A Florida jury on Friday found Tesla liable to pay $243 million to victims of a 2019 fatal crash of an Autopilot-equipped Model S, a verdict that could encourage more legal action against Elon Musk’s electric vehicle company.

The verdict is a rare win for victims of accidents involving Autopilot. Mr. Musk has been pushing to rapidly expand Tesla’s recently launched robotaxi business based on an advanced version of its driver assistance software.

Tesla shares fell 1.8% on Friday (August 1, 2025), and are down 25% this year.

Jurors in Miami federal court awarded the estate of Naibel Benavides Leon, as well as her former boyfriend Dillon Angulo, $129 million in compensatory damages plus $200 million in punitive damages, according to a verdict sheet.

Tesla was held liable for 33% of the compensatory damages, or $42.6 million.

Jurors found the driver George McGee liable for 67%, but he was not a defendant and will not have to pay his share.

“Tesla designed Autopilot only for controlled-access highways yet deliberately chose not to restrict drivers from using it elsewhere, alongside Elon Musk telling the world Autopilot drove better than humans,” Brett Schreiber, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, said in a statement.

“Today’s verdict represents justice for Naibel’s tragic death and Dillon’s lifelong injuries,” he added.

Tesla said it will appeal.

“Today’s verdict is wrong and only works to set back automotive safety and jeopardise Tesla’s and the entire industry’s efforts to develop and implement life-saving technology,” the company said.

The plaintiffs had sought $345 million of damages. Their lawyers said the trial was the first involving the wrongful death of a third party resulting from Autopilot.

IMPACT ON FUTURE CASES

Tesla has faced many similar lawsuits over its vehicles’ self-driving capabilities, but they have been resolved or dismissed without getting to trial.

In June, a judge rejected Tesla’s bid to dismiss the Florida case. Experts said Friday’s verdict may spur more lawsuits, and could make future settlements more costly.

“It’s a big deal,” said Alex Lemann, a law professor at Marquette University. “This is the first time that Tesla has been hit with a judgment in one of the many, many fatalities that have happened as a result of its Autopilot technology.”

The verdict could also impede efforts by Mr. Musk, the world’s richest person, to convince investors that Tesla can become a leader in so-called autonomous driving for private vehicles as well as robotaxis it plans to start producing next year.

As Tesla’s electric vehicle sales fall, much of its nearly $1 trillion market value hinges on Mr. Musk’s ability to pivot the company into robotics and artificial intelligence.

DRIVER’S ROLE

The trial concerned an April 25, 2019 incident where George McGee drove his 2019 Model S at about 62 mph (100 kph) through an intersection into the victims’ parked Chevrolet Tahoe as they were standing beside it on a shoulder.

Mr. McGee had reached down to pick up a cellphone he dropped on his car’s floorboard and allegedly received no alerts as he ran a stop sign and stop light before hitting the victims’ SUV.

Benavides Leon was allegedly thrown 75 feet (23 metres) to her death, while Angulo suffered serious injuries.

“We have a driver who was acting less than perfectly, and yet the jury still found Tesla contributed to the crash,” said Philip Koopman, a Carnegie Mellon University engineering professor and expert in autonomous technology.

“The only way the jury could have possibly ruled against Tesla was by finding a defect with the Autopilot software,” he added. “That’s a big deal.”

Tesla, in its statement, said Mr. McGee was entirely at fault.

“To be clear, no car in 2019, and none today, would have prevented this crash,” the company said. “This was never about Autopilot; it was a fiction concocted by plaintiffs’ lawyers blaming the car when the driver – from day one – admitted and accepted responsibility.”

Published – August 02, 2025 06:43 am IST

Elon Musk is a billionaire with the highest net worth in the world, according to Bloomberg Index. And after Donald Trump’s win in the US presidential election, the tech tycoon is close to breaking his wealth record (of $340 billion in 2021) following the rally of Tesla’s shares. The world’s richest person gained almost $21 billion on Monday as Tesla stock jumped 9 per cent, boosting his net worth to $335 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. So how long would it take for a salaried person to reach Musk levels of wealth?

Also Read | Elon Musk, Donald Trump And World’s Largest MAGA Megaphone

According to Forbes, the average annual salary in US is $59,428. It will take more than three million years for an average US resident to amass Mr Musk’s wealth by working a regular job, per Statista.

A study on UK’s working population claims it will take the average person 17 weeks and one hour to earn what Tesla’s founder and CEO does in five minutes. The research was done by mathematical modelling tool Gigacalculator.com that studied the earnings of the 10 highest paid bosses according to Bloomberg’s CEO pay index, and compared them to the average Briton’s full-time salary of 35,423 pounds.

In June, shareholders of Tesla voted in favour of restoring Mr Musk’s 10-year pay plan of $45 billion. According to the current exchange rate, this comes to about Rs 3.80 lakh crore in a year, or Rs 1,040 crore per day.

In September, a new report from Informa Connect Academy, a group that tracks wealth, said Mr Musk is on track to become the world’s first trillionaire by 2027. The report further said the billionaire’s wealth has been growing at an average annual rate of 110 per cent.

In terms of his earnings from assets, Mr Musk’s wealth primarily comes from his stakes in various companies like Tesla, SpaceX, X (formerly Twitter) and The Boring Company.

Mr Musk was born in Pretoria, South Africa, and showed his talents for entrepreneurship early, going door-do-door with his brother selling homemade chocolate Easter Eggs. According to the BBC, he developed his first computer game at the age of 12.

Mr Musk dropped out of Stanford University and founded two technology start-ups during the “dotcom boom” of the 1990s. His online banking company that eventually became PayPal was bought by eBay for $1.5 billion in 2002.

He bought X two years ago and since then, influence on the platform has skyrocketed with followers nearly doubling to 194 million.

Los Angeles, United States:

Elon Musk on Thursday unveiled what he said was a robotaxi capable of self-driving, predicting it would be available by 2027 — about a decade after he first promised an autonomous vehicle.

The Tesla CEO said the fully electric car — which has no steering wheel or pedals — would be priced under $30,000, would be charged wirelessly with inductive technology and would be “10 to 20 times safer” than human-driven cars.

“You can think of the car in an autonomous world as being like just a little lounge,” he told a crowd at the Warner Brothers Studio lot near Los Angeles.

“You’re just sitting in a comfortable little lounge, and you can do whatever you want while you’re in this comfortable little lounge, and when you get out, you will be at your destination.”

Few details were given about the vehicle, whose gullwing doors are reminiscent of the Delorean made famous by the “Back to the Future” films, but Musk said Tesla already had 50 of them.

He said the company was expecting to begin “fully autonomous, unsupervised” driving in Texas and California next year with existing models, and then move on to production of what he called the “cybercab”.

“I tend to be a little optimistic with time frames, but in 2026, so yeah, before 2027. Let me put it that way.”

Robovan and Optimus robot

The evening, which started almost an hour late, was heavy on sunny visions of the future, but light on specifics.

But it also showcased a mass passenger vehicle that Musk called “The Robovan.”

The vehicle, which looks like an enormous moving toaster, has no steering wheel, pedals or driver.

It can seat up to 20 people or could be converted to carry goods, Musk said.

He gave no details about production or any timeline.

Musk also brought out dancing humanoid robots called Optimus that he said would one day be able to do menial tasks, as well as offer friendship.

“I think this will be the biggest product ever of any kind,” he said, adding that he expected the robot to retail for $20,000 to $30,000.

He gave no timeline on this, either, and it was not clear from the livestream what the robot’s capabilities were, although it was shown walking amongst audience members, handing out plaques and serving drinks.

Trump

Musk’s bullish pronouncements and dedicated fanbase have helped build Tesla into one of the world’s most valuable companies.

While he was once the darling of the political left for his environmentalist moves towards electrifying transport, he has become increasingly controversial.

Since buying Twitter — which he renamed X — the free speech absolutist cut staffing on the platform, leading many long-time users and advertisers to abandon the forum.

And he’s currently spending time and money promoting Republican Donald Trump, echoing the billionaire presidential candidate’s dire warnings about migrants and a crumbling America, including during an exuberant appearance at a weekend Trump rally that was widely mocked.

Thursday night’s robotaxi reveal was a long time coming.

Musk first said in 2016 a fully automated car was two years away; a year later he was touting a vehicle by 2019 so clever that customers would be able to sleep while it drove them around.

But as many automakers have found, self-driving is tricky.

While lots of cars nowadays have limited automation, theoretically allowing the driver to cede some of the boring bits of driving to an onboard computer, the person behind the wheel still has to pay attention and jump in if the car does something unpredictable.

That’s because computers, unlike people, are not very good at reacting to unexpected events or situations they have never seen before.

Other companies, such as Google’s Waymo and General Motors’ Cruise, have operated heavily regulated and limited pilot robotaxi programs for a few years already.

Anything Tesla tries to put on the road will face the same kind of regulatory hurdles, as well as skepticism from the general public, many of whom have never seen a car without a driver.

Immediate reaction to the reveals was mixed.

“Delusional nonsense from a liar who has been promising a robotaxi every year for a decade,” wrote user @goodandnormal on X.

Others on the platform were more enthusiastic, with some predicting that Tesla’s share price will soar when US markets open.

“Tesla self-driving ‘Robovan.’ The future looks promising,” wrote @CollinsEbot1.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

A Tesla shareholder filed a lawsuit on Thursday accusing CEO Elon Musk of insider trading when he sold over $7.5 billion of shares of the electric car maker in late 2022, saying the billionaire entrepreneur sold the shares before potentially disappointing production and delivery numbers were made public.

Shareholder Michael Perry, in the lawsuit filed in Delaware Chancery Court, said that Tesla’s share price plummeted after the company’s fourth-quarter numbers were made public on Jan. 2, 2023, and claimed that Musk “improperly benefited” by about $3 billion in insider profits.

“Musk exploited his position at Tesla, and he breached his fiduciary duties to Tesla,” the lawsuit said, asking the court to direct Musk to return the profits made from the trades.

According to the lawsuit, Musk sold the shares on various dates in November 2022 and December 2022.

The lawsuit also accused Tesla’s directors of breaching their fiduciary duty by allowing Musk to sell the shares.

Musk and Tesla did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.

In the lawsuit, Perry said Musk – who in 2022 said demand for Tesla’s vehicles was “excellent” – found out about the lower-than-expected numbers mid-November, with his access to real-time data, and sold his shares before the information was public.

Following news of vehicle price discounts that sparked demand concerns and the release of the numbers in January, Tesla’s stock tanked.

“Had (Musk) waited to make these sales until after the release of material adverse news,… his sales would have netted him less than 55% of the amounts realized from his November and December 2022 sales,” the lawsuit said.

The lawsuit is the latest legal headache for Musk.

It comes as Musk faces opposition from some Tesla shareholders who are set to vote on June 13 on whether to ratify his $56 billion pay package, which a Delaware judge voided in January because she found he improperly controlled the process.

Tesla is incorporated in Delaware.

Musk is also in the middle of a regulatory probe to determine whether he broke federal securities laws in 2022 when he bought stock in social media platform Twitter, which he later renamed X. Musk said the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission was trying to “harass” him through unwarranted investigations.

Musk and the top U.S. markets regulator have been in a years-long feud, dating back to 2018, when he tweeted that he had “funding secured” to take Tesla private.

A separate shareholder lawsuit has accused Musk of defrauding X investors by delaying disclosure of his stake in the social media company to amass shares at lower prices.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Prime Minister Narendra Modi meets Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, in New York, USA. File.
| Photo Credit: PTI

American electric car maker Tesla CEO Elon Musk is visiting India later this month to meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi and is likely to announce the company’s investment plans in the country, according to sources.

Mr. Musk, who has described as a ‘natural progression’ to provide Tesla electric vehicles in India, is likely to be accompanied by other company executives during the visit that is expected in the week of April 22, a source said.

An e-mail query sent to Tesla to confirm Mr. Musk’s visit remained unanswered.

In June last year, Mr. Musk met with Mr. Modi during the latter’s US visit and stated that he planned to visit India in 2024 while expressing confidence that Tesla would enter the Indian market soon.

His upcoming visit to India comes weeks after the government announced a new electric vehicle policy under which import duty concessions will be given to companies setting up manufacturing units in the country with a minimum investment of USD 500 million, a move aimed at attracting major global players like Tesla.

As per the policy, the companies that would set up manufacturing facilities for EV passenger cars will be allowed to import a limited number of cars at lower customs /import duty of 15 per cent on vehicles costing USD 35,000 and above for a period of five years from the date of issuance of the approval letter by the government.

At present, cars imported as completely built units (CBUs) attract customs duty ranging from 70% to 100%, depending on engine size and cost, insurance and freight (CIF) value less or above $40,000.

The policy seeks to promote India as a manufacturing destination for EVs and attract investment from reputed global EV manufacturers.

Last year, Tesla approached the Indian government seeking duty cuts to import its vehicles in India.

Previously in 2022, Mr. Musk had said that Tesla, which was earlier seeking a reduction in import duties to sell its vehicles in India, would not manufacture its products unless it is allowed to first sell and service its cars in the country.

In August 2021, Mr. Musk said that Tesla may set up a manufacturing unit in India if it first succeeds with imported vehicles in the country. He had said Tesla wanted to launch its vehicles in India “but import duties are the highest in the world by far of any large country!”