Summary
Donald Trump mocked Time magazine after its latest cover depicted Elon Musk sitting behind the Resolute Desk, questioning if the magazine was “still in business.”
While pretending indifference, the cover likely irritated him, as he was ecstatic just months ago when Time named him 2024 Person of the Year.
Speaking at the White House, Trump tried to dismiss the cover’s implications and praised Musk for uncovering “fraud and corruption.”
Despite his criticism, Trump has long craved Time’s approval, even displaying a fake cover of himself.
One can hope, but doubtful
The exact same scenario played out with Steve Bannon, and Trump fired him. I’m don’t see Elon faring much better.
Elon is filthy rich though. There is a difference.
He’s rich so far, but he really seems to be alienating his consumer customer base. If he keeps this up, his car company could crash as fast as it grew, and maybe his other customers will start reacting
He’s worth over $400 billion. He could literally set warehouses full of cash on fire and not notice.
He owns stock currently worth a ridiculous amount. It’s worth so much that tanking Twitter was no big deal, and of course buying a government position is cheap.
But that stock is tied to the value off a small number of companies, especially Tesla. If people stopped buying their products because of that ceo, that’s going to take a couple hundred billion off the top. Yes, that does seem to be happening in Europe. Meanwhile Chinese companies are eating their lunch in most of the world and the us is apparently going back to some smog filled dark medieval time
It’s unfortunate that their cars and other products are still compelling, still have features unmatched by any competitors
And of course there’s spacex, and other companies, not yet impacted.
I am just SO glad that I never bought one of his cars.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/tesla-cfo-board-members-offload-142507093.html
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-02-07/tesla-shares-set-for-worst-week-since-election-as-sales-plunge?sref=Hhue1scO
I totally agree with your take other than that their cars are anything special at this point - what features are unmatched by competitors? Yes they were innovative at the time but they currently don’t lead in efficiency, range, charging, ride quality, interior quality, and FSD was/is an absolute grift.
I do think they still have leads or near the top in most of those. For example, Lucid has outstanding technology and top efficiency but only sell a small number of expensive cars. There is no intermediate priced models similar to Model Y.
Tesla Supercharger network is a game changer, but that benefit will start to erode as other manufacturers come on board over the next couple years
Most EV still need to go through dealers, and it’s hard to think of any reason that’s a positive. Most EVs still have the traditional pricing model of “buyer beware”, hidden fees, surcharges, incentives. Yes, it’s an advantage to buy direct from the manufacturer and pay exactly the listed price: no more, no less
While other companies are finally starting to dabble with software updates, I don’t think any other company has it nailed like Tesla.
Then there’s gadgets, and the app. Sorry but I’m a gadget guy. The sheer number of options from the app, things I can control, are unmatched. Things I can see and control through Home Assistsnt or display on my home dashboard are unmatched. I don’t know if any other car can match sentry mode, much less the dozens of fun gadgets like theater mode, goods mode, etc
I recently found out there are some EVs that don’t even have a heat pump yet. What the heck, that makes a huge difference in winter driving range
There are tons of Y competitors, just not yet from Lucid. It’s the most popular segment with the most competition. Regarding dealers, it’s not a universal benefit. Service and location matter. Rivian for example is really struggling with this. And ask the folks that spent $70k on a model Y a few years ago during the peak squeeze how great they feel about totally not paying a dealer markup. Software is interesting, Tesla does a good job at OTA but in general everyone I talk to seems to want less tech, fewer subscriptions, less invasive tracking, and manual buttons. Half the people I know want to just drive old Toyotas because of privacy. The tech stack and the software mean nothing to me personally. I do care about ride quality and road noise, and last time I was in a Tesla both were awful. Most folks charge at home and the supercharger network is less of an advantage every day. The people that need to cannonball run in subzero temps will drive ICE for another 5+ years anyway. Heat pumps are helpful but not that much. When it’s actually really cold the COP isn’t much better than 1-1.5, and when it’s mild and COP improves you don’t need much capacity anyway. I remember years ago before Tesla put in heat pumps everyone saying it didn’t matter. Sorry for the meandering rant here, the point here is that the Y is by no means a superior vehicle anymore. I personally value nothing that a Y has over an Ioniq 5, and that’s even ignoring that Musk is a Nazi that deserves universal boycotting.