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Tesla gets big legal wins as Musk finds himself at risk of libel over Thai caver controversy
Tesla’s legal troubles got a bit lighter this week, while Elon Musk seemingly gave himself yet another self-inflicted blow. Earlier his week, Tesla won a dismissal of a securities fraud lawsuit over the company’s progress in the production of the Model 3. The company also won a court case against the Ontario government over the state’s cancellation of EV rebates for Tesla customers.
The securities fraud lawsuit against Tesla alleged that the company and its executives knowingly knew that they could not meet their self-imposed goals of producing 5,000 Model 3 per week by the end of December 2017. The lawsuit’s plaintiffs argued that despite knowing these, Tesla still gave the impression that it was equipped to meet its production goals. This caused the stock to become volatile, resulting in losses for some shareholders.
In a decision that was made public on Monday, U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer noted that while it was true that the electric car and energy company was not able to meet its self-imposed production goals, “federal securities laws do not punish companies for failing to achieve their targets.” Tesla, for its part, noted that its difficulties in reaching its manufacturing targets for the Model 3 were caused by bottlenecks in its Nevada Gigafactory and its main factory in Fremont, CA.
“Plaintiffs are correct that defendants’ qualifications would not have been meaningful if defendants had known that it was impossible for Tesla to meet its stated production goals, not merely highly unlikely. The facts plaintiffs have put forth do not tend to establish that this was the case,” Judge Breyer wrote.
Tesla also won a case it filed against the Ontario government over the cancellation of EV rebates for Tesla’s electric cars. The revised EV rebate program was rolled out by the new Ontario government, and it singled out Tesla’s customers from qualifying for rebates of up to $10,640. In a ruling on Monday, Judge Frederick Myers of Ontario opted to strike down the transition program rolled out by the new government. A spokesperson for Tesla issued a statement to Reuters welcoming the Ontario judge’s ruling.
“Tesla only sought fair treatment for our customers, and we hope the Ministry now does the right thing by delivering on its promise to ensure all [electric vehicle]-owners receive their incentives,” the Tesla spokesperson said.
Unfortunately, this week also saw Elon Musk getting baited once more on Twitter over his previous comments about British cave explorer Vernon Unsworth, who was critical of Musk’s efforts to help a soccer team stranded in a flooded Thai cave system last July. After receiving requests online that he help in the Thai rescue efforts, Musk, together with SpaceX and Boring Co. engineers, developed a mini-submarine that the stranded children could use to escape the flooded cave system. Unsworth was dismissive of the mini-sub, stating that it would not work and suggesting that Musk “stick his submarine where it hurts.” In anger, Musk retorted, calling the caver a “pedo guy” on Twitter. Musk later deleted his tweet and apologized to Unsworth.
Just yesterday, Musk was on Twitter when he got baited into discussing Unsworth and his previous incendiary comments once more. At one point, Musk even noted that “You don’t think it’s strange he hasn’t sued me? He was offered free legal services.”
As it turns out, a libel lawsuit was indeed on the way. Unsworth is reportedly preparing to file a civil complaint for libel against Musk, according to a letter from the caver’s lawyer shared to CNBC. The attorney’s letter described Musk’s tweets as “false and defamatory.” The lawyer also urged Musk’s legal counsel to contact him to avoid litigation and correct the reportedly false statements. The letter was dated August 6, just a day before Musk posted his fateful “funding secured” tweet.
While Musk faces another possible lawsuit over his Twitter activity, Tesla continues to pursue its Model 3 ramp. The production of the electric car seems poised to hit record levels this quarter, with analyst Romit Shah of Nomura Instinet stating that Tesla could produce as many as 65,000-70,000 Model 3 this quarter. Baird analyst Ben Kallo is also optimistic about Tesla’s numbers this Q3, stating that the company’s fundamentals are “underappreciated” amidst the noise from the controversy resulting from Elon Musk’s go-private initiative.
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Lucid unveils Lunar Robotaxi in bid to challenge Tesla’s Cybercab in the autonomous ride hailing race
Lucid’s Lunar robotaxi is gunning for Tesla’s Cybercab in the autonomous ride hailing race
Lucid Group pulled back the curtain on its purpose-built autonomous robotaxi platform dubbed the Lunar Concept. Announced at its New York investor day event, Lunar is arguably the company’s most ambitious concept yet, and a direct line of sight toward the autonomous ride haling market that Tesla looks to control.

At Lucid Investor Day 2026, the company introduced Lunar, a purpose-built robotaxi concept based on the Midsize platform.
A comparison to Tesla’s Cybercab is unavoidable. The concept of a Tesla robotaxi was first introduced by Elon Musk back in April 2019 during an event dubbed “Autonomy Day,” where he envisioned a network of self-driving Tesla vehicles transporting passengers while not in use by their owners. That vision took another major step in October 2024 when, Musk unveiled the Cybercab at the Tesla “We, Robot” event held at Warner Bros. Studios in Burbank, California, where 20 concept Cybercabs autonomously drove around the studio lot giving rides to attendees.
Fast forward to today, and Tesla’s ambitions are finally materializing, but not without friction. As we recently reported, the Cybercab is being spotted with increasing frequency on public roads and across the grounds of Gigafactory Texas, suggesting that the company’s road testing and validation program is ramping meaningfully ahead of mass production. Tesla already operates a small scale robotaxi service in Austin using supervised Model Ys, but the Cybercab is designed from the ground up for high-volume, low-cost production, with Musk stating an eventual goal of producing one vehicle every 10 seconds.

At Lucid Investor Day 2026, the company introduced Lunar, a purpose-built robotaxi concept based on the Midsize platform.
Into this landscape steps Lucid’s Lunar. Built on the company’s all-new Midsize EV platform, which will also underpin consumer SUVs starting below $50,000. The Lunar mirrors the Cybercab’s core philosophy of having two seats, no driver controls, and a focus on fleet economics. The platform introduces Lucid’s redesigned Atlas electric drive unit, engineered to be smaller, lighter, and cheaper to manufacture at scale.
Unlike Tesla’s strategy of building its own ride hailing network from scratch, Lucid is partnering with Uber. The companies are said to be in advanced discussions to deploy Midsize platform vehicles at large scale, with Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi publicly backing Lucid’s engineering credentials and autonomous-ready architecture.
In the investor day event, Lucid also outlined a recurring software revenue model, with an in-vehicle AI assistant and monthly autonomous driving subscriptions priced between $69 and $199. This can be seen as a nod to the software revenue stream that Tesla has long championed with its Full Self-Driving subscription.
Tesla’s Cybercab is targeting a price point below $30k and with operating costs as low as 20 cents per mile. But with regulatory hurdles still ahead, the window for competition is open. Lucid’s Lunar may not have a launch date yet, but it arrives at a pivotal moment, and when the robotaxi race is no longer viewed as hypothetical. Rather, every serious EV player needs to come to bat on the same plate that Tesla has had countless practice swings on over the last seven years.
Elon Musk
Brazil Supreme Court orders Elon Musk and X investigation closed
The decision was issued by Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes following a recommendation from Brazil’s Prosecutor-General Paulo Gonet.
Brazil’s Supreme Federal Court has ordered the closure of an investigation involving Elon Musk and social media platform X. The inquiry had been pending for about two years and examined whether the platform was used to coordinate attacks against members of the judiciary.
The decision was issued by Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes following a recommendation from Brazil’s Prosecutor-General Paulo Gonet.
According to a report from Agencia Brasil, the investigation conducted by the Federal Police did not find evidence that X deliberately attempted to attack the judiciary or circumvent court orders.
Prosecutor-General Paulo Gonet concluded that the irregularities identified during the probe did not indicate fraudulent intent.
Justice Moraes accepted the prosecutor’s recommendation and ruled that the investigation should be closed. Under the ruling, the case will remain closed unless new evidence emerges.
The inquiry stemmed from concerns that content on X may have enabled online attacks against Supreme Court justices or violated rulings requiring the suspension of certain accounts under investigation.
Justice Moraes had previously taken several enforcement actions related to the platform during the broader dispute involving social media regulation in Brazil.
These included ordering a nationwide block of the platform, freezing Starlink accounts, and imposing fines on X totaling about $5.2 million. Authorities also froze financial assets linked to X and SpaceX through Starlink to collect unpaid penalties and seized roughly $3.3 million from the companies’ accounts.
Moraes also imposed daily fines of up to R$5 million, about $920,000, for alleged evasion of the X ban and established penalties of R$50,000 per day for VPN users who attempted to bypass the restriction.
Brazil remains an important market for X, with roughly 17 million users, making it one of the platform’s larger user bases globally.
The country is also a major market for Starlink, SpaceX’s satellite internet service, which has surpassed one million subscribers in Brazil.
Elon Musk
FCC chair criticizes Amazon over opposition to SpaceX satellite plan
Carr made the remarks in a post on social media platform X.
U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Brendan Carr criticized Amazon after the company opposed SpaceX’s proposal to launch a large satellite constellation that could function as an orbital data center network.
Carr made the remarks in a post on social media platform X.
Amazon recently urged the FCC to reject SpaceX’s application to deploy a constellation of up to 1 million low Earth orbit satellites that could serve as artificial intelligence data centers in space.
The company described the proposal as a “lofty ambition rather than a real plan,” arguing that SpaceX had not provided sufficient details about how the system would operate.
Carr responded by pointing to Amazon’s own satellite deployment progress.
“Amazon should focus on the fact that it will fall roughly 1,000 satellites short of meeting its upcoming deployment milestone, rather than spending their time and resources filing petitions against companies that are putting thousands of satellites in orbit,” Carr wrote on X.
Amazon has declined to comment on the statement.
Amazon has been working to deploy its Project Kuiper satellite network, which is intended to compete with SpaceX’s Starlink service. The company has invested more than $10 billion in the program and has launched more than 200 satellites since April of last year.
Amazon has also asked the FCC for a 24-month extension, until July 2028, to meet a requirement to deploy roughly 1,600 satellites by July 2026, as noted in a CNBC report.
SpaceX’s Starlink network currently has nearly 10,000 satellites in orbit and serves roughly 10 million customers. The FCC has also authorized SpaceX to deploy 7,500 additional satellites as the company continues expanding its global satellite internet network.