This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Unfortunately even an astronomical sum like this is still in "slap on the wrist" territory for a company that size. This is for a single incident, though, not class action. So it could be a valuable precedent in actually forcing them to act more responsibly for fear of more meaningful consequences.
Building on what you said, I think that the sum is actually pretty significant if you think of it as being roughly $100 million per person, and then multiply by the number of people hurt by the supposed "Autopilot" who now have incentive to sue.
people hurt by the supposed "Autopilot"
I thought these cases were all regarding incidents with the FSD package and not autopilot? The autopilot (in Tesla) is just TACC and lane-assist, the "advanced" autonomous features that actually steer the car is all in FSD.
Ah, I was not paying much attention to the distinction; my bad, then.
This case is about AP, but AP does steer the car. The car has TACC and Auto Steer, together it's called Autopilot.
FSD is the one that can do lane changes, stop for stop lights/stop signs, and all the other necessary things like park and reverse.
The "auto steer" is what is called lane assistance in other brands, it just keeps you centered in the lane and will do so for mild turns without disengaging. It doesn't take turns or anything resembling actual steering beyond that, it goes straight and keeps the lane in mild bends in the road like all others.
Are you from Europe?
EU has some laws that cause AP to disengage beyond mild turns. It can take some pretty good turns outside EU, but not really sharp ones.
Yeah I am, and here it is nothing but well-marketed lane-assist. It does better than other brands, but nothing resembling actually steering of the car.
Imagine the trouble they could have saved themselves and others if that's how they marketed it everywhere instead.
I'm pretty sure it's the same overhyped bullshit on the European version of the Tesla site as in the US, the actual product available in cars is just limited more.
This is significant if they actually pay it, it's a drop in the bucket for their market capitalization, but as to the actual money they have it's a very large amount, they don't make that much money it's all imaginary stock prices not earnings.
I'm sure they will appeal it until they get it cancelled.
They have 44b in cash and 6.2b in free cash flow in 2025.
They make plenty of money and this is a drop in the bucket to their cash reserve.
They've paid off almost all their debt as well
That is quite a bit,
I just looked up their Price to Earnings Ratio to just see how much it's changed and it's 380. Typical P/E ratios are like 12/1. 12 price to 1 earning. It's insanely overvalued still it defies logical explanation there is no way they ever make enough money to justify 1,540,000,000,000 market price, with 3,750,000,000 shares valued at 412 right now.
You're absolutely right that the earnings today doesn't justify the stock price.
It's all based off future assumptions that would need to come true like dominating the AV industry and humanoid robot industry.
There was actually a brief period in 2022 I think where the stock price was really high, but they were making more profit than other OEMs combined with a faction of the cars, and they were actually reaching what seemed like a reasonable PE ratio. Then he bought twitter, did the nazi stuff, did the Cybertruck instead of the 25k vehicle (which is now abandoned), and their vehicle growth started shrinking instead of growing.
Nice.
Musk = POS Nazi.
I don’t even care if the autopilot was at fault or not in this case. I’m just here to say fuck that guy!
Indeed
Wow! That sounds like TRILLION DOLLAR Behavior!
Can't they just keep appealing till they get to the Supreme Court that will do whatever Trump tells them to?
Does the Supreme Court have jurisdiction over civil cases?
What's the point of such court cases when the loser can simply appeal and appeal and appeal? It's a stupid system.
Edit: typo.
There are limits to appeals. Each appeal up the chain requires that court to agree to hear the challenge of the appeal. Depending on the jurisdicion, I think the limit would be only 3 or 4 appeals with that last one being the Supreme Court of the United States. If the next higher court declines to hear the appeal, the lower courts ruling stands.
You can appeal - but appeals are rarely agreed to. An appeal isn't about the facts in most cases - it is about was the law correctly applied and if so is the law constitutional.
Appeals aren’t an infinite thing. Each appeal goes to a higher court, and eventually will reach the SCOTUS. And at any point, the respective appellate court can refuse to accept the appeal, essentially saying that they agree with the lower court’s ruling and leaving it in effect.
Each step of the appeals process basically asks if the lower court applied the corresponding laws correctly. And if they did, the appellate court looks at whether or not that law is constitutional. If both are true, (the law is constitutional and was applied correctly) then the appeal fails. Appeals are actually fairly hard to win, especially for laws that have lots of precedent. If a law already has lots of precedent and the lower court was simply applying the law the same way that other cases did, the appeal will almost certainly be shot down.
That’s why lots of the big landmark “court strikes down law as unconstitutional” cases are from laws that were recently passed. There is no long-standing precedent for the recently passed law, so the lower courts have to set the precedent, and the appeal is actually what is deciding whether or not the law is constitutional.
You are describing the courts like how they are supposed to work, not how they work. They are biased in favor of the powerful. Whether the law was applied correctly doesn't matter so much as who is the company appealing, and perhaps what consideration they can provide under the table.
It's a lot more corrupt than you would lead us to believe here, courts by and large think the republic is already dead in all but name, the higher up the chain you go the more that's true.
