Tesla investors are getting tired of Elon Musk’s antics (just like would-be buyers), and they are not a fan of another record payday for the CEO if he continues to be a “part-time” CEO. Shareholders are soon expected to vote on a new compensation deal for Musk at this year’s annual meeting after a Delaware court killed a 2018 package worth $56 billion. That number first came about because folks were concerned that if he didn’t get a huge payday, Tesla would have to compete with Musk’s other companies for his attention, according to Fortune. That happened anyway.
Lately, Musk’s attention hasn’t been on any of his companies, either. No, he’s been far more interested in transphobia, advocating against diversity hiring and illegal immigration, and shitty conspiracy theories as a whole. Basically, he’s been the world’s shittiest guy on the internet for a while now. His companies are suffering because of it, especially Tesla, which just reported an absolutely dismal first quarter of 2024. Amazingly, since these numbers came out, Musk has posted about Disney more than his own automaker on his social media platform, Twitter.
Here’s more from Fortune on how people feel about Musk’s antics:
[W]hile some have been critical of his brand of divisive politics, their complaints focused on Musk’s lackluster enthusiasm as Tesla CEO, which they feel too few are willing to call out.
Twitter once served as a useful mechanism to provide quick feedback to Musk from the community, but now some believe the Tesla CEO has let his popularity on the platform go to his head.
Some Tesla “fans” are now doing some things that are petty and potentially even illegal that affect my life directly – simply because they disagree with what I write.
This is a new low and it won’t work.
They are messing with the wrong person. I’ve been sued before, I had…
— Fred Lambert (@FredericLambert) March 13, 2024
“The feedback loop is completely broken and now Elon is basking in the praise of his super fans while branding all legitimate criticism as attacks,” says Fred Lambert, who has previously spoken about mistakenly putting Musk on a pedestal.
Lambert, Electrek’s CEO, spoke with Fortune, saying his involvement in the Tesla community goes back to when he was a subreddit moderator. He’s recently distanced himself from Musk after emails surfaced showing the billionaire had favored OpenAI becoming a for-profit company under his control and not Microsoft’s.
“He was always in it for himself,” Lambert wrote at the time, adding “This is not the man I used to consider my hero.”
Speaking to Fortune, Lambert believes the CEO made a strategic mistake by focusing on the expensive stainless steel Cybertruck at the expense of a $25,000 entry model teased at its September 2020 Battery Day, which he believes would have driven further growth. (Musk appears to now be prioritizing a robotaxi following a Reuters report on Friday that he’s put development of the entry model on ice)
[...]
Lambert is indicative of a growing schism in the community.
While most don’t care how Musk splits his time since they support the man first—and the company second—an increasingly vocal minority want to see Musk commit himself fully to Tesla’s original mission to decarbonize transport, fearing that this plan has been forgotten as the CEO pivots to robotics and AI—when he isn’t posting his thoughts on X.
Some of Musk’s biggest fans around the internet are losing faith.
YouTuber Lee of New Zealand has published over 900 videos devoted to the company under the Tesla Economist account.
He tells Fortune he became increasingly critical after Musk broke one promise after the other, whether it is the never-ending wait for the Semi, the Roadster or the entry model.
Perhaps the biggest disappointment, however, has been the painfully slow progress made with Tesla’s vaunted next-generation 4680 cells and its related failure to reach scale with its innovative dry battery electrode coating, a game changer in terms of capital expenditure and manufacturing cost.
“The company itself has been going downhill ever since,” he says.
Musk still hasn’t delivered on the second part of his Master Plan, and yet he is already predicting Tesla’s future lies in robotics.
Meanwhile, the core car business has faltered and needed a series of price cuts just to hit its volume target of 1.8 million vehicles last year.
“I believe he saw this coming and dumped his stock early as a result” Lee says.
He also criticizes him for popularizing meme cryptocurrency like Dogecoin among his followers, knowing he can manipulate the price with a single tweet.
Much like his promotion of the Shiba Inu-themed digital token, he suspects a lot of Musk’s broken promises were little more than an attempt to pump the stock to meet the milestone targets of his mammoth (and now void) pay package.
Okay, I don’t want to give too much else away about the piece in Fortune. You should really head over to their website and read the story for yourself.