5 ms·

Isn't this just Elon Musk getting into one of his superfluous fights, only this time California being the somewhat-random opponent? Musk has been completely unh

Isn't this just Elon Musk getting into one of his superfluous fights, only this time California being the somewhat-random opponent? Musk has been completely unhinged the last few weeks, and it doesn't seem to be wise making such large decisions in anger, especially considering the reason for his anger is, even if justified, unlikely to reoccur. I'm quite the Musk fanboy, but he's always had this very strange anger issue... It's not even getting in fights that I find troubling. But for the genius that he is, these squabbles just seem...pedestrian? Calling people pedophiles or going five rounds with SEC for no reason at all? For comparison, I hate Peter Thiel with a passion. But finding some plaintiff and funding the lawsuit that bankrupts the news organisation that wronged you, for something entirely different? That's how you should win stupid fights when your day job is rockets, fire-throwers, and revolutionary sports cars. If his recent "red pill" comments is a sign of what's to come, he might be stretching his luck. Going full alt-right MAGA is going to cut his customer base in half, at least in the US and Europe.

Aperocky 6y ago
> Musk has been completely unhinged the last few weeks The most logical guess I can make is he on some new drugs that's starting to damage his brain. Some form of synthetic or maybe good ol heroin.
- WalterSear 6y ago
  I think he's just huffing his own farts.
- danso 6y ago
  I don't agree with his behavior but I don't feel how he's recently acted is extreme for him. The whole covid-19 quarantine has been painful for everyone, and it obviously causes a specific pain point for Tesla because of state and county-specific orders. Him flipping out about it is mostly expected, or at least more expected than his random $420 tweet, or his concerted effort to keep talking/emailing about Vernon Unsworth months after the cave rescue.
- snypher 6y ago
  He could be beta testing the neural link tech.
epistasis 6y ago
I'm already looking at the competitors to the Model 3 that are coming out in the next few years. I have loved this car, but Musk is toxic and I don't want to be finding him anymore. I know maybe 5 other people with Teslas, and two others have already said they're looking to switch too. Part of the Tesla story was that it could be a California pride thing. When Musk makes the state his enemy, and acts like an idiot, and is simultaneously an absolute publicity whore that claims credit for all sort of work that is not his, well, he had better be ready to accept the consequences for acting like a traitor in a war.
- rubicon33 6y ago
  "Part of the Tesla story was that it could be a California pride thing." Lol. Can humans ever drop the tribalism, I wonder? To be fair, Musk is totally playing the same game. I've held out for a long time, denouncing both sides as stupid. But I'm getting tired of seeing everyone else just say fuck it, grab a beer, a bible, a shotgun, and go full blown alt-right. Or say fuck it, grab a cell phone camera, and go full blown virtue signaling gotcha culture alt-left. Seems like everyone needs to play on some team, and needs somebody to hate these days. I just want a cool car that doesn't pollute the planet, because I believe thats a shitty thing to do. If you don't feel the same way, it's all good brother.
  - epistasis 6y ago
    I'm not even talking about the alt-right turns. I'm talking about non-partisan hostilities towards our state and the weird science denialism around SARS-CoV-2. General values that I see in most Bay Area engineers. Add in alt-right and he's going to lose a hell of a lot more people than those who love in California and love it and prefer to support local economies when possible.
  - hadtodoit 6y ago
    Don't worry, the majority of people are like you. I forget the numbers but something like 10% of twitter accounts are making 99% of tweets; reading things online can skew your view of the world. You will only ever hear from the very vocal minorities because the rest of us just don't care.
sangnoir 6y ago
> Going full alt-right MAGA is going to cut his customer base in half, at least in the US and Europe. Putting my best effort to be charitable here: he could be opening up a whole new market that is opposed to tree-huggers, fuel efficiency and Priuses. Texas loves trucks, the Cybertruck will be henceforth known as the Freedom Cybertruck and the Texas Edition will come with a complementary "Come and take it" sticker. "Southern Heritage" flag interior design & center console wallpaper will be a paid extra.
- dpau 6y ago
  this is an awesome take- musk has been playing 4d chess all along, getting hard-core conservatives to buy into renewable energy..
  - testbot123 6y ago
    This is a very charitable interpretation of Elon Musk's recent outbursts.
    - dpau 6y ago
      tongue in cheek. lately musk has reminded me not to have heros :(
      - Fjolsvith 6y ago
        Slightly off topic, but has anyone seen Amazon's new anti-hero series, "The Boys"? Talk about taking the Batman vs Superman theme exponential. Wow!
- sunstone 6y ago
  I think it's helpful to remember that Musk being in the media is the primary plank in Tesla's marketing effort. So being controversial and therefore being in the media is literally a part of his job. Even before covid-19 got serious Tesla had already said they were looking for a factory location "in the midwest possibly Texas". So that's not some reaction to being shut down in California. Another aspect though is that right now Tesla is building a new factory in Germany and will start very soon a new factory near Austin. Building these simultaneously will be such a severe drain on Tesla's cash flow that they can ill afford having their California factory shut down for long. In this circumstance Musk could well become hot under the collar especially if he feels Tesla has done enough to mitigate risk to Tesla employees.
m0zg 6y ago
"Republicans buy shoes too". He even referred to taking both pills in the very next tweet, but some people are too dense to understand what he meant.
kylec 6y ago
> I'm quite the Musk fanboy Still? I can understand still being a fan of Tesla or SpaceX, but I'm suspicious of anyone that's followed Musk's behavior recently and is still like "that's my guy!"
hadtodoit 6y ago
This might come as a shock to you but most people do not care what the political opinions or behavior of a car manufacturer's CEO are. Likewise the internet does not at all reflect the views of your average person, and I would wager that despite Tesla fanatics being very aware of Musk and his eccentric behavior, most Tesla owners moving forward won't even know or care who the CEO is as they rollout to mass market. This won't make a dent in his customer base. Musk is beyond reproach at this point, his "fuck you" warchest is too big.
- epistasis 6y ago
  A lot of Tesla's customers came to it because of the politics of buying a car that doesn't use gasoline. Now that other companies are finally catching up (or at least I hope they do), those same customers will have choices. Tesla has really been the only long-range choice, so of course they are going to dominate. They also make a really good car, that makes their customers happy. Marketing and branding have huge impacts on a lot of car purchases. If Musk narrows his brand appeal by contributing to the US's partisan divide, that has a lot of potential to dent his consumer base. How many of those expensive trucks out there are ever used for truck things? So many car purchases are about image! (Though obviously not all.)
- DeonPenny 6y ago
  This may come to a shock to you but you're wrong
drak0n1c 6y ago
Elon dabbling in civil liberties activism and countering far-left "rose twitter" with the rose emoji and red pill phrase is not "going full alt-right" -- the political spectrum is more nuanced than that.
lowdose 6y ago
He needs sales volume and the progressive part of the population is not enough. Onboarding more conservatives is his only option. Progressives do not have many viable alternatives to what Tesla is offering, bait and hook. Classic diffusion of innovation what Musk does, the sequence of Tesla models are 100% reflecting different parts of the bell curve.

Aperocky 6y ago

> Musk has been completely unhinged the last few weeks The most logical guess I can make is he on some new drugs that's starting to damage his brain. Some form of synthetic or maybe good ol heroin.

WalterSear 6y ago
I think he's just huffing his own farts.
danso 6y ago
I don't agree with his behavior but I don't feel how he's recently acted is extreme for him. The whole covid-19 quarantine has been painful for everyone, and it obviously causes a specific pain point for Tesla because of state and county-specific orders. Him flipping out about it is mostly expected, or at least more expected than his random $420 tweet, or his concerted effort to keep talking/emailing about Vernon Unsworth months after the cave rescue.
snypher 6y ago
He could be beta testing the neural link tech.

epistasis 6y ago

I'm already looking at the competitors to the Model 3 that are coming out in the next few years. I have loved this car, but Musk is toxic and I don't want to be finding him anymore. I know maybe 5 other people with Teslas, and two others have already said they're looking to switch too. Part of the Tesla story was that it could be a California pride thing. When Musk makes the state his enemy, and acts like an idiot, and is simultaneously an absolute publicity whore that claims credit for all sort of work that is not his, well, he had better be ready to accept the consequences for acting like a traitor in a war.

rubicon33 6y ago
"Part of the Tesla story was that it could be a California pride thing." Lol. Can humans ever drop the tribalism, I wonder? To be fair, Musk is totally playing the same game. I've held out for a long time, denouncing both sides as stupid. But I'm getting tired of seeing everyone else just say fuck it, grab a beer, a bible, a shotgun, and go full blown alt-right. Or say fuck it, grab a cell phone camera, and go full blown virtue signaling gotcha culture alt-left. Seems like everyone needs to play on some team, and needs somebody to hate these days. I just want a cool car that doesn't pollute the planet, because I believe thats a shitty thing to do. If you don't feel the same way, it's all good brother.
- epistasis 6y ago
  I'm not even talking about the alt-right turns. I'm talking about non-partisan hostilities towards our state and the weird science denialism around SARS-CoV-2. General values that I see in most Bay Area engineers. Add in alt-right and he's going to lose a hell of a lot more people than those who love in California and love it and prefer to support local economies when possible.
- hadtodoit 6y ago
  Don't worry, the majority of people are like you. I forget the numbers but something like 10% of twitter accounts are making 99% of tweets; reading things online can skew your view of the world. You will only ever hear from the very vocal minorities because the rest of us just don't care.

sangnoir 6y ago

> Going full alt-right MAGA is going to cut his customer base in half, at least in the US and Europe. Putting my best effort to be charitable here: he could be opening up a whole new market that is opposed to tree-huggers, fuel efficiency and Priuses. Texas loves trucks, the Cybertruck will be henceforth known as the Freedom Cybertruck and the Texas Edition will come with a complementary "Come and take it" sticker. "Southern Heritage" flag interior design & center console wallpaper will be a paid extra.

dpau 6y ago
this is an awesome take- musk has been playing 4d chess all along, getting hard-core conservatives to buy into renewable energy..
- testbot123 6y ago
  This is a very charitable interpretation of Elon Musk's recent outbursts.
  - dpau 6y ago
    tongue in cheek. lately musk has reminded me not to have heros :(
    - Fjolsvith 6y ago
      Slightly off topic, but has anyone seen Amazon's new anti-hero series, "The Boys"? Talk about taking the Batman vs Superman theme exponential. Wow!
sunstone 6y ago
I think it's helpful to remember that Musk being in the media is the primary plank in Tesla's marketing effort. So being controversial and therefore being in the media is literally a part of his job. Even before covid-19 got serious Tesla had already said they were looking for a factory location "in the midwest possibly Texas". So that's not some reaction to being shut down in California. Another aspect though is that right now Tesla is building a new factory in Germany and will start very soon a new factory near Austin. Building these simultaneously will be such a severe drain on Tesla's cash flow that they can ill afford having their California factory shut down for long. In this circumstance Musk could well become hot under the collar especially if he feels Tesla has done enough to mitigate risk to Tesla employees.

m0zg 6y ago

"Republicans buy shoes too". He even referred to taking both pills in the very next tweet, but some people are too dense to understand what he meant.

kylec 6y ago

> I'm quite the Musk fanboy Still? I can understand still being a fan of Tesla or SpaceX, but I'm suspicious of anyone that's followed Musk's behavior recently and is still like "that's my guy!"

hadtodoit 6y ago

This might come as a shock to you but most people do not care what the political opinions or behavior of a car manufacturer's CEO are. Likewise the internet does not at all reflect the views of your average person, and I would wager that despite Tesla fanatics being very aware of Musk and his eccentric behavior, most Tesla owners moving forward won't even know or care who the CEO is as they rollout to mass market. This won't make a dent in his customer base. Musk is beyond reproach at this point, his "fuck you" warchest is too big.

epistasis 6y ago
A lot of Tesla's customers came to it because of the politics of buying a car that doesn't use gasoline. Now that other companies are finally catching up (or at least I hope they do), those same customers will have choices. Tesla has really been the only long-range choice, so of course they are going to dominate. They also make a really good car, that makes their customers happy. Marketing and branding have huge impacts on a lot of car purchases. If Musk narrows his brand appeal by contributing to the US's partisan divide, that has a lot of potential to dent his consumer base. How many of those expensive trucks out there are ever used for truck things? So many car purchases are about image! (Though obviously not all.)
DeonPenny 6y ago
This may come to a shock to you but you're wrong

drak0n1c 6y ago

Elon dabbling in civil liberties activism and countering far-left "rose twitter" with the rose emoji and red pill phrase is not "going full alt-right" -- the political spectrum is more nuanced than that.

lowdose 6y ago

He needs sales volume and the progressive part of the population is not enough. Onboarding more conservatives is his only option. Progressives do not have many viable alternatives to what Tesla is offering, bait and hook. Classic diffusion of innovation what Musk does, the sequence of Tesla models are 100% reflecting different parts of the bell curve.