Musk and Tesla already had a fraught history with regulators in Washington. Tesla was staking its future on the artificial intelligence bet of the century: putting a fully autonomous vehicle in the hands of customers, a moon shot that differed from the mostly commercial ambitions of the robotaxi projects from Big Tech competitors like Google and Apple. Regulators and safety officials in the federal government who were building a set of rules to regulate Silicon Valley’s lab experiments—small-scale testing in a highly regulated space—were caught largely flatfooted when Tesla started adding features that resembled autonomy to its cars beginning in late 2014.

Musk may have resented Washington’s meddling, but he also owed much of Tesla’s success to it. In 2009, the company was on the verge of collapse as the Great Recession promised to wipe out demand for its pricey electric cars. Tesla had produced a sleek sports car, the Roadster, which offered the thrill of instant torque combined with an electric power train, in part inspired by the mid-engine Lotus Elise. That thrill came at a price: the vehicle cost around $100,000, or more than double the sticker price of the Elise. Faced with a souring economy that threatened its ability to produce the Model S—the car that would later make the company a household name—Tesla found two saviors. Daimler, the auto group that encompassed Mercedes-Benz, approached Tesla to build power trains for its electric Smart cars. Meanwhile, the US government, aiming to bring electric cars to the masses, made a bet on Tesla. The Department of Energy provided the company with a $465 million loan, critical cash at a time of existential uncertainty.

In a 2011 interview with The Atlantic, Musk acknowledged Tesla’s reliance on the government.

“Tesla has received a loan from the government,” he said. “If Tesla is to compete effectively against GM, Ford, Chrysler and others and those guys are getting massive amounts of money from the government at zero cost of capital and we don’t participate in that game it makes a very difficult job even harder. And so it just would be really unwise if we didn’t do that.”

In the coming years, Tesla would secure another coup. The government was encouraging big automakers to go electric, but they didn’t have the capacity or willpower to do so, especially in a declining economy. Tesla, on the other hand, would pump out thousands of electric vehicles per quarter. Why couldn’t Detroit simply take credit for their work? Automakers such as Chrysler started buying what were called “regulatory credits” from Tesla so they could surpass state emissions requirements under the federal Clean Air Act. This arrangement propelled Tesla to the profitability that helped make Musk the world’s richest person. Not only would his company get a yearslong head start on the competition, it could also cash in on their failure to adapt.

Musk may have outmaneuvered competitors in Silicon Valley and Detroit, but the threat of regulation still hung over him. Though the safety investigators with the NTSB [National Transportation Safety Board] had a different mandate from their counterparts at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), [Robert] Sumwalt felt that Musk lumped all the DC suits together. Musk had been irate when NHTSA regulators called him after another, similar crash in 2016; a Tesla in Autopilot had slammed into a tractor-trailer at 70 mph after failing to distinguish the rig from the sky behind it, in Tesla’s explanation, killing the driver. Musk yelled on the phone and threatened a lawsuit when he was told regulators were getting involved, a former safety official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive matter, said.

Musk’s view was simple: “We’re all beating up on him,” Dennis Jones recalled.

Musk’s relationship with regulators and safety officials fully eroded during the five most critical years in his self-driving push. As he promoted his vision of consumer robotaxis, Musk tested a strategy of harnessing online armies of fanboys—oftentimes, enthusiastic investors whose toxic digital personas were aimed at silencing short sellers or naysayers— against those who threatened to slow the progress of Autopilot and its companion mode, Full Self-Driving, making life a nightmare for those who stood in his way. All in the name, Musk argued, of safety. One official was forced to flee her home in response to what local authorities regarded as a dangerous threat after Tesla fans erupted over her appointment as an NHTSA adviser, and Musk joined in the public attack. In another instance, authorities had to get involved after criticism of a government official escalated into personal threats from online trolls.

On April 6, 2018—the Friday before Musk would angrily hang up on him—Robert Sumwalt knew that he was faced with a potentially unpleasant task: calling the CEO about the latest deadly crash involving a Tesla on Autopilot. Things began quite cordially, but Sumwalt would soon learn the same lesson as so many who have crossed Musk’s path over the years: the mercurial billionaire can charm and play nice with those who have power over his empire, but he can turn on them just as quickly if he feels they’re threatening to stand in his way.

Federal safety investigators have a duty to the public: ensuring that the errors contributing to fatal crashes are not repeated or, worse, built into safety-critical systems. Many feel this responsibility deeply. Sumwalt—an easygoing but direct communicator who had spent decades as a commercial pilot—certainly did. Even so, he was starstruck as he first dialed Musk’s cell phone to discuss the matter.

“In fact, I was amazed . . . I thought ‘this was pretty cool, I’m talking to Elon Musk,’” said Sumwalt, now retired from the safety board, recalling the conversation after a recent dinner at Cracker Barrel in Florida.

The two men exchanged pleasantries. Sumwalt, flanked by a coterie of Washington officials huddled around a speakerphone on a sofa outside his office, explained to Musk that he wanted Tesla to be a party to the investigation. This was an especially critical step for a company with vast amounts of internal data, whose technical understanding of its own systems far outmatched that of safety officials. Dennis Jones, the NTSB’s longtime managing director, liked to joke that the agency was charged with investigating airplane manufacturers who could pay for its whole budget with a single airliner. In Tesla’s case, investigators were helpless in retrieving and decoding the proprietary data from the company’s onboard computers without internal assistance. Musk should have been well aware of this knowledge gap.

But the investigative process also benefited Tesla: if the company played a part in the investigation, it would be aware of potentially damaging information and could offer input and clarity about possible damning investigative findings. The ultimate goal was to keep the public safe—and a company that didn’t want to mask wrongdoing had little reason not to cooperate.

There were also rules: a party to a federal investigation could not unilaterally release information that might factor into the NTSB probe. I had broken a story earlier in the month about how the NTSB was “unhappy” with Tesla’s release of investigative information in the Huang crash, which had implied Huang’s inattention was a factor.

Basically, Tesla wasn’t allowed to spin its own version of the crash if it wanted to collaborate with safety officials in good faith. Sumwalt had been concerned about Tesla preemptively disclosing data that was subject to the investigation and wanted to make sure Musk understood the rules. On that spring day, Musk was polite and professional on the phone with Sumwalt—and he expressed openness to cooperating. He wanted Tesla to be part of the probe, he said. Sumwalt took that as an indication that Musk intended to follow the rules. So Elon Musk and the country’s top transportation safety investigator agreed to work together.

Copyright © 2025 by Faiz Siddiqui