Why I am not going to hate on Tesla cars

Sure, there's less reason than ever for giving Elon Musk money, but that's not the only issue.

I open with the disclaimer that I am a mostly satisfied owner of a Tesla, a 2020 Model 3. So really this post is also about why I don’t dump mine in protest of Musk.

Elon Musk has proven himself to be among the most harmful of American citizens to other American citizens. I don’t defend anything he’s said or done.

You can say “He created the electric car boom,” but he did not. He was the angel investor that the Tesla founders chose to work with. At the time they hadn’t even launched the original Tesla Roadster (built by Lotus), but the plans for the Model S already on the board were so good that they were never going to have trouble finding an angel. It could have been anyone, and Tesla still would have launched the EV revolution. The real credit goes to its visionary founders Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning.

You can say “He revolutionized the space industry,” but he did not. There was a longstanding recognition of the need for change in the space industry. Launches were declining, the forecast was stagnant, and traditional methods were not meeting the evolving needs of the industry. Jeff Bezos kicked it off when he founded Blue Origin in 2000. Elon Musk’s idea for SpaceX was a copycat of Bezos. It was two years later when Musk went out and found Tom Mueller and Chris Thompson, the engineers behind SpaceX (Musk calls himself “chief engineer” but he has no relevant background or knowledge and is not actually involved with any engineering). SpaceX did beat Blue Origin to the market, but the industry credits Gwynne Shotwell, originally the head of sales, and now the President and COO. It’s her show.