Okay, that was all fun & games, but here’s the most wild one of all. This is the really disturbing one. Apparently, a Tesla whistleblower who was fired for breaking robots and teaching them how to kick-box, has proof that Elon Musk has completely lost his marbles and now thinks he’s actually a drug dealer, not a tech billionaire running Tesla, SpaceX, and The Boring Company. He wanders the halls of the Fremont factory and Gigafactory and tries to slyly sell factory workers Ambien. He tells them he’s the kingpin of Ambien in this region and is also attempting to take over the world. Sometimes, he threatens the line workers by telling them he’s going to make all of them unionize if they don’t buy his Ambien. Reportedly, there are lawsuits pending from workers, TSLA shorts, the SEC, the EPA, the CIA, and the Smurf Mafia (don’t ask).
Or not.
Yep. And we are seeing that it is far easier for the existing automakers to change the drivetrain than it is for Musk to convert Tesla from a niche manufacturer than a mass market one with competitive prices.
Yes, the most common interpretation interpretation of “natural born citizen” is that it means “US citizen at birth” rather than “born within the US.”
I kind of hope he does and he gets pushed out by the board and stockholders. He’s a brilliant guy but seems to not be able to get out of his own way.
Normally I’m in favor of CEO’s that have s sense of ownership in a company rather than a rotating list of good old boy assholes. Often there’s no middle and in my experience the latter prevails in corporate America. But he may need to go.
True.
The other difficult thing is that because Trump is now waging war on media outlets, people feel the need to “pick a side” – and so they either should utter distrust of the news, or not enough scepticism.
Employees complaining about their boss should probably be taken seriously, but also with a grain of salt – there may well be technical issues that Musk had wanted addressed so that things could keep moving, and do so safely.
It’s that old thing – people tend to trust the media, until the write something on a subject in which the reader is an expert, then you see all the gaps and hype and whatever else is wrong with the story.
I’m all for being critical of Musk, but this recent dogpile seems a little like hyped up bandwagon jumping by journos.
Most entrepreneurs have a maniacal side… if they can use it for good,we get good things… ; )
Does anyone remember Coda?
I happened to know someone who invested in them.
RIP Coda.
They basically set that money ablaze.
No one owes anyone success – even if the concept is sound and the cause worthy.
Quick, name the CEO of General Motors.
Now do Ford, Chrysler, Toyota, Hyundai, Blue Origin, Boeing, Caterpillar, Raytheon, etc.
You might actually know some of these if you care about these industries. But I bet you don’t know who any of them are dating. This is my clever way of pointing out that Musk is famous. Absurdly so. DELIBERATELY so.
That’s a business strategy, and it’s been a pretty effective one. (Worked for Edison, the original Henry Ford, and Trump, too.) Respect as always to Musk’s battalions of marketing people, who earn every one of the gazillions of dollars they’re paid to keep him as the shiniest object in three or four industries. Who indeed are reading these very words as they triage this thread to see if it’s worth intervening in.
But if you’re wondering why he’s going Charlie Sheen on us all of a sudden, it’s because fame is extremely toxic and he is not one of the small number of humans with built-in immunity to it. I mean, sure, there are other reasons, but that’s the driver. When Joe Chrysler has a bad quarter, there aren’t tabloid reporters staking out his house at 4:00 a.m. the next day.
He made this bed for himself, so my sympathy is limited, but I don’t fault him for cracking up. Almost anyone would, and the products he makes or says he’ll eventually make are totally irrelevant to that.
I’ll raise you:
Damn you Stonecutters!
No, but I remember the Citicar.
And Steve Jobs, who for some reason people remember so fondly, but he was in many ways just as big a mega-a-hole as Trump. I mean, Trump has done plenty of sleazy shit, but the routine abuse Jobs’ employees and colleagues are alleged to have had to endure is pretty appalling.
(Only he didn’t live long enough to get really crazy).
(PS – unlike Trump, I guess Jobs gave us a lot more than some cheesy reality TV and a bunch of hotels… so there’s that…)
Even better, replace (most) cars with better mobility solutions. Our cities are not made for cars and most people live in cities. Atmospheric pollution (which electric cars reduce and move but not solve) is only part of the problems cars create
I’m all for that. I own a car but use the bus and walk for 99% of my transpiration needs.
If we go further back, George Romney (Mitt’s dad, ran in 1968) was born in Mexico.
As for Musk himself, his mother was born in 1948 in Canada to an American father and a presumably-Canadian mother who were married to each other. By the law in force at the time of her birth, assuming that her father ever lived in the US and that she has never renounced her US citizenship, she is AFAICT a US citizen.
But, by the time he was born in 1978, US law had been tightened up. In order to pass her American citizenship down to her children, Maye Musk would have had to spend at least ten years in the US before they were born, including 5 years after the age of 14. AFAIK she did not, so Elon Musk was not a US citizen from birth.
And he has helped how? Tesla has yet to turn a profit, the Roadster was an electric Lotus Elise (which you were paying double the price for), and I have yet to see relevant progress in any technology directly related to EVs. If Tesla had the ability to double or triple battery power density the mythical $35k Model 3 would be delivered now, not 6 months or a year from now. Musk has been over selling since forever, coasting along on the idea that tech will catch up enough to make his promises a reality. Meanwhile, if a $35k EV Camry (with a +200 mile range) could be produced for any level of profit, Toyota would be rolling thousands out a month. Not to mention the same would apply to GM, Honda, or VAG…
As far as SpaceX, I assume enough smart people work and run it that they insulate it from a great deal of Elon’s bullshit.
You know what the major complaint in modern cars is? The add-on bullshit electrical things, nav systems, smart interfaces, the dozens of sensors now needed. Ironically Teslas are full of electrical things not core to making that motor spin. And you are correct, electric motors rarely fail compared to ICE systems. But EVs are not running synchronous 3 phase industrial motors, they need a great deal of high current electronics to handle the variable freqency configurations in most modern EV setups. While it is likely the motor will out last the car, it is unlikely the power control system will.
unnnnnhhhhhhhhh so true. I love love love 
old compacts, especially Japanese and Euros precisely because of their elegant simplicity. Todays Civic barely gets better gas mileage than this beauty
despite four decades of work by some of the world’s finest engineers to improve performance and efficiency, because they’ve been fighting four decades of work by sales and marketing to fatten the poor thing up to the tune of ~1/2 a ton. It’s a shame IMO.
Oh my gosh! THAT is soooo cuuuutttteee! I WANT ONE! Except I want mine pink with violet fenders.
