Tesla chief Elon Musk has dropped plans to take the electric car maker private with Saudi money, ending weeks of drama and uncertainty about the company's future.  The question now is what the Tesla board will do with the brash billionaire.

Tesla likely remains in the sights of US financial regulators, because of the way Mr. Musk announced his desire to rid himself of second-guessing from investors and short-term pressures from public markets. 

This started on 7 August, when Musk tweeted he was considering taking the company private and that funding had been secured for the deal.  Six days later, he revealed the money from Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund wasn't locked down at all.  Late last week, Musk said the decision to go private had been scrubbed after he had a meeting with existing big shareholders.  They told him that Tesla is better off as a public company, and that not all of them would be able to come up with more cash to own shares of a private company.

The lesson thus far is that chaos comes at a price.  The US Securities and Exchange Commission is reportedly investigating for possible manipulation of the stock price, because Tesla's share price shot up after that first tweet in early August. 

"You can't throw out information that moves the market and say, 'Never mind'," Peter Henning, professor of law at Wayne State University, said.  "This is the CEO of the company.  His statements are the company's statements.  Will they make an example of him?  Maybe."

At least two lawsuits seeking class-action status also have been filed alleging Musk broke securities laws by making it sound like financing for the buyout was lined up.

"Tesla investors must realize that they have a panicky, erratic, possibly self-destructive CEO at the helm," said Professor Jeffrey Sonnenfeld of the Yale School of Management, obviously a Musk critic.  "No CEO is ever this confused and confusing."

The episode only added to growing doubts about Musk's management style.

"Prior to the go-private episode, his credibility was in question, although investors still had overall confidence in the guy," said Erik Gordon, a business and law professor at the University of Michigan.  "This whole go-private episode has taken his credibility close to zero."

Zero?  Isn't that a little overly dramatic?  Well, in the past few weeks, investors who bet against Tesla collectively have made by than a billion dollars, US.  But in the long-run, there are still many, many investors who see Musk as a visionary and who remember concerns voiced over Amazon's Jeff Bezos or Apple's Steve Jobs.  And how did those end up?