It was only a few months ago that Wall Street was bashing Elon Musk’s Tesla Inc. Times have changed for the automaker and its mercurial CEO.

Elon Musk is doing everything he can to speed up deliveries of the Tesla Model 3, including the tantalizing prospect that he may have purchased a trucking company to augment capacity provided by existing vehicle haulers.

SAN FRANCISCO — Elon Musk is taunting the government regulators who threatened to oust him as CEO of electric carmaker Tesla just days after he settled a case alleging he duped investors.

Elon Musk will give up the role of Tesla Inc. chairman and pay a $20 million penalty to settle fraud charges brought by the U.S. over his claims about taking the company private.

All it took to draw the U.S. Justice Department into investigating Tesla Inc. was a single tweet by Chairman Elon Musk. But now that prosecutors have a toehold, they can dig in to look for other signs of misconduct at the electric car maker.

Elon Musk has hired Morgan Stanley to assist him in his potential bid to take Tesla Inc. private, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Even as CEO Elon Musk pursues the idea of taking Tesla private, the electric automaker has confirmed that it still plans to release safety data on its Autopilot semi-autonomous driving feature.

Large for-hire carriers and major retailers are reserving their places in line to be among the first to test the all-electric Tesla Semi in their operations.