Elon Musk has become an annoying genius

Hines Brian May 15, 2024No Comments

There's no doubt that Elon Musk is a brilliant guy, arguably a genius, who deserves a lot of credit for his accomplishments with Tesla, Space X, and other business pursuits.

I've been a happy Starlink customer (a Space X offering) since it's early beta days, and it's enabled us to trade our crappy 7 Mbps copper phone line DSL for a snappy 250 Mbps satellite broadband here in rural south Salem, Oregon.

But Elon Musk has gone from being fascinating to annoying.

Not to everybody, because a big cause of my annoyance with Musk is what he's done with Twitter after buying the company and renaming it X. Though X is still a social media platform that I use and enjoy numerous times a day, under Musk it has become much more of a haven for right-wing crazies.

Fortunately, X still allows users to only see posts from people and organizations that they follow. That walls my X account off from extremists and conspiracy theorists. But I follow Elon Musk, so I'm "treated" to his frequent posts about politics, which are decidedly in accord with the wacko wing of the Republican Party.

This is a dumb move given that liberals and Democrats have been much more likely to buy Teslas that conservatives and Republicans. Now, surveys have found that this group is turned off by Musk's right-wing antics, which hurts Tesla sales.

Another thing that's going to hurt Tesla is Musk's temper tantrum that led to him firing the entire staff of the department in charge of the vaunted Supercharger network, which has been a key reason to buy a Tesla rather than a different electric vehicle.

Today I came across a Reuters story that describes how the firing happened. Here's excerpts from "The inside story of Elon Musk's mass firing of Tesla Supercharger staff."

The day before Elon Musk fired virtually all of Tesla’s electric-vehicle charging division last month, they had high hopes as charging chief Rebecca Tinucci went to meet with Musk about the network’s future, four former charging-network staffers told Reuters.

After Tinucci had cut between 15% and 20% of staffers two weeks earlier, part of much wider layoffs, they believed Musk would affirm plans for a massive charging-network expansion.

The meeting could not have gone worse. Musk, the employees said, was not pleased with Tinucci’s presentation and wanted more layoffs. When she balked, saying deeper cuts would undermine charging-business fundamentals, he responded by firing her and her entire 500-member team.

The departures have upended a network widely viewed as a signature Tesla achievement and a key driver of its EV sales. Tesla Superchargers account for more than 60% of U.S. high-speed charging ports, federal statistics show, and the company has been the biggest winner so far of $5 billion in federal funding for new chargers.

The charging-team layoffs mark the latest drama in a tumultuous year for Tesla as Musk has shut down or delayed several core efforts meant to drive the rapid EV sales growth that investors have expected. Instead, Musk now says Tesla will shift its main focus to self-driving cars, a fiercely competitive and riskier business that could take years to develop.

The company posted its first decline in auto sales since 2020 in the first quarter amid fierce competition from Chinese electric-vehicle makers and sagging worldwide EV demand. Reuters reported in April that Tesla had scrapped plans for a long-awaited affordable car known as the Model 2. That has thrown into doubt Tesla’s plans for new factories in Mexico and India, where Musk had been expected to travel last month to meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi, before canceling at the last minute. And a host of executives have departed amid deep companywide layoffs.

I'm disappointed about Tesla's decision not to offer a lower cost, and smaller, electric car.

My last three cars have been subcompacts: a Mini Cooper S, a VW GTI, and a Subaru Crosstrek. I much prefer that size car over larger sizes. A Tesla "hot hatch" priced around $25,000 to $35,000 would be very popular both in the United States and elsewhere.

But Elon Musk appears to have scrapped the Model 2, choosing to instead build updated versions of the Model 3 and Y, both of which have been around for quite a while and look similar. His intention to focus on self-driving cars/taxis strikes me as a mistake, though maybe it will pay off in the end.

After all, like I said, Musk is both annoying and a genius. I just wish he manifested more of the latter quality and less of the former.