Original statement from the annual report was "Barring unexpected challenges with Gigafactory Shanghai, we are targeting annualized Model 3 output in excess of 500,000 units sometime between Q4 of 2019 and Q2 of 2020."
So saying "we'll produce 500k cars in 2019" is a lot of new information:
- it's now definitely 2019, not Q2 2020
- it's 500k total, not just "annualized output"
- risk of "unexpected challeges" in Shanghai disappeared.
And do you think that's because he got such significant new information in the two weeks since the report, or because he summarized badly?
By itself it looks like new information. But once you consider it's a typical post on twitter, it's quite plausible that it's a botched quotation.
The agreement pertains to posts that "contain, or reasonably could contain, material information". Sounds like it needs [a likelihood of] actual material information to count.
(This is all assuming that "material information" is info that's not already widely publicly distributed. In other words I am assuming that a tweet of "Tesla makes cars." would not violate the agreement.)
(Also, none of this precludes him getting in trouble for a misleading tweet, entirely separately from whether he violated this agreement.)
So saying "we'll produce 500k cars in 2019" is a lot of new information:
- it's now definitely 2019, not Q2 2020
- it's 500k total, not just "annualized output"
- risk of "unexpected challeges" in Shanghai disappeared.