WelshBluebird
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If the rumours of him having a fully blown ket addiction are true, then it isn't that hard to work out.
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Elon Musk - the world's "greatest" spiv?
- Thread starter brad465
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I think he admitted to this himself on a X audio conference (space?). That said, should we believe anything he says or admits to?
1D54
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Rumours from where? He has only really come to the attention of the UK press recently in regards to these outbursts because of his interest in Reform and Farage but he has been acting in this way for donkeys years and any serious addiction to drugs make wonder how he remains the mega success story he is.
We can all indeed wonder. He's on video smoking weed too - although that's generally legal in much of the US now.
I think a lot of this drugs stuff is over-stated tbh. There's very little indication that he's getting through any more weed than hundreds of thousands of other people, who have not for the most part turned into megalomanic fascists. Assuming that he's micro-dosing the Ketamine as he claims, that's also a fairly well-researched treatment for various forms of depression, and has very little to do with Ketamine-use as a recreational drug.
Furthermore, Trump is himself an utterly dreadful person with many of the same tendencies, and as far as I understand it it's been years since he last indulged in anything more exciting than a binful of McDonalds.
I think there’s a more boring explanation - which is that Musk has a short attention span, and unlike many other countries, UK news is easily digestible to an English speaker.
He therefore takes hasty, knee-jerk positions on various topics which seem valid at first glance, but fall apart when given more thought. Musk never gets to the second phase before moving on to the next development.
The suggestions that he is an evil plotting mastermind gives him more credit than he deserves.
He therefore takes hasty, knee-jerk positions on various topics which seem valid at first glance, but fall apart when given more thought. Musk never gets to the second phase before moving on to the next development.
The suggestions that he is an evil plotting mastermind gives him more credit than he deserves.
He acts like a child at times and seems to love the feeling of being able to communicate with (and get responses from) world leaders and other important people, presumably thinking in his head that he's more powerful than all of them.
SuspectUsual
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Is *he* a mega success story, or the companies he's involved with and which are very largely run by others?
I doubt be does anything more than shout and threaten staff at Tesla, Space X and make their life miserable as he changes his mind on a regular basis.
I bet most staff are happy he's wasting his time on X and trying to run the world, but sadly Tesla is only going downwards as it continues to not sell cars and doesn't appear to have anything new on the horizon that all car makers need to stay in business.
So Elon comes in with his big bold promises about self driving, AI etc and pumps the stock. Most investors know it's all fake but are happy if the stock goes up because Elon held an event that has his base all excited.
It's obviously all going to come crashing down eventually and he's making it more likely every day by who be attacks. He will eventually find that all the money in the world won't save him.
I don't mean prison as rich people in the USA don't go to jail, but being found out and ending up irrelevant and ignored. That will be a far bigger punishment for him.
Easy to argue that the successes are in spite of him. Tesla and especially SpaceX have benefited from generous government subsidies/contracts/policies, such as the US gov's decision to simply buy human space flight services from private companies as opposed to the Space Shuttle approach where NASA was far more involved. Tesla used to make more money selling its carbon credits than on the cars themselves, and they're in real trouble now that other Western manufacturers are in the market and China's coming for all of them.
There have been previous reports of how SX/Tesla execs have had to figure out how to "manage" him when he attempts to interfere, and from rank and file employees who appreciate when he becomes distracted on something else and stays away.
His stewardship of Twitter is probably the clearest example of what happens when he directly runs a business that actually has to compete in the open market. That and the "success" of the Cybertruck.
He's been talking even more nonsense about Germany, and has apparently moved on to Norway. In Norway he seems to have done the same thing as in Britain by skipping the extreme parties who have any kind of electability and going straight for supporting the neo-Nazis.
A lot of this, along with Trump's posturing on Greenland and the Panama Canal, could just be positioning so that the agressive-but-less-extreme policies that they actually come in with are more of a relief. I'm not convinced though - it would involve an ability to stick to somebody else's script which I think Musk lacks. He really does just seem to be a pathetic edge-lord with billions to waste on his hobby.
brad465
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I don't know what the law/policy on sectioning is in the US, but I wouldn't be surprised if in the UK there are patients who have been sectioned for less than what Musk is publicly displaying.
Cloud Strife
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Tesla at this point is still benefiting from horrible decisions made by the other manufacturers. For instance, Tesla is very good at pushing out OTA updates to improve things, whereas other manufacturers are barely pushing them out, or they're very difficult to do without visiting the dealer. Then there's the general UI/UX, which on Tesla works well, but VW (for instance) have horrible interfaces that are simply slow, laggy and unusable.
brad465
Established Member
I'm not familiar with car sales, but I wonder if Musk's tirade towards the UK will cause Tesla car prices to drop in this country, especially relative to other countries? If users don't want to be associated with the brand there maybe a glut of cars available that dealers then try to get rid of.
For me it seemed that he got himself into some odd corners of the internet during the pandemic
5 years ago, I would have agreed, but such wonderful ideas as the Cybertruck, and 'X', I wonder if the success was despite him, rather than because?
They already have a problematic international glut of cars, and had a pretty awful year in 2024. On a fundamental level though, the company is trading at some insane multiple of what it's actually worth, so whether they sell any cars may be beside the point.
That's the thing. Tesla's stock price is based on what Elon keeps promising (even though it never happens, or it happens in form of the Cybertruck that had two million 'orders' and has sold around 50-70,000 with production now slowing or stopping) and the cult status of Elon himself, which Elon seems desperate to hurt.
Tesla is not going to get FSD working properly anytime soon, hence wanting to remove regulations and oversight as well as legal liability, the Robotaxi is a con, his other invention is just a bus with more steps, and there's no work on a smaller and cheaper EV - or the new roadster that a lot of people have had a deposit on for years. A car that incidentally has impossible specs and will never be as advertised.
I am a fan of the Powerwall 3 home battery but the Tesla brand is putting me off getting it.
Tesla is not going to get FSD working properly anytime soon, hence wanting to remove regulations and oversight as well as legal liability, the Robotaxi is a con, his other invention is just a bus with more steps, and there's no work on a smaller and cheaper EV - or the new roadster that a lot of people have had a deposit on for years. A car that incidentally has impossible specs and will never be as advertised.
I am a fan of the Powerwall 3 home battery but the Tesla brand is putting me off getting it.
JohnMcL7
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That's a good question. Musk would like to think himself as an engineer who is responsible for the success of the companies which is clearly not true, his recent attacks on wikipedia are because he's not happy he's correctly listed as an investor. Everything that seems to be known about him running businesses shows he is awful at it (particularly the information known about his Twitter takeover) and particularly recently it's pretty clear he's spending very little time actually running these companies. On the other hand I think some aspects of the companies can be attributed to him particularly the massively overvalued price of Tesla which is mostly down to him being a prolific liar and somehow not being called out on it. He's been promising self driving features imminently for years now which doesn't appear to be any closer and the Tesla range appears to be badly stagnating with no sign of the mass market model 2 nor refreshes or replacements for the Model X and S.
What I find particularly strange as a business decision is the move to the far right whereas the market Tesla cars is more left leaning. I've a friend who has a model 3 he's planning to replace and initially he was a big fan of the car, when it came to replacing it another model 3 was initially high on the list but now not even in consideration mainly due to Musk's recent antics. I just wonder how many others feel that way about Tesla and when the balloon is going to burst, if ever. I'd have thought the big announcement this year with the hopeless Robotaxis (quickly redresed Model Y's and clearly a terrible design) and the faked robots would be the end of it but somehow not.
I forgot about the robots that he thinks will be in every home in the next few years. I think almost every demo he's had has been faked (off-screen people controlling) and even the robotaxi event was apparently a mix of remote controlled vehicles with cars following a pre-programmed route that had been set up in advance - hence hiring a movie backlot.
So not only is he not a genius, he's actually a con artist.
Remember the home with solar tiles powering the street where Elon had an event to launch said tiles? Fake. The tiles are still not widely available, if they ever will be.
The only Tesla product right now that I'd rate is the Powerwall 3, but given how warranties work I'd be fearful of whether Tesla still exists within the warranty period going by his current state of mind. He's getting more and more out of control online and reverting to a teenager with his responses to people.
So not only is he not a genius, he's actually a con artist.
Remember the home with solar tiles powering the street where Elon had an event to launch said tiles? Fake. The tiles are still not widely available, if they ever will be.
The only Tesla product right now that I'd rate is the Powerwall 3, but given how warranties work I'd be fearful of whether Tesla still exists within the warranty period going by his current state of mind. He's getting more and more out of control online and reverting to a teenager with his responses to people.
BingMan
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My son sold his much admired Tesla when he moved to New York. Now leaving New York he is looking for an EV but it won't be a Tesla because of Musk's behaviour
Thankfully there are now plenty of EVs to choose from and prices are coming down all the time. In fact, the problem now is deciding whether to buy now or wait for something even better around the corner (and perhaps even lower prices as battery prices keep falling) because the industry is really gathering momentum.
The clearest sign of this is the fact that the Las Vegas tunnel, which itself is a hell of a downgrade from the once-promised hyperloop (and is less efficient than a light rail system). If Tesla can't implement autonomy in an environment that is a close to controlled as is possible to get, then how's it going to ever work properly in the real world. Competitors such as Waymo are closer but not quite there either, as they are limited to areas where everything is meticulously mapped and monitored. Far from the ideal of being able to run on any road anywhere in the country.
Regarding the alleged UI/UX advantages - Tesla kickstarted the trend of putting everything on a touchscreen which is demonstrably less safe than real buttons and people tend to dislike it. They also haven't managed to integrate Android Auto or Apple Carplay, which has long been available on cars and 3rd party head units at all price ranges.
Cloud Strife
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I think we're now seeing what happens when you don't have a strong marketing / PR department. They would be pushing Tesla heavily, but Tesla under Musk seems to be focusing solely on what they can actually build rather than moving forward with new designs. It's understandable given how many problems they had with ramping up production, but Teslas are already starting to look quite dated.
I mean, the touchscreen *is* well designed, compared to the mess that most other manufacturers offered. But they've also learnt from their mistakes, and with Apple/Google/GM all heavily investing in the UI/UX, it's pretty obvious that Tesla will lose that advantage sooner rather than later.
I don't think they've got the engineering teams to make any new designs happen either.
If they had a stronger marketing team rather than depending on Elon's weird Musky allure, then the marketing team might be pushing for a larger engineering team so that they had something to sell. That's not a given though - just look at the recent Jaguar hype event for what a strong marketing team might choose to do if they don't have anything to sell.
I think Rolls Royce is quite a step up from Polestar! And no Tesla is in the same class as Rolls Royce either. Polestar would be a pretty close match, given Geely has made such a big attempt to copy Tesla - to the point where some of its models (as well as the Volvo EX30) are likely to be penalised in future safety ratings for relying too much on touchscreens.
Musk appears to be insane, and is a complete and utter weirdo with a huge ego and a severe lack of common sense.
He is socially inept and seems to get a kick out of inciting racial and religious hatred.
A 24 hour period of his posts on Twitter have been exposed as including multiple lies:
www.bbc.co.uk
He is socially inept and seems to get a kick out of inciting racial and religious hatred.
A 24 hour period of his posts on Twitter have been exposed as including multiple lies:
Ros Atkins on...24 hours on Elon Musk's X timeline
The BBC's Analysis editor, Ros Atkins, investigates Elon Musk's recent posts on X about grooming gangs - and looks at how one day unfolded on his timeline.
www.bbc.co.uk
43096
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As I said above, he's a narcissist - it's all about him and his attention seeking.Musk appears to be insane, and is a complete and utter weirdo with a huge ego and a severe lack of common sense.
He is socially inept and seems to get a kick out of inciting racial and religious hatred.
A 24 hour period of his posts on Twitter have been exposed as including multiple lies:
Ros Atkins on...24 hours on Elon Musk's X timeline
The BBC's Analysis editor, Ros Atkins, investigates Elon Musk's recent posts on X about grooming gangs - and looks at how one day unfolded on his timeline.