This is a pretty mild punishment compared to the sorts of things the SEC has the power to do, like getting Musk banned for life from any executive position in any company, forcing him to get rid of all his ownership in Tesla, and fining him many billions of dollars.

That the SEC settled so quickly and for so little makes me think they believed they couldn't get any more to stand up in court. I assume that Musk refused a more harsh earlier settlement because he was aware of this. So he played chicken with the SEC, and the SEC backed down.

It would be really good, though, if Musk learned a lesson from all this and decided to be more responsible in his communications.