I was about to say this. Elon would go on stage and say something like “and this is something we can do today”, or “coming next year” in 2018. The crowd goes wild, the stock price shoots up.

The first time could be an honest mistake, but after a certain point we have to assume that it’s just a lie to boost the stock price.

I'm not sure it's fraud because there was always the fine print. But a company selling a car with a feature called Full Self Driving that does not in fact fully self drive, well, that's a company I don't buy from. Unfortunately others don't seem as offended and happily pay for the product, encouraging further b.s. marketing hype culture.

Just like politicians, it seems there's no repercussions for CEO's lying as long as it's fleecing the peons and not the elite.

Not in the US. There's a whole bureaucracy of advertising boards where a false advertising case can heard and appealed before anyone with legal authority would even look at it, which pretty much never happens. Even then, it's a tort, so punishment outside of fines is pretty much non existent.

It's only illegal when the insufficiently rich do it.