Toronto, Ontario — August 29, 2018 — Should Tesla’s certification program, which is up-and-running in the U.S., come to Canada, repairers may want to think twice about pursuing it. While the electric revolution is certainly going to arrive in the near future, Tesla may not be there to see it thanks to CEO Elon Musk’s increasingly erratic behaviour.
Yesterday, Tesla chief Musk sent shivers running through investors spines by repeating baseless accusations he made about a British diver living in Thailand.
Six weeks ago Musk apologized for and retracting a series of tweets about Vernon Unsworth. In the bizzare digital diatribe, Musk claimed the heroic 62-year-old British diver responsible for rescuing a team of young soccer players trapped in a cave in, had an interest in more than just the welfare of the teenaged boys. Yesterday, the 46-year-old billionaire appears to have retracted the apology.
Unsworth earned Musk’s ire by backing a Thai police decision to decline Tesla’s offer to send an experimental minisub into the cave network. Vernon Unsworth, a diver playing a key role in the rescue operation, suggested the impractical plan was little more than a PR stunt.
In response, Musk, in a now-deleted tweet, described Unsworth as a “Pedo” – a slang term for paedophiles.
A note from Unsworth’s attorney read: “You published through three different tweets to your twenty-two million followers that Mr. Unsworth engages in the sexual exploitation of Thai children, and you did so at a time when he was working to save the lives of twelve Thai Children. You did so without any basis. According to a subsequent Twitter post, you did so out of anger.”
This is not the first time that the Tesla chief has gotten into hot water this summer. His leadership of Tesla has come under widespread criticism from shareholders. Short sellers have begun selling borrowed stocks, hoping to profit from a collapse of Tesla stock that they believe to be imminent. Worse still, Musk’s own tweets have put him into legal jeopardy.
In what some industry observers view as an act of reckless vengeance against these short sellers, Musk sent two tweets which caused Tesla’s stock to spike.
In one, he claimed that he was looking to take Tesla private. In the other, he claimed that funding had been concerned. The plan, as it turned out, appears to have come to nothing, and Musk may investigated by the SEC for attempting to mislead investors.
