Elon Musk: The Man, the Myth, the Misdirection
Too many journalists have bought into the Reagan era myth that financial success indicates virtue and intelligence. Too many are impressed by wealth, hobnobbing with the very people destroying the U.S.
This obsequious lionization of billionaires serves as a vehicle for disparaging the roles that should be played by the government, giving them justification to reject the concept of checks and balances built into our system.
If you want to know why corporate America is willing (by and large) to settle for a second Trump presidency, just look at the not-so-well-known success stories of the Biden administration in tackling corporate malfeasance and mega-mergers.
Exhibit One in our tale of mis doers and democracy deniers is Elon Musk, who’s doing untold damage to the electric vehicle market by charging consumers for repairs when they fail because the cars were poorly made.
He is an amazing teller of tales, like claiming he founded Tesla and being chief engineer of his companies. Customers are flocking to buy his cars; unfortunately they are buying into a tangled web of deception and a bunch of stuff hidden in the fine print of their sales contracts. There's an entire site devoted to cataloging Musk's public lies.
Cory Doctorow has written about Tesla/Musk along the way of revealing the undersides of the tech industry.
Tesla is a giant shell-game masquerading as a car company. The important thing about Tesla isn't its cars, it's Tesla's business arrangement, the Tesla-Financial Complex.
Once you start unpacking Tesla's balance sheets, you start to realize how much the company depends on government subsidies and tax-breaks, combined with selling carbon credits that make huge, planet-destroying SUVs possible, under the pretense that this is somehow good for the environment
Reuters did a deep dive into one type of failures, profiling one man charged $14,000 for repairs after his newly purchased Model Y’s front-right suspension collapsed while making a turn
Jain is one of tens of thousands of Tesla owners who have experienced premature failures of suspension or steering parts, according to a Reuters review of thousands of Tesla documents. The chronic failures, many in relatively new vehicles, date back at least seven years and stretch across Tesla’s model lineup and across the globe, from China to the United States to Europe, according to the records and interviews with more than 20 customers and nine former Tesla managers or service technicians.
Individual suspension or steering issues with Teslas have been discussed online and in news accounts for years. But the documents, which have not been previously reported, offer the most comprehensive view to date into the scope of the problems and how Tesla handled what its engineers have internally called part “flaws” and “failures.” The records and interviews reveal for the first time that the automaker has long known far more about the frequency and extent of the defects than it has disclosed to consumers and safety regulators.
The documents, dated between 2016 and 2022, include repair reports from Tesla service centers globally; analyses and data reviews by engineers on parts with high failure rates; and memos sent to technicians globally, instructing them to tell consumers that broken parts on their cars were not faulty.
An earlier report gave details about a secret team at Tesla that discouraged customer complaints about vehicles not matching claims about distances between recharges.
The Austin, Texas-based electric carmaker deployed the team because its service centers were inundated with appointments from owners who had expected better performance based on the company’s advertised estimates and the projections displayed by the in-dash range meters of the cars themselves, according to several people familiar with the matter.
Inside the Nevada team’s office, some employees celebrated canceling service appointments by putting their phones on mute and striking a metal xylophone, triggering applause from coworkers who sometimes stood on desks. The team often closed hundreds of cases a week and staffers were tracked on their average number of diverted appointments per day.
Last week Gizmundo reported that Tesla had slashed range estimates of its Model Y Long Range and Performance models by 6%.
The Model Y’s new range estimates are not a reduction in performance, but rather a more realistic estimate of how far a Tesla’s charge will get you. The Model Y Long Range model is down to 310 miles from 330, while the Model Y Performance is down to 285 miles from 303, according to Electrek.
As for the Autopilot update, there was a similar over-the-air software update to over 2 million American Teslas in December after the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration determined Tesla wasn’t doing enough to ensure drivers used the system correctly. This week, the update expanded to Teslas in China, where a competitor, BYD, recently overtook Tesla as the top-selling electric car.
California’s DMV is currently in a legal battle with Musk over bold marketing claims about Tesla’s “full self-driving capability,” despite the cars requiring driver supervision in Autopilot mode. The DMV accuses Tesla of fraud whereas Musk calls the exaggerated claims “free speech.”
There is conflicting information about the reliability of Tesla models, with some media outlets hailing the Model 3 in particular for its reliability. Consumer Reports has been enamored with this model, saying only the 2022 Kia EV6 was more reliable. This endorsement came with the caveat that EVs were more problematic than gas powered or hybrid models.
Via Wards Auto:
Reuters reports that Tesla would have finished fifth from bottom out of 32 brands in the Vehicle Dependability Study rankings with owners citing problems with the Autopilot driver assistance system and the forward collision warning systems, as well as wind noise. However, J.D. Power had to cut Tesla from its league tables because, unsurprisingly considering the brand’s litany of issues, the automaker refuses to share consumer data.
In reviewing the publicly available reviews of Tesla models, the range of satisfaction with them was wide; it’s safe to say that recently about one in four owners were unhappy. The problem here is that Tesla has a closed system; there are no outsiders servicing the vehicles.
The DRM (Digital Rights Management) system in Teslas means that outside servicing amounts to altering the car’s software without permission, which is a felony, punishable by up to five years in prison.
Teslas have a hidden feature that lets them lock out their owners and summon a repo man to drive them away should there be a dispute about a late payment. Reports about the disputes over driving range include the nugget that complainers had their Tesla app altered so they were unable to to book a service appointment for any reason.
If their car malfunctioned, they'd have to request a callback, which could take several days. And if they didn’t answer the callback, their request was considered resolved.
Last month Tesla announced a recall of two million vehicles –nearly all the cars sold in the US– to update software and fix a defective system that’s supposed to ensure drivers are paying attention when they use Autopilot.
Via the Los Angeles Times:
Documents posted Wednesday by U.S. safety regulators say the update will increase warnings and alerts to drivers and even limit the areas where basic versions of Autopilot can operate.
The recall comes after a two-year investigation by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration into a series of crashes that happened while the Autopilot partially automated driving system was in use. Some were deadly.
***
Musk’s stewardship of Xitter (pronounce the X as “sh”) should be Exhibit Two, running the company into the ground financially whilst enabling the worst of the worst commentary in what was once considered a digital town square.
I’ll leave SpaceX alone for the moment other than to say that the massive cash flow coming via our tax dollars should be redirected toward NASA.
Musk has left a trail of ex associates burned by his ambition and ruthlessness willing to sneak around the non-disclosure agreements they signed.
Recently the Wall Street Journal gave voice to allegations about his erratic behavior being fueled by drug abuse, saying Musk has used LSD, cocaine, ecstasy and psychedelic mushrooms.
People close to the Tesla Inc. and SpaceX chief executive officer told the WSJ his drug use is ongoing, and that in particular he’s consuming ketamine. Musk took to social media last summer to say he has a prescription to use the drug as an antidepressant.
The New York Times reported in August 2018 that directors were concerned about Musk’s use of Ambien.
And there was the Joe Rogan podcast where he puffed a joint on air. Shortly thereafter Musk was replaced as board chairman at Tesla. Two new independent directors were added as part of a settlement of fraud charges brought by the US Securities and Exchange Commission.
While Musk has denied any drug use, saying he’s been tested regularly at NASA’s request for the past three years post the Rogan incident, accounts of his erratic behavior continue.
Via Bloomberg:
While Musk’s drug use has the potential to harm his other enterprises — particularly Space Exploration Technologies Corp., a US government contractor — he derives more of his fortune from Tesla than any other company. His shares and exercisable stock options are worth $97.6 billion, or about 44% of his $219.4 billion net worth, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
“Whatever I’m doing, I should obviously keep doing it!” Musk posted on X, citing Tesla and SpaceX being the world’s most valuable car and space companies. “If drugs actually helped improve my net productivity over time, I would definitely take them!”
***
As much as the 2024 election is about democracy vs authoritarianism, it’s also about the power wielded by people whose wealth really ought to be taxed. Heavily.
***
Monday’s News Clips of Note
***
Happy January 6th? They made it a Holiday! Via Alicia’s Substack
Republicans are celebrating January 6th as a Holiday right now—for cucks sake, Happy January 6th is trending on Twitter (X). Meanwhile, a video has popped up that shows just how disgusting and rabid their central Holiday star, Ashli Babbit, was.
Nobody paying attention would be shocked by the nastiness flying out of Babbit’s mouth in the above video. I wasn’t. But I suppose a meeting over Starbucks might have changed her mind? Seriously, why would I expose myself to such vitriol and danger?...
…Liberals should not entertain this mess; I mean, in what world do some people live in where they think the Ashli Babbits of America care two wits about reason? If such were reasonable, they wouldn’t be aligned with an orange, diaper-shitting fascist who wants to sic crocodiles on migrants.
***
Is the Far-Right Threatened by Taylor Swift? It Certainly Looks that Way Via Daily Kos
As Swift’s career and her status as an outspoken Democrat have expanded this year, though, so have the Republican Party’s attacks on her. A recent report from nonpartisan watchdog group Media Matters for America shows a consistent trend of conservative outlets and pundits levying attacks against her, ranging from Fox News and OAN to fringe alt-right outlets such as The Gateway Pundit and PragerU. Pundits including Ben Shapiro and Charlie Kirk made snide comments dripping with misogyny, criticizing Swift’s body and marital status. A list from Mediaite shows a list of the tweets from right-wingers attacking the pop star but there are many more examples.
These attacks are not at all surprising. Noted feminist author Jude Ellison Sady Doyle reported in 2018 that misogyny had become “central to the Republican mission” and that it expanded far beyond Trump. Several years later, that is even more true, as evidenced by the GOP’s attacks on its own female members. This makes it all too clear that the party is threatened by Swift, seeing her as a powerful ally for the Democratic Party. As The Nation reports:
“More unmarried women voting poses a particular threat to the GOP. In 2020, a whopping 63 percent of single women voted for Biden over Trump. This is bad news for the Republican Party, since the number of married people is declining. The share of households headed by married couples declined from 55 percent in 1990 to 46 percent in 2020.”
***
Republican officials threaten to remove Biden from the ballot Via Popular Information
Republican officials in several states are threatening to remove President Biden's name from the presidential ballot. The officials claim that removing Biden's name could be justified in response to Biden's immigration policies. The threat is rooted in a white nationalist conspiracy theory, the "great replacement," which posits Biden is intentionally allowing migrants to cross the border as part of a scheme to cement political control of the country.
The warning by Republicans that they are prepared to kick Biden off the ballot comes in response to decisions in Colorado and Maine to disqualify Trump. These decisions, which are under appeal, are based on the text of the 14th Amendment, which states that anyone who "having previously taken an oath… engaged in insurrection" is disqualified from holding "any office, civil or military, under the United States."
On X, Missouri Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft (R), who is currently a candidate for governor, said that if the decisions in Colorado and Maine are upheld, he would apply the "new legal standard" to Biden.
