Vaguely related, Paul Graham tweeted "I worry Elon has no idea how much he has damaged his personal brand ...", re UK stuff and Elon posted a pages of text rant as a result. Not sure if it was written by him or Grok. I worry Elon's going a bit bonkers with drugs or whatever.
I own several Teslas, and based on first hand service experience, your concerns are warranted. Stay out of the ecosystem, lots of other good EVs to pick from (Hyundai Ioniq 6, for example). If nothing goes wrong during your ownership, you're fine. If anything goes wrong and you need service or support, it is a terrible experience.
Maybe this changes if Tesla fires Musk and puts someone competent and accountable at the helm (bring JB Straubel back as CEO, imho). I wouldn’t buy another Tesla until then.
> Stay out of the [Tesla] ecosystem, lots of other good EVs to pick from (Hyundai Ioniq 6, for example)
I'd also step back and ask if a PHEV would be sufficient. I don't think that there is any time in the last 3 years that I've driven more in one day than the EV mode range of a Prius Prime or RAV4 Prime which means it would essentially be an EV for me, and they have great reliability reputations.
Maybe I'll drive more longer trips when I retire (hopefully within the next year or so) and then would have to use the ICE engine. A Prius Prime gets over 50 mpg when using the ICE so although the energy cost for such a trip would be higher than for a pure EV it would't be a lot higher (100 miles in ICE mode would be about $5 more than 100 miles in an EV at my typical gas and electricity costs).
the problem with a non-tesla is charging… and it is a BIG problem. I own both Tesla and a non-tesla EV which I literally never take anywhere if I need to charge it … the first time you wait 7 hours to charge the car you get it :!
At least in the US, almost every automaker has contracted with Tesla for access to the Supercharger network. I am aware this is still a chokepoint that Musk could exercise control over while having a controlling interest in Tesla.
I bought my Tesla in 2014 and have 100k miles of free super charging behind. total number of non-Tesla’s I have seen in 11 years charging - exactly two
The subset of Tesla Superchargers with a MagicDock are usable by any CCS EV. You can find them on the Tesla charger map by filtering by "Open to other EVs"
Musk takes a bit too much ketamine and has a Roseanne Barr moment
Rosanne Barr, for her flaws, has never done anything as bad as Elon Musk has done in the past two weeks. He already had his Rosanne moment and then some with the Nazi salute, and soared past her into uncharted territory since then. He has lost his mind.
Just an anecdote but i'll put it here:
A friend of mine insisted that her ex was slowly driven somewhat mad by finasteride, not in the typical crazy ex way, but obsessive somewhat delusional thoughts and moods, like he was getting stuck in a loop over some idea.
She later dated another guy who was taking it for a very long time, and said he had the same type of delusional quirks.
On that note, I've always wondered whether a lot of this is because of his Apartheid-era South African upbringing.
Unlike a lot of White South Africans he's English, and they were viewed as outsiders by a number of Afrikaners. Same with with David Sacks being Jewish South African and Peter Thiel being the kid of German expats in ZA.
On the other hand, Roelof Botha tends to remain outside the political limelight despite being from Afrikaner political royalty (his granddad was the Foreign Minister towards the end of Apartheid).
Maybe Musk, Sacks', and Thiel's anger and political weirdness is because they felt like the perpetual outsider no matter where they were.
Musk, Sacks, Thiel, and Botha all must have been 2nd or 3rd degree connects well before the PayPal mafia even started because their parents were all at the top of the social and economic strata among White South Africans (same handful of private schools, country clubs, etc)
It is all their when you include him: the unstable personal identity. The contempt for average South African (British or Afrikaaner) while being a minority white. The Sovereign Individualism. The use of the Internet to pioneer new firlds of commerce (telemedicine). The contempt for women. The attempts breed Ubermenschen. And of course, the utter contempt for Rule of Law.
We can also explain much of their behaviour when we look at his life story.
So genuine question: is Musk actually addicted to drugs? Or a frequent user? I keep seeing that around, but I don't know if it's more a joke/meme or serious?
My theory is that after he bought Twitter he no longer had to abide by the rules (since he owns the thing), and combined with his wealth basically no one ever says "no Elon, you can't do that" or "you idiot, that's fucking mental". Also he has tons of people cheering him on (also in that thread). This is not helping keeping him grounded.
He has a prescription for Ketamine and is probably an occasional other stuff. Of course you don't quite know. The best source is probably the wsj article https://archive.ph/zcAdE . Says "LSD, cocaine, ecstasy and psychedelic mushrooms, often at private parties".
My sisters first boyfriend went permanently nuts from mostly that list. I think it was a toxic mushroom that flipped him.
Musk had lost it long before Twitter, his K problems were obvious at Tesla, which is one of the reasons I never purchased one.
If you didn't see all the instability when he was calling folks paedos because they were saving lives, while he was snorting whatever he could find, then I'm not sure what else to say. It was never going to end well, yet techbros pumped up his bad ideas and feeding the ego.
Conversation here: https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1879785727468163505