WILMINGTON, Del.— Tesla Inc. Chief Executive Elon Musk returned to court Tuesday for a second day to defend the company’s purchase of SolarCity Corp.
Mr. Musk faced another day of cross examination after a heated first day during which he took aim at opposing counsel, while also arguing he didn’t act improperly during the negotiating process.
The case dates to 2016, when Mr. Musk was chairman of both companies, and Tesla, then still unprofitable, bought money-losing SolarCity for about $2.1 billion to establish a single clean-energy business. Plaintiffs, which include pension funds that owned Tesla stock, have characterized the deal as a scheme to benefit himself and bail out a home-solar company on the verge of insolvency.
Mr. Musk, the opening and only witness in the first day in a nonjury trial in the Delaware Chancery Court, faced roughly five hours of testimony, saying the SolarCity purchase was crucial to the sustainable-energy strategy he had envisioned for Tesla for a decade.
“I don’t think SolarCity was financially troubled,” Mr. Musk said Monday. “In order to have a compelling product, you really needed to have a tightly integrated solar and battery solution. And we could not create a well integrated product if SolarCity was a separate company.”
