Tesla is having a tough time of late. Its Autopilot advanced driver assistance system (ADAS) is once again the center of attention in a fatal crash. Deliveries of the Model 3, its budget electric vehicle, are far below the company's goals. Meanwhile, Elon Musk made a series of April Fool's "jokes" on Twitter on Sunday about the company going bankrupt even after a sale of Easter eggs. Despite this attempt at levity, Tesla's share price continued to slide on Monday, losing almost seven percent in the morning, having shed more than 20 percent of its value in the last month.

On March 23, Wei "Walter" Huang died when his Tesla Model X—in Autopilot mode—crashed into a highway divider on Highway 101 in Mountain View, California. According to the Mercury News, Huang had complained about Autopilot's behavior at that particular spot on more than one occasion, accusing his car of veering toward the crash barrier.

Several days after the crash, Tesla confirmed that the vehicle was indeed in Autopilot mode but that the driver did not intervene in the seconds up to the incident:

The driver had received several visual and one audible hands-on warning earlier in the drive and the driver’s hands were not detected on the wheel for six seconds prior to the collision. The driver had about five seconds and 150 meters of unobstructed view of the concrete divider with the crushed crash attenuator, but the vehicle logs show that no action was taken.

Tesla is well known at this point for releasing onboard diagnostic data to the press to bolster its case after high-profile crashes. In this case, it may not have been the wisest move. Sunday, the Washington Post reported that the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB)—which is investigating the incident—was "unhappy" with Tesla's information dump.

A 2017 NTSB investigation pointed a finger at the Autopilot UX as a major factor in the 2016 fatal crash of Joshua Brown's Tesla Model S in Florida. (A separate investigation into that incident by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) noted that Tesla's ADAS implementation cut crash rates by up to 40 percent, something Tesla pointed out in its recent blog post.)

Model 3 well behind target

Meanwhile, Tesla is still well behind its target for Model 3 production. Originally launched with bold predictions of building 500,000 a year, the company has repeatedly downgraded production estimates. The most recent of these was to drop projections to just 2,500 cars a week, but by the best estimates Tesla is only able to reach half this figure, and even then only by halting production of the Model S and Model X lines and transferring workers to help out.

One could accuse Tesla CEO Elon Musk of taking all of this on the chin. On Sunday, he issued a series of "April Fool's" tweets, joking about the company's impending bankruptcy:

Tesla Goes Bankrupt

Palo Alto, California, April 1, 2018 -- Despite intense efforts to raise money, including a last-ditch mass sale of Easter Eggs, we are sad to report that Tesla has gone completely and totally bankrupt. So bankrupt, you can't believe it. — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 1, 2018

Elon was found passed out against a Tesla Model 3, surrounded by "Teslaquilla" bottles, the tracks of dried tears still visible on his cheeks. This is not a forward-looking statement, because, obviously, what's the point? Happy New Month! pic.twitter.com/YcouvFz6Y1 — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 1, 2018

Musk can afford to be flippant, for if Tesla survives the next decade it is likely to make him one of the richest men on the planet. (Figures of $200 billion would put him about equal with the amount Vladimir Putin is estimated to have hidden away.) But industry analysts didn't like this attempt at humor, and Tesla shares keep trading down at the time of writing.