I think the Scott Adams piece the other day[0] described the system dynamics well:

"Once you’re sufficiently prominent, politics becomes a separating equilibrium; if you lean even slightly to one side, the other will pile on you so massively and traumatically that it will force you into their opponents’ open arms just for a shred of psychological security."

I think Biden giving credit to GM[1] and being used as a political football, prior to Musk entering politics in a big way himself, drove him away from the left and (by process of elimination) toward the right. Once you're down the rabbit hole, the rest is history.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46646475

[1] https://www.businessinsider.com/gm-ceo-joe-biden-elon-musk-t...

Yes.

People's true nature reveals once they stop caring about money.

To be fair, he was really good at faking.

I mean Werner Von Braun was a Nazi party member and knowingly used slave labor. Doesn’t make his rocketry advancements any less impressive.

Or Charles Darwin’s views of superior races.

Or Gandhi’s gray area views of pedophilia.

I mean if you’re going to discounted every person with a view you find distasteful your list of people you admire is going to be blank.

You may find Musk’s views distasteful but he’s had an enormous impact on EV’s, rocketry, hell space in general. I think it’s pretty awesome.

He meticulously worked on his image for decades.

I have a hypothesis that the Hedonic Treadmill[1] can cause actual harm to the human brain; I suspect that over time, in certain brains, extreme wealth erodes the reward centers such that some rich people can't help but be miserable, flailing for ever-elusive life satisfaction. It seems like a fairly serious bug in human software.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedonic_treadmill

I’ve also come to consider him to be a skilled business person. He negotiated a ridiculous low price for the Fremont ex-NUMMI plant. He secured funding to enable Tesla to survive the GFC. The list goes on. I’d argue that Elon’s biggest wins were business related, not technical. Not that there weren’t technical accomplishments, it’s just that the technological accomplishments were more incremental SV type stuff whereas the business accomplishments were more heroic. I also give Tesla credit for the success of model S. But I consider that to be a function of good execution, not of technology. If that would have flopped it would have been the end. But there were many possible ways for Tesla to die back then.

One of Elon’s key business skills is his ability to sell a narrative. I guess that goes hand in hand with the “bullshitter” thing. He seems to have a magical ability to hypnotize fanboys and investors into believing that Tesla is more than it actually is.

The auto industry is not very sexy from an investor point of view. It’s a mature market, very capital intensive, high risk, low margin. Yet somehow Tesla achieves an outsized market cap.

As humorously noted in the HBO Silicon Valley “no revenue” scene, investors reward you for future promises and punish you on actual delivery. But what if you could promise a future that remains perpetually in the future? And every delivery is not an end, but only a step along the way to this utopian/distopian vision? What if you “promise the moon”, er, I mean Mars? If you did this, then maybe you could have a perpetual pure play that never expires.

So back to the article. Is this the demise of Tesla? I don’t know if Tesla necessarily has “no path forward” as “just a car company”. But I think Elon’s ability to sell the “sci-fi future” is wearing out. Tesla has delivered on some difficult business cases with incremental technology, but the track record on the “impossible future“ stuff isn’t good. Also, the mainstream EV industry will become increasingly commoditized with new Chinese entrants, eroding margins. Tariffs keep you in saturated markets and don’t help you in growing markets. So maybe a bit of a demise for all?

As soon as they forgot this, their downfall began.

"The Dennises were traveling westbound on South 56th Street, toward the intersection with South Washington Street, in Tacoma, Washington, when their Tesla Model 3 suddenly and rapidly accelerated out of control, continuing to accelerate faster and faster for at least 5 seconds before crashing into a utility pole on the northwest corner of South 56th and South Washington streets shortly after 1:00 PM. 9. Video footage from a nearby business shows the Dennis Model 3 rapidly accelerating and swerving to avoid hitting other vehicles as it sped out of control. At no time did the Model 3s Automatic Emergency Braking (AEB) system engage prior to it crashing into the utility pole.

Immediately upon impact the Model 3 burst into flames, in what was only the beginning of an extremely hot fire that immediately engulfed the Model 3 and would burn for many hours before responders from the fire department were able to extinguish it completely.

Several bystanders ran to the vehicle and attempted to assist Jeff and Wendy Dennis but the Model 3s door handles would not operate by design making it impossible for anyone to open the doors from the outside of the vehicle. Several good Samaritans even attempted to use a baseball bat to break the car windows to help the Dennisses out of the burning vehicle. However, the increasingly intense fire forced them to distance themselves from the rapidly growing fire. They could only watch helplessly from a distance as the severely injured Jeff and Wendy burned in the inferno. The Tesla as it struck the utility pole.

[photos]

Seconds after impact the Tesla exploded into flames."

https://ia801700.us.archive.org/25/items/gov.uscourts.wawd.3...

Italics are mine

HN commenters sometimes reply to stories about Tesla crashes by asserting that it was the driver's fault, Tesla batteries rarely catch fire, etc.

Perhaps this comment will draw some of those replies

Other cases mentioning "sudden uncommanded acceleration" include

Inkie Lee v. Tesla, Inc. (C.D. Cal. 2020)

Djemil v. Tesla Inc (W.D. Wash. 2021)

Thakrar v. Tesla, Inc. (N.D. Ill. 2022)

Leach v. Tesla, Inc. (N.D. Cal. 2023)

There are hundreds of wrongful death cases involving Tesla fires

Tesla fans are entitled to their opinions

Given that, objectively speaking I could not call Tesla irrelevant.

This is a website that took Hyperloop seriously because Musk casually threw it out there...