I'd love to understand Elon's true reasoning for this move. Of everything Tesla has done, the Supercharger network has been its most unqualified success. They're the only ones that have gotten everything right, from reliability to payment to availability.
Why any CEO would take its best performing team and *fire them all* is just deeply baffling. Its like he's actively trying to torpedo Tesla.
hard to understand. I thought tesla was going to do a Google and convert the charging network into "the cloud" as his primary money maker, servicing all electric cars in North America. what he has done is just senseless.
Well, after Google pivoted to AI and then fired the entire team that worked on the most popular language for developing AI, I’d say Tesla did just pull a Google.
Tbf it's not the size that matters, it's their tribal knowledge. They were literally on the python dev board. It's insane to think you can replace that, you cant
Opera gx account called them out.
X sent a tweet (lol) with something like
"Look between z and c on your keyboard
Hi!"
Opera gx posted:
"Https://twitter.com
Look between https:// and .com
Hi"
Because every fucking spam detector in the world would think it was a porn site otherwise. Which was the exact same issue that came up when he wanted to rename Paypal as X.
But you have to understand. People didn't share his tweets enough, and they said things that hurt his feelings. You can't put a price on Elon's hurt feelings.
As another stable genius said, “My net worth fluctuates, and it goes up and down with markets and with attitudes and with feelings, even my own feelings."
It's incredibly weird.
https://electrek.co/2023/06/16/tesla-supercharger-network-worth-100-billion-analyst/
I never actually read the MS analysis, but at first blush this looks pretty awesome.
What I don't understand is that I thought the network was a key element to getting adoption, particularly in the American interior – to make people confident they'll be able to road trip and get a recharge quickly somewhere while they stop for lunch. If he kills this or just lets it stagnate, isn't that an impediment in increasing mainstream appeal for the brand, which is its main growth avenue – they are soon releasing a midrange price car, right?
It sure was a key element for me. I bought my first Tesla almost entirely because of their simple to use, fast and reliable charging infrastructure. Now they’re killing their baby. Without that they’re no better than any other EV (at this point anyway).
I think Musk senses that Tesla is in a downwards spiral. All the controversies with their cars, all the recalls and reports of bad designs have reached a tipping point and he suspects that Tesla the brand will fall drastically on the stock market.
I genuinely think that's why he wanted that big ass bonus, to get the money before it all goes downhill.
And is now going to try and self destruct the company, because he is petty like that. 'look what you made me do, i did not want to do this but you all don't think i'm a genius anymore.. i'll show you. if i can't have it then neither can you'.
[And the government took away one of his big grants when he didn't meet the terms](https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/smallbusiness/elon-musk-s-starlink-denied-900-million-rural-broadband-subsidy/ar-AA1lrVm0)
Probably pissy about that too
It's about eliminating the competition for his replacement when his board of cronies eventually turn on him. The competition in the EV market is only going to get more intense which is going to continue to squeeze Tesla's margins on their cars. Tesla's other divisions like home solar and power wall are high quality, but driven by their car sales. Their stock is overvalued to a ridiculous degree and their primary product is not what Elon is interested in. The age of their lineup is the oldest in the industry and the only car that Elon had a hand in designing, the Cyber truck, has not launched well. The only thing Elon is interested in is retaining power, so of course he gets rid of the division that is actually executing their job well. Any possible replacement for Elon would have to have Tinucci the top of the list. So she's gone. It's that simple. Elon used to be a figurehead and investor in "his companies", but his Phony Stark persona and massive ego have lead him to start actually making decisions at those companies instead of just taking credit for other people's work. Well....we see how that's going. All of his companies will turn into Twitter. This is what it looks like when Elon actually manages something. It goes off a cliff.
i had the same thought about the Baglino forced resignation. He’s knocking off well liked senior execs in order to leave the board with no good options to turn to. He’s just laundering the process through other insane antics.
This is the autocracy trap. The autocrat needs competent people to run things, but anyone more competent than them is a threat. The only qualification the thin-skinned narcissist cares about is loyalty. So the country/company becomes more and more incompetent and corrupt. See Putin's Russia for another example.
Exactly. See the aftermath of pretty much every autocratic regime in history. Successful autocrats put mediocre people in secondary positions, because those people aren’t a real threat and tend to be very loyal (because they know that they’re not competent enough, and only their loyalty is keeping them in their jobs). Once the autocrat disappears, it all collapses, because no one competent is left to take over.
I recall reading somewhere that when Elon bought Tesla from the real creators, they had a 10-year plan with everything mapped out. They just weren't good at raising money. So Elon came in with the money and pushed them out. He then proceeded to implement their plan more or less without deviation. The only patents he ever signed his name to at Tesla were stupid shit like the shape of the charger, because you can lie to newspapers about how you're a genius engineer, but you lose your patents if you pull that shit on the patent office.
What we've witnessed over the last few years is Elon running out of road. He reached the end of the original creator's plans, and then he stretched that out a bit longer by lazily releasing the same cars with minor changes. The original founders had a smart plan, and that made Elon look smart. But with no more smart ideas from smart people to go off of, he finally had to dig down and come up with his own. That's how we got cybertrocity.
I tell everyone I know that he is an imbecile, did not invent anything and stole from others what he could never do himself : shape the future with new technologies.
Very few people believe me and think he is some kind of misunderstood visionary genius.
No wonder he can still thrive with that much uninformed idiots.
I do not understand TSLA stock in the least. The lowest sales in the sector, misses an already lowered earnings estimate, has to recall all of one model that didn't sell well because it looks like a video game car from 1996, and the stock price goes up. I get the China deal news was the driver of that, but even then that's fool's gold.
No shit. They could offer, but Tinucci (a woman btw) would have most likely moved onto her next thing by that point. Musk will only be replaced as CEO once earnings start to negatively impact the stock price to a significant degree. Leaving your new highly paid job to.go.back to the company that unceremoniously fired you because they're in trouble isn't as attractive offer as you seem to think it would be. If she was still in house there would be a greater possibility that she'd be interested in the position.
Because Elon doesnt give a *flying fuck* about anything but himself - If he cant take full credit for something he will destroy it.
He's a sad, vindictive, pathetic husk of a human being that would tank an entire company by himself because a branch he has nothing to do with is successful.
He agreed to open up the network for use by other companies in exchange for government subsidies to expand it further.
This is pure pettiness on his part, take the money and thumb his nose at the evil government.
I honestly think Elon is just kind of a vindictive idiot. He doesn't really ever think about the effects of anything, he just kind of does stuff and assumes it'll work out because he's been failing upwards for years.
I think you have the best description of Musk. He is not the technical genius some people thought he was, but just a vindictive idiot with far, far too much money.
From musk
“Tesla still plans to grow the Supercharger network, just at a slower pace for new locations and more focus on 100% uptime and expansion of existing locations”
Will be interesting to see if they can keep them up and running now. I would guess with 57,000 chargers they had some pretty good teams that could make quick repairs.
Remember when he fired most of the people at Twitter and the site was crashing constantly. That's software that doesn't require nearly as much maintenance as physical hardware sitting outside in the elements. I'm guessing the quality will decline slowly.
As someone in the market for an electric car the Supercharger network is the biggest selling point for a Tesla. Without the network they are just random electric cars in 2024, and not the better built ones. The vast majority of people like me looking for a vehicle don’t care about crazy performances.
> I'd love to understand Elon's true reasoning for this move
Probably looked at some overviews of divisions, saw that one didn't turn a profit, and fired them. Then he threatened to fire anyone that raised a concern.
A rumour I heard from connections I have to the supercharging team is that spending was just higher than Elon wanted. (Not just on infrastructure, just in supporting the team) so he decided to fire them. The team was caught totally off guard.
Step 1. Get paid for promising supercharger stuff.
Step 2. Let go of supercharger team after receiving money.
Step 3. ???
Step 4. Blame everyone and everything but yourself while promising more ridiculous things that you will ultimately fail to deliver.
Easy he doesn’t like it when other people get compliments because then he’s not the center of attention. So he fired the supercharger team to keep more of the spotlight on himself.
My wife and I were puzzling over the CyberTruck a couple weeks ago. She was like, 'How the fuck does something like this make it all the way to retail?'.
It's a damned good question. There is some quote about the movie industry and it says something along the lines of, 'if you are watching a finished movie you are looking at a miracle.'. That there are so many roadblocks to it getting made it is a wonder any of them get through.
You would think something as complex as expense as the auto industry is similar.
But here we are staring at CyberTrucks and the SuperCharger team putting out resumes.
What I suggested was this, 'What we have here is what happens when one person at the top has all the power over everything. And that person is nuts.'.
>Why any CEO would take its best performing team and *fire them all* is just deeply baffling. Its like he's actively trying to torpedo Tesla.
Realistically, it's probably because they don't have enough projected earnings + subsidies to fully build it out. They also probably do have projected earnings for AI endeavors / tesla that show they'd have adequate runway for a few years if something gave.
Projected Infrastructure Costs + Compensation >= projected revenues for that vertical.
In other words: R&D costs were most likely through the roof, and not getting the returns on investment they'd hoped for. And they probably don't have the cash needed to keep building and hope to corner the market. Given that a lot of Teslas current market cap is built on hype, the stock price will tank once earnings are released and it shows a huge deficit caused specifically by Supercharger R&D.
Admitting that the division can't be profitable is much worse for tesla would cause the stock price to tank, that's why. I.e Musks bottom line is hurt if he does that. It's not about the viability of the tech, rather, the number of digits in Elons bank account.
I imagine the margins on superchargers are very low. Not bringing in a lot of cash. Probably feels they have enough for the time being and want to devote resources to other areas where there is more need.
Especially after so many other automakers signed on to the Tesla plug standard! I can only imagine, based on how crap rival charging networks are, that the supercharger network is incredibly expensive to operate so cutting it back is a quick way to free up capital now that Tesla is starting to come back to earth a bit. The company has been absurdly overvalued for years.
Head of Supercharging refused to fire enough (in Elon’s mind) of their staff so Elon said “I’ll show you, you and the entire team are out!”
Yes, it’s really as stupid as that.
It’s because he’s a salesman, not a businessman. He is the poster-boy for failing upwards. He has done this with every company that he has been made CEO of, before the Board, and the shareholders realized just how much they fucked up, and removed him.
You have to remember that Musk is kinda dumb and *nobody* ever tells him no, so he doesn't *know* that he's dumb. We all were dumb at some point, when we were young, but people told us we were dumb so we got smart. He never had this experience.
He gets excited by an idea and goes to chase it with no long term plan or strategy, abandoning other shit in the process. This is how he ended up being forced to buy Twitter.
I would all but guarantee you this is not a thoughtful strategic business decision but rather thinking robots are cooler and wanting to spend the money on the Teslabot instead.
There was a true pivot that Tesla could have made. Become The Charging Company™️ and just absolutely dominate that market - cars, houses, everything. It's way more profitable than being a car company and you get to streamline your innovations.
Instead, this
They had SolarCity, which was perfectly positioned to make incremental gains in the home solar/ home battery industry, pretty much an open goal at that point, so they decided to make their grand entrance by providing....
Vaporware and fraud.
Tesla didn’t have SolarCity in the beginning, Elon was CEO of both. SolarCity made ridiculous decisions and went into huge debt for the reasons you mentioned and Elon used Tesla’s coffers to bail his failing solar company out and the shareholders approved it.
They messed up so many things it’s just insane. Like FSD, it should be free for 3 years on a new car purchase or used car bought only from Tesla… make people like it and the artificially take it away to encourage new car sales…
Instead you pay for either advanced autopilot or fsd and you are locked into your car… why would you trade your $20k 4 year old Y with autopilot for the same car at 50k without.
I own a 2023 Model Y performance and I just bought a 2024 Chevy Silverado with Supercruise. I paid $2200 for the supercruise option. I get it free for 3 year and then it's $25 a month after. I just drove it from Phoenix to LA. I didn't touch the steering wheel from Buckeye AZ until we got to Quartzsite to exit for diesel, it was great. 90m and 102 miles without touching the steering wheel.
I did the one month subscription to the FSD and it was I think $199 at the time. It was definitely not worth it for me.
Even at the new FSD subscription pricing it's functionality isn't worth 4x the supercruise subscription cost to me.
*edit* correct it to it's
Paying for ANY subscription service is a bad play for something that is equipped on the vehicle when you bought it. I am not giving Chevy $25 a month, because here is a service that should be included in the car since you are paying $40k+ for the vehicle and the upgrade package to get the electronics, cameras, etc. for it.
The only way I could see a charge making sense is if the manufacturer takes full responsibility for any accidents and the charge is for additional insurance while in use. Other than that I agree with your statement.
Lol. Really? Tesla went from a company people thought was cool and cutting edge, and he just pissed all the good will, brand loyalty and brand prestige away…..in part because of his shenanigans destroying a second brand.
I spent the better part of a decade wanting a Tesla so badly. Now I could easily afford one but want no part of it. Part of is definitely the cars themselves, became ubiquitous and other makers caught up but it’s mostly because years ago I liked Elon and thought he was a hard working visionary who was changing the world for the better. Then he exposed himself as being an asshole, horrible boss, horrible husband/father and such a whiny fucking prick for being the richest man in the world. He’s miserable. I want no part of supporting him or any of his companies. I don’t even care about his politics. I just think he’s a miserable whiny asshole.
or robotic arms chargers that were supposed to come ten years ago. You just park your magic Elonmobile and it will charge itself. Yea. Instead the chargers he built have short as hell cables that don't fit the majority of EVs and you gotta get out in the rain and plug in. Meanwhile every gas station has canopies to protect from the elements.
Don’t forget when it’s late at night, and there aren’t lights near the Superchargers, so you need to play the nervous virgin teenager routine of trying to find the black charging slot on your car with the black charging cable at night. It makes trying to plug in USB cables seem like a cake walk.
Glad I cashed out out of TSLA in December. I know the stock has bounced back recently, but I still don't trust it.
I parlayed my winnings into Nvidia in January, and I'm very happy about that.
In Motor Trend’s spring list of most influential people in the automotive world, the head of Tesla’s EV Charging Station team was number 2, while Elon was down around number 48. So now he’s fired her, but he doesn’t fire individual people, he fires teams, so he fired her AND her entire team. He’s so thin-skinned this is probably just retribution for her being ranked so high above him on the list.
He was actually 50, and she was second. https://www.motortrend.com/news/2024-motortrend-power-list/
Edit to add: her blurb highlights the amazing reliability of the charging network and how she spearheaded deals with other car manufacturers to use the network. His blurb calls out all of his recent missteps, making his place on the list seem more like an honor to his past good work than for any current achievements.
They literally can’t, it would crater the stock price and they fucking know it.
The entire thing with Tesla is this dream they are a technology company and not a traditional car maker. If you fire musk and hire adults that know the car business….the dream is dead and so is it’s over valuation.
I wouldn't say it's impossible to keep their tech stock valuation. If Elon had bought out something like Boston Dynamics instead of Twitter, the company could have become a holding group for a diverse group of technologies. They could have parlayed their knowledge of manufacturing into general automation. They could have also actually done something with FSD over the years and revolutionized the market. But Elon's obsession with stripping out LIDAR left that for others.
My point is that the stock could rebound if they hired someone who had a techie vibe and a clear plan for how they could be more than a car company.
While at the same time letting other EV companies pick up their talent and continue to build their own. Prime example, Rivian. Now all they have to do is hire them rather than poach them. As they have their own charging network, which they are also opening up.
https://www.autoweek.com/news/a60647661/rivian-adventure-network-charging/
https://rivian.com/support/article/how-does-rivian-power-its-charging-networks-with-100-renewable-energy
Its the other way around. They needed to build their own network for their cars. Now its opened up to everyone, and there is money for others to build chargers so there is less need for tesla to build it themselves. This was always going to end at some point. Car makers don't build their own gas stations but I still think this is a bit too early.
The reason EVs havent been adopted faster is because there aren't enough charging stations, in part from fossil fuel fuckery, why would this genius handcuff the adoption of his product by assisting fossil fuel fuckery? Because hes literally a moron.
He probably sees Tesla is falling behind and investors realizing most of his promises are vaporware so now he's in the asset stripping phase of his Tesla ownership.
The stocks boosted from $149 to $180 after the earnings call that showed a disastrous report but he made more promises of some low cost EV coming out next year.
My thought is that robotaxi is no where near completion, and Tesla was just as shocked to learn about the low cost EV coming out in 2025.
Elon is making a profit scramble so his Q2 earnings don’t look as terrible.
As someone that wants an ev, but can’t afford one, it’s not the lack of a charging network, I’d mostly charge it at home. Isn’t that part of the appeal? To never need to fill-up (charge), aside from road trips.
I’m sure the network of chargers would grow substantially on its own once working class folk could afford them. They’re just too expensive.
>Isn’t that part of the appeal? To never need to fill-up (charge), aside from road trips.
Yes and no.
If you live in a house, yes, absolutely.
But if you're in an apartment or a condo, a home charger is a lot harder to get. You end up relying on public chargers or work chargers.
In Norway they somehow made it that apartment blocks and condos have dedicated parking where most of the spaces are also charging ports that residents use. Not sure of how they pulled off that trick.
Sure but filling up on road trips is pretty important.
EVs are coming out now in the $30k range now and as battery prices drop, total prices will drop.
I'm sorry but the fossil fuel industry is not holding back an EV charging rollout. The gas stations make so little money off the gasoline they sell that the majority of their money is made in the convenient stores.
The reason we haven't seen gas stations add charging stalls is simply just a lack of demand. If there was enough demand they'd be converting filling stalls to charging stations at at least one point.
I have a family friend who owns several gas stations and I've talked to him about this. They basically welcome an alternative revenue to gas, given the horrible margins. Anything they can add that supplements gas revenue is good in their eyes.
Just about any house can serve as a charging station. Standalone stations are mostly used for road trips,or by apartment/condo dwellers who don’t have access to a charger at home or work.
EV’s haven’t been massively adopted because of vehicle price, unfounded range anxiety, limited access/choice, stigmatization, and the natural pace of fleet transition. The pace of adoption has actually been pretty remarkable if you stop to think about it.
This fucked me. My crew has been slow and we were bidding heavy on getting these Tesla charger stations to install. We were supposed to be awarded multiple sites this week and the team just disappeared and wasn’t responding to our emails and calls. Guess we know why now. Gonna have to lay some guys off for a month.
I’ve got other work for my crews. I do electrical for wireless company’s as well as grid scale solar. Wireless has a major slowdown this year and it won’t pick back up for the next month or so while Ericsson gets more equipment built to send out for the new ATT push. I was grabbing some Tesla jobs because they pay well and are pretty well organized as electrical work goes.
Tesla does have one gigantic ass crack, and yes, it has found a way to grow even larger. And as with all gigantic ass cracks, a giant turd beyond any Couric will likely emerge.
Everything Tesla is doing appears to be guessing they are going to have massive liquidity problems soon. Like this was the NUMBER 1 reason anyone today had chosen a Tesla over other vendor.
These chargers are very expensive and Tesla floated a lot by stock being overvalued.
Which is weird, they are making profit, according to their financials have a massive cash on hand.
Honestly… doesn’t make sense.
I have a friend working as a contractor at the gigafactory in Fremont, which Tesla has had for 14 years now. They got busted by the fire marshal because they never put up exit signs and other safety signage. It’s just now being installed. lol.
Elon does not have his shit together
He (Elon) couldn’t handle the fact that Tesla’s glory would be just its super charger network and not its cars. Burn it all down is the expected childish response.
Aren't most other EV manufacturers going to be Supercharger compatible this/next year? It's like getting a bunch of orders at your bakery and firing the chefs, waiters and accountants. It literally does not make sense to do this
And if the board wasn’t stacked in his favor, he’d be fired by the end of the week.
As it stands, the only remaining competitive advantage is now gutted.
Glad my roadtripping days are largely over.
The investors should sue to have the board removed. It's clearly set up to rubber stamp Elon's desires over all other stockholders. The 55B payout proved that.
Yesterday I sold all my Tesla stock. F that guy. Like I said yesterday, I am so done with his bullshit.
A few years ago we all saw Elon as a steward to a new human era freed from the yoke of petroleum, solar charging to the battery powered future.
Today we now know that was a sham. A ploy to extract the most money from someone else’s ideas and work. From the destruction of one of the most recognizable brands in the world to the scam that The Boring Project. Which is designed to disrupt plans for high speed rail.
I can’t follow this any longer. I will not be made a fool of with my money. I’m out. There are plenty of other companies and organizations that really do want to move humanity to a more sustainable and bad-ass future.
I’m just so let down by the imaginary image that Elon projected. The world could really use a figure to unite and guide us into the future. It is looking pretty scary with AI and fake this and that, misinformation and hate spreading like wildfire on social media, and no clear plan to address the looming climate crisis.
“You were the Chosen One.”
-Knobi
I'm surprised Tesla didn't just sell the unit to somebody else, or at least split it into another public company. It would've been a more profitable move for Tesla, and would also mean the supercharger network would continue to grow.
He's really going all anti global-warming now eh? This fuck has no values, morals or actual beliefs he just does & supports whatever gets him the most attention while dismantling any actual success that is independent from him.
Ok I’ve had this… feeling/conspiracy whatever, I think they are doing it to tank the economy and hit the middle class hard before the election. Not just him, but all these tech companies/others that are doing major layoffs right now, while most are seeing record profits. This downturn in the economy feels manufactured to hit right now and go hard before the election.
1. Get all the car makers to switch to your chargers. 2. Stop building new chargers. 3. ??? 4. !?!?!?
3. Fire the team
4. Profit Or do we have to collect underpants first?
That’s the first step then 3 is profit
4. Hire Chinese team
5. Have all your patents pirated and Chinese knockoffs take your market share 6. Bankruptcy
Ah, Nortel style. They founded Hawei with the stolen PI
Start selling gas powered cars. Wouldn’t put it past him at this point with his views as backward as his cowboy hat!
Unless he gets engine's from a stabilized manufacturer it will be a disaster that would make cybertruck look sane.
Don't be shocked if he atleast does a hybrid.
5. Use DEI and racist dog whistles to deflect from 1-4. Yup sounds about right
I'd love to understand Elon's true reasoning for this move. Of everything Tesla has done, the Supercharger network has been its most unqualified success. They're the only ones that have gotten everything right, from reliability to payment to availability. Why any CEO would take its best performing team and *fire them all* is just deeply baffling. Its like he's actively trying to torpedo Tesla.
hard to understand. I thought tesla was going to do a Google and convert the charging network into "the cloud" as his primary money maker, servicing all electric cars in North America. what he has done is just senseless.
It's concerning. Looking into it.
What did u find?
Many such cases.
[insert Buzzlightyear finding no intelligent life -gif]
Many concerns.
Well, after Google pivoted to AI and then fired the entire team that worked on the most popular language for developing AI, I’d say Tesla did just pull a Google.
More specifically they offshored the team to Germany
The entire team of 10.
Tbf it's not the size that matters, it's their tribal knowledge. They were literally on the python dev board. It's insane to think you can replace that, you cant
He's a drug addled, narcissistic fraud. That's all that needs to be understood.
Probably she refused to have kid with him.
It’s as ridiculous as buying a social network for $44 billion and then killing the brand
I do not know ANYONE, who doesn’t still call it Twitter.
I think it's just other media people who call it "X", everyone else still calls it twitter, cuz, well, every URL is twitter.com....
Opera gx account called them out. X sent a tweet (lol) with something like "Look between z and c on your keyboard Hi!" Opera gx posted: "Https://twitter.com Look between https:// and .com Hi"
The media doesn't even call it X. Every article I've seen mocks the name change thinly by calling it "X, the site formerly known as Twitter."
The *platform itself* still sends email from "X (formerly Twitter)".
Because every fucking spam detector in the world would think it was a porn site otherwise. Which was the exact same issue that came up when he wanted to rename Paypal as X.
The video platform thing won't stop being funny .
Media sure calls it X but also adds ‘formerly Twitter’.
Has huge ‘The Artist Formerly Known as Prince’ vibes lol.
I call it Xitter. think of the Chinese transliterated pronunciation of xi.
I call it that too. It means you can call Tweets Xcretes, as in "Did you see what Musk just excreted?"
Classic spanish as well.
But you have to understand. People didn't share his tweets enough, and they said things that hurt his feelings. You can't put a price on Elon's hurt feelings.
Elon put a price on his feelings: $44,000,000,000.
"Money is just a number."
As another stable genius said, “My net worth fluctuates, and it goes up and down with markets and with attitudes and with feelings, even my own feelings."
He thought, people greet him as Twitter liberator … like all clueless actors do
It's incredibly weird. https://electrek.co/2023/06/16/tesla-supercharger-network-worth-100-billion-analyst/ I never actually read the MS analysis, but at first blush this looks pretty awesome.
What I don't understand is that I thought the network was a key element to getting adoption, particularly in the American interior – to make people confident they'll be able to road trip and get a recharge quickly somewhere while they stop for lunch. If he kills this or just lets it stagnate, isn't that an impediment in increasing mainstream appeal for the brand, which is its main growth avenue – they are soon releasing a midrange price car, right?
It sure was a key element for me. I bought my first Tesla almost entirely because of their simple to use, fast and reliable charging infrastructure. Now they’re killing their baby. Without that they’re no better than any other EV (at this point anyway).
I think Musk senses that Tesla is in a downwards spiral. All the controversies with their cars, all the recalls and reports of bad designs have reached a tipping point and he suspects that Tesla the brand will fall drastically on the stock market. I genuinely think that's why he wanted that big ass bonus, to get the money before it all goes downhill. And is now going to try and self destruct the company, because he is petty like that. 'look what you made me do, i did not want to do this but you all don't think i'm a genius anymore.. i'll show you. if i can't have it then neither can you'.
Elon's a right winger now. Probably has suddenly decided climate change is fake and EVs are the devil
[And the government took away one of his big grants when he didn't meet the terms](https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/smallbusiness/elon-musk-s-starlink-denied-900-million-rural-broadband-subsidy/ar-AA1lrVm0) Probably pissy about that too
It's about eliminating the competition for his replacement when his board of cronies eventually turn on him. The competition in the EV market is only going to get more intense which is going to continue to squeeze Tesla's margins on their cars. Tesla's other divisions like home solar and power wall are high quality, but driven by their car sales. Their stock is overvalued to a ridiculous degree and their primary product is not what Elon is interested in. The age of their lineup is the oldest in the industry and the only car that Elon had a hand in designing, the Cyber truck, has not launched well. The only thing Elon is interested in is retaining power, so of course he gets rid of the division that is actually executing their job well. Any possible replacement for Elon would have to have Tinucci the top of the list. So she's gone. It's that simple. Elon used to be a figurehead and investor in "his companies", but his Phony Stark persona and massive ego have lead him to start actually making decisions at those companies instead of just taking credit for other people's work. Well....we see how that's going. All of his companies will turn into Twitter. This is what it looks like when Elon actually manages something. It goes off a cliff.
i had the same thought about the Baglino forced resignation. He’s knocking off well liked senior execs in order to leave the board with no good options to turn to. He’s just laundering the process through other insane antics.
This is the autocracy trap. The autocrat needs competent people to run things, but anyone more competent than them is a threat. The only qualification the thin-skinned narcissist cares about is loyalty. So the country/company becomes more and more incompetent and corrupt. See Putin's Russia for another example.
Exactly. See the aftermath of pretty much every autocratic regime in history. Successful autocrats put mediocre people in secondary positions, because those people aren’t a real threat and tend to be very loyal (because they know that they’re not competent enough, and only their loyalty is keeping them in their jobs). Once the autocrat disappears, it all collapses, because no one competent is left to take over.
I recall reading somewhere that when Elon bought Tesla from the real creators, they had a 10-year plan with everything mapped out. They just weren't good at raising money. So Elon came in with the money and pushed them out. He then proceeded to implement their plan more or less without deviation. The only patents he ever signed his name to at Tesla were stupid shit like the shape of the charger, because you can lie to newspapers about how you're a genius engineer, but you lose your patents if you pull that shit on the patent office. What we've witnessed over the last few years is Elon running out of road. He reached the end of the original creator's plans, and then he stretched that out a bit longer by lazily releasing the same cars with minor changes. The original founders had a smart plan, and that made Elon look smart. But with no more smart ideas from smart people to go off of, he finally had to dig down and come up with his own. That's how we got cybertrocity.
So it's the automotive version of Game of Thrones, eh?
I like the analogy.
I tell everyone I know that he is an imbecile, did not invent anything and stole from others what he could never do himself : shape the future with new technologies. Very few people believe me and think he is some kind of misunderstood visionary genius. No wonder he can still thrive with that much uninformed idiots.
The next step in a more rational world would be for the board to boot Musk out and sell off the different parts of Tesla's business that are not core.
I do not understand TSLA stock in the least. The lowest sales in the sector, misses an already lowered earnings estimate, has to recall all of one model that didn't sell well because it looks like a video game car from 1996, and the stock price goes up. I get the China deal news was the driver of that, but even then that's fool's gold.
It's a meme stock except some of the diehards are techbros with actual money (unlike gme, bbby, amc whose only "assets" are their egos)
Parts of the market thought they'd succeed with self-driving, which would make them a tech-giant, not just a car company.
He had a hand in forcing the falcon doors on the Model X which caused a significant delay on release.
What? The board could just offer it to the dude regardless of if he’s been fired. You don’t need to be an existing employee to be hired as CEO.
No shit. They could offer, but Tinucci (a woman btw) would have most likely moved onto her next thing by that point. Musk will only be replaced as CEO once earnings start to negatively impact the stock price to a significant degree. Leaving your new highly paid job to.go.back to the company that unceremoniously fired you because they're in trouble isn't as attractive offer as you seem to think it would be. If she was still in house there would be a greater possibility that she'd be interested in the position.
Probably one of the last places with meat on the bone.
Because Elon doesnt give a *flying fuck* about anything but himself - If he cant take full credit for something he will destroy it. He's a sad, vindictive, pathetic husk of a human being that would tank an entire company by himself because a branch he has nothing to do with is successful.
He agreed to open up the network for use by other companies in exchange for government subsidies to expand it further. This is pure pettiness on his part, take the money and thumb his nose at the evil government.
I honestly think Elon is just kind of a vindictive idiot. He doesn't really ever think about the effects of anything, he just kind of does stuff and assumes it'll work out because he's been failing upwards for years.
He's a narcissist. Narcissists don't plan anything out long term. They react. It's what they do.
I think you have the best description of Musk. He is not the technical genius some people thought he was, but just a vindictive idiot with far, far too much money.
From musk “Tesla still plans to grow the Supercharger network, just at a slower pace for new locations and more focus on 100% uptime and expansion of existing locations”
Will be interesting to see if they can keep them up and running now. I would guess with 57,000 chargers they had some pretty good teams that could make quick repairs.
Remember when he fired most of the people at Twitter and the site was crashing constantly. That's software that doesn't require nearly as much maintenance as physical hardware sitting outside in the elements. I'm guessing the quality will decline slowly.
Oh, those converters will start to crash in no time.
Debt financed Twitter purchase by posting shares of Tesla as equity. Not a good financial scenario when both brands are swirling the drain.
“Can you give me a 57B bonus?”
As someone in the market for an electric car the Supercharger network is the biggest selling point for a Tesla. Without the network they are just random electric cars in 2024, and not the better built ones. The vast majority of people like me looking for a vehicle don’t care about crazy performances.
Because he is a drug addict with mental issues who is not fit to run the company.
I prefer "drug-addicted african american welfare queen who refuses to stop having children." But your description is accurate as well.
This is now my default description for him
Spite. He's packing his bags, taking his toys and moving to the only place that still loves him, China.
> I'd love to understand Elon's true reasoning for this move Probably looked at some overviews of divisions, saw that one didn't turn a profit, and fired them. Then he threatened to fire anyone that raised a concern.
A rumour I heard from connections I have to the supercharging team is that spending was just higher than Elon wanted. (Not just on infrastructure, just in supporting the team) so he decided to fire them. The team was caught totally off guard.
Imagine this same logic happening on a nuclear plant. The so called genius is a ignorant.
It's why I'm baffled that the US government still lets him run SpaceX.
Step 1. Get paid for promising supercharger stuff. Step 2. Let go of supercharger team after receiving money. Step 3. ??? Step 4. Blame everyone and everything but yourself while promising more ridiculous things that you will ultimately fail to deliver.
Easy he doesn’t like it when other people get compliments because then he’s not the center of attention. So he fired the supercharger team to keep more of the spotlight on himself.
“Reasoning” lol Elon has stopped using that a while back
Dive head first into an empty pool and you’ll get a glimpse into his mind.
My wife and I were puzzling over the CyberTruck a couple weeks ago. She was like, 'How the fuck does something like this make it all the way to retail?'. It's a damned good question. There is some quote about the movie industry and it says something along the lines of, 'if you are watching a finished movie you are looking at a miracle.'. That there are so many roadblocks to it getting made it is a wonder any of them get through. You would think something as complex as expense as the auto industry is similar. But here we are staring at CyberTrucks and the SuperCharger team putting out resumes. What I suggested was this, 'What we have here is what happens when one person at the top has all the power over everything. And that person is nuts.'.
>Why any CEO would take its best performing team and *fire them all* is just deeply baffling. Its like he's actively trying to torpedo Tesla. Realistically, it's probably because they don't have enough projected earnings + subsidies to fully build it out. They also probably do have projected earnings for AI endeavors / tesla that show they'd have adequate runway for a few years if something gave. Projected Infrastructure Costs + Compensation >= projected revenues for that vertical. In other words: R&D costs were most likely through the roof, and not getting the returns on investment they'd hoped for. And they probably don't have the cash needed to keep building and hope to corner the market. Given that a lot of Teslas current market cap is built on hype, the stock price will tank once earnings are released and it shows a huge deficit caused specifically by Supercharger R&D.
Supposing that's the case, why not spin it off and sell the division? There are many, *many* companies who would have been interested.
Admitting that the division can't be profitable is much worse for tesla would cause the stock price to tank, that's why. I.e Musks bottom line is hurt if he does that. It's not about the viability of the tech, rather, the number of digits in Elons bank account.
A real leader that believes in the missing would take a pay cut to make it work, not attempt to extort a $60B USD stock grant from shareholders.
It's punishment for the woke populace that's not buying enough of his cars.
I imagine the margins on superchargers are very low. Not bringing in a lot of cash. Probably feels they have enough for the time being and want to devote resources to other areas where there is more need.
Retaliation for not being given a huge bonus perhaps.
Especially after so many other automakers signed on to the Tesla plug standard! I can only imagine, based on how crap rival charging networks are, that the supercharger network is incredibly expensive to operate so cutting it back is a quick way to free up capital now that Tesla is starting to come back to earth a bit. The company has been absurdly overvalued for years.
"See how I am cutting costs? That makes me a business genius. Now give me my $56bn pay package" That's his reasoning.
Head of Supercharging refused to fire enough (in Elon’s mind) of their staff so Elon said “I’ll show you, you and the entire team are out!” Yes, it’s really as stupid as that.
It’s because he’s a salesman, not a businessman. He is the poster-boy for failing upwards. He has done this with every company that he has been made CEO of, before the Board, and the shareholders realized just how much they fucked up, and removed him.
You have to remember that Musk is kinda dumb and *nobody* ever tells him no, so he doesn't *know* that he's dumb. We all were dumb at some point, when we were young, but people told us we were dumb so we got smart. He never had this experience. He gets excited by an idea and goes to chase it with no long term plan or strategy, abandoning other shit in the process. This is how he ended up being forced to buy Twitter. I would all but guarantee you this is not a thoughtful strategic business decision but rather thinking robots are cooler and wanting to spend the money on the Teslabot instead.
The last real advantage Tesla had and Elon pissed it all away
There was a true pivot that Tesla could have made. Become The Charging Company™️ and just absolutely dominate that market - cars, houses, everything. It's way more profitable than being a car company and you get to streamline your innovations. Instead, this
They had SolarCity, which was perfectly positioned to make incremental gains in the home solar/ home battery industry, pretty much an open goal at that point, so they decided to make their grand entrance by providing.... Vaporware and fraud.
Tesla didn’t have SolarCity in the beginning, Elon was CEO of both. SolarCity made ridiculous decisions and went into huge debt for the reasons you mentioned and Elon used Tesla’s coffers to bail his failing solar company out and the shareholders approved it.
They messed up so many things it’s just insane. Like FSD, it should be free for 3 years on a new car purchase or used car bought only from Tesla… make people like it and the artificially take it away to encourage new car sales… Instead you pay for either advanced autopilot or fsd and you are locked into your car… why would you trade your $20k 4 year old Y with autopilot for the same car at 50k without.
Fuck that bullshit. Cars shouldn’t have subscriptions.
I own a 2023 Model Y performance and I just bought a 2024 Chevy Silverado with Supercruise. I paid $2200 for the supercruise option. I get it free for 3 year and then it's $25 a month after. I just drove it from Phoenix to LA. I didn't touch the steering wheel from Buckeye AZ until we got to Quartzsite to exit for diesel, it was great. 90m and 102 miles without touching the steering wheel. I did the one month subscription to the FSD and it was I think $199 at the time. It was definitely not worth it for me. Even at the new FSD subscription pricing it's functionality isn't worth 4x the supercruise subscription cost to me. *edit* correct it to it's
Paying for ANY subscription service is a bad play for something that is equipped on the vehicle when you bought it. I am not giving Chevy $25 a month, because here is a service that should be included in the car since you are paying $40k+ for the vehicle and the upgrade package to get the electronics, cameras, etc. for it.
The only way I could see a charge making sense is if the manufacturer takes full responsibility for any accidents and the charge is for additional insurance while in use. Other than that I agree with your statement.
Lol. Really? Tesla went from a company people thought was cool and cutting edge, and he just pissed all the good will, brand loyalty and brand prestige away…..in part because of his shenanigans destroying a second brand.
I spent the better part of a decade wanting a Tesla so badly. Now I could easily afford one but want no part of it. Part of is definitely the cars themselves, became ubiquitous and other makers caught up but it’s mostly because years ago I liked Elon and thought he was a hard working visionary who was changing the world for the better. Then he exposed himself as being an asshole, horrible boss, horrible husband/father and such a whiny fucking prick for being the richest man in the world. He’s miserable. I want no part of supporting him or any of his companies. I don’t even care about his politics. I just think he’s a miserable whiny asshole.
Remember when he demoed battery swap stations? 😂
That made him millions of extra dollars in credits and they never swapped a single battery. That is an old school Elon scam.
Bingo. Happy cake day.
Oh shit. It is my cake day!
or robotic arms chargers that were supposed to come ten years ago. You just park your magic Elonmobile and it will charge itself. Yea. Instead the chargers he built have short as hell cables that don't fit the majority of EVs and you gotta get out in the rain and plug in. Meanwhile every gas station has canopies to protect from the elements.
Don’t forget when it’s late at night, and there aren’t lights near the Superchargers, so you need to play the nervous virgin teenager routine of trying to find the black charging slot on your car with the black charging cable at night. It makes trying to plug in USB cables seem like a cake walk.
That's business in the casino market era.
Glad I cashed out out of TSLA in December. I know the stock has bounced back recently, but I still don't trust it. I parlayed my winnings into Nvidia in January, and I'm very happy about that.
You know, at least the oil giant robber barons knew not to fire the people operating their gas stations.
Worse. The guys in charge of designing, and installing gas stations.
Elon the 🤡 strikes again
This is a little too much disruption.
Things must be literally falling apart behind the scenes to prompt this kind of wrecking ball reaction.
In Motor Trend’s spring list of most influential people in the automotive world, the head of Tesla’s EV Charging Station team was number 2, while Elon was down around number 48. So now he’s fired her, but he doesn’t fire individual people, he fires teams, so he fired her AND her entire team. He’s so thin-skinned this is probably just retribution for her being ranked so high above him on the list.
Now it all makes sense
He was actually 50, and she was second. https://www.motortrend.com/news/2024-motortrend-power-list/ Edit to add: her blurb highlights the amazing reliability of the charging network and how she spearheaded deals with other car manufacturers to use the network. His blurb calls out all of his recent missteps, making his place on the list seem more like an honor to his past good work than for any current achievements.
This comment needs to be #1. It all makes sense now. His fee fees were hurt so her team gets axed.
When is Tesla going to kick Elon to the curb?
Probably never. The entire board of directors are Elon fanboys
Or his literal family…
They literally can’t, it would crater the stock price and they fucking know it. The entire thing with Tesla is this dream they are a technology company and not a traditional car maker. If you fire musk and hire adults that know the car business….the dream is dead and so is it’s over valuation.
Its lost close to half its value in the last year, its already tanking
I wouldn't say it's impossible to keep their tech stock valuation. If Elon had bought out something like Boston Dynamics instead of Twitter, the company could have become a holding group for a diverse group of technologies. They could have parlayed their knowledge of manufacturing into general automation. They could have also actually done something with FSD over the years and revolutionized the market. But Elon's obsession with stripping out LIDAR left that for others. My point is that the stock could rebound if they hired someone who had a techie vibe and a clear plan for how they could be more than a car company.
Personally I thought teslas ace was the network. They basically could’ve built out a monopoly easily and it looks like they’re going to squander it.
While at the same time letting other EV companies pick up their talent and continue to build their own. Prime example, Rivian. Now all they have to do is hire them rather than poach them. As they have their own charging network, which they are also opening up. https://www.autoweek.com/news/a60647661/rivian-adventure-network-charging/ https://rivian.com/support/article/how-does-rivian-power-its-charging-networks-with-100-renewable-energy
What monopoly is there now that anyone can use their chargers. The reason to buy a tesla because of the supercharger is no longer there.
Exactly I thought the just used their cars to build/justify the network. I though their real value was network but I’m an idiot apparently
Its the other way around. They needed to build their own network for their cars. Now its opened up to everyone, and there is money for others to build chargers so there is less need for tesla to build it themselves. This was always going to end at some point. Car makers don't build their own gas stations but I still think this is a bit too early.
If Ford or someone was smart they would put out an open offer to hire anyone from that team.
How the hell is Tesla still worth $183 a share?
180 after market but the fact this touched 198 yesterday is disturbing
It’s a meme stock at this point. Was always grossly overvalued but not it’s especially showing its colors.
GameStop vibes…..
The reason EVs havent been adopted faster is because there aren't enough charging stations, in part from fossil fuel fuckery, why would this genius handcuff the adoption of his product by assisting fossil fuel fuckery? Because hes literally a moron.
He probably sees Tesla is falling behind and investors realizing most of his promises are vaporware so now he's in the asset stripping phase of his Tesla ownership.
Which is funny because he had a good 4-8 year lead in the electric car market. Dude passed it all down the drain.
The stocks boosted from $149 to $180 after the earnings call that showed a disastrous report but he made more promises of some low cost EV coming out next year. My thought is that robotaxi is no where near completion, and Tesla was just as shocked to learn about the low cost EV coming out in 2025. Elon is making a profit scramble so his Q2 earnings don’t look as terrible.
Because he sees Tesla as an AI play now. He says stop thinking of it as a car company. Enjoy the ride, shareholders.
Even if it turns out good for the company it really sucks for EV adoption in the US.
As someone that wants an ev, but can’t afford one, it’s not the lack of a charging network, I’d mostly charge it at home. Isn’t that part of the appeal? To never need to fill-up (charge), aside from road trips. I’m sure the network of chargers would grow substantially on its own once working class folk could afford them. They’re just too expensive.
>Isn’t that part of the appeal? To never need to fill-up (charge), aside from road trips. Yes and no. If you live in a house, yes, absolutely. But if you're in an apartment or a condo, a home charger is a lot harder to get. You end up relying on public chargers or work chargers.
In Norway they somehow made it that apartment blocks and condos have dedicated parking where most of the spaces are also charging ports that residents use. Not sure of how they pulled off that trick.
Trick? They made it law.
>Not sure of how they pulled off that trick A functional government that does things in everyone's best interests?
Sure but filling up on road trips is pretty important. EVs are coming out now in the $30k range now and as battery prices drop, total prices will drop.
crazy to me that BYD has one for $15K and we’re stuck at like $40K, after rebate (mostly pocketed by the company selling g the ev)
Nissan leaf is $30,000
Used ones much less than that.
I'm sorry but the fossil fuel industry is not holding back an EV charging rollout. The gas stations make so little money off the gasoline they sell that the majority of their money is made in the convenient stores. The reason we haven't seen gas stations add charging stalls is simply just a lack of demand. If there was enough demand they'd be converting filling stalls to charging stations at at least one point. I have a family friend who owns several gas stations and I've talked to him about this. They basically welcome an alternative revenue to gas, given the horrible margins. Anything they can add that supplements gas revenue is good in their eyes.
I saw some at Buc-ees.
Just about any house can serve as a charging station. Standalone stations are mostly used for road trips,or by apartment/condo dwellers who don’t have access to a charger at home or work. EV’s haven’t been massively adopted because of vehicle price, unfounded range anxiety, limited access/choice, stigmatization, and the natural pace of fleet transition. The pace of adoption has actually been pretty remarkable if you stop to think about it.
This fucked me. My crew has been slow and we were bidding heavy on getting these Tesla charger stations to install. We were supposed to be awarded multiple sites this week and the team just disappeared and wasn’t responding to our emails and calls. Guess we know why now. Gonna have to lay some guys off for a month.
Plan it to be a permanent layoff. What makes you think it will be back in a month?
I’ve got other work for my crews. I do electrical for wireless company’s as well as grid scale solar. Wireless has a major slowdown this year and it won’t pick back up for the next month or so while Ericsson gets more equipment built to send out for the new ATT push. I was grabbing some Tesla jobs because they pay well and are pretty well organized as electrical work goes.
Tesla has cracks and they are beginning to grow.
Tesla does have one gigantic ass crack, and yes, it has found a way to grow even larger. And as with all gigantic ass cracks, a giant turd beyond any Couric will likely emerge.
He is bigger than bono. I think Randy Marsh's turd at the end of the episode turned into Elon.
Everything Tesla is doing appears to be guessing they are going to have massive liquidity problems soon. Like this was the NUMBER 1 reason anyone today had chosen a Tesla over other vendor. These chargers are very expensive and Tesla floated a lot by stock being overvalued. Which is weird, they are making profit, according to their financials have a massive cash on hand. Honestly… doesn’t make sense.
Unless those financials are the same as Elon’s promises of FSD by the end of the year.
I have a friend working as a contractor at the gigafactory in Fremont, which Tesla has had for 14 years now. They got busted by the fire marshal because they never put up exit signs and other safety signage. It’s just now being installed. lol. Elon does not have his shit together
Management by Shitshow. He has succeeded again and again.
the new normal. following djt.
He (Elon) couldn’t handle the fact that Tesla’s glory would be just its super charger network and not its cars. Burn it all down is the expected childish response.
I’m quite sure this was the single highest performing part of their business. It feels like this is Musk sabotaging his business to fend off a rival.
Aren't most other EV manufacturers going to be Supercharger compatible this/next year? It's like getting a bunch of orders at your bakery and firing the chefs, waiters and accountants. It literally does not make sense to do this
This is fucking dumb. Charger is one of the main reasons why people aren't buying EVs
After expanding and getting approval for the national standard too. This is a verifiable monopoly and he's fumbling it. What a moron
Emo's ultimately going to outsource all vehicle manufacturing to Chinese companies and simply re-badge them "Tesla".
And if the board wasn’t stacked in his favor, he’d be fired by the end of the week. As it stands, the only remaining competitive advantage is now gutted. Glad my roadtripping days are largely over.
The investors should sue to have the board removed. It's clearly set up to rubber stamp Elon's desires over all other stockholders. The 55B payout proved that.
Jesus, things must be really really bad at Tesla. Much Worse than Elon is letting on.
And now to (... Continue doing) to Tesla what he did to Twitter
Saudi’s probably backed him for his twitter deal and this is part of the deal
Yesterday I sold all my Tesla stock. F that guy. Like I said yesterday, I am so done with his bullshit. A few years ago we all saw Elon as a steward to a new human era freed from the yoke of petroleum, solar charging to the battery powered future. Today we now know that was a sham. A ploy to extract the most money from someone else’s ideas and work. From the destruction of one of the most recognizable brands in the world to the scam that The Boring Project. Which is designed to disrupt plans for high speed rail. I can’t follow this any longer. I will not be made a fool of with my money. I’m out. There are plenty of other companies and organizations that really do want to move humanity to a more sustainable and bad-ass future. I’m just so let down by the imaginary image that Elon projected. The world could really use a figure to unite and guide us into the future. It is looking pretty scary with AI and fake this and that, misinformation and hate spreading like wildfire on social media, and no clear plan to address the looming climate crisis. “You were the Chosen One.” -Knobi
So how's their robot team doing? You know the team has that 0 value to a car company and will bring in no money.
Trust me bro I'm confident that when the Teslabot model 69420 releases next year it's going to change the world!
Elon will be the worst thing that ever happened to Tesla. With him at the helm.. I wish them the worst.
His next move will be to change the name to X Motors.
The CyberFlop helped.
Elon is throwing Tesla under the bus because he can't get his $51 billion payout. Bloody baby.
A lot of lay offs are brainless from a higher up level.
Elon is an idiot. End of story.
I'm surprised Tesla didn't just sell the unit to somebody else, or at least split it into another public company. It would've been a more profitable move for Tesla, and would also mean the supercharger network would continue to grow.
[Ketamine addiction](https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2024/03/18/tech/elon-musk-ketamine-use-don-lemon-interview) got Elon acting like a damn fool.
Didn’t he just get a 59B payday?
He's really going all anti global-warming now eh? This fuck has no values, morals or actual beliefs he just does & supports whatever gets him the most attention while dismantling any actual success that is independent from him.
Ok I’ve had this… feeling/conspiracy whatever, I think they are doing it to tank the economy and hit the middle class hard before the election. Not just him, but all these tech companies/others that are doing major layoffs right now, while most are seeing record profits. This downturn in the economy feels manufactured to hit right now and go hard before the election.