From Tesla’s tech hero to Twitter troll
Musk’s star power is slipping after a series of bizarre battles
● Elon Musk’s life can hardly be labelled boring. The billionaire entrepreneur behind Tesla and SpaceX was part of the inspiration for Tony Stark, the charismatic protagonist of the 2008 film Iron Man.
But in the space of two months, Musk has seen his image go from possible saviour of humanity to internet troll after a series of bizarre incidents that culminated last Sunday, when he baselessly implied a diver who recently helped rescue 12 Thai boys trapped in a cave was a paedophile.
Musk, 47, had tried to assist in the cave rescue by providing a purpose-built metal submarine, which he said could be used to transport the children out safely.
For a while, it looked like his miniature metal submarine would arrive just in time to help rescue the remaining trapped children. But the device ended up left outside the cave when the rescue team said “the equipment” was “not practical with our mission”.
Musk did not take kindly to the rejection. On Sunday night, he accused British rescue diver Vernon Unsworth of being a “pedo guy” and implied that his being resident in Thailand was suspicious.
Unsworth said he was considering legal action over Musk’s comments, although Bloomberg reported on Wednesday that Musk had apologised in a tweet, saying: “My words were spoken in anger after Mr Unsworth said several untruths & suggested I engage in a sexual act with the mini-sub.”
The incident comes at a time of stress for Musk as his electric car company, Tesla, is attempting to dramatically increase production of its Model 3 sedans. He recently told Bloomberg he had taken to sleeping in his office at Tesla to oversee production.
The company set a production target of 5 000 vehicles a week, which it finally hit at the start of July.
In June, Musk announced Tesla would cut 9% of jobs as it tried to become profitable for the first time. “The past year has been very difficult, but I feel like the coming year is going to be really quite good,” he said.
For most technology execs, spending days sleeping on the floor of their office would be a sign that they were at breaking point. But for Musk, it is almost to be expected.
When he started his first company, Zip2, in 1995, he “never seemed to leave the office — he slept, not unlike a dog, on a beanbag next to his desk”, writes biographer Ashlee Vance.
He went on to sell Zip2 to Compaq and got $22-million from the sale, using those proceeds to fund both Tesla and his space rocket development company, SpaceX.
The success of both has made him worth an estimated $20-billion (about R268-billion), but in recent months he has gone from technology superhero to an erratic figure.
At Tesla’s results call in May, he became frustrated with analysts’ questions. “Boring, bonehead questions are not cool,” he said in response to a query about Tesla’s capital expenditure projection.
“These questions are so dry. They’re killing me,” he also said after being asked about pre-orders for the Model 3.
Days later, Musk purchased the website pravduh.com, a play on the name of the Soviet newspaper, which he said would become a site to rate journalists for accuracy. This followed his criticising journalists for what he called unfair coverage of Tesla’s safety record and business. “The holierthan-thou hypocrisy of big media companies who lay claim to the truth, but publish only enough to sugarcoat the lie, is why the public no longer respects them,” he tweeted.
Soon after, Musk was drawn into a spat with artist Tom Edwards, who designed a mug featuring a cartoon of a farting unicorn, a design which Tesla integrated into the electronic dashboard of its latest cars.
Edwards requested payment for his art, but Musk tweeted that a lawsuit from him would be “lame” and said Edwards should be grateful. “If anything, this attention increased his mug sales,” he said.
Days after Tesla hit its production goal of 5 000 Model 3 sedans per week this month, Musk launched an attack on a journalist for writing critical stories on his company using a source inside the business.
Musk called Business Insider writer Linette Lopez “sketchy” and demanded that she publicly say that she had not bribed her source to give her information about Tesla.
While the traditional automotive industry has always been wary of Musk, his company could previously rely on his star quality to generate breathless, excitable coverage of his every announcement. But these recent incidents have eroded any goodwill he retained.
It may be no coincidence that his erratic behaviour comes at the same time that questions are being asked about Tesla’s ability to match its ambitious promises.
What will worry investors is the reverse effect: on Monday, the day after Musk launched his attack on Unsworth, Tesla’s shares dropped by 3.6%. — © The Daily Telegraph, London