Elon Musk: Technological Visionary or Entrepreneurial Buffoon?

Two Views

Elon Musk is apparently viewed as a genius by many people.  His quirks, such as tweeting bombastic nonsense à la Donald Trump, are forgiven because of his great technological and entrepreneurial contributions.  Others, such as myself, see him as more a symbol of a financial system gone off the rails.  He offers false hope that capitalism, as currently practiced, can solve the most important societal problems.

There is no doubt merit in both perspectives.  Musk has brought great focus to electric cars, causing great investment by others, in addition to the contributions of his own company, Tesla.   Electric cars are critical if we are to attain sustainability as a civilization.  So kudos to Musk for that.  On the other hand, it seems undeniable that Musk's vision is faulty.  Rather than focusing on the electric car business, he spends most of his resources promoting technologies of questionable value and practicality.  I follow his public pronouncements and I don't hear much about building a sustainable society.  Rather I hear more about "autopilot" and "hyperloop".  So where is he trying to lead us?

Headlines and Biographical Notes

I'll now turn to specifics.  Starting with a Google search on "Elon Musk", here are the top results (headline) on Google:

• Elon Musk says hyperloop hit a top speed of 463 km/h before exploding
• Elon Musk promises new Hyperloop tunnel after speed record broken
• Elon Musk: Starship, Super Heavy Will Have 41 Total Engines
• Elon Musk's AI project to replicate the human brain receives $1 billion from Microsoft

To get another take, with Musk news from a different time, here is a sample of the top news stories on "Elon Musk" from May 2019:

• Elon Musk says Tesla has a ‘good chance’ of record deliveries this quarter
• Elon Musk tells Tesla employees in leaked email that customer demand is still high, despite the stock crashing in recent weeks
• This is hardcore: Elon Musk confronts the bear case
• Elon Musk sets bold goals. But has he delivered?
• Elon Musk to investors: Self-driving will make Tesla a $500 billion company

Turning from news articles to biographical sketches, we see the following:


Forbes:

• Elon Musk is working to revolutionize transportation both on Earth and in space.
• His automaker, Tesla Motors, which was founded in 2003, is bringing fully-electric vehicles to the mass market.
• He settled with the SEC in September 2018 for making alleged "false statements" about a plan to take Tesla private, and had to step down as chairman.
• SpaceX, Musk's rocket company, is now valued at more than $20 billion.

Wikipedia:

Elon Reeve Musk FRS (/ˈiːlɒn/; born June 28, 1971) is a technology entrepreneur, investor, and engineer.^[4][5][6] He holds South African, Canadian, and U.S. citizenship and is the founder, CEO, and lead designer of SpaceX;^[7] co-founder, CEO, and product architect of Tesla, Inc.;^[8] co-founder and CEO of Neuralink; founder of The Boring Company;^[9] co-founder and co-chairman of OpenAI;^[10] and co-founder of PayPal. In December 2016, he was ranked 21st on the Forbes list of The World's Most Powerful People.^[11] He has a net worth of $22.3 billion and is listed by Forbes as the 40th-richest person in the world...

Musk has stated that the goals of SpaceX, Tesla, and SolarCity revolve around his vision to change the world and humanity.^[18] His goals include reducing global warming through sustainable energy production and consumption, and reducing the risk of human extinction by establishing a human colony on Mars. 

So he's a successful businessman who is concerned about the environment and makes several products which address these concerns.  On the other hand, his success in addressing environmental concerns is somewhat overshadowed by his personal wealth and grandiose schemes.

Quirks and Questionable Business Practices

Here are some examples of the odd behaviors which must be considered in evaluating Musk as a societal leader:

"Autopilot" and Driverless Cars

Musk has a long history of misrepresenting Tesla's "Autopilot" feature as imminent full self-driving.  For more than two years, Tesla charged customers $3,000 or more for a "full self-driving" package. Despite years of failed predictions and broken promises,  Musk continues to misrepresent Autopilot in a dangerous, as well as fraudulent, manner. [arstechnica, SeekingAlpha, Jalopnik, Fortune]

Consumer Reports:  "Tesla’s current driver-assist system, ‘Autopilot,’ is no substitute for a human driver. It can’t dependably navigate common road situations on its own, and fails to keep the driver engaged exactly when it is needed most."

Managerial Issues

• Tesla's VP of engineering has left the company — here are all the key names who have departed in recent months
• Tesla's CFO Abrupt Resignation Doesn't Pass The Smell Test
• Tesla CFO Steps Down for Second Time
• “Close to 10%” of Autopilot software team reportedly departs after shakeup
• Tesla says its factory is safer. But it left injuries off the books
• Inside Tesla’s factory, a medical clinic designed to ignore injured workers
• Inside Tesla’s Model 3 Factory, Where Safety Violations Keep Rising
• Tesla fined by Cal-OSHA for Model 3 labor violations at Fremont factory
• Tesla Had 3 Times as Many OSHA Violations as the 10 Largest US Plants Combined
• Tesla Price Cuts Anger Buyers (7/23/2019)
"The endless stream of price cuts and increases this year is also demoralizing Tesla customers. Many of these people opted for a Tesla, despite their hefty price tags, because they were confident they were getting a fair price when buying a Tesla.  The spate of price cuts has seriously undermined this confidence and has led some to loudly complain Tesla duped them into buying expensive cars"

Investment Scams

• List of 103 Tesla Mistruths, going back to 2011.  Quite a pattern.
• List of Musk Predictions and Promises that Have Not Come to Pass 
  There are 45 items listed.  As one example, 7 ½ years ago Musk said that Tesla will never need to raise capital again. Since then, there have been 11 issuances of common stock or convertible notes averaging almost $1 billion each.
• Elon Musk acted like a jerk, and Tesla stock paid the price (5/2/2018)
  "Tesla Inc. Chief Executive Elon Musk held a long, odd earnings conference call Wednesday in which he insulted analysts, the media, federal regulators and people who died behind the wheel of his cars...  Tesla on Wednesday disclosed the largest quarterly loss in the history of a company known far and wide for losing vast sums of money, with a net loss of almost $785 million."
• Tesla Reports Another Doozie (4/24/2019)
  "Tesla reported a zinger of a net loss of $702 million, its third-worst quarterly net loss ever...  The company has $22 billion in liabilities (mostly long-term debt)...  Moody’s rates Tesla 'B3' — six notches into junk and considered highly speculative...  Tesla’s share price has continued to blow out rational minds, even after its 32% drop from the top of the spike in June 2017. The company has a history of nothing but annual losses and cash-burn, and 'production hell,' as its chaotic CEO Elon Musk called it so aptly, is standard operating procedure. It has a global market share of less than 1%. And yet, at the price of $258.66 a share at the close today, Tesla has a market capitalization of $44.7 billion.  By comparison, GM which made $48 billion in net income over the past four years and whose revenues of $147 billion in 2018 were seven times the size of Tesla’s, has a market cap of $56.6 billion."
• Seven Months After Elon Musk's $420 Tweet Tesla Stock Is Closer To $240
  On Tuesday, August 6th, 2018, Tesla stock closed the trading day at $341.99. The following morning of August 7th at 9:48 am, Elon Musk posted his now infamous tweet, saying, "Am considering taking Tesla private at $420. Funding secured." ...  We have since learned that Elon Musk did not have the "funding secured."  
• Tesla and SolarCity's merger doesn't appear to have a bright future
  In 2016 Tesla purchased SolarCity for $2.6 billion. Much criticism and backlash had been pivoted towards Elon Musk's decision to acquire the company due to his own personal ties with the company and its co-founders...  Tesla’s 2016 acquisition of SolarCity is looking worse and worse. And its $1 billion solar gigafactory in Buffalo, New York, which the state built, subsidized, and equipped for SolarCity, seems to be primarily operating as a Panasonic plant. [...] In the more than two years since Tesla acquired SolarCity, its overall solar installations have plummeted by more than 76%.
• Elon Musk Says ‘Hyperloop’ Tunnel Is Now Just a Normal Car Tunnel Because ‘This Is Simple and Just Works’
  in a mere two years we’ve gone from a futuristic vision of electric skates zooming around a variety of vehicles in a network of underground tunnels to—and I cannot stress this enough—a very small, paved tunnel that can fit one (1) car.
• Boring Company
  Musk's super exciting Boring company, thus far, has done nothing but dig a tunnel with an off the shelf used tunneling machine from China. So many press reports made it sound as if it was some sort of exciting new invention. No. It's a machine they bought.

Two Views Revisited

The evidence points to Musk being a compulsive braggart and liar in the manner of Donald Trump.  That these two men have become obscenely rich and powerful largely on the basis of false promises is an indictment of the elite culture which dominates our society.  It pays to lie.

Trump seems to have no redeeming values.  With Musk, on the other hand, we must ask if his quirkiness is offset by the great contributions he is making to society via his investment in electric cars.  My view is that his car company is poorly managed, and is failing on its own, entrepreneurial, terms.  When Tesla fails, we will still face the challenge of migrating away from fossil fuels.  Tesla engineers, paid by Musk, will have contributed somewhat to electric car technology. But the system in which Musk thrived, where capitalist investment in new technologies solves society's most pressing problems, has reached a dead end.

Mush has earned billions by duping gullible investors and consumers.  Let's not hide this inconvenient truth.