Speaker 1: Thanks for downloading Making a Killing. I'm Bethany McClain. We've
Speaker 1: had some amazingly fun conversations so far in this series,
Speaker 1: but other shows that are really fun is when my
Speaker 1: interview collides with a topic I've written about for Vanity Fair,
Speaker 1: and this upcoming episode will feature Lynette Lopez talking about Tesla.
Speaker 1: In modern English, the term cult has usually been used
Speaker 1: in reference to a social group that is defined by
Speaker 1: its unusual, religious, spiritual, or philosophical beliefs, or by its
Speaker 1: common interest in a particular personality, object or goal. So
Speaker 1: that's how Wikipedia answers the question what is a cult?
Speaker 1: I was thinking about that because, well, because I'm thinking
Speaker 1: about Elon Musk, who isn't a Tesla and the rest
Speaker 1: of Elon's empire. I recently finished a piece for Vanity
Speaker 1: Fair about Solar City, which was a mostly forgotten piece
Speaker 1: of the puzzle until recently. Back to them anyway. The
Speaker 1: headline of the piece was He's full of s blank
Speaker 1: blank blank, How Elon Musk fooled investors, built taxpayers, and
Speaker 1: gambled Tesla to save Solar City. I guess my point
Speaker 1: of view is pretty clear. Criticizing Musk is an interesting exercise,
Speaker 1: because Musk, who is going to save the planet with
Speaker 1: solar energy, self driving electric vehicles, artificial intelligence, and if
Speaker 1: all else fails, a way to get to Mars, is
Speaker 1: in many ways the leader of a cult. Let's call
Speaker 1: it the Muscuans. Musk is their leader, their icon, or,
Speaker 1: as one put it on Twitter, the most genius man alive.
Speaker 1: During the course of my reporting, I learned about another group,
Speaker 1: a group called Tesla Q Tesla stock symbol followed by
Speaker 1: the queue that stocks pickup when they are delisted due
Speaker 1: to bankruptcy. Obviously, these are not Muscians, these are skeptics,
Speaker 1: and the battleground between the believers, the Muscians and the
Speaker 1: skeptics is Twitter. Of course, as is the case with
Speaker 1: any cult. To the believers, it's Tesla C that is
Speaker 1: the real enemy. And so the dark side of fintwit,
Speaker 1: which is what people call financial Twitter, is that cult
Speaker 1: members target people, particularly female journalists, who dare to write
Speaker 1: or say anything negative about their leader. As listeners of
Speaker 1: this podcast know, one of the questions I'm obsessed with
Speaker 1: is what is the line between a visionary and a fraud.
Speaker 1: I don't have a view on the rest of Elon's
Speaker 1: empire beyond Solar City. The one thing I do know
Speaker 1: is that if any piece of it works, Elon Musk
Speaker 1: will go down in the history books as a visionary.
Speaker 1: But will the problems he has created and Tesla's desperate
Speaker 1: need for cash catch up with him? And is the
Speaker 1: way his critics are treated, whether with his explicit or
Speaker 1: implicit consent, a clue to how all of this might
Speaker 1: turn out. My guest today is Lynette Lopez, who has
Speaker 1: been covering Musk fearlessly and skeptically for Business Insider for
Speaker 1: several years. A year ago, after she wrote a particularly
Speaker 1: skeptical story, the Muskins came after her, so she's also
Speaker 1: experienced the dark side of fintwit. I'm curious as to
Speaker 1: her views on his empire, but also her experience with
Speaker 1: the cult and what, in her view it all means. Selenette,
Speaker 1: your pin tweet is pretty astonishing. It's from about a
Speaker 1: year or so ago, and it's I'd just like to
Speaker 1: point out that right now, right at this very moment,
Speaker 1: at Elon Musk is going through my Facebook history and
Speaker 1: screen tell us about that. So Elon Musk doesn't engage
Speaker 1: on Twitter like most CEOs or adults. He targets people
Speaker 1: who don't have nearly the following that he has. He
Speaker 1: relies on information that he gets from his Twitter followers,
Speaker 1: who are as you might call them, members of his cult.
Speaker 1: And his very rapid response to that tweet was, I'm
Speaker 1: not grabbing from your Facebook profile. Someone is sending me
Speaker 1: pictures and that's what I'm seeing. That is not the
Speaker 1: response of a normal adult, let alone a normal CEO,
Speaker 1: let alone a normal CEO. So, regardless of what you
Speaker 1: think about Elon Musk, let's establish right now that he
Speaker 1: is not normal. And that's a really good starting point.
Speaker 1: Not normal, and no interaction that you will have with
Speaker 1: him or his company will be normal. The entire thing
Speaker 1: runs as an appendage to his body and brain and
Speaker 1: heart because he's a very emotional man. So you have
Speaker 1: to think about every single person who interacts with you
Speaker 1: from Tesla as an agent of Musk. So they're all
Speaker 1: just appendages, appendages, and that they are that way because
Speaker 1: they're afraid. They're afraid of losing their jobs, they're afraid
Speaker 1: of incurring his wrath, as members of the cult are
Speaker 1: afraid of their fearless leader, right exactly exactly, So what
Speaker 1: was it that led to this. What was it that
Speaker 1: caused Elon Musk? If causes the right word, as if
Speaker 1: there's some linearity about this? What caused Elon Musk's followers
Speaker 1: to start going through your Facebook? Well it's a little
Speaker 1: bit complicated and has resulted in a lawsuit against a
Speaker 1: man named Martin Tripp, who is a former Tesla employee. Ye,
Speaker 1: a whistle blower, right, yes, he is a whistle blower.
Speaker 1: He approached me in May of twenty eighteen with documents
Speaker 1: that proved that Tesla was just generating an unbelievable amount
Speaker 1: of scrap in order to build the Model three. And
Speaker 1: what does it mean that they were generating a lot
Speaker 1: of scrap, that they were wasting a lot. Yes, roughly,
Speaker 1: it meant that for every two cars Tesla was making,
Speaker 1: it would throw away a third of a car. Oh,
Speaker 1: that's stunning, stun stuff. And is there a sense what's
Speaker 1: normal in the Is some scrap normal? In the an
Speaker 1: automobile manufacturing, some scrap is normal. But that was it
Speaker 1: blew the Detroit guys away. Okay, that level blew anybody
Speaker 1: who had any experience in automotive away. But one thing
Speaker 1: I will note that is that a lot of Tesla
Speaker 1: employees do not have a lot of experience in automotive,
Speaker 1: but those that did would speak to me in kind
Speaker 1: of hush tones. I remember I spoke to one guy.
Speaker 1: He was the manager of the line in Fremont that
Speaker 1: manufactured the doors on the Model three, and I asked him,
Speaker 1: you know, so what's your fail rate? And he kind
Speaker 1: of just mumbled percent and I was like what, Like
Speaker 1: I thought he was going to say like point three
Speaker 1: percent or something like that. It was fifteen percent. Wow. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and again is standard something approaching five percent zero percent?
Speaker 1: It's something between I would say one in three. Okay,
Speaker 1: So this is a huge number. This is a huge
Speaker 1: and one that makes it really hard for test let
Speaker 1: make money, which is already the problem, right because I
Speaker 1: would assume that the more you're wasting, the harder it
Speaker 1: is to actually turn a profit. Right. Yes, And you
Speaker 1: have to also remember that it Tesla, nothing is final.
Speaker 1: Everything is always in flux and also subject to the
Speaker 1: whim of Elon Musk. So if a car look ridiculous
Speaker 1: or become too complicated with butterfly doors, doesn't matter. If
Speaker 1: Elon wants the butterfly doors, you're getting. Butterfly doors come
Speaker 1: hell or high water. So Martin Tripp came to you
Speaker 1: and with the stunning number about the waste. Okay, yes,
Speaker 1: stunning number, he started leaking all sorts of information about
Speaker 1: what was going on inside of Tesla because he was
Speaker 1: very concerned. He joined Tesla because he wanted to save
Speaker 1: the earth. He was a huge Musk fan when he
Speaker 1: joined up, and it took several months for the company
Speaker 1: to kind of wear him down to the point that
Speaker 1: he was overworked, depressed, and felt like he really wasn't
Speaker 1: get the whole story about what Tesla was about. So
Speaker 1: he wanted to be a Muscan, but he was then
Speaker 1: refold very much wanted to be a Muscan. And after
Speaker 1: having spoken with dozens of Tesla employees, former, current, etc.
Speaker 1: It's a familiar story. They go in, they have a
Speaker 1: high opinion of Elon Musk, and they come out of
Speaker 1: there just stunned at how just massive the chaos is
Speaker 1: inside of the company. So the trip was eventually found.
Speaker 1: Musk hired a third party service to hunt him down
Speaker 1: and they used a detail in one of my stories
Speaker 1: and corroborated with his searches inside the company's database, and
Speaker 1: they found him. They sued him and they thought that
Speaker 1: would probably shut me up, but no. So that was
Speaker 1: in June of last year, and around July, after having
Speaker 1: collected other sources around the company, I published a story
Speaker 1: that said, in order to factory gait, which is a
Speaker 1: Tesla term, so get five thousand cars finished at the
Speaker 1: end of the factory lines. It's what they had a
Speaker 1: goal of factory getting five thousand cars. To get to
Speaker 1: that number, they stopped doing this test called the brake
Speaker 1: and roll test, which is a test that tests the
Speaker 1: car at different rotations per minute the wheels. You connect
Speaker 1: the car to a computer, the wheel starts spinning, and
Speaker 1: the computer tells you how the alignment's going, what the
Speaker 1: car's doing, how it's reacting to difference. And it's a
Speaker 1: standard test and an important test standard tests. Nobody I
Speaker 1: talk to anywhere in the world of automaking could tell
Speaker 1: me why anyone would stop doing I mean, the idea
Speaker 1: of it not being done was just like, I mean,
Speaker 1: there's no rule, but you know a little bit like
Speaker 1: putting a pharmaceutical product out without quality control exactly, there's
Speaker 1: no cool But who would do that was kind of
Speaker 1: the reaction. So I published the story and I don't know,
Speaker 1: the stock fell might have been just light trading Day
Speaker 1: was around the July fourth holiday that tends to get
Speaker 1: Elon's attention, though, and a few days later he was
Speaker 1: tweeting at me basically suggesting that I was being paid
Speaker 1: by short sellers to write negative articles about Tesla, which
Speaker 1: is always the favorite response to any immature CEO who
Speaker 1: is targeted, right who has anything skeptical said about him,
Speaker 1: which is that it must be the short sellers paying
Speaker 1: the journalist, rather than maybe there's some legitimate criticism here.
Speaker 1: Maybe journalism is a job that we do and we
Speaker 1: get paid for, and maybe it's something different than being
Speaker 1: a syncophan for the company. Right. I have student loans.
Speaker 1: I got to pay my bills. Unfortunately, these short sellers
Speaker 1: aren't out here paying like that. But they're not. They're
Speaker 1: just not. They don't do it. I've never experienced any
Speaker 1: short seller in my life to establish that. Actually, I've
Speaker 1: been doing this for twenty five years. I've never had
Speaker 1: someone offered to pay me. No, never, they don't do that.
Speaker 1: So Elon went on and on and on for what
Speaker 1: felt like two days, just like tweeting out screenshots from
Speaker 1: my Facebook profile. As you pointed, out and speculating, and
Speaker 1: then of course his twenty two million followers start speculating,
Speaker 1: and everyone's speculating. So now I have this really angry
Speaker 1: mob following me everywhere I go on Twitter, making fake
Speaker 1: accounts that purport to be me. Yeah, and you can
Speaker 1: complain to Twitter about this, but then they say that
Speaker 1: you are a public figure. So if people are making
Speaker 1: dummy accounts, like, what are you going to do? I
Speaker 1: have twenty two thousand followers. I am heartily a public figure, right,
Speaker 1: but you know, Okay, So just in case you're wondering,
Speaker 1: if you're ever bullied on Twitter, don't expect any help.
Speaker 1: That's a whole other Staddy Jack and and so that's that.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's been my relationship with Tesla ever since.
Speaker 1: Unless I have a really really good scoop, they don't
Speaker 1: respond to my questions, they don't engage with me. And
Speaker 1: I guess that's fine because that establishes the nature of
Speaker 1: our relationship. I don't have to pretend to be nice.
Speaker 1: I'm not nice, very adult response just to ignore the
Speaker 1: journalists who just ignore me question. So since we're not
Speaker 1: going to play nice, that's fine. I know how to
Speaker 1: do that. I know how to play me. You have
Speaker 1: a line after your pin tweet which is great, which
Speaker 1: says you go on to say, if you're investing or
Speaker 1: Tesla or in a Tesla, you need to sit with that.
Speaker 1: Why do you think it's relevant how Musk treats you
Speaker 1: and treats other people. How the Muskians, not just Musk,
Speaker 1: treat people who ask questions they don't like. It just
Speaker 1: reminds me of Cicero. He said, to be, not to
Speaker 1: seem yep, and Elon is really focused on seeming and
Speaker 1: less focused on being, and you really need to consider
Speaker 1: why that is. That's why you need to know your philosophers.
Speaker 1: That's got to know you fast. Because let's back up
Speaker 1: and go back to I think the first piece you
Speaker 1: wrote about Tesla may not be for Business Insider. It
Speaker 1: was Sam z Allen Teaboon Pickens criticizing Tesla, and Sam's
Speaker 1: all was critical because of the government subsidies that Tesla
Speaker 1: was getting. But you also noticed both of them said
Speaker 1: he might be the smartest man in the world, the
Speaker 1: best dealmaker, and the best salesman. This was hardly a
Speaker 1: full on critical piece, right. What was your mindset at
Speaker 1: that point? At that point, I mean I was that
Speaker 1: had to be twenty fifteen, twenty sixteen. I think I
Speaker 1: was just at a conference watching these two guys talk
Speaker 1: about Tesla. Look, Sam's Allen Teboon, Pickens Rip Teaboon. They
Speaker 1: were both very, very, very successful men. But they are
Speaker 1: Rip Teaboon, Yes, very nice man of metals several occasions.
Speaker 1: But Old, oh my god, Old, and you know is
Speaker 1: not known for his kindness or charming personality. I know,
Speaker 1: he's known for being a battle axe. So as a
Speaker 1: young person, it's always fun to watch the boomers freak
Speaker 1: out about new things. Yeah, and I had no feeling
Speaker 1: about whether Tesla should or should not succeed at that point.
Speaker 1: It was just interesting to listen to them those statements
Speaker 1: from the two of them. He might be the smartest
Speaker 1: man in the world, the best dealmaker, the best salesman.
Speaker 1: At that time, there was pretty much unqualified adulation surrounding Musk. Right,
Speaker 1: Is that a fair summary? That's a fair summary. I
Speaker 1: think I don't think people everybody really understood the Solar
Speaker 1: City deal at that point, right. I think people were
Speaker 1: just seeing that he had created the first American car
Speaker 1: company in a hundred years. It seemed to have some success,
Speaker 1: and he had his hair plugs by then he was
Speaker 1: looking like a billionaire player. There's something in CEOs needing
Speaker 1: to redo their hair right. That has happened more than once,
Speaker 1: and it has not been a good sign. Yeah, no, no, okay.
Speaker 1: I get that he had created the first new American
Speaker 1: car company and over a century. It is astounding. But
Speaker 1: why do you think he is such a cult figure.
Speaker 1: Why does he have his army of muscans? Is there
Speaker 1: more to it than that? I think he makes He
Speaker 1: makes a certain kind of person feel powerful. He makes
Speaker 1: a certain kind of man, especially, feel like they can innovate,
Speaker 1: they can have power over the world that they see
Speaker 1: around them, and they can use their minds to affect
Speaker 1: change because they're riding on his coattails. They're riding on
Speaker 1: his coattails and they can learn from him. So whenever
Speaker 1: somebody gets this like kind of hero complex, it's always
Speaker 1: useful to dig deeper. That's it's such a good point
Speaker 1: that you make. I remember I did a skeptical piece
Speaker 1: about Valiant. You remember, of course, Valiant, the high flying
Speaker 1: drug company, And I remember one skeptical investor saying to me,
Speaker 1: whenever people start to refer to the CEO by his
Speaker 1: first name, because everybody called him Mike, not Mike Pearson,
Speaker 1: but Mike. But when people start to refer to the
Speaker 1: CEO by his first name, watch out. That's not an investment,
Speaker 1: it's a cult. And so per your point, exactly right.
Speaker 1: Is there another layer to it too in this that
Speaker 1: makes the Muscians sort of more extreme, which is this
Speaker 1: layer of self righteousness surrounding it, that somehow if you're
Speaker 1: against him, you're you're a climate change denier. If you're
Speaker 1: against him, you want to see the Earth go down
Speaker 1: in flames. Does that add to it as well? Of
Speaker 1: course the self righteousness is a huge part of it.
Speaker 1: And somebody brought to my attention that inside of the
Speaker 1: Tesla Facebook group, but Tesla Owners Facebook group, they were speculating.
Speaker 1: They're like, well, isn't she a climate change denier? Why
Speaker 1: is she against Tesla? How is she for the climate
Speaker 1: and against Tesla? Can't be these two things? Cannot understand
Speaker 1: And I can explain it for you, but I can't
Speaker 1: understand it for you. Tesla Owners Club. Yeah, that's all
Speaker 1: I have to say about it. I thought this also.
Speaker 1: I don't think this was you. It was another female critic,
Speaker 1: One of the Muscians wrote, how about you shut the
Speaker 1: hell up and stop bothering Elon. Every minute that you
Speaker 1: cause trouble is a minute that fully autonomous vehicle sick
Speaker 1: is late to market. You're literally killing people as if
Speaker 1: somehow any criticism of Elon Musk is delaying the advent
Speaker 1: of autonomous vehicles. And I can't quite trace the logic
Speaker 1: of that, can you? No? I can't. And it's almost
Speaker 1: as if they think that Elon himself is in the
Speaker 1: trenches figuring out autonomous vehicles. No, he has a team
Speaker 1: that does that, a team that is breaking apart, and
Speaker 1: you know, probably has what I like to think of
Speaker 1: as the eye of Mordor, which is his full intention
Speaker 1: on them, and that why they're breaking apart. Whenever Elon
Speaker 1: focuses on a specific part of the business, it does
Speaker 1: tend to fracture. It is. It's a lot of really,
Speaker 1: it really is. I know, my Lord of the rings,
Speaker 1: good good that prepared you for this job. And so
Speaker 1: I will admit I'm not well sourced in the autonomous
Speaker 1: on the autonomous team, but I do follow the reporting
Speaker 1: and the exits. Yep. I also thought it was fascinating
Speaker 1: the whole idea that criticism about this is even the
Speaker 1: notion that criticism about this is distracting Musk from his
Speaker 1: task means that Musk is paying attention to the criticism right,
Speaker 1: which is back to our point originally that not many
Speaker 1: CEOs invest this amount of their very limited time in
Speaker 1: attacking their critics for a reason. They've got a job
Speaker 1: to do. It's almost like he thinks he's the president
Speaker 1: of the United States or something. There's another piece he
Speaker 1: wrote in the sumber of twenty eighteen where you spoke
Speaker 1: with I think forty two Tesla employees and they talked
Speaker 1: actually explicitly about the cult of Elon Musk And what
Speaker 1: did you hear from them? Well, first of all, do
Speaker 1: not fire nine percent of your workforce while you're in
Speaker 1: the middle of a massive project, because they will talk
Speaker 1: so And was it because he'd hired the wrong people
Speaker 1: to begin with, or just because he has a temper
Speaker 1: and just fires people on a whim. Trim the fat
Speaker 1: running out of money. This was during the Model three ramp,
Speaker 1: so I imagine that they were burning through a lot
Speaker 1: of cash and they needed to trim the fat as
Speaker 1: an organization. Before we come back to that just pause
Speaker 1: and explain to listeners why the Model three and the
Speaker 1: Model three ramp were so important. What was this supposed
Speaker 1: to do? So? Elon Musk has said that Tesla has
Speaker 1: had a master plan for years now, and the plan
Speaker 1: was to start with luxury vehicles, the Roadster being first,
Speaker 1: then the S and the X, and then move on
Speaker 1: to a mass market vehicle that would become like the
Speaker 1: Toyota Camera of electric cars. Everyone could afford it, they
Speaker 1: would mass produce it, and it would completely change the
Speaker 1: game of automotive. Of course, the challenge there would be
Speaker 1: making margins thick enough to sustain the manufacturing of this
Speaker 1: car and mass and so in order to do that,
Speaker 1: Elon Musk had to keep the price down, can't keep
Speaker 1: the price of the car affordable, and try not to
Speaker 1: blow as much money as he had in the past
Speaker 1: on past models. He failed to do that, and last
Speaker 1: summer we watched that happen, and the margins on the
Speaker 1: Model three are not where they should be. I don't
Speaker 1: I don't think they're above twenty percent. Yet he has
Speaker 1: not sold as many cars as projected, and right now,
Speaker 1: you know, it looks like there's no real plan to
Speaker 1: get out of a financial the financial hole that the
Speaker 1: company is in now because the Model three was not
Speaker 1: a success. This goes back to the question of why
Speaker 1: Musk is such a cult, or at least it's linked
Speaker 1: to it. But why, at least to this point, arguably
Speaker 1: to this point, has this not mattered. Why have the
Speaker 1: capital markets still been willing to give Musk billions of
Speaker 1: dollars two point seven billion dollars only last spring, despite
Speaker 1: the fact that it was easy to see that promises
Speaker 1: like this weren't coming together. Girl, they were about to
Speaker 1: sell us we work at fifty billion. I guess that
Speaker 1: says it all right, said no, we work, We don't
Speaker 1: work billion. It don't work right. I think that as
Speaker 1: long as bankers recognize that there is an appetite for
Speaker 1: the story, they will sell you whatever. And Musk has
Speaker 1: had the story. He Musk is a great story. He's
Speaker 1: still a great story. I think people are starting to
Speaker 1: understand him better and that is hurting him. But He's
Speaker 1: been a story you could sell for years now, and
Speaker 1: Wall Street loves that. People don't understand that Wall Street
Speaker 1: is making its percent and it doesn't mean because they're
Speaker 1: selling stock and bonds for companies that they believe in
Speaker 1: those companies. Quite the contrary, right, it can be the
Speaker 1: ultimate exercise in cynicism. No, and the terms of Tesla's
Speaker 1: last capital raise weren't that. In fact, Wall Street made
Speaker 1: out like a bandit and congratulations, guys, you did it again.
Speaker 1: Back to the Model three. How big a deal is
Speaker 1: the failure of the Model three? I think it could
Speaker 1: sink the company if they don't figure out what story
Speaker 1: they're selling next. It is not hard for Elon Musk
Speaker 1: to blow through two billion dollars. He does that. He
Speaker 1: does that pretty routinely, right, like every year, every quarter,
Speaker 1: every year. It's two billion, two and a half billion,
Speaker 1: three billion dollars. So the last capital raise wild did
Speaker 1: provide some kind of cushion, is not enough to sustain
Speaker 1: the company for any significant amount of time if there
Speaker 1: is not some kind of profit made. And the losses
Speaker 1: that Tesla has generated throughout its existence have completely canceled
Speaker 1: out any profits that it has made over the three
Speaker 1: or four quarters that has actually been profitable. I mean,
Speaker 1: they basically might as well not have even happened. And
Speaker 1: Tesla's in a lot of debt, so it needs cash
Speaker 1: on hand. And this is a very very very expensive
Speaker 1: business that it's in. And that's another promise Musk has blown. Right,
Speaker 1: was the promise earlier this year, at the end of
Speaker 1: last ye that Tesla was now going to be profitable
Speaker 1: going forward. Right, Not so much. Yeah, he did, he
Speaker 1: did say that. But it doesn't actually matter. If you
Speaker 1: remind people what Elon Musk said wants is if perhaps
Speaker 1: part of the old version of tell a really big
Speaker 1: line and you can get away with it, it's small
Speaker 1: eyes that will kill you, and perhaps that this is
Speaker 1: a version of it, and that if you lie constantly
Speaker 1: all the time, always, then it no longer matters because
Speaker 1: people just stop keeping track of it. And yeah, they
Speaker 1: stop keeping track, they stop taking you certain things you
Speaker 1: say seriously. They're like, oh, it's Elon, And then you
Speaker 1: start thinking, well, what should the markets take seriously about
Speaker 1: what this person says? Right? And when does that dispensation
Speaker 1: he has that special dispensation to say anything without consequences,
Speaker 1: When does that go away? Good question. I have no
Speaker 1: idea if yet to see it. But the SEC has
Speaker 1: had issues with him saying things that were not true
Speaker 1: or handing out material non public information at the wrong time.
Speaker 1: He is very good at marshaling his own media, which
Speaker 1: there are gro electric car blogs. They're huge fanboys of his.
Speaker 1: There's one guy at Electric he said one semi critical
Speaker 1: thing on Twitter once and the Tesla people just destroyed him,
Speaker 1: as if he had not been sweet to Elon for years.
Speaker 1: He says one semi critical thing, and it was like
Speaker 1: watching a puppy get kicked in the face. It was
Speaker 1: so brutal. I was like, but he loves you. But
Speaker 1: that's why cults work, right, must Ardent believers are never
Speaker 1: supposed to step out of line. So on this note
Speaker 1: of the special dispensation that Musk has, why does he
Speaker 1: seem to have it on the regulatory front, both with
Speaker 1: the very minor slap on the risk from the Securities
Speaker 1: Exchange Commission over the funding secured tweet, which was outright
Speaker 1: stock manipulation, wasn't it Today where you can argue his
Speaker 1: company is making claims, carefully worded claims it about autonomous
Speaker 1: driving technology that is that could actually be quite dangerous,
Speaker 1: and yet no one in the regulatory apparatus seems to
Speaker 1: be willing to do much about this. Why why does
Speaker 1: that special dispensation extend to our regulators? So I don't
Speaker 1: necessarily know, but I will tell a story. I don't
Speaker 1: know if you were at CNBC's Delivering Alpha last week
Speaker 1: when the SEC Commissioner was speaking, and one thing that
Speaker 1: he talked about was how we really need to get
Speaker 1: mom and pop invested in these opaque private companies before
Speaker 1: they get to market, because you know, we're not letting
Speaker 1: them share it. Not the well that he did not see,
Speaker 1: Oh yes he did. So that's who we're dealing with.
Speaker 1: Imagine mom and pop getting into we work before this
Speaker 1: situation had happened, before the IPO collapse, and everything at
Speaker 1: the fifty billion dollar valuation than whatever valuations were believable
Speaker 1: to me. And this is who we're dealing with running
Speaker 1: the SEC. So I don't know why Elon Musk gets
Speaker 1: a special dispensation, but actually maybe it's not that special.
Speaker 1: Maybe it's not that special anymore. You're right, there's there's
Speaker 1: a hands off attitude, and you can argue the regulatory
Speaker 1: pendulum swings too far at certain points to each end,
Speaker 1: and it's probably too far at the certain end. It
Speaker 1: is right. That is actually stunning. Yeah, So backing up again,
Speaker 1: as I'm sure you know, tesla Q members talk about
Speaker 1: this moment a lot of them have had where they've
Speaker 1: believed in Musk or not really been paying much attention
Speaker 1: to the story, but they thought, wow, well Elon Musk
Speaker 1: is a genius, and then he strayed into their field
Speaker 1: and said something about something they know intimately. And Tesla
Speaker 1: Charts the guy, a guy who goes on Twitter by
Speaker 1: the handle Tesla Charts, who has a PhD and knows
Speaker 1: a fair amount about solar roofs has a story about
Speaker 1: thinking Yon Musk was a genius and then listening to
Speaker 1: Musk do his solar roof pitch in the fall of
Speaker 1: twenty fifteen and saying this is made up. It doesn't
Speaker 1: it doesn't work this way. Then then people often discover,
Speaker 1: through the community of Tesla skeptics on Twitter that somebody
Speaker 1: else who knows something about another corner of the empire
Speaker 1: also thinks it is it is full of bs. Do
Speaker 1: you have these moments, big moments for you where you said, oh, wow,
Speaker 1: this is really scary or is it? How is it
Speaker 1: more for you? Ben just sort of a compendium of
Speaker 1: small things. So the Solar City deal, that company was
Speaker 1: obviously dog do do Yeah. Great headline on the Solar
Speaker 1: City deal wait, I have it. Let me see if
Speaker 1: I can find it. You when the deal was announced,
Speaker 1: the title of your piece was Elon Musk just kicked
Speaker 1: his shareholders in the teeth. Yeah. I don't know anything
Speaker 1: about solar roofs. I don't know anything about cars. I
Speaker 1: actually haven't driven since the Bush administration. That's awesome. I'm
Speaker 1: so jealous. I hate driving with you. I hate driving too,
Speaker 1: so in a lot of ways, I think that's helped
Speaker 1: me because I'm not impressed by the feeling of a
Speaker 1: Tesla or the look of a Tesla. To me, it
Speaker 1: looks like a camera. It looks like any other car.
Speaker 1: I don't care. That's actually a really interesting point that
Speaker 1: has something to do. I don't think cars are sexy.
Speaker 1: I don't care. But for me, I do know what
Speaker 1: a deal should look like. I do know what a
Speaker 1: crappy company on the vertiage of bankruptcy looks like. And
Speaker 1: that was Solar City. And I do know what saddling
Speaker 1: a somewhat healthy company growth stock with millions and millions
Speaker 1: and millions and millions of dollars debt. I know what
Speaker 1: that looks like. And it looks like crap. And that's
Speaker 1: what that deal was after that I started paying attention
Speaker 1: a little more, and all these people were talking about
Speaker 1: Elon and engaging with his ideas and engaging with his
Speaker 1: vision of the future as if they were somehow part
Speaker 1: of it. He's great at making you feel that way.
Speaker 1: But every other thing that I was hearing about Tesla
Speaker 1: in the spring of twenty eighteen, even before I spoke
Speaker 1: to Martin Tripp, was a very clear sign, frankly, that
Speaker 1: Elon Musk doesn't care about you. It was at that
Speaker 1: time that Reveal was doing its investigative work on the
Speaker 1: working conditions inside of Tesla, which are not great. It
Speaker 1: was at that time that Elon had just flipped out
Speaker 1: on some investment banker who was asking normal, rational questions
Speaker 1: about the company, and he was like, I don't want
Speaker 1: any boring, bone headed questions, and he went to I mean,
Speaker 1: it was just issue after issue where I was wishing
Speaker 1: that was perfectly analogous to Jeff Skilling, the former CEO
Speaker 1: of ven Ron, once calling an investor an asshole. Ye. Yes,
Speaker 1: back to that issue after issue, the issue after issue
Speaker 1: in which it was very clear, I mean, there were
Speaker 1: Tesla fires. It was just very clear that Ian pause
Speaker 1: on Tesla fires. You mean cars just spontaneously, spontaneously combusting
Speaker 1: with little to no explanation. And by little to no,
Speaker 1: I mean no no explanation. You cannot pretend like you
Speaker 1: give a crap about the future if you are not
Speaker 1: willing to answer questions, you are not willing to clarify
Speaker 1: the issues that you have with your technology, and you
Speaker 1: are not willing to treat your workers like human beings.
Speaker 1: Elon Musk doesn't care about you. He doesn't care about stockholders.
Speaker 1: You don't want volatility. He doesn't care about his customers
Speaker 1: and whether or not they're getting into cars that have
Speaker 1: defects or safety issues. He doesn't care. And that has
Speaker 1: been made clear to me as I've been watching these
Speaker 1: cars roll off the lot and into the hands of customers.
Speaker 1: Some people are very happy, but there's always this you know,
Speaker 1: my car is great, butt X, or my car is
Speaker 1: amazing the right butt X and the butt X is
Speaker 1: kind of swept under the rug because they love the
Speaker 1: mission and they love what they think that Elon Musk
Speaker 1: is doing for the world. And Elon Musk, I'm sorry
Speaker 1: to say, is not doing this for the world. He's
Speaker 1: doing this for Elon Musk. So that was your moment
Speaker 1: of cognitive dissonance when you said, oh wait, this thing
Speaker 1: back to your sister. A quote is not about what
Speaker 1: it is. It's about what it's trying to seem to be.
Speaker 1: It is what Elon Musk wants you to think about
Speaker 1: Elon Musk. It is not about what Elon Musk is.
Speaker 1: Before we come back to other things, pause on this
Speaker 1: issue of the fires. You would think, in a rational world,
Speaker 1: at least I would think that would be a pretty
Speaker 1: simple one way story. Right, things are bursting into flame.
Speaker 1: This isn't good. But the Muskians say that the press
Speaker 1: is making too much of this, that this stuff just happens,
Speaker 1: and that this is yet another example I guess of
Speaker 1: the cabal against Musk that we even dare to ask
Speaker 1: questions about car spontaneously exploding? Right? Is that a good summary?
Speaker 1: That is accurate? It is insane, but it's accurate. You know.
Speaker 1: I wrote a story about this kind of calculating really
Speaker 1: how many combustible engine cars should spontaneously combust if they
Speaker 1: were too equal the percentage of Tesla's that's spontaneously combust
Speaker 1: and the numbers do not look good for Tesla. There
Speaker 1: are a lot of reasons why the cars could be
Speaker 1: spontaneously combusting, and they have to do with battery technology.
Speaker 1: Tesla's batteries are actually a bunch of laptop batteries strung together,
Speaker 1: and if one of the little cells explodes, whether it's
Speaker 1: thermal runaway or there's some kind of defect inside of
Speaker 1: the battery, one in a billion spontaneously combusting, as one
Speaker 1: of my sources told me, which is quite possible in
Speaker 1: this kind of battery technology. The rest of the cells
Speaker 1: could also explode in what is called sympathetic detonation, and
Speaker 1: that can cause a fire. So I've read fire reports
Speaker 1: from people who I had a flat tire and I
Speaker 1: want to change my tire, and as I was driving home,
Speaker 1: my battery started smoking, possibly because of the impact of
Speaker 1: the tire change, who knows, But Tesla really doesn't give
Speaker 1: people explanations for that. You know, the battery is at
Speaker 1: a certain point ruined, So how do you investigate the
Speaker 1: root causes of that? And is that a contrast with
Speaker 1: how the Big three would handle things? When I think
Speaker 1: about not that they've been perfect by any means, but
Speaker 1: when I think about GM's recalls, that seems to be
Speaker 1: a little bit more of a concern for consumer safety.
Speaker 1: Perhaps maybe I'm giving the Big Three too much credit.
Speaker 1: I don't know, because I don't cover cars. I cover
Speaker 1: the craziness of Tesla. I cut my teeth covering things
Speaker 1: that I think are a little bit scammy. Yes, so
Speaker 1: I don't. It's a good background to have, actually, because
Speaker 1: once you've realized what scammy is, and you realize it exists,
Speaker 1: and you realize the belief system that goes along with it,
Speaker 1: it actually gives you a new lens to look at
Speaker 1: the world. Right. Yes, and how easy scams are to perpetuate. Yes,
Speaker 1: you don't get surprised anymore by how long anybody can
Speaker 1: pull something off or how big it got. That doesn't
Speaker 1: surprise me. Ever, it becomes almost a defense in some
Speaker 1: ways because people think, well, it's gone on so long,
Speaker 1: it can't possibly be a scam, or if it were
Speaker 1: a scam, it would have blown up by now, And
Speaker 1: all you have to do is have a little understanding
Speaker 1: of history to say no, not at all. So back
Speaker 1: to Solar City. One of the theories that I heard
Speaker 1: the reason for the acquisition, and I was laughing when
Speaker 1: you use the phrase sympathetic detonation, was that that's what
Speaker 1: letting Solar City would go. Having let it go bankrupt
Speaker 1: back then would have caused a sympathetic detonation and the
Speaker 1: rest of Musk's empire because it would have cast out
Speaker 1: on the mythology of Elon Musk, and so he needed
Speaker 1: at all costs to prevent that from happening. But by
Speaker 1: acquiring it, he's now perhaps the irony is the catch
Speaker 1: twenty two is that he's now perhaps caused himself a
Speaker 1: bigger problem. Were you surprised by any of the revelations
Speaker 1: and the unsealed complaint that came out just recently. I
Speaker 1: was surprised at how involved Musk was in the deal,
Speaker 1: very hands on, very hands on, and I thought maybe
Speaker 1: it was something that bankers handled, maybe it was something
Speaker 1: that his cousin who were running Solar City handled, and
Speaker 1: he was just like, show me where to sign on
Speaker 1: the dotted line. I didn't realize that he himself was
Speaker 1: the one calling the shots. He was the maestro, calling investors,
Speaker 1: trying to persuade the ones that weren't on board to
Speaker 1: do this, calling the bankers right, trying to raise cash
Speaker 1: for Solar City. I found the most shocking part of it,
Speaker 1: and we had known this, but just the way in
Speaker 1: which he and his cousins had lent money to Solar
Speaker 1: City before the acquisition via these solar bonds, and the
Speaker 1: way in which they were so quickly repaid after the acquisition.
Speaker 1: It was hundreds of millions of dollars. I mean, the
Speaker 1: self dealing, and that the idea. I don't think there's
Speaker 1: another CEO. There certainly aren't many CEOs who could get
Speaker 1: away with that. No, and that's the board, that's shareholders.
Speaker 1: They don't care apparently, I mean, that's the sec they
Speaker 1: don't care. No one cares. So I guess we're just
Speaker 1: going to be wringing our hands. I'm going to continue
Speaker 1: to watch fake Lynette Twitter accounts. That's just the way
Speaker 1: the world is. Now. Let's let's talk about that for
Speaker 1: a little bit. Felix Samon, his credit gets laid, among
Speaker 1: other things, wrote about the stalking of you. He wrote,
Speaker 1: this is worse than just stalking. Musk is setting his
Speaker 1: army a fanboys loose on Lopez. He's retweeting stuff they find,
Speaker 1: and he's encouraging them every step of the way. Musk's
Speaker 1: harassment of Lopez is obsessive and deranged. Why do you
Speaker 1: think that is? Why do you think he has had
Speaker 1: a problem with you and with female journalists in particular.
Speaker 1: First of all, I don't think these guys really like
Speaker 1: it when women to try to tell them what to do.
Speaker 1: I've read about Elon's marriages and his relationships with women.
Speaker 1: I am not a therapist, but it seems like he
Speaker 1: is very insistent on being the alpha. Yeah. I think
Speaker 1: it threatens his ego, it threatens his manhood that a
Speaker 1: woman is coming after him, and I think he knows
Speaker 1: that a lot of his followers have. You know, there
Speaker 1: are a lot of them who are very, very very
Speaker 1: anti anti woman. I've gotten some really really nasty emails
Speaker 1: and nasty, nasty messages. I don't keep my dms open.
Speaker 1: I'm no longer on Facebook, but I'm flattered by it.
Speaker 1: And that's also why I tweeted out Mariah Carries, why
Speaker 1: are you so obsessed with me? During this time? I
Speaker 1: was done by some of this as I dug into it. Though.
Speaker 1: Another journalist named Aaron Bieba, who criticized Musk, one of
Speaker 1: the tweets that her was you criticized a man with
Speaker 1: a cult following of twenty one million plus followers. You
Speaker 1: should have seen it coming. You brought it on yourself again,
Speaker 1: this sort of warped logic in which because Musk is
Speaker 1: so famous and has so many followers, he somehow should
Speaker 1: be beyond any kind of criticism. It's adorable. It's adorable.
Speaker 1: That was not the word I thought was going to
Speaker 1: come out of your mouth, because it's so pathetic, it's sad. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's not your dad. He doesn't need you to defend him.
Speaker 1: He doesn't need you to defend him. He doesn't care
Speaker 1: that you're defending him. He's taking his private jet from
Speaker 1: one side of LA to the other. Honey, he doesn't
Speaker 1: care about you, Okay. Isn't that amazing saying how some
Speaker 1: people have that ability to convince other people though that
Speaker 1: somehow they do care or there's something in it for
Speaker 1: them too. That that quality that people have is just
Speaker 1: endlessly fascinating to me, because visionaries have it and fraudsters
Speaker 1: have it, right, and they both have it in spades,
Speaker 1: and it makes it very difficult in the moment to
Speaker 1: tell the difference between the two. Yes, it does. There
Speaker 1: is a attention as a journalist in covering someone like Musk,
Speaker 1: because you're supposed to be unbiased. When you cover anything,
Speaker 1: you're supposed to approach it with an open mind and
Speaker 1: just getting the facts. And at a certain point, though,
Speaker 1: you start to understand what you're covering. And once you
Speaker 1: start to understand it and you make a judgment about
Speaker 1: what you're seeing in front of you, that's when people
Speaker 1: can say, oh, you have a bias. Now you've injected
Speaker 1: your bias. But is it bias or have you simply
Speaker 1: done your job? I would argue the latter. I would
Speaker 1: argue that it's by if a you start with a
Speaker 1: predetermined point of view and you're trying to prove that
Speaker 1: and that's why you come to have your point of view.
Speaker 1: It's bias if you refuse to hear things that are
Speaker 1: counter to your argument because you don't want you because
Speaker 1: you don't want to hear them. And it's bias if
Speaker 1: you have something at steak other than getting it right.
Speaker 1: But the only thing we at journalists, as journalists have
Speaker 1: at steak is being right. We don't want our stories
Speaker 1: to look ridiculous a year from now, two years from now,
Speaker 1: five years from now, ten years from now. We want
Speaker 1: to look right. And if we have nothing more at stake,
Speaker 1: then getting it right. Then, I actually think it is
Speaker 1: a lack of courage not to take the information you've
Speaker 1: learned and use it to make a point, particularly if
Speaker 1: that point is running counter to the established narrative, because
Speaker 1: then you're making people think. And if you can make
Speaker 1: people think, isn't that one of the great points of life.
Speaker 1: I've had a lot of delicious meals in my life,
Speaker 1: but nothing is delicious as being right. Yet never eaten
Speaker 1: anything better than that exactly right. And there's nothing more
Speaker 1: distasteful than being wrong or shameful than being wrong. Right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So I mean in twenty thirteen, twenty fourteen, I was
Speaker 1: like Elon Musk, Tesla, Megan Green Cars, everybody loves it great.
Speaker 1: It really wasn't until I started understanding the company that
Speaker 1: I was like, there is a dark side to this.
Speaker 1: And I have not yet encountered anything, not from Tesla PR,
Speaker 1: not from people inside of the company, even from people
Speaker 1: who love the company, that has been able to show
Speaker 1: me that I've gotten this all wrong. And and in fact,
Speaker 1: my engagements with Tesla PR only make me more suspicious
Speaker 1: of what the hell is going on in there? What
Speaker 1: do you think do you worry about being wrong? Unlike
Speaker 1: these guys on Wall Street. I don't have any money
Speaker 1: behind this, so being right is all I've got. Right.
Speaker 1: Is there anything you could hear that would change your mind?
Speaker 1: Is there anything anybody could say or something you could
Speaker 1: learn that would make you say that would make you
Speaker 1: know how that happens? Sometimes where your perspective suddenly then
Speaker 1: you see the same series of events through a different light.
Speaker 1: Tesla would have to become profitable, yep. And the numbers
Speaker 1: would have to work, right, number tesky little numbers, test
Speaker 1: little numbers would have to work. And I would have
Speaker 1: to start hearing from employees that they're being treated well, yeah,
Speaker 1: and that the company cares about them. Oh, and from
Speaker 1: customers that the cars are working properly. I start working.
Speaker 1: To me, the compelling pieces of evidence that all is
Speaker 1: not well at Tesla is the string of executive departures. Absolutely.
Speaker 1: What do you hear about that? Working for Elon is
Speaker 1: hard and you don't want the eye mortar, and after
Speaker 1: a while you burn out, or you collect so many
Speaker 1: secrets that you're just in So you either by the cult, yeah,
Speaker 1: and you collect the secrets and you move up fast,
Speaker 1: or you see what's going on, or Elon burns you
Speaker 1: out and you leave. There are a lot of people
Speaker 1: who love the challenge of working at a small organization,
Speaker 1: like relatively small compared to the traditional at something that's
Speaker 1: trying to change the world, something change the world, unique
Speaker 1: engineering challenge, you know, very do it yourself sink or
Speaker 1: swim culture. But ultimately it is nerve racking. I've had
Speaker 1: sources whose entire families have turned on Musk because Daddy
Speaker 1: has to go to the factory at six a hundred morning,
Speaker 1: and he has to come home at night for dinner,
Speaker 1: but then go back to the factory for maybe like
Speaker 1: a skip level meeting or something at ten pm, and
Speaker 1: then it starts a day all over again. Tesla is
Speaker 1: a lifestyle, it's not just a job, so that lifestyle
Speaker 1: can be toxic to some people. It's actually really interesting
Speaker 1: because there's a great story from C. S. Lewis called
Speaker 1: The Inner Circle the Inner Ring, and it's about how
Speaker 1: compelling it is for most people once they get on
Speaker 1: the inside, because we've all experienced what it is to
Speaker 1: be on the outside, and once you're on the inside,
Speaker 1: it's so compelling that you will basically do anything to
Speaker 1: stay there because the allure is so so overwhelming. And
Speaker 1: so when you see a company like Tesla where people
Speaker 1: are being admitted to the inner circle and then leaving you,
Speaker 1: there's something pretty astounding about that, right, most astounding was
Speaker 1: his lawyer quitting. And yes, January was it. Yeah, after
Speaker 1: he sent another tweet, his lawyer quit pretty much forty
Speaker 1: eight maybe twenty four hours. It was so fast. And
Speaker 1: changing horses in the middle of a lawsuit. Always having
Speaker 1: different attorneys, that's always a red flag as well. And
Speaker 1: Elon has a lot of different attorneys, Yes, that is
Speaker 1: for sure. There are a lot of lawyers making fees.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, you know. I was thinking about this issue
Speaker 1: of retaliation against critics, and I thought, to be fair,
Speaker 1: we should point out it actually isn't only against women, right.
Speaker 1: That's been the mob on Twitter. The Muscians on Twitter
Speaker 1: seem to have directed a fair amount of their ire
Speaker 1: toward women. But Elon has also fired this lawsuit against
Speaker 1: ran Deep Hothy, the Tesla cue member who did a
Speaker 1: lot of research into Musk. There's the Cave Diver episode
Speaker 1: and the lawsuit against that, which is probably pretty well known.
Speaker 1: Is crazy. I don't like bullies, and I think that
Speaker 1: it is very suspect when someone with the power and
Speaker 1: the money and the resources of Elon Musk goes after
Speaker 1: a grad student like ran Deep, or a random diver
Speaker 1: or a little journalist. I cannot imagine Elon ever suing
Speaker 1: David Einhorn or Jim Chenos people with you're right. He
Speaker 1: picks on people you're right. He picks on people who
Speaker 1: he thinks doesn't don't have the means to fight back.
Speaker 1: He would never sue. It's a really good point. He
Speaker 1: would never see the Times, He's never gonna see the
Speaker 1: journal He's never gonna see any of these publications. He
Speaker 1: will only sue people who he thinks cannot beat him.
Speaker 1: And that upsets me. That's such a good point it's
Speaker 1: worth pointing out for listeners. What happened to this young
Speaker 1: man named Randy Pathi who was sued by Tesla reportedly
Speaker 1: for endangering employees. But when he got funded to actually
Speaker 1: have a lawyer and said, well, Tesla, you need to
Speaker 1: turn over the documents that show me doing this, in effect,
Speaker 1: Tesla dropped the lawsuit. They just expected to be able
Speaker 1: to destroy him because he wouldn't have the means to
Speaker 1: fight back. And you're right, that's a very different picture
Speaker 1: than going after people who can fight back, and I
Speaker 1: can't fight back on the internet. I can't fight back
Speaker 1: on Twitter, but he can't sue me. What would you
Speaker 1: say if I were a big investor sitting here making
Speaker 1: a decision whether or not, or I were somebody who
Speaker 1: had the power to give Elon Musk half a billion dollars?
Speaker 1: I don't. By the way, let's be clear if just
Speaker 1: to say, let's pretend, why would you say this matters
Speaker 1: about Musk's habit of bullying? Why is this an issue?
Speaker 1: Because it means he's hiding something. It means that he
Speaker 1: cannot handle any scrutiny at all. It means that he
Speaker 1: is not willing to tolerate dissent or criticism of any kind.
Speaker 1: And it means that he has time to swat at flies?
Speaker 1: And how does he possibly have time to swat flies?
Speaker 1: So a last question for you, how and when do
Speaker 1: you think this plays out from where we sit today? Oh,
Speaker 1: my lord, Jesus, be a biscuit and just stop me up.
Speaker 1: I don't know, I don't know. I never heard that
Speaker 1: phrase before. That's awesome. I don't know how this ends.
Speaker 1: We don't have an sec we don't have regulators. We've
Speaker 1: got compliant capital markets at least at least for maybe
Speaker 1: not anymore. Maybe we work as a turning point. Maybe
Speaker 1: maybe we work as a turning point. Maybe if we
Speaker 1: don't have a million robotaxis on the ground by next spring,
Speaker 1: as Elon promise last spring, or if they aren't a
Speaker 1: thousand solar roofs being installed each week by the end
Speaker 1: of this year, as Musk just said would be happening,
Speaker 1: maybe that will be an issue for the markets. I
Speaker 1: don't know. I don't consider the markets completely and totally efficient,
Speaker 1: especially not now. I consider the markets a collective understanding
Speaker 1: of how we feel in the present about the future,
Speaker 1: not necessarily a smart understanding, isn't it Canes who said
Speaker 1: the market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solved.
Speaker 1: Absolutely so, I don't know where he's going to pull
Speaker 1: out another moneymaker, though he doesn't seem to have the
Speaker 1: cash to the revamp the smmecs, which are the two
Speaker 1: models that actually make margin. I don't think that China
Speaker 1: is going to be a huge success because we're seeing
Speaker 1: the automarket there crater and electric vehicle manufacturers in China
Speaker 1: are not doing well. So I don't know, but that said,
Speaker 1: one lesson you've learned at least which will be true
Speaker 1: until it's not. As don't count Elon Musk out right.
Speaker 1: Oh no way, no way. I mean, if there's anything
Speaker 1: I can say about Elon that is positive is that
Speaker 1: he just won't go away. Yep. The guy's got incredible will,
Speaker 1: He's got an incredible way will ye yeah, Iron, And
Speaker 1: it's going to be really interesting to see how this
Speaker 1: plays out. So thank you so much for taking the
Speaker 1: time to talk to me. We'll stay in no doubt.
Speaker 1: So that was fun. I expected Lynette to have strong opinions.
Speaker 1: She's covered Musk from much longer and in much more
Speaker 1: detail than I have, but I think she summed up
Speaker 1: something we both realized. There is nothing about this that's normal.
Speaker 1: My view is that maybe Musk will change the world,
Speaker 1: maybe he'll get us to Mars, save the planet, rewire
Speaker 1: our brains, but he'll do it despite his quirks, not
Speaker 1: because of them, because there is nothing about his misrepresentations,
Speaker 1: his failed promises, his treatment of him employees, and most
Speaker 1: of all, his bullying that is good in any way
Speaker 1: make you a killing