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Tesla’s product is the stock, pure and simple. Everything they do from rushing the model Y, causing its lead engineer to leave the company, to battery day, autonomy day, $420 funding secured, the solar city merger, the semi, roadster, FSD, all of these exist to support the stock price and nothing else.

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Arguably, the solar city merger was about bailing out Musk's personal holdings in a failing business.

With the end goal of maintaining the brand of Musk’s companies and pushing the stock price higher. If SolarCity had gone bankrupt, which it should have, Musk’s whole empire would have been in jeopardy

>Musk’s whole empire would have been in jeopardy

He says this himself in the SolarCity lawsuit deposition, I believe.

That deal was incredibly sketchy. His cousin was the CEO, right?

Yes, an Elon and his brother owned debt in SolarCity both personally and through other business ventures (SpaceX owned $100 mn in SolarCity debt at the time).

Court filings that have been released show that SolarCity was approaching bankruptcy, and that Musk faked the solar roof presentation to sell the deal to Tesla shareholders. The homes shown at the event were non functional.

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