the time said it could be worth up to $70 billion if the company - which has yet to post an annual profit - grew quickly.
The compensation award includes no salary or cash bonus for the Silicon Valley billionaire Musk, but sets rewards based on Tesla's market value rising to as much as $650 billion over the next decade.
On Friday, Vice Chancellor Joseph Slights of the Delaware Court of Chancery ruled against Tesla's request to dismiss the lawsuit by shareholder Richard Tornetta at an initial phase in the litigation because of the way the board approved the package.
As a result, the board must now defend against allegations that it breached its fiduciary duty in approving the package, and that the package unfairly enriches Tesla's CEO. The ruling opens the way for additional discovery into the decision-making process.
Tornetta had asked that the pay package be rescinded and the board of Tesla be overhauled to better protect investors.
The ruling turned on Tesla's compensation committee, which the company conceded was not independent of Musk, according to Slight's opinion. Had the package been negotiated by truly independent directors and approved by a majority of shareholders who were unaffiliated with Musk, Slights said he would have dismissed the lawsuit.
"Plaintiff has well pled, however, that the board level review was not divorced from Musk's influence," Slights wrote.

More at: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/delaw...233324527.html

[Swordsmyth]

SolarCity Panels Spontaneously Ignite On Colorado Residential Rooftop

[Swordsmyth]

Newly unsealed court documents published by PlainSite on Monday reveal that shareholders are accusing Tesla of improperly valuing its acquisition of SolarCity, providing "flawed analysis and misleading investors", according to CNBC. They also allege that Tesla withheld key information about its acquisition of SolarCity from Ernst & Young.
The lawsuit was filed in 2016 and is one of the more notable legal actions proceeding against Tesla and Elon Musk, who also face lawsuits regarding solar panel fires and Autopilot deaths - in addition to the ongoing defamation lawsuit by Vern Unsworth.


More at: https://www.zerohedge.com/technology...holder-lawsuit

[Swordsmyth]

"Fully Engulfed In Flames": Truck Hauling Tesla Vehicles Spontaneously Combusts On I-80

[Swordsmyth]

Judge Rules Tesla Broke Labor Laws, "Illegally Threatened And Retaliated" Against Employees

[Swordsmyth]

NHTSA Opens Inquiry Into Tesla's Smart Summon Sh*tshow

[Swordsmyth]

11 Tons Of Water And "Special Container" Used To Extinguish Burning Tesla In Austria

[Swordsmyth]

The NHTSA Is Finally Looking Into Tesla Battery Fire Issues

[Swordsmyth]

Elon Musk paid a convicted fraudster to smear a British diving hero who he baselessly called a paedophile, according to court documents.
The billionaire technology entrepreneur allegedly orchestrated a “malicious, false, and anonymous leak campaign” in a bid to trash the reputation of Vernon Unsworth, who helped to rescue a schoolboy football team trapped in a cave in Thailand last year.


Last month Musk’s legal team sought to have the lawsuit dismissed in a court document which the Space X founder claimed “peado guy” was “a common insult used in South Africa”. He said the expression was synonymous with “creepy old man” and was not meant to “accuse Mr Unsworth of engaging in acts of paedophilia”.
Musk also claimed an August 2018 email to a BuzzFeed News journalist in which he referred to Mr Unsworth as a “child rapist” was based on a private investigator’s report that he did not know at the time was false. He later admitted he was “a f***ing idiot” for sending the email.
Mr Unsworth’s legal team said Musk’s accusations were “false, defamatory, and were published negligently and with actual malice”.
“Musk knows the truth but will not admit it,” Mr Wood wrote.
According to the court filing, Musk paid $52,000 (£43,000) to a supposed “private investigator” who he did not vet for reliability and later described as a “con man” who was “just taking us for a ride”. The investigator, James Howard-Higgins, was jailed in 2016 for stealing more than £420,000 from his maritime company’s accounts.
Mr Howard-Higgins told Mr Musk that Mr Unsworth had met his wife when she was “at least 18 or 19 years old” but the inventor “nonetheless told the BuzzFeed reporter that Mr Unsworth is a child rapist who married a 12-year-old child bride,” noted the document, which added the diver had in fact met his partner when she was 32.
The investigator, who admitted to Mr Musk that none of his information had been verified, was offered a $10,000 (£8,200) bonus for “successful confirmation of nefarious behaviour” by Mr Unsworth, whose lawyers said the bonus was “never paid before no such evidence exists”.
Having failed to uncover dirt on the diver, the court documents allege, Mr Musk ordered Mr Howard-Higgins to “immediately move forward” with leaking information to the UK press “to plant an unflattering story” about Mr Unsworth and young girls “without any disclosure that it was coming from Elon Musk”.
The case is set to go to trial on 22 October.

More at: https://news.yahoo.com/elon-musk-pai...163317481.html

[Swordsmyth]

Elon Musk Testifies Under Oath That He's "Financially Illiquid"

[Swordsmyth]

Drug Kingpin Pablo Escobar’s brother is going after Elon Musk, saying Elon’s engineer stole the idea for his flamethrower during a visit to the drug-accountant’s residence. Why is Elon’s Engineer meeting with the accountant brother of a drug kingpin?

[Swordsmyth]

Tesla's "Futuristic" Door-Handles Blamed For Killing 48-Year-Old Man Trapped In Burning Wreck

[Krugminator2]

LOL. I noticed no ripping on Musk these last two days. Wonder why that is.


I am not sure how Tesla is going to end up but he gets a victory lap today. Tesla makes a great looking car and owners are happy with them. He pulled the rabbit out to the hat somehow.

[Swordsmyth]

What Elon Forgot To Mention: Tesla's US Sales Crashed An Astonishing 39% In Q3

[Swordsmyth]

Elon Musk Is Now Officially Going To Trial For Calling Vernon Unsworth "Pedo Guy"

[Swordsmyth]

The SolarCity shareholder lawsuit discovery continues to bear highly disturbing insights into how Elon Musk and his merry band of brothers were running their "pyramid" of money losing companies - SpaceX, SolarCity and Tesla - back in 2015 and 2016.
Most recently, it was revealed that Musk shifted resources from SolarCity in order to save Tesla from bankruptcy while it was preparing to produce the Model 3, according to Bloomberg.
Musk said in a June pre-trial deposition: “If I did not take everyone off of solar and focus them on the Model 3 program to the detriment of solar, then Tesla would have gone bankrupt. So I took everyone from solar, and said: ‘instead of working on solar, you need to work on the Model 3 program.’ And as a result, solar suffered, as you would expect.’’
Of course, at the time, no such disclosures were made to investors.

Musk also acknowledged in the deposition that he "probably wouldn't support" the SolarCity acquisition again given the stress that Tesla faced during its Model 3 push.
Musk said: “At the time I thought it made strategic sense for Tesla and SolarCity to combine. Hindsight is 20/20. And if I could wind back the clock, you know, I would say probably would have let SolarCity execute by itself; would have let Tesla execute by itself. But I just didn’t realize how difficult it would be to do the Model 3 program. And so that was just a big distraction and sort of offset a lot of things by more than a year, year and a half maybe.’’
To help alleviate the pressure of the Model 3 ramp, Musk took SolarCity employees from engineering, management, sales and service and transferred them to work on the Model 3. Other SolarCity workers were deployed to Tesla retail stores, while some delivered cars to customers.
The pension funds who filed the lawsuit against Musk are arguing that Tesla was in no condition to buy a $2 billion company that was already basically insolvent. When Tesla reported Q3 earnings, its rooftop solar business increased for the first time in a year.

And Musk was combative with the lawyer asking him questions about SolarCity's health at the time, Randy Baron, even calling him "reprehensible" when he questioned whether SolarCity was a viable entity.
Musk continued in the deposition, saying to Baron: “You seem like a very, very bad person. Just a bad human being. And I hope you come to regret your actions in the future, but you probably won’t. And that’s sad.”
When asked if he "bailed out" SolarCity, Musk said to Baron:“Advancing solar is absolutely good for the world. Do you just think about money? What is your purpose in life?’’

More at: https://www.zerohedge.com/technology...elping-model-3

[Swordsmyth]

Federal probe launched into Tesla for possible battery defects after 'alarming number of car fires'

[Swordsmyth]

SolarCity Lawsuit Reveals Almost All Of Elon Musk's Merger Promises Were "Misleading Or False"

[Swordsmyth]

The "Green" Illusion Continues: Tesla Crash Victim Can't Find Anyone To Recycle His Wrecked Car

[Swordsmyth]

Tesla Supercharger Erupts In Flames At New Jersey Wawa

[Swordsmyth]

The boy genius Elon Musk, who has already dug himself a wonderful hole by baselessly defaming British cave diving hero Vern Unsworth by calling him "pedo guy", now apparently feels sufficiently confident that he can dig himself out.
At least, that's the message Musk's lawyer seems like he wants to get across. Musk will be testifying in his own defense against the lawsuit, according to Reuters, who reported the news based on a statement from Musk's lawyer on Tuesday.
Of course, we can't help but think this statement in and of itself is a bit of show - Musk really wouldn't have a choice but to be examined by the plaintiff in a civil trial to begin with, based on our understanding of civil litigation. So his "decision" to testify may not actually be a "decision" at all.
And if Musk's lawyer's interpretation of the events is anything like what his testimony will look like, we can't wait for Unsworth's attorney, L. Lin Wood, to have his chance to question Musk

Musk's lawyer, Alexander Spiro, said: “Evidence is going to be through Mr. Musk (testifying) that in fact Mr. Musk didn’t call him a pedophile. Mr. Musk deleted the tweet, apologized and moved on.”
Sure, if by "moved on", you mean "referred to Unsworth as a 'child rapist' in correspondence with journalists" and "taunted Unsworth to sue him".


More at: https://www.zerohedge.com/political/...famation-trial

[Swordsmyth]

A few things we think are worth considering when it comes to TSLA - out of the 9 products they’ve announced and sell, they only actively make 3 of them (and demand for those three products appear to have peaked) while the other 6 products they sell are vaporware, i.e., products that do not exist – yes, you heard that right:
TSLA’s current cars in production include:

• Model 3 (ASPs and units are in severe decline, and sales were down -49% y/y in Oct. in its biggest market, the USA)
• Model X (sales have collapsed in both the US and globally)
• Model S (same as Model X)

Meanwhile, here are TSLA’s current cars/products not in production:

• Roadster (unveil was 2yrs ago)
• Semi (unveil was 2yrs ago)
• Model Y (TSLA refuses to mention how many pre-orders they’ve received here)
• Cybertruck ($100 fully-refundable deposits on a car that will likely cost $60K, or 0.167%, is the equivalent of someone putting $1.67 toward an $1,000 i-Phone & apple calling it an order)
• ATV
• FSD (to be FSD, TSLA would have had to achieve level 5 autonomy… they’re at level 2)

So… TSLA has more vaporware products (i.e., stuff that doesn’t exist) than real products for sale; and, it’s real products are seeing large negative y/y growth currently.

More at: https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/te...oducts-it-does

[Swordsmyth]

Elon musk has a get out of jail free card:


Elon Musk Cleared In "Pedo Guy" Defamation Lawsuit

[Swordsmyth]

Just when you thought the "pedo guy" story couldn't get any stranger than a high priced lawyer striking out on what many believed to be a layup of a case against a billionaire, we get tonight's stunning Tweet and letter to the editor of Law.com from L. Lin Wood, Vern Unsworth's (former) lawyer.

After losing at trial to Elon Musk, lawyer L. Lin Wood took to Twitter to explain - not why his client was wronged by the verdict - but rather, why the verdict against him was correct. It's an admission that, even if he believed it, would be a stunning slap in the face to his client and would have many questioning why Wood would take the case to begin with. Late on Monday night, Wood tweeted:

Some reflections from lake. The verdict in Unsworth v. Musk spoke the truth. While written as possible libel, Elon Musk only intended an insult. Thus, no factual statements were intended. Truth removes any question marks as to Vern’s reputation. Truth wins. So do both parties.
— Lin Wood (@LLinWood) December 10, 2019

To add insult to injury, Wood also published a letter to the editor at Law.com, congratulating Elon Musk and the lawyers on his team for winning the case.
Wood opened the letter by saying:

I congratulate Elon Musk and the lawyers on his team at Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan for their efforts to achieve a verdict for their client that spoke the truth. Alex Spiro and Bill Price are exceptional lawyers. Their efforts contributed greatly to the verdict that spoke the truth: Musk’s July 15, 2018, comments about Vernon Unsworth were nothing more and nothing less than an insult. Insults by definition do not convey fact. And truth, even in the hands of skilled lawyers, does not change.

He then called Musk's lawyers "skilled legal adversaries":

And after a textbook trial between skilled legal adversaries, the verdict was rendered and the truth was revealed, Musk won. So did Unsworth. Musk only had to use his checkbook to pay his lawyers their well-earned fee.

Before then announcing his retirement from being a trial lawyer.

As for me, I promised my family on Thanksgiving Day that the trial for Unsworth would be my last jury trial. I will fade away with my silver hair wisdom ready to help only if needed. I have had the privilege of training a group of skilled young lawyers in this trial to take over the reins and be in the next generation of trial lawyers who purse truth with the best interests of the client at the forefront of their efforts. Lawyers who will never let our profession degenerate to being about money, but who will practice law knowing that it is about the pursuit of truth.

Twitter immediately blew up with outrage at Wood, with some speculating he was paid off by Musk, blackmailed or is simply just an incompetent lawyer looking to make excuses for his poor performance.


More at: https://www.zerohedge.com/technology...n-musk-twitter

[Krugminator2]

I was wrong about Tesla. I figured a new American car company couldn't compete. Company now profitable. Stock closed new all time high. Up 2200% since IPO.

At some point you have to admit the guy is greatest entrepreneur on the planet. Tesla makes a great looking car and is becoming more reliable than the Detroit cars though still behind.

[Swordsmyth]

I was wrong about Tesla. I figured a new American car company couldn't compete. Company now profitable. Stock closed new all time high. Up 2200% since IPO.

At some point you have to admit the guy is greatest entrepreneur on the planet. Tesla makes a great looking car and is becoming more reliable than the Detroit cars though still behind.

Tesla is a scam waiting to fall apart that has survived as long as it has on government handouts and arm twisting.

Musk is a fraud and a corrupt oligarch. (or the frontman for such)

[pcosmar]

Tesla is a scam waiting to fall apart that has survived as long as it has on government handouts and arm twisting.

Musk is a fraud and a corrupt oligarch. (or the frontman for such)

Wow,,that sounds like Butt-hurt..

or Jealousy

hard to tell.

[acptulsa]

Wow,,that sounds like Butt-hurt..

or Jealousy

hard to tell.

If the sense of entitlement is strong enough, the jealousy and the butthurt are the same thing.