“Tesla’s Model X 75D won the American Automobile Association’s Green Car vehicle award, impressively, for the second year in a row,” CleanTechnica reports. “Tesla’s Model S 75 also happened to win AAA’s Large Car category.”
Immigrant entrepreneur Elon Musk has just settled a Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) suit on terms favorable to himself and the innovative companies he founded. Shortly before, the SEC had said that it was “seeking to bar Mr. Musk, Tesla’s largest shareholder and its top executive, from serving as an officer or director of any U.S. public company,” the Wall Street Journal reports. This would likely have destroyed his debt-burdened electric car and battery company. It would also have jeopardized his leadership of the other advanced technology companies he founded and is presently leading. These include SpaceX and The Boring Company. A subsequent Wall Street Journal editorial denounced the SEC’s unusually harsh punishment as overkill. Today’s settlement represents a more reasonable settlement for both parties.
Musk, like an even better known national figure, often gets in trouble with his controversial tweets. The SEC and Justice Department opened investigations against him when he tweeted that he had an offer to take Tesla private at $420 share, which turned out to be incorrect. He also has a defamation suit pending against him by a British diver whom he tweeted was a “pedo” (pedophile).
The settlement with the SEC allows Musk to remain as CEO — but not chairman of the board — of Tesla and adds two independent directors to the Tesla board. His position in the other companies he founded remains undisturbed. This is fortunate. SpaceX is crucial to the national space program and the inexpensive launching of commercial satellites. It is the world leader in reusable rocket technology and an important contender in plans to revisit the moon and to colonize Mars.
The Boring Company has an innovative tunneling technology, contracts with the city of Los Angeles, and a possible contract with the city of Chicago to build a high-speed express transporter to O’Hare Airport from downtown Chicago. It is working on the technology to build a hyperloop train that would travel above or below the ground at speeds up to 760 miles per hour.
Tesla’s electric car battery is currently the best in the industry. Tesla is also a major force in the manufacture of large electric batteries for storage of power on electric grids.
Musk was a co-founder of PayPal, which was subsequently sold at great profit.
He also co-founded OpenAI, a non-profit, open-source artificial intelligence (AI) research organization. One of its purposes is to insure that no single company or government monopolizes AI expertise.
Tesla and the electric car industry as a whole have been criticized for being dependent on government subsidies. Tesla cars face a difficult period ahead to the extent these subsidies are reduced and new competitor models emerge from older, better established car companies. Tesla will also likely need refinancing of its debt burden and possibly dropping its low-end Model 3 line, which is unprofitable.
Musk, like Google’s co-founder Sergey Brin, is an immigrant who became a naturalized American citizen and extraordinarily successful entrepreneur.
Click here to go to the previous Founders Broadsheet (“Little support in private sector for administration’s escalating trade war”)
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