I wouldn't call myself a fanboy but I believed he genuinely wanted to advance the electric car, no matter who ends up coming on top. This was the version of reality I saw in 2009 ish. The goal was not to make money. I thought he actually wanted to show the big carmakers that you can actually sell an electric car.
Back then I didn't know about how good public transit is better than even the cleanest electric car because I had never experienced good public transit and well I have very limited imagination (I thought the Dropbox was a sucker that I was taking advantage of because I could get extra 50 MB or whatever by just walking up to someone in my dorm and referring them to use Dropbox, even if they had no intention to continue using Dropbox...)
Musk's companies have done some truly amazing things. He absolutely created enough buzz with Tesla to put EVs on the map, after they were fading. Battery tech. StarLink. SpaceX. They are all long overdue.
He still does the car for the same reasons, and it's still 'a good thing for green' he's just a bit older, a bit fatter, a bit richer (and targeted by 'socialists' a bit more often), he's a bit more irritated, and frankly, anyone who starts to let loose on Twitter is going to make waves.
About 80% of the people that I respect, I have lost respect for because of Twitter.
They just can't help themselves with the populism.
Back then I didn't know about how good public transit is better than even the cleanest electric car because I had never experienced good public transit and well I have very limited imagination (I thought the Dropbox was a sucker that I was taking advantage of because I could get extra 50 MB or whatever by just walking up to someone in my dorm and referring them to use Dropbox, even if they had no intention to continue using Dropbox...)