I disagree. It's the dawn of autonomous driving; Tesla needed to get the message out that lives had been saved by that tech already, and did; etc. The Mandarins aren't moved by context, let's put it that way. They had no legal power to squelch Tesla, so after blustering as if they did, they have opted to use their more petty powers, as far as I can see. The Feds could have given some quarter, here, given the stakes - and I don't mean money. The Feds had powers enough but wanted to reach for powers over publicity that they didn't have.