First came the shock that Argo AI, the start-up Ford and Volkswagen had each seeded with multibillion-dollar investments, was shutting down. Within hours, Reuters reported that Tesla’s self-driving claims are under criminal investigation. A person familiar with the matter told Bloomberg that Justice Department prosecutors in Washington and San Francisco have been probing statements by the electric-car company and its executives since last year.
The autonomous-driving sector just endured a day that tech and automotive giants may well look back on the way Wall Street recalls March 16, 2008.
Whereas the day Bear Stearns collapsed was an epochal event in the global financial crisis, when flawed assumptions about the value of mortgages pushed banks to the brink — and some over the precipice — Oct. 26, 2022, will go down as the date that seismic consequences emerged from years of faulty presumptions about driverless-vehicle technology.
