Yep. DH’s company provides parts to tesla and said that every time they contacted them it was a different manager on the account. DS turned down a job offer there b/c he’d heard such awful things about working there.
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I suspect he already saturated this base with his products, so now it is time to peddle to the remaining, more right-leaning masses - ?
Maybe? But cars are not a buy once and then never again product… Anecdotally, I was finally in the market for a new car and had been considering a Tesla for many years, but his recent behavior (and the fact that a lot of the Tesla brand is tied to Musk personally), caused me to look at other EV’s and I ended up with a car that I liked better.
I don’t have any numbers on this, and maybe he does, but I suspect that appealing to those heavily invested in the culture wars on the right side, will not yield as many customers as those he’d lose from the left. Too much of the right’s identity has been tied to an anti-EV culture (not uniform).
In general, businesses are best taking non-confrontational positions… they stick to the generic - we love America, give to our communities, families, etc… sorts of things that everyone agrees with and then give money to every politician, Republican and Democrat.
If he insisted on taking a stance on some of this - let’s say free speech, he took about as stupid approach to it as possible. You can express an opinion like “hey, I’m concerned that we’re moving too quickly to censor opposing viewpoints taken in good faith instead of engaging in meaningful conversation” - that is perfectly reasonable and would have gotten little pushback, except from the most reactionary. Instead, he went with the mocking, confrontational style, which if your goal is to expand business is dumb.
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Do intentions or results matter more?
Timely (from the point of view of this thread) results from the “move fast and break things” philosophy of innovation. Fine if it’s a television; problematical if it’s a ton or more of vehicle hurdling down the street (possibly the wrong way). Then the things might be people.
I recently saw another video that demonstrated that presently the Self-Driving Tesla does not recognize closed road or wrong way signs. it’s called “Full Self-Driving” but it also says the driver must be prepared to take over at all times because “may do the wrong thing at the worst time.” That’s from the instructions by Tesla. Does Tesla have the best engineers and engineering? - The Dawn Project
I’ve been leery of his approach since long before the Twitter situation. When I get an EV, which I want to do, I will go to one from a company I trust. I don’t trust EM or Tesla.
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Maybe not every politician… probably mostly those who look like they can be bought with campaign donations and have at least some chance of winning. Of course, they may have agendas that are not specifically seen as partisan, such as trying to get special favors in legislation.
When political propaganda comes in the mail, the “ad paid for” disclosure can be interesting, as in “why does Out-of-state Company X have an interest in this state legislative candidate to pay for propaganda for this candidate?”
I think in general it’s a good idea for businesses to cultivate relationships with all politicians who have influence over legislation or regulation of their activities. That’s mainly the point I was trying to get at…in general not be too blatantly partisan that they make enemies of those who can affect their business.
In the next James Bond movie, the archvillain could be played by Elon Musk, as himself.
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Driving a self-driving Tesla, of course. 
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I saw snippets of this interview with Musk yesterday at the B20. With the dark background, his head appears to be just floating without a body. Anyway, Musk said he’s overwhelmed and working almost 24/7. He sounds depressed.
Just my opinion, but “the move fast and break things” design approach has a bad rap primarily from people who don’t really understand it. Even Zuckerberg, who coined the term, has tried to refine it to “acting with urgency and not waiting until next week to do something you could do today.”
Consider SpaceX vs NASA. SpaceX is where it’s at because they were not afraid of “rapid unscheduled disassembly” (another term I love) of their rockets during the development and testing phase. Why? Because in some endeavors you learn much more from failure, and SpaceX rocket tests have sometimes been spectacular during their “rapid unscheduled disassembly” . NASA however, takes a different, old school, approach which is why their upcoming launch is so late and so over budget ( Originally claimed to cost $6 billion and launch in 2016, the SLS will instead launch in 2022 after expenditures of more than $23 billion). Meanwhile SpaceX rockets are taking people to the space station on a routine basis, the boosters are independently returning to earth to be reused reducing the cost per pound to get to orbit.
Same thing with Tesla. There is no doubt that Tesla has one of the best autonomy/AI groups in the world. They also have more data than any other company (since all their cars upload driving data). FSD has become an issue primarily because of their marketing and because of peoples inability to use it in a safe way. Full autonomy is so difficult that it’s still years away, but it will happen, and if I’d have to bet Tesla might just do it.
As far as full EVs go, Tesla cars are pretty good. Don’t like FSD, don’t buy the option. 
Only when the yahoos in their rusted out trucks die out… 
For someone who works 24/7 he sure does tweet a lot.
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Musk has 8 -10 children. He must not work ALL the time 
(I think 8 of the 10 are his, with 3 women?? Not sure about this. One child died of SIDS.)
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Work hard, play hard …
Whaaaaa? I had no idea.
- They are all his.
To clarify, 2 sets of twins, a set of triplets, and 3 singletons, of whom one died in infancy
He has a goal to beat Nick Cannon.
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The last three (that we know of) were all born by IVF (Grimes second child and the twins with his employee at Neuralink). That can be somewhat less time consuming, at least for the guy. And doesn’t really correspond to my idea of “play hard” 
That’s easy. Not easy: don’t share the road with someone else who did.
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