What’s up with Elon Musk?
Tesla stock falls in response to tech guru’s odd behaviour
Just six months ago, the gushing — largely accurate — descriptors often used for Elon Musk were almost embarrassing in their grandeur: magnate, mogul, inventor, tycoon, genius, space pioneer, revolutionary.
At 47, his ideas have already come to life in amazing ways: SpaceX, a private company that conquered commercial space travel, is developing crewed interplanetary space flight; Tesla Inc., maker of stylish electric cars; PayPal, a major online payment system; and other projects. Musk was the guy stuck in traffic in 2016 who tweeted: “Traffic is driving me nuts. Am going to build a tunnel boring machine and just start digging” and, then, actually started the Boring Company to create low-cost tunnel networks beneath congested cities.
But 2018 has been a strange, hard year for Musk.
In recent months, the adjectives surrounding Musk have taken a sharp turn toward the less grand: erratic, mercurial, wonky, unpredictable.
His latest exploit to raise eyebrows was a meandering two-hour, livestreamed YouTube interview with comedian Joe Rogan in which Musk wore a T-shirt with the slogan Occupy Mars, smoked marijuana, wielded a samurai sword and a flame-thrower, mused on the end of the world and the future of artificial intelligence and said he wondered as a child if he was insane because of his “never-ending explosion” of ideas.
And he offered viewers advice that, given recent events, he might benefit from more self-reflection: “Spend more time with your friends and less time on social media.”
It has left many wondering, what’s up with Elon Musk?
In May, his tetchiness showed through in dramatic fashion with investors, analysts and the media over questions on the financial performance of Tesla. During a conference call with analysts and journalists, he was dismissive of inquiries about the path to profit, interrupting a question, saying: “Next. Boring bonehead questions are not cool.”
He then went on a rant against the media:
“Going to create a site where the public can rate the core truth of any article & track the credibility score over time of each journalist, editor & publication,” Musk said on Twitter.
That same month, another Twitter rant against unionization at Tesla — “why pay union dues & give up stock options for nothing?” — earned a complaint to the National Labor Relations Board by the United Auto Workers accusing him of illegally threatening to take away benefits from workers if they join a union.
Then, in July, Musk became a figure of some ridicule when the world was transfixed by the treacherous rescue operation of a boys soccer team from a flooded cave in Thailand.
With a rescue plan underway, Musk sent SpaceX and Boring Co. engineers to help, suggesting an inflatable tube, like a long “bouncy castle,” might help and then started building a “kid-size submarine” to whisk the trapped boys to safety.
The head of the rescue said Musk’s technology was “not practical for this mission” but, with the successful rescue well underway, Musk arrived at the cave with a prototype submarine that was not used in the successful extraction.
Musk then struck back on Twitter, alleging to his 22 million followers that the diver was a pedophile, calling him “pedo guy.” When asked for evidence to support the claim, he responded: “Bet ya a signed dollar it’s true.” The diver is suing. Musk has not backed down.
But some of Musk’s recent behaviour has teetered closer to his core businesses.
In August, Musk stunned the business community through his Twitter account when he tweeted: “Am considering taking Tesla private at $420. Funding secured.” A level of chaos seized investors and analysts. The tweet sparked a U.S. securities investigation, a class-action lawsuit from investors, and a dip in share value.
In interviews afterwards, Musk said he was exhausted, working long hours with little sleep, was using sleeping pills and was frustrated with the demands of operating a public company.
It was not the message every investor wanted to hear.
On Friday, two top executives left Tesla, including chief accounting officer Dave Morton, who resigned after less than a month on the job. Tesla shares went on another roller-coaster day of trading.