The defamation part is simple: Hothi's lawyers argued that when Musk wrote the email in 2019 claiming that Hothi 'almost killed' a Tesla security guard, with no evidence to back it up, he defamed Hothi. — Reuters"My commitment: We will never seek victory in a just case against us, even if we will probably win," he wrote."We will never surrender/settle an unjust case against us, even if we will probably lose.
Another way to look at it: If a family's net worth totaled US$165,000 and the settlement percentage was the same, that family would have to write Hothi a check for one-tenth of 1 cent, or maybe carve a tiny slice off Abraham Lincoln's copper colored head and deliver that piece of penny with tweezers.
Hothi was on a mission. He was sceptical that Musk could pull off promises of manufacturing the new Model 3 in a factory so automated and so devoid of humans it would resemble an"alien dreadnaught." The"alien dreadnaught" wasn't the only source of Hothi's scepticism. He regarded Musk's claims that his Autopilot system would soon develop into a"full self-driving" robot car as fantastical. Musk had claimed in 2016 that a Tesla would be able to drive itself with no human intervention from Los Angeles to New York by the end of 2017.