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by dirkg 1331 days ago
Musk doesnt deserve credit for the success of Tesla, if you mean actually providing any leadership or technical skills. I do not work there so obviously I dont know internal details but everything we know points to him not making any contributions besides being an obnoxious taskmaster who wanted employees to work late.

He does credit for being such a charismatic charlatan and somehow managing to fool most of the world and being a social media and tech darling based on nothing but lies and empty promises. Tesla's valuation comes from a large part from Musks constant lies that FSD was a solved problem and was just around the corner, every ear since 2016. Every time he said that, he got more fanatics, and the stock surged.

SpaceX is almost fully funded by DoD and Musk has acknowledged the end goal is to use it for military purposes.

All his other ideas like Hyperloop/Boring company, the recently released private tweets with his billionaire friends, getting fired by his own board, clearly expose him as someone who doesn't really understand technology let alone be a 'genius'. More like an idiot.

He was born rich, got lucky and somehow people buy into his myth.

And yes, he is a fraud. He's been selling vaporware for close to a decade, charging for alpha code that kills people and lying about it. Its not the same level of fraud as Holmes but Musk was never honest about it either.

3 comments

>He's been selling vaporware for close to a decade

Interesting, my Tesla feels pretty real.

How is that robotaxi working out for you?
I'm not sure there is anything in this comment that is true.
You become a magnet for this kind of commentary once you achieve any significant level of success.
Not true, Jeff Bezos and Steve Jobs get credit for what they built without this kind of commentary. Primarily because people don't detect immense amounts of fraud in how they operate(d), they actually built and delivered what they promised investors and consumers.
What "immense amounts of fraud" are you talking about?
Promising FSD, Self driving Taxis, Tesla Trucks, Tesla Semis, and other vaporware to raise funds from investors and public then never delivering.

There are also claims of games being played with Tesla options at the direction of Elon, though that area is less clear to me.

That's pretty ridiculous way to frame things IMO.

Maybe it's just a case of what he is doing is a dramatically more difficult and challenging than what the majority of us can remotely understand. And that would mean things don't go the way he planned a significant amount of the time (perfectly normal). And that includes the whole spectrum of business operations -> investors, funding/finance, marketing, technology, distribution, supply chains etc.

I know from the comfort of our desk chair (with no risk taken, no relevant experience, no nothing really) and with perfect 20/20 hindsight we can make these criticisms but really they dont mean much.

>dramatically more difficult and challenging than what the majority of us can remotely understand.

Jobs and Bezos fell into this category, they just underpromised and overdelivered, not the opposite.

lol, the guy has an extremely long track record of overpromising and underdelivering.
lol...if only Elon had delivered like your average forum commenter...