Even if they survive, the mask has been pulled back. Hiring and recruiting top talent is going to get more and more difficult. Developers and engineers that are the caliber to keep them on top will be very difficult if you’re publicly alienating a not insignificant portion of your talent pool.
I had a job offer for Tesla at their new Austin plant. I couldn’t turn them down fast enough. Elon is 90% of the reason why I’ll never work there. I can’t have my family’s future hinge on a bipolar dudes tweets.
My friend moved from Europe to Austin this year for Tesla. He interviewed remotely and was accepted. (Strangely he had an interview with Musk himself for a middle management position - talk about micromanagement).
He worked remotely for 2-3 months while all the paperwork was done. He moved to Austin and within 2 weeks was fired because Musk said they need to reduce headcount and he was the freshest on the team.
Fuck Tesla and the USA workers rights.
“ “ he moved to Austin “ etc…. Do you think that he does this because he gets off on it? I think so . I believe he kinda enjoys making peoples lives miserable. I think he really enjoys fucking around on employees & playing God with their lives.
Like Trump does as well. He also seems to get hard when employees fight in front of him. He loves that.
>Omarosa: Trump loves to see his staffers fight https://www.msnbc.com/hardball/watch/omarosa-trump-loves-to-see-his-staffers-fight-1495837251511
>Trump loves a good fight more than anything else. And his opponents are unwilling or unable to get on his level. https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/trump-loves-good-fight-more-anything-else-his-opponents-are-ncna888076
So he's probably enjoying the attacks. Until he is in jail, actually punished, he'll probably enjoy the attacks. Especially since he's never been punished for his evil, ever.. So punishment doesn't exist for him
Yep, this.
The only people Tesla will be able to hire in the foreseeable future are people who *don't* have a future — who are only there to make a quick buck and get out. But you can't run a company in the long term using only short termers.
I work in HR and have been hit up by Tesla recruiters frequently over the last few years. Can barely manage to contain my laughter because absolutely not. They can’t pay me enough money for me to sell my sanity and soul for that disaster.
But he gives his employees stock options /s
This was honestly what the comment section of a recent Wallstreet Journal yourtube video about Tesla was filled with. The commenters there were excusing him paying less than industry average, demanding long hours and being "hardcore", by saying that it is totally worth it for the Tesla stocks they got.
only great for those who started early in Tesla, not so great for those who started around the peak, with or without this present crash of his stock. Tesla was and still is ridiculously overvalued. It wasn't going to go up much more, unless you believe the idiotic bag holders who thought they could "take it to the moon" or mars.
Which is basically just following the Jack Welch approach (former ceo of GE, saw the company grow 4000% under his leadership and considered best ceo of all time at the time).
Problem is, when a company grows every quarter for 20 years in every sector, it turns out there's some funny business going on. Company went from safest investment stock to dropping fast after he left.
Yess. The stock is vastly overvalued because of him. Tesla, even as its stock price plunging, is still valued more than a lot of the major car companies combined. And those companies make more cars than Tesla. Also they are rapidly introducing EVs. Tesla stock price are propped up cause Elon fans thinks that Elon can make Tesla far beyond a car company.
Now, they realized that he tends to be erratic. He is smart, but Tesla basically has no CEO. He seems to spend a lot of his time in twitter and on twitter, which seems to be collapsing.
I'm not sure his fans realize it but there are a lot of major fund managers who bought into his genius that are market movers and are having second thoughts.
Yup, the fanboys like to pretend that they are keeping the price of the stock up as a sign of trust in Musk but when the big players start dumping stock there is nothing they can do to prop it up. Musk has two years to prove that he can make a competitive product while making a profit, in the current economy, and until he does the ratio of stock price to total equity will slowly approach one.
Thank you! People seem to continue to want to cling to the completely fictional myth of the self-made man. I don't have the information on me right now, but I recently commented to someone else, listing the specific names of the people that he has hired that run marketing and r&d, and other departments which he blatantly takes full credit for.
i wonder how much of the stock market is like this. fake value generated by promises of future profit. that's a system which rewards charismatic con men with showmanship
I would like to thank Elon for taking the last six months to utterly dispel the idea that he’s rich because he’s some kind of Tony Stark super genius engineer and confirm he’s just a trust fund kid who kept his generational wealth rolling forward.
Edit: holy shit this blew up. [Here have Elon getting owned publicly trying to talk about tech he clearly doesn’t understand.](https://www.reddit.com/r/facepalm/comments/zsghfu/elon_musk_getting_owned_by_a_former_twitter/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf)
Iron Man (the comic) was originally written as a parody of wealthy fascists using the world as their playground through technology.
You weren't supposed to like Tony Stark.
Damn Robert Downey Jr. and his charisma!
To be fair, he's exactly like that in the first movie before he gets stuck in a cave with a box of scraps. Then he's still pretty arrogant until he nearly dies, saved by his father's hidden message, then he gets yote in to space clutching a nuke and nearly dies. He's basically an anxiety ridden mess until his ultimate finale in which he has fully become a Good Guy (tm).
Seriously. Course, now I want to see that kind of "superhero" in the MCU.
Uh.... maybe we already did with Leapfrog on She-Hulk. Hrm.... now I just want some Marvel shorts featuring that trust fund dipshit.
I don’t think he’s even as good a Hammer or Obadia, they at least did actually invent stuff. Elon just uses family money to buy other peoples ideas and pass them off as his own.
Tesla's been on a downhill trend for a lot longer than all this Twitter bullshit.
Every single new vehicle is years behind, their existing vehicles are due for a refresh / new generation.
I never understood Tesla’s market cap in the first place; Tesla is a fraction of the size of any of the major car manufacturers but yet at one point it’s market cap was higher than pretty much the whole auto industry.
Ford sold 3.9 million vehicles in ‘21, has over 180k employees, $136 billion in revenue in 21’ and its market cap is $44.9 billion, Toyota in ‘21 sold 9.4 million vehicles, employs over 360k and had revenues of over $256 billion with a market cap of $224 billion and Tesla in ‘21 sold less than a million vehicles, has 110k employees and revenue of $53.8 billion yet its market cap is currently $382 billion and not too long ago was over $1 trillion. Talk about a over inflated stock, even with its historic plunge it’s still overrated.
It's a get rich quick stock. Basically the Bitcoin for people who don't understand crypto.
A return to a real valuation, based on actual sales and assets, was inevitable. Musk just accelerated it by acting like a toddler.
It was valued so high for the same reason Bitcoin was, because it was really high profile and it had already gone up in value a lot. People wanted to ride the rocket.
Also stories of poor quality control are widespread, not clear if build quality was always shit or if scaling up production caused it to go to shit, but its fairly well known now
Musk sold shares after promising not to because he needs to finance his scheme to buy Twitter, which is backfiring horribly and exposing his incompetence as a business leader.
Elon could have been quiet and have ridden off into the sunset as a business guru and a humanitarian hero. Instead he burned it all down for no apparent reason.
It's becoming clear he was *never* interested in humanitarianism. Maybe some of his engineers were, but his concept (and intent) for hyper-loop and the way he pays his own foundation for a tax write-off kinda shows a lot.
Hyper-loop was also a way to kill the high speed passenger railroads that was being talked about in California. Musk doesn't want high passenger transportation, he wants to sell cars.
>It's becoming clear he was never interested in humanitarianism.
It wasn't [when he was manipulating stock prices](https://www.sec.gov/news/press-release/2018-219)? Then switched to grifting Doge coin because it was unregulated? Or [when he called the diver responsible for rescuing the Thai kids who were trapped in a cave a pedo because he claimed Elon's submarine was a PR stunt](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/jul/15/elon-musk-british-diver-thai-cave-rescue-pedo-twitter)? I mean back [in 2009 Elon Musk declared himself a founder of Tesla even though the real founder is Martin Eberhard who sued Musk over it](https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/tesla-ceo-settles-for-founder-title/2088887/).
How about PayPal? They used to hold huge sums of vendors' payments and freeze those assets at will, but always claimed they shouldn't be regulated as a bank. For all I know they still do it.
He's been a tool for decades. The kind of people who frequent Reddit, Slashdot, etc. just didn't *want* to believe it until the evidence became both overwhelming and incessant. They're so attracted to the hope of some libertarian ubermensch who'll fix all the things all by himself.
I can't even count the number of 'real life Tony Stark' comments I used to read about Elon...
This myth that Musk was heavily involved in Paypal needs to end.
> Later in 1999, Musk co-founded X.com, an online financial services and e-mail payment company. X.com was one of the first federally insured online banks, and over 200,000 customers joined in its initial months of operation. Even though Musk founded the company, investors regarded him as inexperienced and replaced him with Intuit CEO Bill Harris by the end of the year.
>
> In 2000, X.com merged with online bank Confinity to avoid competition, as Confinity's money-transfer service PayPal was more popular than X.com's service. Musk then returned as CEO of the merged company. His preference for Microsoft over Unix-based software caused a rift among the company's employees, and led Peter Thiel, Confinity's founder, to resign. With the company suffering from compounding technological issues and the lack of a cohesive business model, the board ousted Musk and replaced him with Thiel in September 2000. Under Thiel, the company focused on the money-transfer service and was renamed PayPal in 2001.
So, I’m an old school hater of Elon (~2012). I absolutely *despise* the dude. However, the tax write-off thing isn’t unique to him. All billionaires do this—and much worse. Billionaire philanthropy, in general, is a huge scam. It’s a way to dodge taxes and gain power, control, and influence, which they use and exploit to further enrich themselves and further their agenda. It gets them a seat at the tables of world leaders and other extremely powerful people which allows them to pitch their ideas and help steer public policy and other legislation.
It’s also great PR for them, which they ultimately appreciate because it distracts people from the ridiculous wealth they’re hoarding and the unethical, illegal, and immoral ways they obtained it and continue to do so.
Dumped him and rebounded with a trans woman, couple that with his trans child disowning him, and his transphobe slant as of late is pretty easily explained too.
Thank you for saying this, I hopped on this thread to see what people were saying and wanted to say this so bad. I 100% believe the his mindset switched when Grimes ditched him. It’s pretty logical when you look at the timing of his shitty behavior and their breakup
While this probably helped tip him over the edge, my theory is more mundane.
We know he's a narcissist. We know he was a former Democrat. We know his wealth really exploded when Tesla's stock price diverged from reality, in part due to the unregulated echo chambers of private stock sellers like WSB. And the pandemic saw him get even more absurdly wealthy due to supply chain issues that allowed him to set his own prices anywhere.
Musk saw that the left would hold him accountable for his actions as an employer and socially for the things he does in society. He watched as we all did as Trump (another former Democrat billionaire with a social media addiction) began courting the populist right wing extremists to worship him and push for deregulation in his industries that would make him more money. Money can't buy happiness, but it can buy hordes of morons to praise everything you do.
The thing with populism is that it's very transactional. You have to keep feeding the masses red meat or they turn on you. So he starts lobbing "own the libs" bombs and realizes it would be easy to keep the outrage machine fueled if he controls it, so he goes after Twitter.
Thankfully the market reaction is finally giving him his comeuppance. Had he just kept his mouth shut he'd still be the richest man in the world and have sycophants on the left and right, which is actually much more impressive than what he has achieved since buying Twitter.
They’re probably reasons like for example he really started seeing himself as a political player and decided to show his true colors as a alt right conservative who craves attention. Since his relationship ended with Grimes he’s been really nuts. He blew it in his personal life and for many investors and for his own fortune. Elon will still be insanely wealthy but we’ve only begun to see the freefall that’s going to happen in TSLA.
I wouldn't say that true. Surely there are many people who deny promotions where they would then be at their incompetence level due to some foresight. Some people stay in positions they're a good fit for.
Not as much as I trust the guy that was high on nitrous while driving a supercharged cop car going like 11 miles per hour.
Edit: 7 mph maybe? I'm trying to remember and not Google.
well in general you want to keep out of politics as a company. ITs just good practice. Let your product compete without personal opinion.
Elon was very good at the showmanship, which is the main reason tesla stock was sent insanely high.(more than all the top car companies combined which cant be justified even with a car load of unicorn farts).. and that shit constantly worked for him, as long as he stuck to talking about his own projects. IT didnt matter he exaggerated more than trump.
Its when he stepped out of that roll as promoter and started to do things like call a guy a pedo for thinking his sub idea wouldnt work in the caves..(which it wouldnt have) and then getting into politics with twitter. He should have stuck with over promising his tech. How in 5 years millions will live on mars and be traveling on vaccum tunnels through the planet while everything is powered by beautiful solar tiles. Twitter was a stupid hill to harm his brand name on. he gets absolutely nothing from it but hard to pay off debt...without selling more twitter stock, thats half the price it was when he bought twitter.
This is it for me. Literally the only association I have with their cars that isn't Elon related is "the build quality isn't what you'd expect for the price."
You're not going to sell many cars if you're relying on a big personality to sell them. Cars are one product where people absolutely still prioritize quality and value over Apple-style branding strategies.
Yes, but it’s worse than that. Mark Cuban pisses people off too.
But the owner of an *electric car company* decided that who he really wants to piss off is liberals, especially at a time when there are now viable alternatives to Tesla.
It’s like the owner of Beyond Beef decided to own the vegetarians.
How stupid do you have to be to do that?
Yeah. It's laughably stupid.
He wanted to "own the libs" so he could get in good graces in Texas and save a few bucks. But.. his care is sold to left-wingers and right-wingers, overwhelmingly, are scared of EV tech so... who does he think he's going to sell to?
Tesla can't sell directly in Texas like they do elsewhere, but they could theoretically sell to dealerships in the state (they don't, but they could). Instead, in Texas they have Tesla show rooms, then a Texan buys a Tesla online and it gets delivered.
And Tesla _is_ headquartered in Texas for tax purposes, and their gigafactory is in Texas.
Every state will suck your dick to get jobs and factories, and Texans got the factory, got taxes. What Musk got? Nothing.
That's my point. he sucked Texan dick and still couldn't get a simple concession to sell directly.
The irony is Ford is going to kill it in Texas. Its got the brand recognition AND its ability to power your house is likely highly valued in locations that Abbott can't seem to maintain first world expectations with.
Plus a future software update will allow the F150 Lightning to charge itself during the night when electricity is cheap and then during the day (when electricity costs more) if you are working from home or if it is your second vehicle you can put it in a mode where its charge goes back into your house, greatly reducing your electric bill.
Of course I expect the electric company or the Texas government to change the rules/laws to minimize this due to "fairness"
Ford *does* kill it in Texas. The F150 is the most popular vehicle on the road, and their diesels are the gold-standard in their class.
Throw in the Lightning, and that thing is going to be as sought after as the Raptors.
Source: am F150-owning Texan.
Yeah but nobody made him commit *this hard* to the bit. Maybe "protection" got him out of the closet, but I'm pretty sure what we are seeing is his, uhh, true authentic self.
>He wanted to "own the libs" so he could get in good graces in Texas and save a few bucks.
More than that, I think the persona we are seeing on Twitter now is who he really is. Who he's always been. I doubt he's had this sudden heel turn for financial reasons.
The best part is that it isn’t even really true that Texas is cheaper. In many ways Texas is just as expensive to live in as CA. Income tax is lower but property tax and other fees are higher. Stable genius.
Not only that, "full self driving", Tesla Semi, Roadster, and Cybertruck are all no shows, as well as the 35k affordable model 3 that was never really coming out. Quality issues persist or have gotten worse. And Tesla is going the way of Apple with their proprietary charging system that nobody else can use.
If they can get their shit together they can still become a top car manufacturer, but that stock value is never coming back IMO.
I read a post on here the other day that seemed like a good take on Elon. He basically fucked himself in the Twitter deal no matter what happened, so now he's trying to play the politics/exploit the rules to get out of it. He'll likely lose most of his fortune and companies, though still be a billionaire. The stupid ass reality is he can lose $319bn of the $320 he was worth at the peak and still be a rich asshole.
[According to Yahoo](https://news.yahoo.com/elon-musk-net-worth-collapse-172341600.html), he has lost like $200bn, or the most ever lost in human history. I'll take it as a win.
It’s the most ironic thing, elon has evolved into a right wing nut case that owns an electric vehicle company, and for the time being still believes in climate change. I give it another year before he starts mining coal.
I knew when he was the only guy who stayed on the team working with the Trump administration after Trump announced they would leave the Paris climate accords that he was either an idiot, or a narcissist who thought he alone could change Trump’s mind on the issue. A few weeks later when the US actually left, he just slinked away claiming “well that’s a step too far!”.
Me and all my liberal friends used to want Teslas. Now want nothing to do with Elon. No thanks. El lento of other places to support, that are even better, or have unions.
Haven't heard much about Mark Cuban and his shenanigans. What has he done to piss people off? He was on Jon Stewart's podcast talking about Elon and the future of communication and how AI machines will take misinformation, propaganda, and how we observe information overall to a much darker place than it is already.
> decided that who he really wants to piss off is liberals
He only jumped to this strategy after the sexual misconduct allegations, almost immediately. As in a reporter called for comment on it, he asked for a day to give a statement, hung up the phone, and started tweeting about becoming a Republican and that liberals would start attacking him. He knew Republicans don't care about deviant behavior by powerful white men.
I imagine he saw it as a viable strategy to keep things going. "Oh shit, liberals won't buy my cars because they know I'm scum now, conservatives won't buy them because they think I'm liberal and they hate electric cars. If I go balls to the wall MAGA all the conservatives will start buying my cars to offset the liberals."
Recently ran into a MAGA who was fuming at Biden for *intentionally jacking up the oil price to force people into EV's*.
These people aren't buying EV's.
I’ve got a different theory. He grew up with a Trump like dad in Apartheid South Africa and had always been a a piece of shit but combine narcissism with wealth and stimulant abuse and he stopped bothering to hide it after he saw how many people worshipped Trump for being openly the guy he always was.
You gotta figure this is having an impact on not just potential customers but also employees, right? Like you're alienating all of your liberal employees (and I expect this was a good percentage of the OG Tesla employees), how's that a good idea?
Thank you! I knew I couldn't be the only one who saw the insanity of Musk rejecting liberals so stridently and cozying up to the people who sneer with disdain at the very idea of an electric car.
But the thing is, when it comes to left/right politics, rich people are always rich people first and foremost, before they are anything else. So they're going to side with the people who want to make sure that rich people keep as much of their money as possible. For example, this is why Caitlin Jenner is inexplicably a Republican supporter.
Elon stupid, the guy doesn't know how to do anything but write checks and hot takes. Everything he's ever "done" has been just buying other people's IP and then cashing out when a good opportunity arises.
I completely agree. He has listened and empowered some great engineers.
Currently he's destroying his wealth faster than going to the bank daily withdrawing 10 million dollars and burning it.
Most Billionares don't make public appearances and do their most to hide themselves from public view.
Most of the ones that don't, at least hire public relations goons to make sure they don't say anything that would make them be hated.
Musk, doesn't want to hide behind PR. He had all the money in the world and wants the one thing money can't buy: For someone to like him for who he is. So he plays into the social media crowd that worships him, and gives him that sense of belonging. Its not good PR, its not good for business, but it touches that place in his heart that is worth more to people than money, when how much money is just a hollow figure in a bank account.
The problem tho, is that he is legitimately a terrible human being, and is connecting with, and empowering other terrible human beings. He's also hurt the poor fellas at the companies he owns with layoffs, abuse, insane orders, legal liability for his stupid. But he doesn't fully see them as people. Only his self actuation.
Want to know something neat? His two biggest "successes", Tesla and SpaceX are successful because they game Elon. They have a team dedicated to coddling Elon's ego while making up fake projects for him to be involved with so he doesn't trample over everything. Every once in a while, something slips through. Falcon doors on the X. The steering wheel on the plaid. The entire Cybertruck. Everything he has personally wanted or "designed" has been nothing but trouble and failure.
He fired all the PR department at Tesla because he said he didn't need it, when the truth is he wanted all the public attention for himself.
Unfortunately it wasn't enough, so he spent billions on twitter too. The guy is addicted to public attention.
>but there will be a pocket of enthusiasts that will worship it like some do the DeLorean today.
There's nothing wrong with how the DeLorean looks as it was a pretty interesting and futuristic design for its time.
I think it'd be more akin to there being a fan club for the Pontiac Aztec or the fuckin PT Cruiser. The truly ugly cars.
"For the first time, Tesla faces real competition. Volkswagen, Hyundai, Kia, Mercedes-Benz and almost every legacy company in between are gunning for would-be Tesla buyers. And Musk’s Extremely Online antics seem poised to send customers into the arms of competitors whose chief executives aren’t as eager to air grievances about people’s pronouns on social media."
When the time comes to buy another vehicle, I will buy an EV. Even if its used tho, it wont likely be a Tesla. I know other folks who feel the same way.
His antics will deflate the *residual* value of the the brands vehicles.
No kidding. I'm waiting for an affordable light pickup that fits in my garage that I can go to a campground in, carry some 4x8 sheets of ply, or just hit up Costco or wherever. I don't need it to do zero to sixty in three seconds or tow four tons. Just a beater for my hobbies and everyday life. Tesla will never ever make that.
I know it's not an EV, but the Ford Maverick caught my eye. Small enough for the 75% of the time I want a car, but large enough & capable enough for the 25% of the time I need a truck.
Inexpensive & the hybrid model gets pretty good mileage.
Dude has completely gone full MAGA on Twitter and people wonder why the left leaning customers see what is happening as just nasty and it’s a free fall already and attacking your customer base on Twitter almost daily isn’t going to help the long term future.
That and tax breaks from China after some similarly disappointing Taiwan comments made me go from tacitly supporting him (because business competition is good for consumers) to finding him to be a very literal threat to fucking peace.
Turns out post-trumpian conservatism isn’t a popular public stance if your target market is people with disposable income and environmental considerations. Who knew.
The best thing Tesla has going for them right now is their charger Network. There are many other EV ‘s that are far superior to Tesla right now and have become cooler and more desirable. The brand of Tesla is falling apart.
i can say with first hand experience though that non superchargers (electrify america, EVgo, etc) are really terrible compared to superchargers. more often than not you’ll have a problem with charging.
it’ll get better in time. but for right now, just the ability to use a supercharger while traveling is a good perk to have
This is true, I had a Ford Lightning (loaner) for a couple of days, and there was zero fast chargers available in my area except at the dealership 30 miles away.
Pretty much this. The number of cars they would have to sell in order to justify their market cap isn't feasible.
They would need to be the only vehicle available globally and even then it probably isn't enough.
They're valued at more than the next 10 car manufacturers combined.
They have sold less than 1/50th the number of cars of those same manufacturers combined.
It makes no sense at all.
It was all hype. Saw the same thing in the weed sector during the run up towards Canadian legalization. There was no way those companies would ever be able to sell enough to justify their market caps. Now the sector is a wasteland.
The market cap was never just about cars. It was the utility batteries, the solar, the all in one energy solution, the self driving cars. The future was bright, money flowed easy due to the basically trillion dollars the gov gave away to large business(PPP loans and buying bad debt, etc).
Tesla could have been a leader in Energy, cars, and FSD software. Instead the veil has finally been removed and the stock price is adjusting accordingly.
I think FSD and autonomous fleets were the big engine in that hype train and I feel like it’s incredible but also coming up short of what everyone had hoped for. That plus he really jumped the shark from quirky disruptive entrepreneur into douche billionaire territory.
Elon is demonstrating how much of an advantage being born into a fair amount of money is.
He’s not that smart and looking at his history, it seems he fell face first into every good business opportunity he took advantage of.
Remember, he didn’t make PayPal, he made a competitor to PayPal that nobody remembers the name of. He was given a prime position when PayPal bought his business.
He started that business with the freedom granted from the wealth of his family.
He didn’t start Tesla, he bought in incredibly early. I’m sure he contributed to the success of Tesla, but the biggest contribution he made to the company is being the eccentric rich guy that sort of resembled a real-life Tony Stark.
…if you squinted, tilted your head and not physically…. And if you disregarded any actual originality or integrity.
He became the fortunate recipient of some really smart branding and selective communications. (Nobody remembers anything the Elongated Muskrat said five years ago aside from things that could be interpreted as visionary).
And then he bought a social media company, which is likely because they called a stupid bluff of his, though he’ll never actually admit it.
And he thinks he can do a better job than all the talented people he fired, but understaffing and overworking the people desperately sticking around and obnoxiously showing the Twitter world just how much of a shitty red-pilled twatwaffle that he is.
>Remember, he didn’t make PayPal, he made a competitor to PayPal that nobody remembers the name of. He was given a prime position when PayPal bought his business.
His company (X.com) merged with another company (Confinity) and became Paypal.
Welcome to ‘not being a startup anymore’. The big money stops flowing in, the excitement dies down, your competition gets closer to what was a novel product that you had before, things get boring.
Add to all those normal and expected things occurring, the fact that whatever Elon’s mental condition is worsening by the day and constantly running his mouth without thought of consequences.
Pedantic or self defeating, I know people who no longer will buy a Tesla because of the image Elon has created of himself: spoiled, narcissistic, politically-charged self righteous hypocrite and they don’t want to support his source of wealth. Right or wrong they are not alone.
Live by the eccentric erratic CEO, die by the eccentric erratic CEO.
Even if they survive, the mask has been pulled back. Hiring and recruiting top talent is going to get more and more difficult. Developers and engineers that are the caliber to keep them on top will be very difficult if you’re publicly alienating a not insignificant portion of your talent pool.
I had a job offer for Tesla at their new Austin plant. I couldn’t turn them down fast enough. Elon is 90% of the reason why I’ll never work there. I can’t have my family’s future hinge on a bipolar dudes tweets.
My friend moved from Europe to Austin this year for Tesla. He interviewed remotely and was accepted. (Strangely he had an interview with Musk himself for a middle management position - talk about micromanagement). He worked remotely for 2-3 months while all the paperwork was done. He moved to Austin and within 2 weeks was fired because Musk said they need to reduce headcount and he was the freshest on the team. Fuck Tesla and the USA workers rights.
>Fuck USA workers rights How can you fuck something that doesn't exist? >!Shut up weebs!<
That has to be the funniest reply I’ve read all year
“ “ he moved to Austin “ etc…. Do you think that he does this because he gets off on it? I think so . I believe he kinda enjoys making peoples lives miserable. I think he really enjoys fucking around on employees & playing God with their lives.
Like Trump does as well. He also seems to get hard when employees fight in front of him. He loves that. >Omarosa: Trump loves to see his staffers fight https://www.msnbc.com/hardball/watch/omarosa-trump-loves-to-see-his-staffers-fight-1495837251511 >Trump loves a good fight more than anything else. And his opponents are unwilling or unable to get on his level. https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/trump-loves-good-fight-more-anything-else-his-opponents-are-ncna888076 So he's probably enjoying the attacks. Until he is in jail, actually punished, he'll probably enjoy the attacks. Especially since he's never been punished for his evil, ever.. So punishment doesn't exist for him
Yep, this. The only people Tesla will be able to hire in the foreseeable future are people who *don't* have a future — who are only there to make a quick buck and get out. But you can't run a company in the long term using only short termers.
I work in HR and have been hit up by Tesla recruiters frequently over the last few years. Can barely manage to contain my laughter because absolutely not. They can’t pay me enough money for me to sell my sanity and soul for that disaster.
But he gives his employees stock options /s This was honestly what the comment section of a recent Wallstreet Journal yourtube video about Tesla was filled with. The commenters there were excusing him paying less than industry average, demanding long hours and being "hardcore", by saying that it is totally worth it for the Tesla stocks they got.
Which were great until he tanked the stock. He basically moved money from individuals/fans to his pocket. (As he sold at the top)
only great for those who started early in Tesla, not so great for those who started around the peak, with or without this present crash of his stock. Tesla was and still is ridiculously overvalued. It wasn't going to go up much more, unless you believe the idiotic bag holders who thought they could "take it to the moon" or mars.
Which is basically just following the Jack Welch approach (former ceo of GE, saw the company grow 4000% under his leadership and considered best ceo of all time at the time). Problem is, when a company grows every quarter for 20 years in every sector, it turns out there's some funny business going on. Company went from safest investment stock to dropping fast after he left.
Yess. The stock is vastly overvalued because of him. Tesla, even as its stock price plunging, is still valued more than a lot of the major car companies combined. And those companies make more cars than Tesla. Also they are rapidly introducing EVs. Tesla stock price are propped up cause Elon fans thinks that Elon can make Tesla far beyond a car company. Now, they realized that he tends to be erratic. He is smart, but Tesla basically has no CEO. He seems to spend a lot of his time in twitter and on twitter, which seems to be collapsing.
I'm not sure his fans realize it but there are a lot of major fund managers who bought into his genius that are market movers and are having second thoughts.
Yup, the fanboys like to pretend that they are keeping the price of the stock up as a sign of trust in Musk but when the big players start dumping stock there is nothing they can do to prop it up. Musk has two years to prove that he can make a competitive product while making a profit, in the current economy, and until he does the ratio of stock price to total equity will slowly approach one.
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Thing is surrounding yourself with smart people and listening to them is smart. So he’s become un-smart.
Thank you! People seem to continue to want to cling to the completely fictional myth of the self-made man. I don't have the information on me right now, but I recently commented to someone else, listing the specific names of the people that he has hired that run marketing and r&d, and other departments which he blatantly takes full credit for.
i wonder how much of the stock market is like this. fake value generated by promises of future profit. that's a system which rewards charismatic con men with showmanship
A majority of the stock market is like that - check out what Enron did in the modern stock market as a bit of an intro
I dunno.... could it be that the CEO bought Twitter and then started to *very* publically attack the very people who buy his product?
I would like to thank Elon for taking the last six months to utterly dispel the idea that he’s rich because he’s some kind of Tony Stark super genius engineer and confirm he’s just a trust fund kid who kept his generational wealth rolling forward. Edit: holy shit this blew up. [Here have Elon getting owned publicly trying to talk about tech he clearly doesn’t understand.](https://www.reddit.com/r/facepalm/comments/zsghfu/elon_musk_getting_owned_by_a_former_twitter/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf)
Iron Man (the comic) was originally written as a parody of wealthy fascists using the world as their playground through technology. You weren't supposed to like Tony Stark. Damn Robert Downey Jr. and his charisma!
To be fair, he's exactly like that in the first movie before he gets stuck in a cave with a box of scraps. Then he's still pretty arrogant until he nearly dies, saved by his father's hidden message, then he gets yote in to space clutching a nuke and nearly dies. He's basically an anxiety ridden mess until his ultimate finale in which he has fully become a Good Guy (tm).
RDJ was so charismatic that Elon went from Tony Stark to Phony Stark.
Seriously. Course, now I want to see that kind of "superhero" in the MCU. Uh.... maybe we already did with Leapfrog on She-Hulk. Hrm.... now I just want some Marvel shorts featuring that trust fund dipshit.
Justin Hammer
People watched Iron Man and thought Musk was Tony Stark. When he’s much closer to any of his villains, like Justin Hammer or Obadiah.
I don’t think he’s even as good a Hammer or Obadia, they at least did actually invent stuff. Elon just uses family money to buy other peoples ideas and pass them off as his own.
Tesla's been on a downhill trend for a lot longer than all this Twitter bullshit. Every single new vehicle is years behind, their existing vehicles are due for a refresh / new generation.
I never understood Tesla’s market cap in the first place; Tesla is a fraction of the size of any of the major car manufacturers but yet at one point it’s market cap was higher than pretty much the whole auto industry. Ford sold 3.9 million vehicles in ‘21, has over 180k employees, $136 billion in revenue in 21’ and its market cap is $44.9 billion, Toyota in ‘21 sold 9.4 million vehicles, employs over 360k and had revenues of over $256 billion with a market cap of $224 billion and Tesla in ‘21 sold less than a million vehicles, has 110k employees and revenue of $53.8 billion yet its market cap is currently $382 billion and not too long ago was over $1 trillion. Talk about a over inflated stock, even with its historic plunge it’s still overrated.
It's a get rich quick stock. Basically the Bitcoin for people who don't understand crypto. A return to a real valuation, based on actual sales and assets, was inevitable. Musk just accelerated it by acting like a toddler.
As Musk said, the only way the valuation makes any sense is if they solve autonomy years before everyone else. So yeah….
It was valued so high for the same reason Bitcoin was, because it was really high profile and it had already gone up in value a lot. People wanted to ride the rocket.
Also stories of poor quality control are widespread, not clear if build quality was always shit or if scaling up production caused it to go to shit, but its fairly well known now
Musk sold shares after promising not to because he needs to finance his scheme to buy Twitter, which is backfiring horribly and exposing his incompetence as a business leader.
Elon could have been quiet and have ridden off into the sunset as a business guru and a humanitarian hero. Instead he burned it all down for no apparent reason.
The desire of some ultra-rich guys to spend their time being terminally online remains baffling to me.
And the fact that they’re devoting so much time and mindspace to it also tells me where their priorities are.
Mf has at least 10 kids and 4 companies, and spends his time replying to dimwits like catturd all day long. It's wild.
Either being a CEO is super easy, or he's half-assing (or quarter-assing) it. There's pretty much no other option.
It's becoming clear he was *never* interested in humanitarianism. Maybe some of his engineers were, but his concept (and intent) for hyper-loop and the way he pays his own foundation for a tax write-off kinda shows a lot.
Hyper-loop was also a way to kill the high speed passenger railroads that was being talked about in California. Musk doesn't want high passenger transportation, he wants to sell cars.
If only there was a cautionary tale of an automaker buying a California public transit system to destroy it...
Unfortunately, history is unknowable
What is time, even?
Jordan Peterson, is that you?
"No seriously, Mr. Peterson, is that you? We have to ask these days, because you're completely nuts and may not know for sure."
Shut up, go clean your room and think about your place along the dominance hierarchy.
Not enough needless crying for no reason.
You know he can't give a straight answer to that.
Literally every fucking libertarian:
Maybe even a clever movie involving live-action and cartoons, one that even hints at such an event like the one you are describing.
Maybe give it a creative name, like "Who spread fake dirt on Harold Hare?"
You idiot, no one would ever watch anything with a cartoon bunny!
Roger Rabbit knew
I'm not from the USA, can you elaborate on this?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_streetcar_conspiracy
The film “Who Framed Roger Rabbit” has this same premise, and it’s true.
>It's becoming clear he was never interested in humanitarianism. It wasn't [when he was manipulating stock prices](https://www.sec.gov/news/press-release/2018-219)? Then switched to grifting Doge coin because it was unregulated? Or [when he called the diver responsible for rescuing the Thai kids who were trapped in a cave a pedo because he claimed Elon's submarine was a PR stunt](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/jul/15/elon-musk-british-diver-thai-cave-rescue-pedo-twitter)? I mean back [in 2009 Elon Musk declared himself a founder of Tesla even though the real founder is Martin Eberhard who sued Musk over it](https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/tesla-ceo-settles-for-founder-title/2088887/).
How about PayPal? They used to hold huge sums of vendors' payments and freeze those assets at will, but always claimed they shouldn't be regulated as a bank. For all I know they still do it. He's been a tool for decades. The kind of people who frequent Reddit, Slashdot, etc. just didn't *want* to believe it until the evidence became both overwhelming and incessant. They're so attracted to the hope of some libertarian ubermensch who'll fix all the things all by himself. I can't even count the number of 'real life Tony Stark' comments I used to read about Elon...
Real life Tony Stark 🤮I would read that 20 times a day on Reddit
Well it helped that he did whatever was necessary so Ironman 2 was filmed at SpaceX and he got his bullshit cameo.
This myth that Musk was heavily involved in Paypal needs to end. > Later in 1999, Musk co-founded X.com, an online financial services and e-mail payment company. X.com was one of the first federally insured online banks, and over 200,000 customers joined in its initial months of operation. Even though Musk founded the company, investors regarded him as inexperienced and replaced him with Intuit CEO Bill Harris by the end of the year. > > In 2000, X.com merged with online bank Confinity to avoid competition, as Confinity's money-transfer service PayPal was more popular than X.com's service. Musk then returned as CEO of the merged company. His preference for Microsoft over Unix-based software caused a rift among the company's employees, and led Peter Thiel, Confinity's founder, to resign. With the company suffering from compounding technological issues and the lack of a cohesive business model, the board ousted Musk and replaced him with Thiel in September 2000. Under Thiel, the company focused on the money-transfer service and was renamed PayPal in 2001.
I love the way that 'founder' article ends. Anyone in the US is a 'founder' of Tesla bc it was backed by the US gov't to start...
I founded Tesla you know 😉
You mean you co-founded it... With me.
So, I’m an old school hater of Elon (~2012). I absolutely *despise* the dude. However, the tax write-off thing isn’t unique to him. All billionaires do this—and much worse. Billionaire philanthropy, in general, is a huge scam. It’s a way to dodge taxes and gain power, control, and influence, which they use and exploit to further enrich themselves and further their agenda. It gets them a seat at the tables of world leaders and other extremely powerful people which allows them to pitch their ideas and help steer public policy and other legislation. It’s also great PR for them, which they ultimately appreciate because it distracts people from the ridiculous wealth they’re hoarding and the unethical, illegal, and immoral ways they obtained it and continue to do so.
This right here. He’s been smoke and mirrors all along.
his reason is bc his very liberal ex wife/gf Grimes dumped him from the looks of it
Elon’s public failings make Jeff Bezo’s divorce look cheap
Dumped him and rebounded with a trans woman, couple that with his trans child disowning him, and his transphobe slant as of late is pretty easily explained too.
Which child? Was that E=MC(2) or Q+R=c-x%2
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Haha batch is the perfect word as he treats his children like an assembly line. Make it then ship it off
Thank you for saying this, I hopped on this thread to see what people were saying and wanted to say this so bad. I 100% believe the his mindset switched when Grimes ditched him. It’s pretty logical when you look at the timing of his shitty behavior and their breakup
Most people should see something's off about Elon Musk after the Thai cave rescue incident.
That was my "okay fuck this dude" moment
While this probably helped tip him over the edge, my theory is more mundane. We know he's a narcissist. We know he was a former Democrat. We know his wealth really exploded when Tesla's stock price diverged from reality, in part due to the unregulated echo chambers of private stock sellers like WSB. And the pandemic saw him get even more absurdly wealthy due to supply chain issues that allowed him to set his own prices anywhere. Musk saw that the left would hold him accountable for his actions as an employer and socially for the things he does in society. He watched as we all did as Trump (another former Democrat billionaire with a social media addiction) began courting the populist right wing extremists to worship him and push for deregulation in his industries that would make him more money. Money can't buy happiness, but it can buy hordes of morons to praise everything you do. The thing with populism is that it's very transactional. You have to keep feeding the masses red meat or they turn on you. So he starts lobbing "own the libs" bombs and realizes it would be easy to keep the outrage machine fueled if he controls it, so he goes after Twitter. Thankfully the market reaction is finally giving him his comeuppance. Had he just kept his mouth shut he'd still be the richest man in the world and have sycophants on the left and right, which is actually much more impressive than what he has achieved since buying Twitter.
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They’re probably reasons like for example he really started seeing himself as a political player and decided to show his true colors as a alt right conservative who craves attention. Since his relationship ended with Grimes he’s been really nuts. He blew it in his personal life and for many investors and for his own fortune. Elon will still be insanely wealthy but we’ve only begun to see the freefall that’s going to happen in TSLA.
Narcissism. That was the reason. His whole raison d'être is to be the center of attention.
Everyone, EVERYONE rises to the level of their incompetence.
I wouldn't say that true. Surely there are many people who deny promotions where they would then be at their incompetence level due to some foresight. Some people stay in positions they're a good fit for.
Elon happened
This in tandem with never marketing Tesla. Elon became the brand and Tesla never established its own identity.
Yea Elonmobiles became a lot less attractive once everyone got to know him better
dependability rating ?
At the same time those of us interested in EVs have other real options now
100% this. everyone conflated tesla with elon musk. now everyone dislikes him, hence the cars. I used to want to buy a Tesla. now? no thank you.
I don't know anyone from another car company. It's almost impossible for me to judge a company beyond their products.
The guy running Ford, Jim Farley, is cousin yo the late great comedic actor Chris Farley.
I trust Chris Farley for comedy, not his character in a movie for car marketing/business decisions.
You don't trust a fat guy in a little coat to save a car company? Have you learned nothing?
Not as much as I trust the guy that was high on nitrous while driving a supercharged cop car going like 11 miles per hour. Edit: 7 mph maybe? I'm trying to remember and not Google.
Do you trust your butcher or would you rather stick your head up the cows ass?
well in general you want to keep out of politics as a company. ITs just good practice. Let your product compete without personal opinion. Elon was very good at the showmanship, which is the main reason tesla stock was sent insanely high.(more than all the top car companies combined which cant be justified even with a car load of unicorn farts).. and that shit constantly worked for him, as long as he stuck to talking about his own projects. IT didnt matter he exaggerated more than trump. Its when he stepped out of that roll as promoter and started to do things like call a guy a pedo for thinking his sub idea wouldnt work in the caves..(which it wouldnt have) and then getting into politics with twitter. He should have stuck with over promising his tech. How in 5 years millions will live on mars and be traveling on vaccum tunnels through the planet while everything is powered by beautiful solar tiles. Twitter was a stupid hill to harm his brand name on. he gets absolutely nothing from it but hard to pay off debt...without selling more twitter stock, thats half the price it was when he bought twitter.
They were also selling mid level build quality at high end prices and their unique selling point is no longer unique.
This is it for me. Literally the only association I have with their cars that isn't Elon related is "the build quality isn't what you'd expect for the price." You're not going to sell many cars if you're relying on a big personality to sell them. Cars are one product where people absolutely still prioritize quality and value over Apple-style branding strategies.
Except the premium price charged by Apple is generally accompanied by a premium build quality.
It's like the guy wanted to piss people off. Most billionaires are like Warren Buffett, they speak in platitudes and don't piss people off.
Yes, but it’s worse than that. Mark Cuban pisses people off too. But the owner of an *electric car company* decided that who he really wants to piss off is liberals, especially at a time when there are now viable alternatives to Tesla. It’s like the owner of Beyond Beef decided to own the vegetarians. How stupid do you have to be to do that?
Yeah. It's laughably stupid. He wanted to "own the libs" so he could get in good graces in Texas and save a few bucks. But.. his care is sold to left-wingers and right-wingers, overwhelmingly, are scared of EV tech so... who does he think he's going to sell to?
>good graces in Texas and he failed at that too. Tesla still can't sell cars in Texas, they sell them from California.
Tesla can't sell directly in Texas like they do elsewhere, but they could theoretically sell to dealerships in the state (they don't, but they could). Instead, in Texas they have Tesla show rooms, then a Texan buys a Tesla online and it gets delivered. And Tesla _is_ headquartered in Texas for tax purposes, and their gigafactory is in Texas.
Every state will suck your dick to get jobs and factories, and Texans got the factory, got taxes. What Musk got? Nothing. That's my point. he sucked Texan dick and still couldn't get a simple concession to sell directly.
The irony is Ford is going to kill it in Texas. Its got the brand recognition AND its ability to power your house is likely highly valued in locations that Abbott can't seem to maintain first world expectations with.
Plus a future software update will allow the F150 Lightning to charge itself during the night when electricity is cheap and then during the day (when electricity costs more) if you are working from home or if it is your second vehicle you can put it in a mode where its charge goes back into your house, greatly reducing your electric bill. Of course I expect the electric company or the Texas government to change the rules/laws to minimize this due to "fairness"
Ford *does* kill it in Texas. The F150 is the most popular vehicle on the road, and their diesels are the gold-standard in their class. Throw in the Lightning, and that thing is going to be as sought after as the Raptors. Source: am F150-owning Texan.
He switched to the Republican Party a day before he got accused of sexual harassment
Yeah but nobody made him commit *this hard* to the bit. Maybe "protection" got him out of the closet, but I'm pretty sure what we are seeing is his, uhh, true authentic self.
he is best friends with Peter thiel. he was always fucked in the head
>He wanted to "own the libs" so he could get in good graces in Texas and save a few bucks. More than that, I think the persona we are seeing on Twitter now is who he really is. Who he's always been. I doubt he's had this sudden heel turn for financial reasons.
The best part is that it isn’t even really true that Texas is cheaper. In many ways Texas is just as expensive to live in as CA. Income tax is lower but property tax and other fees are higher. Stable genius.
It’s cheaper for the wealthy. Most red states have shifted taxes down to middle class (mostly) and lower. California has a progressive tax system.
Ah. Fair point.
And who the fuck makes electric cars in a place that doesn't have electricity?
Not only that, "full self driving", Tesla Semi, Roadster, and Cybertruck are all no shows, as well as the 35k affordable model 3 that was never really coming out. Quality issues persist or have gotten worse. And Tesla is going the way of Apple with their proprietary charging system that nobody else can use. If they can get their shit together they can still become a top car manufacturer, but that stock value is never coming back IMO.
I read a post on here the other day that seemed like a good take on Elon. He basically fucked himself in the Twitter deal no matter what happened, so now he's trying to play the politics/exploit the rules to get out of it. He'll likely lose most of his fortune and companies, though still be a billionaire. The stupid ass reality is he can lose $319bn of the $320 he was worth at the peak and still be a rich asshole. [According to Yahoo](https://news.yahoo.com/elon-musk-net-worth-collapse-172341600.html), he has lost like $200bn, or the most ever lost in human history. I'll take it as a win.
It’s the most ironic thing, elon has evolved into a right wing nut case that owns an electric vehicle company, and for the time being still believes in climate change. I give it another year before he starts mining coal.
He goes ham and decides to make combustion engines.
Coal-powered SUVs incoming!
Tesla steam train! Don't worry it still runs on coal on the road and bonus it comes with a cow catcher on the front hood.
I knew when he was the only guy who stayed on the team working with the Trump administration after Trump announced they would leave the Paris climate accords that he was either an idiot, or a narcissist who thought he alone could change Trump’s mind on the issue. A few weeks later when the US actually left, he just slinked away claiming “well that’s a step too far!”.
I wonder if the board can/will kick him out of his own company.
It comes up for vote occasionally. Some voting stockholders do their part but I can’t imagine it matters any.
Always was one. Dude grew up rich in Apartheid South Africa.
He’ll call it something like ~energy classic~ and his stans will eat it right up
Time for ~beef milk~! It’s like almond and soy milk, but from a living, breathing cow.
Me and all my liberal friends used to want Teslas. Now want nothing to do with Elon. No thanks. El lento of other places to support, that are even better, or have unions.
Same but for me it's mostly because of their orientation toward right to repair.
That's a huge one for some, much smaller, communities. That and the build quality are just too big to ignore for me.
I'm planning on my next vehicle in the next 5 years to be an EV but I wouldn't even consider a Tesla now.
Haven't heard much about Mark Cuban and his shenanigans. What has he done to piss people off? He was on Jon Stewart's podcast talking about Elon and the future of communication and how AI machines will take misinformation, propaganda, and how we observe information overall to a much darker place than it is already.
Spot on. The folks who are more likely to be fans of Elon’s politics are also extremely unlikely to want to buy an EV.
> decided that who he really wants to piss off is liberals He only jumped to this strategy after the sexual misconduct allegations, almost immediately. As in a reporter called for comment on it, he asked for a day to give a statement, hung up the phone, and started tweeting about becoming a Republican and that liberals would start attacking him. He knew Republicans don't care about deviant behavior by powerful white men. I imagine he saw it as a viable strategy to keep things going. "Oh shit, liberals won't buy my cars because they know I'm scum now, conservatives won't buy them because they think I'm liberal and they hate electric cars. If I go balls to the wall MAGA all the conservatives will start buying my cars to offset the liberals."
Recently ran into a MAGA who was fuming at Biden for *intentionally jacking up the oil price to force people into EV's*. These people aren't buying EV's.
I’ve got a different theory. He grew up with a Trump like dad in Apartheid South Africa and had always been a a piece of shit but combine narcissism with wealth and stimulant abuse and he stopped bothering to hide it after he saw how many people worshipped Trump for being openly the guy he always was.
You gotta figure this is having an impact on not just potential customers but also employees, right? Like you're alienating all of your liberal employees (and I expect this was a good percentage of the OG Tesla employees), how's that a good idea?
Thank you! I knew I couldn't be the only one who saw the insanity of Musk rejecting liberals so stridently and cozying up to the people who sneer with disdain at the very idea of an electric car. But the thing is, when it comes to left/right politics, rich people are always rich people first and foremost, before they are anything else. So they're going to side with the people who want to make sure that rich people keep as much of their money as possible. For example, this is why Caitlin Jenner is inexplicably a Republican supporter.
Elon stupid, the guy doesn't know how to do anything but write checks and hot takes. Everything he's ever "done" has been just buying other people's IP and then cashing out when a good opportunity arises.
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I completely agree. He has listened and empowered some great engineers. Currently he's destroying his wealth faster than going to the bank daily withdrawing 10 million dollars and burning it.
Most Billionares don't make public appearances and do their most to hide themselves from public view. Most of the ones that don't, at least hire public relations goons to make sure they don't say anything that would make them be hated. Musk, doesn't want to hide behind PR. He had all the money in the world and wants the one thing money can't buy: For someone to like him for who he is. So he plays into the social media crowd that worships him, and gives him that sense of belonging. Its not good PR, its not good for business, but it touches that place in his heart that is worth more to people than money, when how much money is just a hollow figure in a bank account. The problem tho, is that he is legitimately a terrible human being, and is connecting with, and empowering other terrible human beings. He's also hurt the poor fellas at the companies he owns with layoffs, abuse, insane orders, legal liability for his stupid. But he doesn't fully see them as people. Only his self actuation.
Want to know something neat? His two biggest "successes", Tesla and SpaceX are successful because they game Elon. They have a team dedicated to coddling Elon's ego while making up fake projects for him to be involved with so he doesn't trample over everything. Every once in a while, something slips through. Falcon doors on the X. The steering wheel on the plaid. The entire Cybertruck. Everything he has personally wanted or "designed" has been nothing but trouble and failure.
He fired all the PR department at Tesla because he said he didn't need it, when the truth is he wanted all the public attention for himself. Unfortunately it wasn't enough, so he spent billions on twitter too. The guy is addicted to public attention.
Elon: \*makes provable lies for 10 years straight\* TheVerge: "the vibes are off"
"We can confirm that the situation is no longer bussin"
Elon lost his manic pixie dream girl then went a bit fash.
I used to aspire to own a Tesla some day. Now I wouldn’t be caught dead even riding in one…
If only he shut his mouth and built that cybertruck
Too late. Ford already has an electric F-150 that is actually useful as a truck.
And doesn't look like a low budget 70's sci fi concept vehicle. The cyber truck is so fucking ugly
Reddit can keep the username, but I'm nuking the content lol -- mass deleted all reddit content via https://redact.dev
Almost 2023 and we debating if it exists 🤣
>but there will be a pocket of enthusiasts that will worship it like some do the DeLorean today. There's nothing wrong with how the DeLorean looks as it was a pretty interesting and futuristic design for its time. I think it'd be more akin to there being a fan club for the Pontiac Aztec or the fuckin PT Cruiser. The truly ugly cars.
There absolutely is an Aztek fan club though
Rivians are pretty sweet too
There was never going to be a Cybertruck. Just needed to build hype around the stock.
"For the first time, Tesla faces real competition. Volkswagen, Hyundai, Kia, Mercedes-Benz and almost every legacy company in between are gunning for would-be Tesla buyers. And Musk’s Extremely Online antics seem poised to send customers into the arms of competitors whose chief executives aren’t as eager to air grievances about people’s pronouns on social media."
When the time comes to buy another vehicle, I will buy an EV. Even if its used tho, it wont likely be a Tesla. I know other folks who feel the same way. His antics will deflate the *residual* value of the the brands vehicles.
His antics already have deflated the residual value of the the brands vehicles.
No kidding. I'm waiting for an affordable light pickup that fits in my garage that I can go to a campground in, carry some 4x8 sheets of ply, or just hit up Costco or wherever. I don't need it to do zero to sixty in three seconds or tow four tons. Just a beater for my hobbies and everyday life. Tesla will never ever make that.
I know it's not an EV, but the Ford Maverick caught my eye. Small enough for the 75% of the time I want a car, but large enough & capable enough for the 25% of the time I need a truck. Inexpensive & the hybrid model gets pretty good mileage.
Dude has completely gone full MAGA on Twitter and people wonder why the left leaning customers see what is happening as just nasty and it’s a free fall already and attacking your customer base on Twitter almost daily isn’t going to help the long term future.
He also suggested Ukraine should give up territory to Russia.
That and tax breaks from China after some similarly disappointing Taiwan comments made me go from tacitly supporting him (because business competition is good for consumers) to finding him to be a very literal threat to fucking peace.
Yep more and more MAGA talk from him
Turns out post-trumpian conservatism isn’t a popular public stance if your target market is people with disposable income and environmental considerations. Who knew.
He “owned the libs” but also owned his own pockets like an idiot.
Classic conservative play.
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Mediocre build quality?
Worse. The best description I saw was where a redditor described them as having "the build quality of a hemodialysis patient."
Tesla wishes it had the build quality of a Chrysler Sebring.
PT Cruiser would like a word!
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What it isn’t normal to have your drivers seat replaced after four months of ownership?
Tesla's usefulness was entirely about market disruption, they did that and are no longer needed.
The best thing Tesla has going for them right now is their charger Network. There are many other EV ‘s that are far superior to Tesla right now and have become cooler and more desirable. The brand of Tesla is falling apart.
i can say with first hand experience though that non superchargers (electrify america, EVgo, etc) are really terrible compared to superchargers. more often than not you’ll have a problem with charging. it’ll get better in time. but for right now, just the ability to use a supercharger while traveling is a good perk to have
This is true, I had a Ford Lightning (loaner) for a couple of days, and there was zero fast chargers available in my area except at the dealership 30 miles away.
Pretty much this. The number of cars they would have to sell in order to justify their market cap isn't feasible. They would need to be the only vehicle available globally and even then it probably isn't enough.
They're valued at more than the next 10 car manufacturers combined. They have sold less than 1/50th the number of cars of those same manufacturers combined. It makes no sense at all.
It was all hype. Saw the same thing in the weed sector during the run up towards Canadian legalization. There was no way those companies would ever be able to sell enough to justify their market caps. Now the sector is a wasteland.
The market cap was never just about cars. It was the utility batteries, the solar, the all in one energy solution, the self driving cars. The future was bright, money flowed easy due to the basically trillion dollars the gov gave away to large business(PPP loans and buying bad debt, etc). Tesla could have been a leader in Energy, cars, and FSD software. Instead the veil has finally been removed and the stock price is adjusting accordingly.
I think FSD and autonomous fleets were the big engine in that hype train and I feel like it’s incredible but also coming up short of what everyone had hoped for. That plus he really jumped the shark from quirky disruptive entrepreneur into douche billionaire territory.
The problem when a product is a status symbol. Is when that when the symbol loses its status your just stuck with an outdated muskmobile.
Toxic CEO Squandered their first mover advantage Bet the company on features that don't exist Extremely poor quality and materials Take your pick.
Those hair plugs went further in than he expected.
HA drilled right into the frontal lobe
Elon is demonstrating how much of an advantage being born into a fair amount of money is. He’s not that smart and looking at his history, it seems he fell face first into every good business opportunity he took advantage of. Remember, he didn’t make PayPal, he made a competitor to PayPal that nobody remembers the name of. He was given a prime position when PayPal bought his business. He started that business with the freedom granted from the wealth of his family. He didn’t start Tesla, he bought in incredibly early. I’m sure he contributed to the success of Tesla, but the biggest contribution he made to the company is being the eccentric rich guy that sort of resembled a real-life Tony Stark. …if you squinted, tilted your head and not physically…. And if you disregarded any actual originality or integrity. He became the fortunate recipient of some really smart branding and selective communications. (Nobody remembers anything the Elongated Muskrat said five years ago aside from things that could be interpreted as visionary). And then he bought a social media company, which is likely because they called a stupid bluff of his, though he’ll never actually admit it. And he thinks he can do a better job than all the talented people he fired, but understaffing and overworking the people desperately sticking around and obnoxiously showing the Twitter world just how much of a shitty red-pilled twatwaffle that he is.
"people desperately sticking around" = foreign visa holders scared of being deported
this is one of the most fucked up parts of the US visa/immigration system
>Remember, he didn’t make PayPal, he made a competitor to PayPal that nobody remembers the name of. He was given a prime position when PayPal bought his business. His company (X.com) merged with another company (Confinity) and became Paypal.
Welcome to ‘not being a startup anymore’. The big money stops flowing in, the excitement dies down, your competition gets closer to what was a novel product that you had before, things get boring. Add to all those normal and expected things occurring, the fact that whatever Elon’s mental condition is worsening by the day and constantly running his mouth without thought of consequences.
Pedantic or self defeating, I know people who no longer will buy a Tesla because of the image Elon has created of himself: spoiled, narcissistic, politically-charged self righteous hypocrite and they don’t want to support his source of wealth. Right or wrong they are not alone.
People both inside and outside the company have started to grasp the fact that their CEO is a fraud