Emperor Elon: Naked and Famous

For Elon Musk — the suddenly unclothed emperor of electric cars — it’s been a year to forget.

In barely one flip through a Pirelli calendar, Musk has seen his personal fortune shrink by $100 billion. The formerly trillion-dollar Tesla has seen $720 billion in shareholder value evaporate, tumbling to a $385-million market valuation. Musk shelled out $44 billion for Twitter, set it aflame, and now wears its carcass like an albatross flambé.

Like Scrooge in reverse, Musk has gone from one of the world’s most-admired tech visionaries to an increasingly bitter, bah-humbug crank: Laying off thousands of Twitter employees with unconcealed glee, while threatening the rest to Work harder, or else. Surveilling employees like a petty, paranoid tyrant. A CEO style as careening and unpredictable as a Tesla in Full Self-Driving mode. Dog whistling to the far right, while trolling the left and LGBTQ community with cringey tweets about pronouns or the “woke-mind virus.” Lashing out at Anthony Fauci and spreading pandemic misinformation, recalling the grudge match that drove Musk and Tesla’s spiteful departure from California.

Musk may be the Henry Ford of our Electric Age, but he’s starting to take the parallels a little too seriously: The guy seems one unhinged rant away from being canceled like Ye. But instead of stronger meds, what Musk clearly needs is a stronger Tesla Board of Directors: Some grown-ups to grow a spine and muzzle him — or sideline him completely — before it’s too late.

The saddest thing about this tale, not least for Tesla shareholders, is how preventable much of it was. Even as I whip up this steaming bowl of Schadenfreude, it’s worth recalling what the man has accomplished. See that F-150 Lightning whizzing by? That pickup would not exist without Musk. Ditto for Rivian, Lucid and other EV start-ups that rode Tesla’s coattails; or the global transportation revolution that’s now seeing an estimated $626 billion in EV and battery investment through 2030.

From Tesla’s near-magical technology to his own near-mythical image, Musk gave the world reasons to buy an electric car. He’s still doing that — only now he’s giving people reasons to buy a Ford, GM, VW or Rivian instead. Those rivals might consider paying Musk sales commissions, as they cheer his self-sabotage of a formerly Teflon-coated Tesla brand; as bizarrely as Musk walking the factory floor and keying every Tesla that rolls past.

Hal DeCoursey bought a Tesla Model Y last fall, after being blown away by driving a friend’s Model S.

“I floored it for the first time, and I was hooked,” says DeCoursey, a digital marketing manager for a gaming company in Rhode Island.

He still recommends the car, but nothing else about the Tesla experience, including “customer service that’s sorely lacking or non-existent. And our experiences certainly aren’t unique.”

As for the CEO’s misadventures, “Interesting decision-making on Musk’s part is the delicate way to put it,” DeCoursey says. “The car is great, but everything else really gives you pause to consider alternatives.”

Musk’s bratty antics, the eccentric-genius shtik, played better when Tesla was the only game in town. But Silicon Valley’s most beloved bedtime story, that of the Great Man, breaking all the rules, has suddenly turned Grimm. The past year has seen a slew of new EVs closing the competitive gaps, from the Lightning to the Hyundai Ioniq5, Kia EV6 and BMW iX.

Barely a year ago, DeCoursey says, “Tesla was still the clear standard bearer for EVs. The other manufacturers were coming along, but they couldn’t compete on features, the battery and range.

“That’s all changed in the past year and a half; there’s a lot more competition.”

That includes the Ford Mustang Mach-E, which DeCoursey’s mother will soon be driving, after canceling a Model Y order due to frustrating delays.

Competition and chaos aside, Tesla’s fortunes are declining because many investors and analysts sense — it’s about time — that Tesla’s demand has peaked and its market share must inevitably decline in the face of robust global competition. Tesla’s vaunted backlog of customer orders has withered, the company forced to offer $7,500 discounts to U.S. customers. Production snafus in Texas, Germany and China have further dinged its prospects, along with a dearth of new product.

To me, the most inexplicable part of Musk’s fall from grace is watching him troll and alienate political liberals and moderates who are clearly the lifeblood of his customer base, from bright-blue California to greens in Germany and other EU countries. In an irony worthy of the Bard, the Twitterverse that helped forge the Muskian myth has contributed to his undoing. Not just for the billions he’s flushed down that social-media cesspool, but for unmasking the “Real Musk” as grotesquely as the Phantom of the Opera. Firing off roughly 20 tweets a day — doesn’t this guy have companies to run? — Musk has given his 122 million followers a peek into a noxious soul that needs more filter than a Philip Morris factory.

Consumer surveys and reporting finds EV shoppers vowing to never buy a Tesla, or owners saying their current Tesla will be their last. A survey by Morning Consult, reported in The Wall Street Journal, showed Since Musk took over, dubbed himself Chief Twit, and strove to earn the title, Musk’s favorability among Democrats has nosedived, while rising slightly among Republicans. Self-identified Dems aside, Americans of many political stripes were surely dismayed by Musk’s more-intemperate outbursts, his mismanagement or callous treatment of employees.

Business 101 tells us that, whether it’s McLaren or McDonald’s, companies are largely advised to stay out of politics and culture wars. When then-President Trump publicly baited and attacked GM and Ford for perceived slights, CEOs Mary Barra and Jim Farley bit their lips and avoided dipping a toe into roiling political waters. What does Musk do? Cannonball straight into the muck.

Ross Gerber, CEO of Gerber Kawasaki Wealth and Investment Management, directly traces much of Tesla’s precipitous decline to that full-body immersion in partisan politics. Gerber, a high-profile Tesla and Twitter investor, has become another public thorn in Musk’s side.

"Tesla stock price now reflects the value of having no CEO. Great job tesla BOD," Gerber wrote. "Time for a shake up."

Elon himself had to take an hour to talk Gerber down from the ledge, in front of 66,000 Tesla shareholders in a Twitter Spaces room.

For Tesla, all is not lost. Aside from a still-dominant market position, Tesla boasts an unrivaled Supercharger network, battery tech/driving range (Lucid aside) and vehicle software. That software helped Tesla skate through the pandemic’s supply-chain crisis that paralyzed less-nimble automakers. The Texas-based company is also beautifully positioned to take advantage of tax breaks under the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, thanks to Musk’s foresight in building a vertically oriented company with made-in-America batteries and content. Yet competitors finally smell blood in the water. Remember when Tesla was going to turn Detroit and other legacy automakers into dinosaurs? No one’s saying that now.

Analyst and Tesla critic Gordon Johnson sees its stock sinking further, once Wall Street stops pricing the company based on products that have yet to arrive, and promises unkept. The much-trumpeted Cybertruck may now arrive to a sad-trombone fanfare, beaten to market by electric pickups from Ford, Rivian and GM.

Before these recent firestorms, the idea of Tesla without Musk running the show was impossible to imagine. Now, it’s hard to imagine how Tesla can move forward without sidelining its runamok celebrity CEO, or at least giving the brat a time-out. A narcissist’s self-pitying need for approval came through in Musk’s ridiculous Twitter poll asking if he should step down as CEO, and his statement that “I will resign as CEO as soon as I find someone foolish enough to take the job!”

For Tesla shareholders, or any fan of good corporate governance, the other infuriating aspect is Musk’s dereliction of duty as Tesla CEO, as he obsesses over his shiny Twitter toy. But Musk’s neglect of his car company goes beyond personal bandwidth, even for a guy who brags about working 16-hour days. By funding his Twitter takeover in part by cashing out nearly $40 billion in personal Tesla stock — infuriating Tesla shareholders — Musk risks spreading himself thin. The social-media purchase has saddled the money-losing Twitter with $13 billion in debt and $1 billion a year in added interest charges. Tesla has already focused on expanding production rather than introduce any new models, with Musk arguing it had more demand for existing models than it could build. That’s in contrast to a GM, VW or other giant automaker, whose richer revenue streams — despite Tesla’s now-booming profits — are letting them build new EV factories even as they dramatically expand EV lineups.

A little thought experiment: If an all-new model costs roughly $4 billion to develop and tool up, the $44 billion poured into Twitter could have funded eleven new Teslas. That kind of dream showroom could lock down Tesla loyalists and cement the company’s EV leadership for years or decades. That $44 billion is also more than the $30 billion Ford plans to invest in EVs between 2020 and 2025, or General Motors’ $35 billion bet through 2025.

Instead of reinvesting his fortune in the revolutionary automaker he built, from acorn to mighty oak, Musk can treat us to his 280-character pearls of Twitter wisdom — or more likely, pointless provocation and sophomoric jokes. Hope it was all worth it.

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