Is Elon Musk hurting Tesla? (Mod Note Post #1)

Again, you're just another person showing their ignorance. Everything he is doing is working towards going to Mars. At no point did I specify a time frame or that it has been accomplished. One of the rockets blew up yesterday. This is the process. It doesn't change the fact that he is building rockets for Mars and to suggest otherwise just confirms you are simply full of hate and you don't fully understand why. You might want to pause and take stock of your surroundings. Who is in your life influencing your opinions, what apps you are using and maybe take time to understand how the algorithms work to feed your prejudices and surround you in this bubble of hate that you are in. Its obsessive and unhealthy.

Musk is a finance guy, no more no less. He is certainly not an engineer or a technical guy in any shape or form. He hires good people and makes sure they are well rewarded financially to perform their best work. So far this strategy has worked - if you ignore Twitter 😂

this thread started in 2022!

At this stage I think it’s fair just say “Is Elon musk hurting Tesla? Yes”

Its perfectly valid to the debate. To suggest he is not acrively involved in building rockets for Mars is entirely false and most definitely you need to examine your social feeds and question the information you are being fed.

I couldn't give a toss of he is taking drugs. I wpuld care if he dies in the bath, his companies will continue but he would be badly missed.

Maybe something we can agree on is I really wish he would drop the politics.

It's the aggressive nature of it.

 Just give it a rest because you all come across as pathetic lunatics.

I hope you see the irony there.

You are being manipulated.

I agree everyone should look outside their bubble but I think you might be well advised to do the same yourself. With respect you do seem entrenched in your view of him and maybe you are also in your own bubble?

The differnece is I'm sticking to facts, actually.

How do you know you are in a bubble?

Well let's first agree that they do exist and there are companies who specialise on generating false narratives and inflating bubbles. They are commonly used in American politics by both sides. If you disagree with that then I'm sorry, you're a lost cause.

So whst are the tell tale signs you are in one of these bubbles? First, there will be some sort of label associated with whatever the narrative is. In Musk's case these would be labels such as liberal or progressive. You're part of a worthy cause, with the moral high ground.

Secondly, the narrative keeps changing. It's a never ending barrage. Each of which is debunked, before moving onto the next. But the damage is already done. Its written in the narrative, there's millions of people who are adamant they have the moral high ground and it is their duty to attack anyone who refuses it. They are Naz*'s, Maga, people with no morals. They must be taken down as part of the cause and to give you the dopamine ping of satisfaction that you stuck it to a Naz* online.

Then there's the progression to the real world. Damaging Tesla's etc. These people deserve it. They support Musk, they're Naz*'so, they are inferior. You have the moral high ground. You are superior, you're above them. They need to be taught a lesson.

Honestly, it's quite hard to get the point across in an Internet post.

But I think you really need to be aware, whether you agree or not, there are people who are completely outside of the "narrative". Completely. They didn't ask for your opinion, they don't agree with your opinion, they don't care about what you read online and they are increasing fed up with having to listen to it and have it forced down their throats.

Musk is very good at getting money to flow to programs and initiatives, and quite good at keeping investors happy.

What he's not good at is strategic and technical direction, people management, and governance (and regulating manifestations of his personality disorder). Tesla as a company has done well in many ways, and part of the continued success is the veil Musk is able to cast over the organisation which kept lots of influential people happy.

He is now hurting the brand, I think we are all agreed there. Is it stopping Irish sales of Tesla products? I'm not sure, and why should it? One might argue that the foundation is well and truly built now - a task he is good at - and maybe it's time he found a new project and left the growth of Tesla to others with different skill sets?

Tesla is integral to his mission to Mars. Battery, solar, autonomous systems, thermal management and Tesla motors are all part of the design of starship.

Outside of Tesla he also needs starlink and the boring company.

There was a point where everything he does was part of his plan to send humans to Mars.

That changed when he got involved with Twitter and politics, but there is even still an argument X was required for free speech (more important on Mars where everything will be remote) and the politics was all to do with being able to run his companies the way he wants to and has always done. Namely a strict work ethic (e.g no remote work) and freedom to hire people based on merit and not their race or gender.

It's another stick people use. That its racism. There is no doubt about it, you will see different races, religions and genders going to Mars. But they will be highly skilled and talented.

He's using enough ketamine to cause bladder problems. Any usual person and that would be considered problematic drug abuse. So far the conclusion is the NYT are entirely right but you think it's false.

The man is not a victim in this scenario. I'm also neurodiverse and have suffered from anxiety and depression btw. I've never needed to be high on the job and if I was, I'd be fired. An SSRI is not remotely comparable to Musk on ketamine.

He was asked to provide a drug test, which he did and published it to the world. But go on let's.hear it. It's fake of.course.

Somebody who was prescribed Ketamine for neurological condition and subsequently becomes addicted deserves sympathy, not poilitical vitriol.

I'm not defending it, I'm saying the evidence so far is its not true. Let the NYT produce the evidence. If it's true, I will feel sorry for him and I hope he gets he gets help. Nobody chooses to become an addict. Nobody enjoys being an addict.

No, I don't think you're understanding this correctly - there is zero onus on me to prove or disprove anything about Musk's drug use. It doesn't matter what I think (just as it doesn't matter what you think or how much you try and defend him on this) - what matters is what the market as a whole thinks - about him, about Tesla.

The facts about Musk's drug use, Nazi-leanings, his political connections, etc. - these facts don't matter, what matters is the market perception. Because Musk is the head of company that sells products where people won't buy if they have suspicions about longevity, reliability, quality.

So, let's talk about proof and facts - Tesla sales are crashing and the company's future is extremely bleak. This has been caused by one person, and you know this rightly.

And once again back to ranting. Musk has made his own bed and Tesla is suffering because of it. You reference toxic and bitchy behavior which perfectly encapsulates Musk's day to day antics at this stage.

I'm going to agree with one thing and then I'm done. He needs to get out of politics and it most definitely is harming the Tesla brand.

I'm glad this could be admitted, that's all that really counts for this thread tbh - even his more ardent and militant fans think Musk is a liability for Tesla.

lol I suggest you try reading a few posts bud

Unfortunately there has been many people in this thread who ardently support Musk's behaviour, not only defending the cars. From what I can gather, their support often appears to stem from pure emotion, rather than the facts, or a healthy mixture of both.
I understand why people defend the cars to an extent, particularly when it comes to effiency, power output and the UI but no matter how I have tried, I cannot comprehend how people can support his character and behaviour.

I acknowledge that Musk did a good job at hiring brilliant engineers who built good cars(and rockets) with the limitations he placed on engineering directions, but the same man has also kneecapped the company not only by his Sieg Heil, but his focus on cutting costs. Autopilot is worse than it was 7 or 8 years ago when the MS had radar.

Andrej Karpathy, one of the worlds leading experts in deep learning and computer vision, struggled to deliver a reliable and consistent camera-only system that met Musks demands. Andrej talked about Musks management style, where he had to fight to recruit and retain talent, fighting Musks desire for quickly firing those he deemed as underperforming. He left for OpenAI after ~5 years at Tesla and said that Musk valued the appearance of staff looking busy in the office. Before he Senior Director of AI at Tesla, Elon went through 6 Directors of AI - each lasting 6 months.
This is clearly ositive punishment where an office environment is driven by negative reinforcement. Employees are motived not the chance of success but by the avoidance of failure, therefore staff are focused on not messing up rather than truly innovating.

Musk's grand idea for FSD is solely based on cutting sensor inputs to the bare bone to get the job done as cheaply as possible. He has this idea that Camera-only FSD is possible because humans have eyes, but yet he ignores the fact that humans are in fact complex multi-sensory beings because for example;

1. We have a vestibular system which allows us to feel acceleration, deceleration, skiding, body roll.
2. Hearing, which gives us important context of what's happening around us.
3. Brain: a processor which was refined by millions of years of evolution to understand the very basics of experienced physics and intent, and social cues. We bring prior experience or lived experiences to situations; We know that an empty plastic bag on the road won't cause damage to a car whereas a plastic bag sized rock will cause damage, nor is a shadow of a overpass an immovable object that we're about to crash into. It's extremely difficult to replicate this aspect of learned experience or common sense in into any Autonomous driving system, let alone a camera-only system.

He is the most successful conman in history in the way he created a flywheel of faith with his narratives. Of course SpaceX isn't simply a company built to launch satellites cheaper than NASA, it was formed to 'make humanity a multi-planetary species'. He is able to package and communicate pipe dreams/ideas in such a way that leaves investors foaming at the mouth for more.

So despite a long history of missed FSD targets and promises, investors remain locked in due their own cognitive biases such as confirmation bias, sunk cost fallacy, prospect of exponential returns, and the narrative of an unparalleded data moat.