[V_Terranova_Jr]

Elon is well-known for firing or sidelining technical staff with whom his intuition disagrees, regardless of his own technical depth in any of those matters. His companies have a lot of success for reasons other than his making the wisest technical and programmatic decisions. He sets his own standard for what he considers acceptable, even if those standards fly in the face of existing norms. That's not unalloyed awesomeness - there are sacrifices.

The author, in an admittedly ranty way, levels basic criticisms that are hard to individually disqualify. With the truck, it seems like Elon did Elon things, and his team is struggling to make his vision real in a mass-producible design with acceptable quality.

[voisin]

I don’t disagree with anything you’ve written, but the idea that Musk hasn’t considered oil panning and should’ve just asked an engineer is ludicrous. The author assumes Musk must be an idiot despite all of the evidence to the contrary.

[V_Terranova_Jr]

> ... the idea that Musk hasn’t considered oil panning and should’ve just asked an engineer is ludicrous. The author assumes Musk must be an idiot despite all of the evidence to the contrary.

I don't see anything ludicrous in the author's article, even if it sneers at times. Though unquestionably successful overall, since Elon has a history of bad technical or PR/appearance-driven moves, I'm not sure what's wrong with mocking him for some of those things. He is successful despite doing some idiotic things, it's not that everything he does is brilliant and correct.

The article doesn't provide any internal Tesla evidence as to whether Elon considered it and disregarded oil canning (for whatever reason), or if people on his team told him about this likely issue and he blew them off, thinking he could just keep demanding his team bring him solutions instead of telling him about problems with his vision. Under the circumstances, either could validly be criticized as idiotic, in which case mocking him seems like fair game. This would hardly be the first such issue ("Falcon Wing" doors, display screens on the Model S, the incredibly ill-advised 'Full Self-Driving' labeling, etc.).

[Zigurd]

Elon's lead designer has been interviewed about Cybertruck, saying words to the effect of: Really, boss?