The “cool” and unique factor of those door handles help sell more cars and increase brand valuation. Increasing it more than the cost of those lives.

At least that’s what American capitalism has shown us.

Important point here: the discussion is about his character, but you’ve made it about his intellect.

I don’t think anyone can doubt that Musk is super smart. I’ve heard silly things like - he doesn’t do anything, it’s all his employees or board or assistant - but reading the history that’s obviously false.

It does seem some people can’t cope with the idea that someone is often an asshat is also brilliant. And I’m afraid it’s true with Musk.

That was certainly the first time he did something so obviously blatantly evil, and obviously his own fault, that I wasn't able to ignore it or dismiss it.

It was sufficiently awful, at first I couldn't even believe he'd done it. When I internalised that he was the kind of person to do that, it made it much easier to see his other flaws.

I think that marked a turning point for many. He had been known to say dumb things in the past but that was monumentally stupid own goal. Worse, he was given multiple chances to take a step back but just kept digging.

This really makes no sense because you can just listen to the man himself (and there's a lot of material).

The "you're a sheep" rhetoric. Great!

Pre-2018 he had already made some substantial lies, (cf. https://elonmusk.today/)

somebody should look into who owns the @elonmusk account that originates these stories...

The Iron Man thing… MCU Tony Stark wasn't as smart as he thought he was. He should've allowed surgeons to help with his heart immediately, rather than the entire B-plot of Iron Man 2; Iron Man 3's plot could've been averted in a whole bunch of ways if he'd been less arrogant and thoughtless, and also shows him as a loner unwilling to call for assistance despite (by this point) being allied with what passes for gods in the MCU; Ultron was his own hubris punching him in the face; the justification he gives for the Sokovia Accords was a stupid response to an act of self-defence that, sure, could've and should've been handled better, but it isn't like Stark himself was great at avoiding collateral damage during emergencies in the other films; his rage-fight against Barnes in Civil War, while understandable, was wildly unprofessional and a sign he was not a suitable person to be in possession of a one-man weapon system like the Iron Man suits have been shown to be; his tech gift to Peter Parker had wildly inadequate safety measures to be gifted to someone still in school, even if they had been to space.

Basically: yes, Musk is just like Stark. Half as smart as he thinks he is, has main-character syndrome and/or narcissism.

>screenwriter Mark Fergus told New York magazine that Musk partly inspired the modern portrayal of [Iron Man]

>According to Fergus, the character was inspired by an amalgam of real people — but none so much as Elon Musk.

The big event just before he announced he was now voting Republican in May 2022 was newspapers reporting on him sexually harassing an employee 6 years earlier.

I was always confused and intrigued what was going on behind the scenes when Tesla was so obviously and publicly rejected by the Biden administration in that manner.

Musk was even then a polarising figure, but given Tesla was arguably more “American” than even the self-proclaimed traditional American car companies, it seemed a weird, self-defeating, perhaps emotional, position for the administration to take.

Are you implying that "moving right" necessitates lying about basic things constantly?

Also, didn't Musk publicly quit Trump's advisory councils over exiting the Paris Agreement back in 2017? Why does that rift not qualify for your "separating politics" hypothesis?

Except there is nothing in musks history that suggest this. His actual behavior was always consistent with who he is now. He just became more aggressive as people pointed it out.

He did not leaned a little right. He had the same political opinions, but less of narcissist rage over not being admired.

As a non-American, even the US Democratic party is waaaay to the right of my Overton Window. While the US is arguing about if the 2nd Amendment should be restricted in cases like "fully automatic weapons" or "people with felony convictions" etc., I'm from a nation where the police aren't routinely armed and don't want to be, not even with pistols.

This doesn't mean I can't admire NASA, that I have to dismiss the Hoover Dam, that I think every act by Obama or Bush was heinous.

Likewise, I can look at Falcon 9/Heavy, at the progress with Starship, and applaud.

But.

His "Paint is Black" video, and what he claimed about it, was a lie. He himself is pretty awful, and already fits amongst the others you list given the revealed preferences shown by Grok, and by his reactions to criticism of Grok's behaviour.

The bonus-target market-cap of 8 trillion only makes sense with a very optimistic view of the AI Tesla's developing for both FSD and Optimus, and by "very optimistic" I mean "FSD turns them into a monopoly supplier of cars worldwide; or both FSD and Optimus together displace a significant fraction of the US low-skill jobs market while also getting a monopoly on industrial robots and a monopoly on cars in just the USA". It's the kind of thing I expect we'll be putting into history lessons next to Enron and Dutch Tulips, with laws passed to prevent whatever investigators find out to be the key mechanism behind it.

Even with SpaceX, it's impressive, but not because it actually hits Musk's goals, rather because everyone else in space is "over optimistic" about their schedules even harder than Telsa is.

>I find it odd to completely disavow someone because you don’t agree 100% with their politics.

"politics":

https://hsph.harvard.edu/news/usaid-shutdown-has-led-to-hund...

https://www.cgdev.org/blog/update-lives-lost-usaid-cuts

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...

This is the nuanced view. In todays polarized world, it is sadly completely unacceptable. At least there are two of us now! ;)

Purity tests are extremely common in left wing politics in the USA.

And Hitler painted some nice watercolours.

As others have noted, breakdown by model probably isn't accurate since Tesla has so few models. I did some shallow searching and it appears Tesla sales were down 8% in 2025 [0] while global EV sales were up 20% [1]. It's a crude comparison but probably more accurate than models.

0 - https://www.cnbc.com/2026/01/02/tesla-tsla-q4-2025-vehicle-d...

1 - https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/climate-energy/global...

Tesla might maintain its current level of sales/revenue while losing 95% of its market cap. Whether it’ll survive the market cap deflation is the question.

The market can remain irrational more than you can remain solvent. But the writing is on the wall for the valuation.

It's not a very good comparison as Tesla has far fewer models than other carmakers.

Norway is an anomaly.

Examples for Europe, 2025 vs. 2024:

  Sweden: -68%
  Belgium: -53%
  Germany: -48%
  France: -37%
  Switzerland: -28%
  Portugal: -22%
  Italy: -18%

Norway representing a wopping 1% of EU car sales. [1]

[1] https://www.best-selling-cars.com/europe/2024-full-year-euro...

The rest of the European market is a "bloodbath".

https://electrek.co/2026/01/06/tesla-full-2025-data-europe-t... https://www.reuters.com/business/tesla-registrations-slump-f...

Is this important market?

Norway is just 5-6 million population. Does being number 1 in Norway even mean anything?

UK is near 70million. Germany 80million. What about the stats for those? How many Teslas were sold as percentage in UK?