The amount of long term damage that is actively being inflicted to the scientific research community alone because of Elon’s crusade all but guarantees that I will never buy another Tesla. The one I have is a great car but I don’t want to be targeted by extremist groups on any side and I don’t want to financially support the economic and social collapse of my country. Elon and thus Tesla is rightfully being labeled as an enabler. If their board agrees, they’ll do the right thing and choose a new CEO.
I’m still a strong supporter of EVs but I’m frustrated that EV owners still pay at least as much for electricity and registration as ICE cars pay for gas (in California). Hybrids still make more financial sense in California.
Here in the PNW we pay $5 for a full charge of our leased Model 3 at home vs $50 for a tank of gas for our ICE car. Switching to EV has saved us about $150 / month (plus all the other benefits).
Never going back to ICE (though we're keep our Subaru Forester for camping, etc.), but buying another brand when our Tesla lease runs out; there are other great options out there. (I would try to find someone to take over our Tesla lease but when I spoke to a dealer about this he said that lots of people are trying to do this now so I'm not likely to succeed.)
It’s probably closer to $15-20 for a full charge here but the catch is, a full tank of gas will get you a full solid 450-500 miles of range whereas a full battery on a LR Model Y will likely only get you 250ish, sometimes more sometimes less.
We have EVs in California (no Teslas) that support two long-ish commutes.
With solar panels, we’re paying close to nothing for electricity. The panels and batteries cost about as much as an EV when we got them, but manufacturing costs have dropped and keep dropping.
Starting roughly this year, vehicle to home (V2H) will be mostly standard. That will let you use your car battery to top-off the house battery. That’ll make full-off-grid much more practical, which puts a ceiling on PG&E’s abusive rate hikes.
I find that most people don’t actually include the cost of solar fairly when making statements like this.
Maximum solar that fit on my roof, no battery with 1 EV with maybe 2 hours of driving per weekday - $250 minimum electric bill plus the cost of the solar system ($250 over 10yrs) = $500-$600/month. I almost never use AC or heat.
>he panels and batteries cost about as much as an EV when we got them, but manufacturing costs have dropped and keep dropping.
So basically you prepaid.
$20-40k buys a LOT of electricity. I live in a real dump of a state with insane electric prices (only reliably exceeded by Hawaii) and I can't make a privately owned system pencil out. Even with the credits the amortization time is on the order of 20yr +/- a few. I get the draw of spending a ton up front to eliminate a bill and have better cashflow but I just can't justify that with tens of thousands of dollars.
In Denmark, electric is about 5-10% cheaper with my hybrid compared to gasoline. It also has the convenience that my car can charge at the car park without me doing anything.
Interestingly, the savings from parking fees are a thousandfold more worth it than the gas stuff.
I’m getting downvoted but the truth is In California, hybrids make way more financial sense. For one, the cars themselves are significantly cheaper. With a Tesla, I definitely pay more per mile when you factor in the significantly increased registration and rising electricity costs which will definitely be increasing more after annual wildfires.
Maybe I'm getting old and jaded, but I don't really care about what the CEO or company does.
Nearly every time I (and likely you) buy something, it's produced by, transported by, funded by, owned by a company or in a country that has been found guilty of repeated human rights violations. Literal genocides in an alarming number of instances.
It almost feels cathartic for the externalities of the society we've built to be burdened by us, rather than someone in another country.
That being said, I agree with the self-interest aspect and would also prefer not to be targeted by extremists on either side. The real trick is figuring out who that's going to be ahead of time - my money would have been on Chinese EV's being hit before Tesla.
So you rule out Tesla and Chinese EVs. That leaves most available. It’s not really that complicated to at least try to avoid the most problematic companies.
Musk is a bit unusual in that he is so associated with Tesla and its image. On the other hand I have no idea who is the ceo of the company that made my car (old merc).
We have one story https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43175023 about a startup promising to identify factory workers giving, by management definition, less than 100% and yet CEOs can run multiple companies, take board seats, and oversee the American government. Of course the last one of those is so far adding huge value to all the others…
Yeah. They don't care what you do outside of work until you're salaried. But that goes away too once you're paid to "supervise" instead of work. It's a weird valley.
> yet CEOs can run multiple companies, take board seats, and oversee the American government
...don't forget also playing Path of Exile 2 80 hours a week...
kinda funny that even after that came out and everyone had a laugh nobody really asked if maybe his real contributions on the business side of things are just as illusionary as his gaming accomplishments.
He seems to have a default assumption himself that if left unchecked each IC in his companies and the federal government aren't providing value commiserate with their compensation... and these days when it comes to people involved in politics I just assume based on accumulated evidence that every accusation is a confession.
So it's actually a 60% market share drop when you consider the growth of market share of EVs.
Beyond politics, this is simply an exercise in CEO malpractice.
Brands and the marketing around them are extremely important to large long-term companies like TSLA presumably is.
In car companies, as its been explained to me, branding is even more important because a consistent positive attachment of existing car owners to the brand is critically important for the biggest source of a car company's customers: the existing ones.
A car is daily used item, a piece of a consumer's ego, a large scale purchase that almost everyone has emotional not just rational investment.
Tesla the car company probably had two fundamental archetypes as purchasers: a techno-geek gee-whiz buyer, and a left-leaning pro-environmental buyer. It's hard to figure out what proportion is which, but let's just say it is at least 50% pro-environment.
Your customers are basically your brand. And the Tesla brand has completely destroyed the pro-environmental crowd. And not just vaguely turned them off. It has angrily reversed them.
Tesla has no marketing department, or very little. It does little advertising. It relied on passionate owners, and of the two archetypes, the techno-gee-whiz is the less passionate, because they are always looking for the next best thing.
The pro-environment crowd was the most emotionally invested, because Tesla represented one of the few hopes for improving the environment over the ICE / petroleum iron grip on transportation. But that emotional investment didn't turn to indifference.
It turned to betrayal and anger.
In Europe, you have compounded this with anti-American sentiment and creepy pro-Russian propangada parroting as well as fascist politics meddling.
On top of all this, Tesla is fundamentally an urban brand. Charging infrastructure sucks in rural areas and driving distances are higher, so urban/suburban drivers buy them, which aligns with the progressive/Democratic buyer profile.
So with the vast anger towards Musk, a driver of a Tesla gets a daily emotional rebuff, from both Musk's daily headlines, to covert looks of dismissal, to overt confrontation, mocking, and danger of vandalism.
So, is there some massive pool of conservative voters ready to enthusiastically buy Teslas? The Cybertruck has been fundamentally rejected by the pickup crowd, and angry young men of that segment are the youth movement of the far-right Republican party. The rest are change-resistant older people, or the miniscule numbers of the wealthy.
The weak response of many Tesla owners is to blame the people as wrongfully blaming Tesla for Musk's actions, which is just a ridiculous notion. CEO does Sieg Heils on national TV. CEO gets money and fame from Tesla. CEO is STILL CEO of Tesla after Sieg Heils.
Those Sieg Heils should be immediate termination grounds for Musk, and a forced selloff in any functioning democracy. There is ample evidence of Twitter dogwhistles and his public statements in support of AfD that there is no "roman salute" or "he's just autistic" that can be argued with a straight face. Public Sieg Heils are not trolling, they are a fundamental offense on democracy. Fascism's very purpose is to contravene democratic principles to gain authoritarian control, and not a benevolent dictatorship. The path of fascism explicitly uses appeals to the darkest side of humanity, and so the authoritarianism will be of the very evil sort, and that comes from a philosophically moral relativist.
On top of that, Musk has hitched himself to a trade warring administration, which will doom Tesla in China, either from indirect edicts from the CCP to not buy Teslas, to outright seizing of their factories and assets if/when the Taiwan saber rattling and cold war expands.
And I could detail a dozen other CEO failures: Cybertruck bust. Semi misexecution. Solar is a joke. Should have acquires a struggling ICE company (like Nissan) for stock swap funny money to gain platforms/engineeers/production capacity. Only basically make two models of mass market cars. Only has one brand and doesn't have other branding levels. Failure of battery day execution/no novel drivetrain or battery technology. Failed to become the premier EV infrastructure provider (and has joined to a administration that will drop the funding). Should have introduced PHEVs in a separate company to apply battery production to more cars. Should have lines in ebikes, power tools, yard tools, anything that is battery-electric. Should have industrial applications and drivetrains. Should actually show up to work.
I agree with you. Even in Texas, where Tesla is now headquartered and Musk enjoys tremendous support from the Republican state government, we don't see many Teslas in the cities. On highways they are even rarer. I sometimes drive through rural parts of Texas where Trump flags abound and I have yet to see a single Tesla/Cyber Truck in these areas.
Before Musk went full Nazi, I was looking into leasing a Model 3 as it was surprisingly cheap. I decided against it after I found out that the new Model 3 doesn't have a turn stalk. Now Tesla is a no go for me as I can't be associated with Musk in any fashion.
I'm sure the stockholders will take a strong stance and replace him as CEO... when he eventually loses favor with the White House. Until then, the brand nose-dives.
The dark humor part is, it's the car owners who are going to suffer most. Stockholders and executives probably already sold enough stock to land on a soft pile of money.
He will never be replaced as the CEO IMO. His cult like following is why the share price is what it is. It's unusual but it was only valued so highly because of him. The shareholders would rather see the company bankrupt than lose his "value add". They believe he will turn it all around, maybe he will?
The only question that remains is whether or not his brand is still salvageable. I'm leaning towards "no", he has taken things really far now. People are pretty fickle. But he is doing some really extreme things and I think it's going to be hard to walk back. Personally I think the emperor has no clothes but let's see.
Based on what China has been doing with EVs, I'm even questioning the narrative that he actually had much to do with kicking off the EV revolution, or whether or not it was going to happen regardless. I think it's the later. China was already going to be the dominant player and was already moving in the EV direction because their dependence on foreign oil wasn't to their benefit.
> I'm even questioning the narrative that he actually had much to do with kicking off the EV revolution
I detest Musk, but Tesla was/is one of CATL's largest customers. Without Tesla, the capital to jumpstart the EV Battery industry within China wouldn't truly exist.
> I'm even questioning the narrative that he actually had much to do with kicking off the EV revolution
I would argue that Tesla did absolutely push the EV industry in the US. China would have dominated outside the US regardless but Tesla's involvement in China probably moved that timeline forward by a few years.
> His cult like following is why the share price is what it is. It's unusual but it was only valued so highly because of him.
Putting up impressive net income figures better than the other car companies and making the best selling car in the world also helps. Plus SpaceX and Starlink are a success. That kind of track record within 15 years could portend more success in the future.
It does not excuse the other failings, but business wise, I don’t see what trepidation shareholders would have had (prior to the recent Nazi and destroying US civilian institutions actions).
How’s that going to happen… he largely controls the board, owns over 10% of issued shared, people like Ellison own another huge chunk and there’s a bunch of Elon fanbois who own much of the retail stock
It takes a supermajority to oust the board or the CEO.
Must controls about 12% of the company, so the remaining 88% of the stock needs to produce the 2/3s majority. So you effectively need 75% of voters to vote against him.
TSLA probably has a large retail segment, and they can't be organized to vote, and generally the TSLA retail crowd is full of Elon fanbois. That leaves institutional investors, and with Musk's alignment with the Trump administration, they are terrified of getting their institutions investigated or harassed.
The only way Musk gets ousted is for the stock to drop so far that a margin call is issued on the loans he has taken on the stock. I don't know what that is, but I suspect it is under 100$/share.
That might force a selloff by Musk, which combined with the price collapse chasing retail investors away, may provide enough voting power for institutions. Still a big IF.
The only other thing would be if board members start resigning, but most of the board is sufficiently amoral and well compensated that it is unlikely.
Regulatory intervention isn't happening for four years. Lawsuits? Probably would need executive branch enforcement, and there's always the Trump pardon to wipe anything away.
Personally, this isn't about Tesla—sorry for the slight tangent. I never considered Tesla, but not because of Elon Musk; rather, EVs simply don’t work for me. I’ve always tried to separate the person from the service they operate (e.g., not judging art by the artist). For what it’s worth, I’ve acknowledged Musk’s accomplishments. Yes, some of the things he has said are deeply disturbing and indefensible, but I’ve generally tried to maintain that separation.
However, his collusion with the administration to actively make people's lives miserable—without proper oversight, due process, or accountability—has been a breaking point for me. The blatant conflict of interest has led me to significantly reduce my activity on X. This creates a dilemma, as many of the people I interact with are in Japan, where X remains extremely popular since the Twitter era. Most of them are unlikely to migrate elsewhere simply because they aren’t directly affected by his political actions.
The situation might be different for Tesla owners, but I’m not sure they were necessarily “overlooking” his statements. People have varying levels of tolerance when it comes to "canceling" products due to the actions of their owners.
Elon's biggest concern for Tesla isn't their stock price. He has an outstanding record of surviving the hits. He can't change a free market, but he also won't be scared until TSLA falls below 100. Protests tend to fizzle and die after the social influencers (online news) moves onto something else. Therefore, its a very, very long way to go before the protesting hits him where it actually counts.
>Protests tend to fizzle and die after the social influencers (online news) moves onto something else.
it's a good thing Elon is addicted to the limelight and won't let them move on. Makes his eventual downfall faster.
> its a very, very long way to go before the protesting hits him where it actually counts.
What counts if not the one thing he brags about. I'm sure the first blow to his ego is no longer being the richest person on the planet. Well, 2nd blow. Getting ratio'd on his own platform was probably the first stone cast.
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I’m still a strong supporter of EVs but I’m frustrated that EV owners still pay at least as much for electricity and registration as ICE cars pay for gas (in California). Hybrids still make more financial sense in California.
Never going back to ICE (though we're keep our Subaru Forester for camping, etc.), but buying another brand when our Tesla lease runs out; there are other great options out there. (I would try to find someone to take over our Tesla lease but when I spoke to a dealer about this he said that lots of people are trying to do this now so I'm not likely to succeed.)
With solar panels, we’re paying close to nothing for electricity. The panels and batteries cost about as much as an EV when we got them, but manufacturing costs have dropped and keep dropping.
Starting roughly this year, vehicle to home (V2H) will be mostly standard. That will let you use your car battery to top-off the house battery. That’ll make full-off-grid much more practical, which puts a ceiling on PG&E’s abusive rate hikes.
Maximum solar that fit on my roof, no battery with 1 EV with maybe 2 hours of driving per weekday - $250 minimum electric bill plus the cost of the solar system ($250 over 10yrs) = $500-$600/month. I almost never use AC or heat.
>he panels and batteries cost about as much as an EV when we got them, but manufacturing costs have dropped and keep dropping.
So basically you prepaid.
$20-40k buys a LOT of electricity. I live in a real dump of a state with insane electric prices (only reliably exceeded by Hawaii) and I can't make a privately owned system pencil out. Even with the credits the amortization time is on the order of 20yr +/- a few. I get the draw of spending a ton up front to eliminate a bill and have better cashflow but I just can't justify that with tens of thousands of dollars.
Interestingly, the savings from parking fees are a thousandfold more worth it than the gas stuff.
Dead Comment
Dead Comment
Nearly every time I (and likely you) buy something, it's produced by, transported by, funded by, owned by a company or in a country that has been found guilty of repeated human rights violations. Literal genocides in an alarming number of instances.
It almost feels cathartic for the externalities of the society we've built to be burdened by us, rather than someone in another country.
That being said, I agree with the self-interest aspect and would also prefer not to be targeted by extremists on either side. The real trick is figuring out who that's going to be ahead of time - my money would have been on Chinese EV's being hit before Tesla.
- CEO running multiple companies: "Genius! Superstar! Incredible!"
- Working class guy working multiple jobs: "Hard worker! Hustler! Lifting his family out of poverty!"
- Office worker with more than one full-time job: "Overemployed! Fraud! Double-dipping!"
...don't forget also playing Path of Exile 2 80 hours a week...
kinda funny that even after that came out and everyone had a laugh nobody really asked if maybe his real contributions on the business side of things are just as illusionary as his gaming accomplishments.
He seems to have a default assumption himself that if left unchecked each IC in his companies and the federal government aren't providing value commiserate with their compensation... and these days when it comes to people involved in politics I just assume based on accumulated evidence that every accusation is a confession.
Beyond politics, this is simply an exercise in CEO malpractice.
Brands and the marketing around them are extremely important to large long-term companies like TSLA presumably is.
In car companies, as its been explained to me, branding is even more important because a consistent positive attachment of existing car owners to the brand is critically important for the biggest source of a car company's customers: the existing ones.
A car is daily used item, a piece of a consumer's ego, a large scale purchase that almost everyone has emotional not just rational investment.
Tesla the car company probably had two fundamental archetypes as purchasers: a techno-geek gee-whiz buyer, and a left-leaning pro-environmental buyer. It's hard to figure out what proportion is which, but let's just say it is at least 50% pro-environment.
Your customers are basically your brand. And the Tesla brand has completely destroyed the pro-environmental crowd. And not just vaguely turned them off. It has angrily reversed them.
Tesla has no marketing department, or very little. It does little advertising. It relied on passionate owners, and of the two archetypes, the techno-gee-whiz is the less passionate, because they are always looking for the next best thing.
The pro-environment crowd was the most emotionally invested, because Tesla represented one of the few hopes for improving the environment over the ICE / petroleum iron grip on transportation. But that emotional investment didn't turn to indifference.
It turned to betrayal and anger.
In Europe, you have compounded this with anti-American sentiment and creepy pro-Russian propangada parroting as well as fascist politics meddling.
On top of all this, Tesla is fundamentally an urban brand. Charging infrastructure sucks in rural areas and driving distances are higher, so urban/suburban drivers buy them, which aligns with the progressive/Democratic buyer profile.
So with the vast anger towards Musk, a driver of a Tesla gets a daily emotional rebuff, from both Musk's daily headlines, to covert looks of dismissal, to overt confrontation, mocking, and danger of vandalism.
So, is there some massive pool of conservative voters ready to enthusiastically buy Teslas? The Cybertruck has been fundamentally rejected by the pickup crowd, and angry young men of that segment are the youth movement of the far-right Republican party. The rest are change-resistant older people, or the miniscule numbers of the wealthy.
The weak response of many Tesla owners is to blame the people as wrongfully blaming Tesla for Musk's actions, which is just a ridiculous notion. CEO does Sieg Heils on national TV. CEO gets money and fame from Tesla. CEO is STILL CEO of Tesla after Sieg Heils.
Those Sieg Heils should be immediate termination grounds for Musk, and a forced selloff in any functioning democracy. There is ample evidence of Twitter dogwhistles and his public statements in support of AfD that there is no "roman salute" or "he's just autistic" that can be argued with a straight face. Public Sieg Heils are not trolling, they are a fundamental offense on democracy. Fascism's very purpose is to contravene democratic principles to gain authoritarian control, and not a benevolent dictatorship. The path of fascism explicitly uses appeals to the darkest side of humanity, and so the authoritarianism will be of the very evil sort, and that comes from a philosophically moral relativist.
On top of that, Musk has hitched himself to a trade warring administration, which will doom Tesla in China, either from indirect edicts from the CCP to not buy Teslas, to outright seizing of their factories and assets if/when the Taiwan saber rattling and cold war expands.
And I could detail a dozen other CEO failures: Cybertruck bust. Semi misexecution. Solar is a joke. Should have acquires a struggling ICE company (like Nissan) for stock swap funny money to gain platforms/engineeers/production capacity. Only basically make two models of mass market cars. Only has one brand and doesn't have other branding levels. Failure of battery day execution/no novel drivetrain or battery technology. Failed to become the premier EV infrastructure provider (and has joined to a administration that will drop the funding). Should have introduced PHEVs in a separate company to apply battery production to more cars. Should have lines in ebikes, power tools, yard tools, anything that is battery-electric. Should have industrial applications and drivetrains. Should actually show up to work.
Before Musk went full Nazi, I was looking into leasing a Model 3 as it was surprisingly cheap. I decided against it after I found out that the new Model 3 doesn't have a turn stalk. Now Tesla is a no go for me as I can't be associated with Musk in any fashion.
The dark humor part is, it's the car owners who are going to suffer most. Stockholders and executives probably already sold enough stock to land on a soft pile of money.
The only question that remains is whether or not his brand is still salvageable. I'm leaning towards "no", he has taken things really far now. People are pretty fickle. But he is doing some really extreme things and I think it's going to be hard to walk back. Personally I think the emperor has no clothes but let's see.
Based on what China has been doing with EVs, I'm even questioning the narrative that he actually had much to do with kicking off the EV revolution, or whether or not it was going to happen regardless. I think it's the later. China was already going to be the dominant player and was already moving in the EV direction because their dependence on foreign oil wasn't to their benefit.
I detest Musk, but Tesla was/is one of CATL's largest customers. Without Tesla, the capital to jumpstart the EV Battery industry within China wouldn't truly exist.
I would argue that Tesla did absolutely push the EV industry in the US. China would have dominated outside the US regardless but Tesla's involvement in China probably moved that timeline forward by a few years.
Putting up impressive net income figures better than the other car companies and making the best selling car in the world also helps. Plus SpaceX and Starlink are a success. That kind of track record within 15 years could portend more success in the future.
It does not excuse the other failings, but business wise, I don’t see what trepidation shareholders would have had (prior to the recent Nazi and destroying US civilian institutions actions).
Must controls about 12% of the company, so the remaining 88% of the stock needs to produce the 2/3s majority. So you effectively need 75% of voters to vote against him.
TSLA probably has a large retail segment, and they can't be organized to vote, and generally the TSLA retail crowd is full of Elon fanbois. That leaves institutional investors, and with Musk's alignment with the Trump administration, they are terrified of getting their institutions investigated or harassed.
The only way Musk gets ousted is for the stock to drop so far that a margin call is issued on the loans he has taken on the stock. I don't know what that is, but I suspect it is under 100$/share.
That might force a selloff by Musk, which combined with the price collapse chasing retail investors away, may provide enough voting power for institutions. Still a big IF.
The only other thing would be if board members start resigning, but most of the board is sufficiently amoral and well compensated that it is unlikely.
Regulatory intervention isn't happening for four years. Lawsuits? Probably would need executive branch enforcement, and there's always the Trump pardon to wipe anything away.
Deleted Comment
However, his collusion with the administration to actively make people's lives miserable—without proper oversight, due process, or accountability—has been a breaking point for me. The blatant conflict of interest has led me to significantly reduce my activity on X. This creates a dilemma, as many of the people I interact with are in Japan, where X remains extremely popular since the Twitter era. Most of them are unlikely to migrate elsewhere simply because they aren’t directly affected by his political actions.
The situation might be different for Tesla owners, but I’m not sure they were necessarily “overlooking” his statements. People have varying levels of tolerance when it comes to "canceling" products due to the actions of their owners.
Dead Comment
It wouldn't be the first time the worlds richest mans house of cards comes crumbling down due to over confidence and over exposure.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivar_Kreuger
it's a good thing Elon is addicted to the limelight and won't let them move on. Makes his eventual downfall faster.
> its a very, very long way to go before the protesting hits him where it actually counts.
What counts if not the one thing he brags about. I'm sure the first blow to his ego is no longer being the richest person on the planet. Well, 2nd blow. Getting ratio'd on his own platform was probably the first stone cast.