Tesla, TerraForm, and Johnson & Johnson Among the Biggest Weekend Newsmakers

The back-and-forth between Tesla Motors Inc (NASDAQ:TSLA) and Mobileye NV (NYSE:MBLY) is still ongoing, this time with the latter refuting Tesla’s claim that Mobileye was trying to stop Tesla’s internet computer vision efforts. Mobileye further added the following interesting tidbit:

“In communications dating back to May 2015 between Mobileye (MBLY) Chairman and Tesla’s CEO, Mobileye expressed safety concerns regarding the use of Autopilot hands-free. After a subsequent face to face meeting, Tesla’s CEO confirmed that activation of Autopilot would be “hands on.” Despite this confirmation, Autopilot was rolled out in late 2015 with a hands-free activation mode.”

It has become increasingly clear that Mobileye and Tesla are now competitors rather than partners. Tesla has been blamed before for adopting autonomous technology too early, and it is in Mobileye’s best interest to keep that issue in the spotlight as long as possible. On the other hand, Tesla would surely like the issue to fade away sooner than later, as negative sentiment hovering over the company could impact Tesla’s ability to raise maximum funds from a secondary offering that Tesla has hinted at executing before the end of this year. 25  funds that we track were bullish on Mobileye NV (NYSE:MBLY) at the end of June, while 36 owned shares of Tesla Motors Inc (NASDAQ:TSLA).

Disclosure: None