“His life just sucks,” one colleague told The New Yorker. “It’s so stressful. He’s just so dedicated to these companies. He goes to sleep and wakes up answering e-mails. Ninety-nine per cent of people will never know someone that obsessed, and with that high a tolerance for sacrifice in their personal life.”
Cybertruck is a hyperactive child's idea of cool. Starship is, so far, neither an economical launch vehicle nor a viable tool for interplanetary manned exploration, and possibly a lesson in why a bastardized Agile-ish style of project management doesn't scale up. Starlink needs 10X the subscribers to be viable.
But those situations and a dozen more were not imposed on Musk, nor are they even necessary to achieve his goal nor has taking those risks kept projects on schedule. He chose this life. How big a hole in one's soul that needs so much to fill it?
That said, I genuinely would like to see him stay healthy so he can focus on SpaceX. Tesla could continue on just fine without him at this point, Twitter/X was a dumpster fire before and will remain so long after, but SpaceX really does seem to benefit from his presence and unwavering vision. And SpaceX is objectively pulling the entire space industry kicking and screaming into the 21's century.
You can root for SpaceX and the good it’s doing while also acknowledging it’s ran by a pretty pathetic dude.
But I will grant that the Twitter acquisition was a pretty clear unforced error.
For bigger cars, a hybrid is much superior from engineering perspective with the state of current tech, it uses a lot less Lithium, and still promotes the development of a charging network that could then charge small EVs.
And for even bigger vehicles, for industrial transport and public transport, we've had the electric train, tram, subway and trolleybus for decades. Decades. All running without batteries, which vastly reduces their weight and improves their safety and performance.
Tesla's contribution to the EV market are overblown. It's by far the most well known EV brand in the West, and it did open many people minds' to the prospect of getting an EV. But Tesla is offering product quality of continuous decline, and is in the process of being replaced by the very competitors in Asia I referred to earlier, who have been in this game for much longer than Tesla, and without peddling vaporware like the always broken FSD. Not to mention Optimus.
Tesla seems like they invented something. And changed the world. But they were just a huge distraction that sucked up the capital for other startups coming up with similar products, at a similar time, due to Elon Musk's empty promises and boatsmanship. Tesla is a distraction and will be forgotten, except for two things: their charging plug standard, and their supercharger network. Those will likely stick around.
Shame really, because I really liked the Tesla brand, and I really like the look of the Model 3/Y (not the interior nor the quality, but it's a nice looking car, simple, elegant). Unfortunately Tesla is currently in decay and they're putting up increasingly weirder rabbits from their hat to hide that fact (and why the CFO left).
They're still absolutely dominant in the US, but losing ground fast. And, anecdotally, their BEV market share in Europe (based on what I see on the road and whilst shopping for used cars) is much lower. In the UK, I believe it's below 20%.
They're still driving innovation in this space, still employing tens of thousands of people, still providing shareholder value and still making cars people want to own.
Hybrids are not superior in any way. Indeed they are actually inferior in just about every way - cost, performance, maintenance / reliability, emissions. Which hybrid beats a Model 3/Y?
Referring to electric trains, trams and subways is also a red herring. This discussion is about Tesla's contribution to electric cars.
Tesla's quality is only suffering in the eyes of its most vocal critics - who often have a vested interest in stirring up controversy. I've owned both a Model S and a Model X - both are significantly more reliable (and better performing) than any other car I've ever owned. Observing that Tesla was not immune from the global supply chain crisis caused by the lockdowns, or is having difficulty perfecting FSD, or is actively researching humanoid robotics (ie: diversifying) seems short-sighted. Would you prefer they make no attempt at innovation? Expecting perfection from Tesla, but excusing mediocrity from every other manufacturer is an unreasonable double-standard. (Although I would agree that their early marketing of FSD was overly optimistic and potentially reckless.)
Nobody is claiming Tesla invented BEV's - that's a straw man. But they certainly did push the BEV market into the mainstream and drastically improve the technology. The fact that you can drive anywhere in the US and be within driving distance of a Supercharger is testament to that. Without Tesla leading the way, I think there's a strong argument to be made that there would still be no EV market in the US.
And finally, Tesla is the first new US car manufacturer to arrive, and be competitive in the last century. I think that's an accomplishment in itself.