Elon Musk Discussion - Tesla Brand Damage

[petercc9]

I am not an Elon fan on a personality level, but I bet I wouldn’t be a fan of almost any CEO, of any car company or other business, since they all seem to be detached narcissists. The difference is most CEOs stay quiet and don’t make it so easy to dislike them. Remember the old saying “better to keep your mouth shut and have people think you are stupid, rather than opening your mouth and removing all doubt”

Anyone who can’t stand Musk and won’t buy a Tesla because of him better not buy a Lucid instead.

If personality was a requirement nobody would be buying iPhones back in the Steve Jobs days.
My ex-boss used to report directly to him and said he was an insanely temperamental guy.

Also I once learned when working for a financial firm with a hot-headed Portfolio Manager.
To his boss
Me: Why do you keep this guy. He's a jerk and completely terrorizes everybody
His Boss: Unfortunately you'll find its the jerks who get things done and usually make the most money for a company.

 

[SouthFLGuy]

I am not an Elon fan on a personality level, but I bet I wouldn’t be a fan of almost any CEO, of any car company or other business, since they all seem to be detached narcissists. The difference is most CEOs stay quiet and don’t make it so easy to dislike them. Remember the old saying “better to keep your mouth shut and have people think you are stupid, rather than opening your mouth and removing all doubt”

Anyone who can’t stand Musk and won’t buy a Tesla because of him better not buy a Lucid instead.

And for that reason, I did not buy a Lucid. Everyone is different and has their personal opinions, but Elon is unhinged. There are people in positions of power where we have no idea what their ideology is - the difference is that Elon is actively spreading it.

 

[SouthFLGuy]

If personality was a requirement nobody would be buying iPhones back in the Steve Jobs days.
My ex-boss used to report directly to him and said he was an insanely temperamental guy.

Also I once learned when working for a financial firm with a hot-headed Portfolio Manager.
To his boss
Me: Why do you keep this guy. He's a jerk and completely terrorizes everybody
His Boss: Unfortunately you'll find its the jerks who get things done and usually make the most money for a company.

In the short-term maybe, but putting profits over the people in your company doesn't make for long-lasting success.. enter Musk.

 

[SouthFLGuy]

Exactly this. Steve Jobs by all accounts was seemingly not a great human....but....the dude made great phones and computers. Like it or not, Elon has done more to advance humanities progression to sustainable energy more than almost anyone. I can guarantee you that most of the people on this forum were never going to buy a Prius or a Nissan Leaf. If his ideologies aligned with the media he would be heralded as a hero.

Like letting Nazis back on Twitter? So they should herald him for that? The antisemitism.. stuff like that?

 

[The Long C_0_N]

Like letting Nazis back on Twitter? So they should herald him for that? The antisemitism.. stuff like that?

A downvote on my post, as well as a quoted response. Nice. You're kind of going off on a tangent with this post, but I'll bite. Everyone should have the ability to say what they want, regardless of whether I personally agree with what is being said. The power of free speech is in the fact that people are allowed to say things that don't jive with your perspective.

Considering that I'm a black person, I'm pretty sure you can come up with some common sense reasons for why I'm not exactly a big supporter of team Nazi. I still believe they should be able to say whatever they want, and thus support Elon's position in the matter.

 

[SouthFLGuy]

A downvote on my post, as well as a quoted response. Nice. You're kind of going off on a tangent with this post, but I'll bite. Everyone should have the ability to say what they want, regardless of whether I personally agree with what is being said. The power of free speech is in the fact that people are allowed to say things that don't jive with your perspective.

Considering that I'm a black person, I'm pretty sure you can come up with some common sense reasons for why I'm not exactly a big supporter of team Nazi. I still believe they should be able to say whatever they want, and thus support Elon's position in the matter.

If you think allowing hate speech and promoting violence against groups of people is OK, then by all means. But people shouldn't pretend that Elon believes in this "absolutist" free speech. The moment he is challenged on something he retaliates like a child.

 

[petercc9]

In the short-term maybe, but putting profits over the people in your company doesn't make for long-lasting success.. enter Musk.

Unfortunately profits are what pays people's salaries..not smiling faces.

 

[KJD]

Does anyone else feel like this has been a hell of a week ? Not sure what to make of this.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1788834859110002716

 

[SouthFLGuy]

Unfortunately profits are what pays people's salaries..not smiling faces.

Do you think it's enjoyable working at twitter now? Good people are lost when the environment is toxic which ultimately leads to a failing organization.

 

[Chucko]

Does anyone else feel like this has been a hell of a week ? Not sure what to make of this.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1788834859110002716

IMHO, Musk is feeling the heat over his ill timed and stupid/poorly executed decision regarding the Supercharger Team and now he's play damage control.

 

[gforce2002]

Like I said in another thread, literally nothing that he says has any credence unless proven with an actual outcome. Trying to parse out meaning from random blatherings is a recipe for a headache.

 

[mborkow]

IMHO, Musk is feeling the heat over his ill timed and stupid/poorly executed decision regarding the Supercharger Team and now he's play damage control.

Totally agree…the stock has lost some of the ground it had started to gain back since that move.

 

[Gixx1300R]

Tesla has grown enough; it is time for Elon to go. he is hurting the brand more than he is helping

 

[petercc9]

Do you think it's enjoyable working at twitter now? Good people are lost when the environment is toxic which ultimately leads to a failing organization.

Tell that to the sell-out management who took the buyout money and ran.
So whose happiness interests do you think were they looking out for...somehow for some reason you think they put the average worker's happiness first....

 

[Alan_F]

Tell that to the sell-out management who took the buyout money and ran.
So whose happiness interests do you think were they looking out for...somehow for some reason you think they put the average worker's happiness first....

IIRC, they were doing their fiduciary duty and all the shareholders benefited from the inflated price that Musk paid for the company. They were never going to be able to make that much money for the shareholders by operating the company. Not great for Twitter employees, but the difference here is Musk is harming the shareholders by driving away some potential buyers through his public statements and recent management actions.

 

[Mateo Leyva]

I don't think Tesla is being treated fairly, and much of that has to do with how the media is treating Musk and the bad optics which stem from that. Look at the NHTSA's rating of Autopilot vs Mercedes' driver assist features. There's no way in hell they are even comparable and yet the Mercedes system is rated "safer". It is undoubtably politically motivated.

 

[SouthFLGuy]

Just my personal experience having used both systems (plus BMW). My Tesla would regularly phantom break going 80mph on the highway nearly getting me rear ended a few times. Never happened in my Benz or the BMW.

 

[spacerfc]

I guess if you define successful as not losing so much money that it threatens to bankrupt Elon Musk in the next 5 years then I can see that. I like the community notes feature. Other than that the biggest change in Twitter seems to be an explosion in porn bots.

Yes, let's just ignore all the new features added to twitter in the past few months such as job listing, monetization and Grok.

As for losing money, that's not at all unique to an early Musk company, SpaceX and Tesla lost money for close to 20 years, now they're industrial titans.

 

[spacerfc]

Elon Musk is proven to be right yet again, 4 years ago this tweet is used as an example of him being a bad person:

https://twitter.com/x/status/1255380013488189440

Yet today moderates are starting to admit pandemic response is indeed excessive:

Here’s a hot take: I think we should view the COVID response in blue states as having been quite radical. Not the first several weeks, when nobody knew what was happening and even many red states were relatively shut down. But closing in-person schooling for more than a year, and banning people from attending church or even from going to the beach — all that shows the government intervening in everyday life in a way it never had in most Americans’ experience.2

By 2022, for instance, a plurality or majority of voters had concluded there was too little attention given to quality of life, individual choice and educational needs during the pandemic response.

 

[Ni Ph]

But all Elon cared about was Elon when he said it. You do know that covid 19 killed a million people in the US after that tweet? It was a unknown new deadly disease and stayed deadly that until the mild omicron variant. Hospital were full and closed to new patients and there were a lot unknown. Some measures were excessive but that the luxury of looking back with hindsight and cherry picking some restrictions.

Can't believe the complete amnesia so people have but we do like in world where they were happy to dose up on Quinine and not take the vacine for the disease. The restrictions were there to protect the vulnerable. But maybe you deniers don't care about that.

I lost two uncles in the US (both in December 2020) before the vaccine, who bought the BS conspiracy theories and resumed their lives and died as a result of it