Tesla on Tuesday was cleared by a court in the 2019 fatal Model 3 crash that took place in Los Angeles, US, involving its advanced driver-assistance system, Autopilot. The case was filed by two passengers who accused the company of knowing Autopilot was defective when it sold the car. Tesla, on the other hand, argued that human error caused the crash. The court too found that the vehicle did not have a manufacturing defect. Now, Tesla chief Elon Musk also reacted to the news and expressed his belief that if Autopilot had been activated, the driver would likely have been saved.

“The irony is that if Autopilot had been turned on here, it would almost certainly have saved the driver,” Mr Musk wrote in on X (formerly Twitter). 

The irony is that if Autopilot had been turned on here, it would almost certainly have saved the driver

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 1, 2023

Micah Lee was killed in 2019 after their Model 3 veered off a highway, hit a tree, and caught fire. While Mr Lee was killed in the incident, his two passengers were injured. The two passengers then approached the court alleging that Autopilot caused the accident and demanded over $400 million in punitive damages. This trial was the first in the United States that alleged that Tesla’s autopilot feature led to death. 

Tesla, however, denied liability alleging that Mr Lee had consumed alcohol and that it was unclear if Autopilot was engaged during the crash. The Jury in Riverside County Superior Court also voted in favour of Mr Musk’s company, saying that the vehicle did not have a manufacturing defect. 

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This is a major victory for Tesla as it faces several other similar lawsuits across the country. But the automaker continues to test and roll out its Autopilot and more advanced Full Self-Driving (FSD) system, which Mr Musk has touted as crucial to his company’s future. 

Notably, the latest verdict represents Tesla’s second big win this year. The automaker won an earlier trial in Los Angeles in April with a strategy of saying that it tells drivers that its technology requires human monitoring, despite the “Autopilot” and “Full Self-Driving” names. The case was about an accident where a Model S swerved into the curb and injured its driver. 

Billionaire Elon Musk’s platform X, which was formerly known as Twitter, is now valued at less than half of what he purchased it for, a year ago. Mr Musk has earlier acknowledged that he had overpaid for Twitter, which he bought for $44 billion, including $33.5 billion in equity. Now, the current value of the company is at $19 billion, almost 55 per cent less than half of what he spent on the social media platform, as per the New York Times. 

The documentation pertaining to the recent stock awards said that X would be providing the equity at a price of $45 per share, with employees able to accumulate restricted stock units over time. According to the company, employees who were issued shares under the previous management would still receive cash payments totalling $54.20 for those shares. However, it is unclear why the share price has not decreased by the same percentage as the company’s worth.

In March this year, Mr Musk told the employees at the company that he believed the company was worth $20 billion and labelled it “an inverse start-up.”

Since taking over Twitter a year ago, Mr Musk has completely redesigned both the business and the social media network. He laid off around 7,500 employees across the globe. Later, modified the content-moderation guidelines and introduced the paid verification procedure. Moreover, advertising, which is a major source of revenue for the company, saw a major drop which caused the cash flow to remain negative in August 2023 with a heavy debt load.

However, the billionaire remains optimistic towards the company’s growth strategy and transforming it into an “everything app”. In a meeting organised on the first anniversary of the acquisition, Mr Musk said, “We’re rapidly transforming the company from sort of what it was, Twitter 1.0, to the everything app with an all-inclusive feature app where you can basically do anything you want on our system. He also spoke about including new features to the microblogging site including dating service.

Although the new owner and CEO Linda Yaccarino were physically absent from the company headquarters, both showered praise on the employees for aiding with the rebranding of the company and launching new features including a revenue share program for the creators, video calls in direct messages and improved live streaming quality.

File photo of Twitter and SpaceX owner Elon Musk
| Photo Credit: Reuters

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk tapped the rocket maker for a $1 billion loan around the time he was acquiring social media company Twitter, now known as X, the Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday.

SpaceX approved the loan, which was backed by some of his SpaceX stock, in October, and Mr. Musk drew all of it down the same month, the newspaper said, citing documents reviewed by it.

Mr. Musk paid back the $1 billion with interest to SpaceX in November, the WSJ report said, adding that the reason for the loan could not be determined.

SpaceX and the social media platform X did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.

Last year, Musk closed the $44 billion deal to take Twitter private and took ownership of the social media platform by firing top executives immediately.

Elon Musk faced a lot of criticism when he took over social media platform Twitter (now known as X) last year. He rebranded the platform in pursuit of the “everything app” for which he received mixed reviews from social media users. But on Sunday, the world’s richest man was criticised publicly when he attended the Valorant World Championship Final, according to a report in Independent. Though he was briefly shown on camera, the crowd erupted in cacophony of boos and “bring back Twitter”. According to the outlet, Mr Musk attended the event with one of his sons.

Mr Musk was shown for roughly four seconds before the camera switched back to live gameplay.

Elon Musk getting booed at VALORANT Champs and the crowd starts chanting “bring back Twitter” lmao pic.twitter.com/lDoWse78YV

— Jake Lucky (@JakeSucky) August 26, 2023

The clip has amassed nearly 15 million views on X, the platform Mr Musk owns.

“Where is that from? That can’t be from in here, surely,” Independent quoted one of the commentators as saying amid the booing.

Even after the camera returned to focus on the game play, the crowd continued to shout “Bring back Twitter!”

The clip also received a flurry of reactions from X users.

“Getting booed by Valorant players is like getting wedgies by the anime club in middle school,” said one user. “Lol we want a new logo,” commented another.

“That was actually a very sweet chant compared to all the other things they could of chanted,” a third user said.

After taking over the company, Mr Musk has rolled out several changes. Twitter Blue was arguably the biggest one. Also, the blue badge of legacy verification was done away with and Mr Musk introduced a paid verification system.

Another move by Musk that sparked outrage was his decision to reinstate many high-profile accounts suspended by the previous Twitter leadership.