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Some of this article is stuff that’s been widely discussed for months, but I think it goes a little deeper into how I think we got here. Maybe I’m wrong, but after covering Tesla and Elon Musk very closely for 12 years and having my assumptions and analysis affirmed by Musk countless times, I do think I could be right with this. Also, frankly, it’s not rocket science.
Okay, I’ll go back a little further than the past year. Clearly, Musk worked his butt off for several years and went through a ton of stress to help Tesla reach mass production of the Model 3 and thus profitability. When Tesla became profitable, short sellers got fried, and Musk was not under the pressure of Wall Street, the press, or his own fear of failure any longer, he let loose. He got rid of Tesla’s PR team before long. He stopped worrying as much about what he said and tweeted (not that he was ever 100% restrained on that). And he decided to go gung-ho into a fun new model, rather than focus every day on more “boring” models (the Model Y, Semi, and a lower-cost car). Of course, we all know what model I’m referring to — the Cybertruck.
With regard to the highly popular and unmatched Tesla Model 3 and then Tesla Model Y, I think the assumption was that consumer demand would just keep growing and growing. Why would anyone buy anything else? (I know that argument well, because I made it several times, and Musk agreed with it.) Naturally, he knew they’d have some limit, eventually, but I think he assumed robotaxi capability would be ready by that time and that would just juice sales that much more — to 20 million vehicles a year by 2030 even.
The 50% growth rate Musk repeated for years had been reality, and he just kept that projection growing, seemingly without giving too much consideration to the possibility that it would be reduced and growth would taper off. Or maybe it was really just all about overconfidence in FSD (Full Self Driving) development. In any case, we haven’t been seeing 50% annual growth, and Musk eventually stopped talking about this, and wouldn’t even give a sales forecast for 2024.
At the same time as all of this has been happening, he’s gotten more and more distracted by other matters. He’s got 12 kids now (I think), and assuming he spends even a little time with all of them, that’s one giant distraction. One of his kids is trans and disowned him, changing her name at the age of 18. It seems like this, as well as an atypical relationship with Grimes that involved all kinds of discussions (from trans topics to communism to squeezing the working class as a billionaire CEO), got Musk much more focused on social and cultural issues than he’d ever be before, and eventually political matters. (Notably, right after a breakup, Grimes was dating a famous trans woman.) Musk got more and more pulled into identity politics, and then bought Twitter. He basically got baited into buying the social media site and then spent months trying to get out of it in court, but he lost the court battle and had to buy the site (which, incidentally, involved selling a lot of Tesla stock).
As Musk got more and more involved in 1) running Twitter (now X), 2) having his attention sucked into Twitter echo chambers and conspiracy theories (like far too many a person before and after him), and 3) trying to make Twitter profitable (but actually driving down its revenue massively), it’s been hard to imagine that he’s been very focused on Tesla vehicle and software development. It’s also hard to believe he’s been paying a lot of attention to different sales trends and competition in key markets — China, Europe, and even the US. He has said he’s working full time at Tesla, but that seems unlikely if not impossible. Some recent analyses have shown him tweeting all throughout the day. He has conducted long interviews with presidential candidates Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis, among others, and one would think he did some level of prep before those (though, given how they turned out and Musk’s propensity for doing things on the fly, that may not have been the case). I also noticed Musk attended the World Cup final in Qatar, the recent US Open men’s final in NYC, and a number of other celebrity events around the world. Again, also, he has 12 children (at least).
By the way, regarding all of his tweeting, the Wall Street Journal recently analyzed it and determined: “Both the AI and keyword analyses revealed the same pattern: Musk’s feed has fundamentally shifted from business toward politics and social issues.” Whereas he used to tweet mostly about Tesla and SpaceX, he is much more focused now on other matters. I think that’s a clear sign his attention is mostly elsewhere. Another analysis found that he spends almost 3 hours a day on X (as a user, not even counting whatever he’s doing in the background to try to run the site). Some days he might spend 5 hours on there. I imagine that some days are completely consumed by X.
In short, I do not think Musk is working full time at Tesla. He might even be quiet quitting.
And let’s also recall Musk’s role at SpaceX, Neuralink, The Boring Company, and some other ventures, organizations, and foundations.
Tying things together, with less and less interest in working on “boring” Tesla vehicles, probably little interest in hearing about the competition and consumer demand challenges Tesla is facing in various markets, a strong aversion to fighting the pressures of Wall Street and the press again, and an enormous circus of distractions, I think Tesla development is being massively neglected.
But he can’t say he’s taken a wrong course, can’t say he’s too distracted, and can’t say he’s failed in his duties at Tesla. And this is where a Hail Mary savior comes in.
He can’t fail. Tesla can’t fail. And he’s been talking about and working on this damn robotaxi thing for more than a decade. Yes, it’s years behind schedule, but it’s got to work. He just has to. It will revive consumer demand growth in Tesla vehicles. It will send the stock to Mars again. It will prove Elon was right all along. And, importantly, it will allow him to stay focused on the more interesting things that grab his attention on X everyday. Also, it will allow him to keep ignoring the requests for a more affordable Tesla vehicle and more variations of the Model 3 and Model Y in order to “grow up” and stimulate consumer demand in the way other automakers do. Also, with the snap of a finger, Tesla can beat all those pesky Chinese rivals that are starting to outcompete Tesla as well as Google-originated Waymo, a decade-long competitor to Musk’s robotaxi vision.
Is this robotaxi savior going to really arrive? Will it solve all of Musk’s Tesla problems? Will everything be fine with the TSLA world again? Will Elon Musk become the world’s richest man again? Will robotaxis financially fuel a long-held desire to go to Mars?
I’ll leave the future to answer all of those questions.
However, I’ll close with a segment of a recent article and book about Musk’s Twitter takeover. As we all know, many Twitter employees were not happy with where Musk was taking the company. The just-released book is Character Limit: How Elon Musk Destroyed Twitter, by New York Times reporters Kate Conger and Ryan Mac. Rolling Stone highlighted this story from the book in an article about “11 WTF Moments,” summarizing it in their own words except for the quotes:
“Musk isn’t too forgiving of employees who criticize him — or give him answers he doesn’t like — as many episodes in the book illustrate. In one case, he was enraged about a decline in engagement on his tweets, and abruptly fired an engineer who suggested that the public’s interest in him had fallen off since the Twitter acquisition closed several months prior. But another employee, a data scientist who had already made up his mind to resign after turning over memos on how to run Twitter more effectively, was even more blunt with Musk. He explained that he had been excited about the takeover but was disheartened when, just weeks later, Musk shared blatant partisan misinformation about an assault by a home intruder on then House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband Paul Pelosi. ‘It’s only really like the tenth percentile of the adult population who’d be gullible enough to fall for this,’ the employee told Musk, who shot back, ‘Fu** you!’ The departing data scientist left him with a piece of advice: ‘I hope you’ll declare bankruptcy and let someone else run the company.’”
Why is that relevant? Musk has had a tendency in the past year, or more, to believe and promote wild conspiracy theories. He’s been jumping to conclusions on what seems to be a daily basis. And he’s been very poor at accepting corrections, critiques, and new information that doesn’t align with his claims. I believe it’s been a very similar story at Tesla. We’ve had reporting on executives there trying to convince him of the importance of various matters (from a more affordable Tesla to maintaining a Supercharging team) and him blowing up in response. It’s concerning, and it matches reporting on his work at Twitter/X as well as much of his tweeting. I’m concerned, and many are, that Tesla is being neglected, important work that could be done at the company is being trashed, and the company’s future is being bet on a Hail Mary. The story above tries to explain how and why that’s happening. Maybe it’s wrong, maybe it’s right. What do you think?
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