I really appreciate you being one of the lone voices here who doesn't just want to heap praise on Musk, and I definitely appreciate a link to a story that isn't one sided. But I have to say that it's not so simple as "Tesla was violating a law that is now going to be enforced", and that therefore the state isn't changing anything and therefore Musk is disingenuous.
Unfortunately, these sorts of laws are often vague and confusing, and boil down a lot to the state's (sometime capricious) choices about what to enforce and how. The governor's ability to direct the state's executive branch is widely and correctly seen as a huge power.
So the law is vague and requires the New Jersey Motor Vehicle Commission to fill in the detail. In fact, the NJMVC itself granted a permit to Tesla to sell cars in the state (as stated in your article). But now the NJMVC has reviewed that decision at a higher level and has decided it made a mistake
If permits are being revoked, that sounds like a change to me.
You can say that a proper interpretation of the law would have always led to that outcome, and that Tesla doesn't have a right to complain that the law is finally being enforced correctly. But that presupposes that laws have unambiguous pre-existing interpretations.
Although the text of the state code isn't changing, it seems clear to me that "the law"--as in the actual regulatory environment experienced by Tesla--is changing in a negative, albeit somewhat predictable manner. Was Musk glib in describing this in his letter? Sure. But I don't think it rises to the point of being disingenuous.
