Over 2 years ago, when most of the media was still celebrating him, I compared Elon Musk to Henry Ford. Not in a good way.
I have seen nothing since to change my view, only to darken it.
Last year was horrible for the South African immigrant, currently the world’s wealthiest person.
He bought Twitter and crashed it. Tesla’s growth slowed dramatically. So did profitability, as the company cut prices to move merchandise. (This is not yet reflected in the stock price.)
Reports of poor build quality increased. Two Starship rockets went through what SpaceX called “rapid unscheduled disassembly” — they blew up.
This year is shaping up to be worse.
China’s BYD has introduced an $11,500 Electric Vehicle (EV) with good build quality. Li Auto, which is growing faster than Tesla on the market’s high end with plug-in hybrids, introduced an all-electric Minivan. Solid state batteries are emerging that crush the company’s advantages there. The SuperCharger network may be capable of delivering $8 billion of revenue per year. But is anyone paying $500 billion for a gas station?
Tesla’s response is the Cybertruck. Oh, and a “roadster” that doesn’t exist. Instead of responding to the Chinese affordability threat, Musk doubled down on super-expensive, overhyped garbage.\
What Else?
SpaceX is still getting defense contracts but has been caught selling Starlink systems to Russia.
What’s least expected, at least to me, is Musk becoming a right-wing political troll. He seems to have put his chips on Donald Trump overthrowing American democracy. That’s a bad bet.
Now comes this idiotic suit against OpenAI. He is correct on the facts. Sam Altman transformed OpenAI from an open source project into a for-profit corporation, attached closely to Microsoft. So what? Companies are free to close open source projects on a whim, as Oracle has proven. The “relief” he seeks is access to OpenAI tech for his own proprietary start-up. Also, he has no standing to sue. He left the place almost 6 years ago.
More important, Microsoft has already moved on from Altman and OpenAI. It now offers President Brad Smith as its AI policymaker. The company’s own blueprint for governing the technology may be gobbledygook, but its gobbledygook its lawyers and lobbyists can defend. They don’t need Altman, and can let him twist slowly in the wind, at the end of Musk’s legal hook. That won’t change a thing.
The bottom line is this. Elon Musk has put his government contracts at severe risk. Tesla is flailing. We will do very well without him.
