This board (and some people/groups I follow on social media) are the only ones I know who have an unfavorable view of Musk. The average person I encounter IRL still thinks of him as some business super genius, alas.
Tesla’s massive success is due in large part to CA’s clean emissions vehicle manufacturers credit system. For a long time, other major corporations like Ford, Toyota, Mercedes etc were basically paying Tesla to make cars. The write off that customers got for buying a Tesla was a major boost as well. Elon has always been very good at working through regulation regimes to build up Tesla. Now the company is basically “too big to fail” along with the other major American car manufacturers. For anyone interested, this podcast is a pretty good chronicle of Tesla’s meteoric rise and Elon’s story:
I’ve wondered sometimes about the drivers of all the Teslas I see on the road… if they care about Tesla quality control, if they’re Musk fans, if they even believe in climate change (despite the fact they have an electric car), how conservative they are, etc. I have a feeling that even those who say they don’t like him have found a way to not think about how their purchase has contributed to his wealth. And for anyone who says that people don’t think about that for other companies and their CEOs, it’s not really the same thing. The amount of direct control over the company (and the amount of wealth gained from it) is not comparable.
Owning a Tesla is a status symbol for some people right? It’s a status symbol with a wide net bringing in the former Prius set (so people who need to feel their car is ‘better’ for the planet ), the luxury car aficionado, and tech gadget geeks. And it might bring in some element of sports car culture when they need a regular car. I don’t care about cars personally other than I need one to get places and don’t want tickets or accidents. So a Tesla does nothing for me. Maybe I’m biased when I see one - thinking the drive is a pompous jerk.
No, there's never enough money for people like Musk. He has a million? Wants a billion, then a trillion, then a quadrillon and so it goes.
Yep, and there's the disgusting 'awe' that business journals and related sources for him possibly being the world's first trillionaire... although I doubt that now. Don't worry, there's other candidates!
I think the vast majority of people think of him as apolitical. That may change soon, as it’s clear that one of the reasons he wanted to takeover Twitter is so that he can join the handful of people who are de facto arbiters of political speech in America, but up to now the policy implications of his business and ideas have mostly been considered “scientific” and technocratic rather than political. I posted this some time last year, and I think it still holds up. The most dangerous part of Elon’s project imo is how eagerly people bought into his utopian futurism, particularly around terraforming, climate change, and automation:
My Bolt is great and costs about half or even a third what a Tesla costs. Gets about 200-220 miles on a full charge, not sure how that compares to a Tesla.
I've got an MG ZSEV due in a few weeks (hopefully). We'll get nearly 300 miles out of a full charge and is £30k Entry level Tesla is the Model 3, gets 300 from a full charge and entry level is £49k Long Range version gets 375 and is £57k Performance gets 340 and is £61 I'll stick with my MG
The build quality tends to be a lot better on much cheaper cars with a major manufacturer like GM. They also don't beta test dangerous software (see: "full self-driving") in their vehicles. But the biggest difference is that if you get a Chevy Bolt in a wreck, it can be as easily repaired as any other car manufactured by GM. That's not the case with Tesla when spare parts can be hard to come by.
Oh a lot of people drive Tesla’s around me. But I have been well known here and in real life for my disgust of the man. Ironically the two Tesla owners I know in real life both friends of my mother are hardcore republicans. I do think Musk lost a few people with his Ukraine should Negotiate spiel. A few people I know in real life who liked him prior say he was pretty stupid for it. I think as these things continue to pile on. Less and less people will like him. Some people are so deep into the cult of personality that his devotees create around him that they think everything he has done is fine from allegedly trying to solicite someone on a private jet to his dabbling into foreign affairs. They think it’s all fine. We can only hope he crashes and burns one day.
Very true Tesla also lock people out of certain aspects of the car if it's not done by an official Tesla dealer. There was a report last week on a bloke in the UK who fitted a towbar to his Tesla and they refused to activate the towing functionality or electrics through to the plugs as it hadn't been installed by a Tesla engineer nor was it a Tesla model towbar (which they've not had for months)
Musk tweets that there may be more to the Paul Pelosi attack than meets the eye. so he's in the christian walker camp
Good. Glad he’s even more of a jackass and says so openly. I don’t like Pelosi anymore than the last guy, but that doesn’t mean I wish for someone to try to kill her husband and herself.
since he's the owner of twitter now and he's going to push conspiracies maybe he can get sued like fox was with Dominion
Without a doubt. Twitter, for all of the attention it gets, isn't a routinely profitable business and yet Musk saw fit to overpay for it. Change is certainly coming for the wee little blue birdie.
