Tesla and Musk are under pressure again: the robotaxis are failing and investors want to go after their CEO. Yes, yes, you read that right, investors say they were also misled (not just the customers) about the safety of the robotaxis… Wasn’t everything going great in Austin? Well, what seemed to be a technological revolution has ended up being a sequence of disastrous errors, cars accelerating for no reason, lane invasions, jumping curbs, running people over and similar things.
And of course, bad publicity for the company means the drop in the stock market has been monstrous, billions lost and a new crisis in Tesla’s image.
What happened?
Denise Morand is the shareholder who is leading this class action lawsuit. She accuses Tesla of hyping up its robotaxi tech between April 2023 and June 2025, but the reality is that Robotaxi was not prepare for anything. What was supposed to be a revolutionary update ended up falling flat on its face, uh, Tesla.
The public tests of the service (carried out in Austin) went pretty badly. Instead of showing off safe technology, the cars failed in a serious way!!. And the market reacted: in just two days, the stock fell by 6.1%, which means a loss of 68 billion dollars in market capitalization…
Promises, promises and only promises..
Of course, this all comes from the fact that in April, during a call with investors, Musk said they would be working in Austin by June, and he promised several other things too, like that they were “safe and scalable” (Really, Elon?) for autonomous driving. And of course, the failures during the tests said the opposite, and what was supposed to be a showcase ended up being a complete disaster. A fiasco that has cost thousands of dollars.
Who’s involved?
Not just Musk, the lawsuit also names the current Chief Financial Officer, Vaibhav Taneja, and former CFO Zachary Kirkhorn, for their alleged involvement in the decisions that led to misleading investors about the real status of the product’s development. Like Team Rocket, but worse!
Tesla and its legal fronts
Not long ago, a jury in Florida found Tesla partially responsible for a fatal accident involving Autopilot. The company was ordered to pay 243 million dollars, although it has already said it plans to appeal.
Also, the California Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) is accusing Tesla of misleading advertising, especially with its “Full Self-Driving” feature, which according to them is neither so “full” nor so “self-driving” as advertised.
Let’s talk about the financial impact
In its latest quarterly report, Tesla reported a 12% drop in annual revenue for the second quarter of 2025, going down from 25.5 billion dollars to 22.49 billion. This negative trend puts the viability of many of Musk’s futuristic promises to shareholders in doubt. After the Austin disaster, they already lost around 68 billion dollars…
And now?
Tesla hasn’t responded publicly to these accusations yet because it’s dealing with others, but if the case moves forward and it’s proven that there was false or misleading information, the company could have to pay hundreds of millions of dollars in damages, and well, maybe your ex sold you lies, but Tesla investors have dropped serious money not to be deceived.
Musk, you’re going to have to get it together if you don’t want your head rolling through the investors’ boardroom. You can’t promise the future and try to lead the technological revolution without even paying attention to whether what you’re promising is real!