Elon Musk used to claim the Tesla Model 3 was the safest car on earth. Then he got a cease-and-desist from the US government.

  • Tesla and its CEO, Elon Musk, repeatedly described the company’s Model 3 sedan as the safest car ever tested by US regulators — claims that earned Musk a cease-and-desist letter last October.
  • The transparency group PlainSite on Tuesday published a letter from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration taking issue with the claim that “there is no safer car in the world than a Tesla.”
  • It did not dispute that the Model 3 deserved its 5-star rating after NHTSA tests. But the letter said it was wrong to describe the Model 3 as safer than other 5-star vehicles.
  • Musk had tweeted a link to a Tesla blog post with the caption “The physics of how Tesla achieved best safety of any cars ever tested.”
  • In a response to the safety agency, a Tesla lawyer denied that the company had misled anybody. Tesla has not responded to the letters becoming public.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk earned a harsh rebuke from the US road-safety regulator for describing the Tesla Model 3 sedan as the safest car in the world, according to newly published documents.

Musk was sent a cease-and-desist letter by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration in October, according to the transparency group PlainSite, which on Tuesday published the letter among a cache of correspondence between Tesla and the regulator.

PlainSite said it acquired the documents from public-records requests under the Freedom of Information Act.

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The letter, dated October 17, said Tesla had made “a number of misleading statements” about the safety of the Model 3. Musk also distributed the claims on social media.

 

www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-tesla-model-3-safety-nhtsa-2019-8

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