Reference no: EM131585941
The assignment is to write an ethical position paper based on the following information.
There have been media allegations citing the electric car manufacturer, Tesla, intentionally waited to disclose "material" information until after a scheduled stock sale which was to raise a substantial amount of capital for the company.
On May 18, 2016, Tesla held a stock sale which raised funds approaching $2.0 billion dollars. Prior to the stock sale, the NHTSA (National Highway Traffic Safety Administration) was conducting a preliminary investigation into the death of a Florida man who was killed on May 7, 2016 in an accident that occurred while an autopilot feature was engaged on his Tesla model S vehicle. The autopilot feature is an option that allows for autonomous driving where the driver is not directly controlling the car. Various computer systems control the vehicle when this option is engaged. In the auto industry there is a lot of focus and speculation on the development and production autonomous self-driving cars. Google even has a project dedicated to developing such a vehicle.
Tesla was aware of their requirements to immediately inform the NHTSA of the incident and Tesla did comply with the reporting requirement. The SEC has other reporting requirements where "material" information is required to be disclosed in offering documents for a capital raise. Publically traded companies, such as Tesla, are also required to disclose "material" events or information to the SEC on a Form 8-K which in turn the SEC makes the information available to the public through its EDGAR website.
Elon Musk, the founder of Tesla, said the Florida man's death being associated with the auto pilot feature being on was not a "material" piece of information so it was not immediately disclosed to the SEC or the public prior to the capital raise on May 18th.
The NHTSA reported the fatal incident six weeks after the accident and the stock price for Tesla actually increased on the day of the announcement. Elon Musk cited the efficiencies of the market proved the information was not material because the stock price went up that day instead of declining sharply.
Your assignment is to take a position as to whether Tesla acted ethically (or not) in not reporting this fatal autopilot crash before the capital raise on May 18th and support it
The number of pages should be between 2 to 3 pages.