>Back in 2016, Musk personally pushed for almost all vehicle functions, including the door handles, to be controlled by electric buttons or touchscreens. His own engineers and executives warned that this is a huge safety risk... They argued for traditional, fully mechanical door handles, but Musk vetoed them for purely aesthetic reasons. He even pushed for the mechanical override, meant to be used in such emergencies, to be hidden
Did anyone catch the source for this? I hadn't heard this detail before.
EDIT: I found a source[0], but that characterization is pretty misleading. The article even say that in internal discussions, "Musk wasn’t alone in pushing for electric controls." All it says about Musk is that pushed for "virtually everything" to be electric, but it doesn't say he pushed anything about the door manual release (you know they'd include that in the article if they could).
I mostly agree, but I would have agreed with a similar article 10 years ago, and that would have been a fairly widely held opinion (e.g. Bill Gates was famously short Tesla).
So I wouldn’t be so sure as this piece is in Tesla’s downfall, and the emotive language doesn’t help this look like an objective analysis.
I also don’t like articles that take the industry consensus or expert opinion as a priori the correct opinion. Tesla wasn’t built by consensus; even the door handle example that is here touted as a negative almost certainly helped Tesla more than its harmed by being one of many unique features.
Man I miss the times when Musk was known as a pioneer in EVs and reusable rockertry, and not for his Twitter hot takes.
I remember he made some disparaging comments about other tech billionaires that while they were focused on ad revenue and social media engagement, he was out there working on the important stuff...
Elon Musk is an interesting case study in that he exposes how submissive and docile most men are around other men that they consider their superiors. He has an obsessive fan base of males who hang on to his every word, no matter he says. Even those who aren't obsessed with him tend to treat him with an odd sort of reverence. This site itself contains many of them. They consider him like a king.
Is he - or any other man - deserving of this? No. But men just can't help worshipping other men. Christianity is another good example. As is the military, showing that most men are naturally drawn to placing themselves within a hierarchy of other men, with one at the top, even if it ends in their demise.
I used to really like and admire Musk. You could say I was a fanboy. I am still asking myself what the fuck happened? Was he faking his true character all this time and managed to dupe me? Did he suffer some brain damage which changed him this drastically? Was it too much social media, was it covid-related, was he poisoned? Did too much money and power get to him? I would seriously like to know. By know, knowing about his chronic tendency to lie about the most basic stuff (such as being really good in a fucking computer game), I assume he duped me, and this makes me really, really dislike him a lot. And I can't be the only one. I hope he fails in all his endeavors.
You were duped. Tesla‘s paint it black video is from 2016 and one the first obvious lies. People called Musk out on his BS 10 years ago, but he successfully managed to keep a "genius" imagine in the media up until COVID-19 hit. Media sentiment changed around 2020/2021 to adjust to reality of Musk being a massive fraudster.
Important point here: the discussion is about his character, but you’ve made it about his intellect.
I don’t think anyone can doubt that Musk is super smart. I’ve heard silly things like - he doesn’t do anything, it’s all his employees or board or assistant - but reading the history that’s obviously false.
It does seem some people can’t cope with the idea that someone is often an asshat is also brilliant. And I’m afraid it’s true with Musk.
I have this [flagged] comment from 4 years ago, recounting my own perception of the events, and I stand by it
>pre-2018, he was a journalists' sweetheart. they were singing him praises and they didn't bring up attention to his misdeeds
>at some point around that time, he had pissed them off with the "who owns the media?" tweet, and they did a 180 degree turn. he didn't suddenly become eccentric then, his eccentricity started to get extensive negative attention. there's a plethora of media sweethearts who get away with far worse things without a peep from checkmarked firebrands
>in other words, you've changed your mind on cue, and you never had an independent opinion to begin with
Thai Cave rescue happened in 2018. It should have already made obvious how completely deranged Musk was to everyone, even if they were not paying close attention before and were dazzled by self-driving cars and Mars colonization promises.
I think that marked a turning point for many. He had been known to say dumb things in the past but that was monumentally stupid own goal. Worse, he was given multiple chances to take a step back but just kept digging.
When Elon was a teenager he bullied another kid about his father’s suicide until the other kid pushed him down a flight of stairs. He has always been like this. His character was never a secret. Everything was in plain view but you didn’t want to see it.
> I am still asking myself what the fuck happened?
I think the Scott Adams piece the other day[0] described the system dynamics well:
"Once you’re sufficiently prominent, politics becomes a separating equilibrium; if you lean even slightly to one side, the other will pile on you so massively and traumatically that it will force you into their opponents’ open arms just for a shred of psychological security."
I think Biden giving credit to GM[1] and being used as a political football, prior to Musk entering politics in a big way himself, drove him away from the left and (by process of elimination) toward the right. Once you're down the rabbit hole, the rest is history.
The big event just before he announced he was now voting Republican in May 2022 was newspapers reporting on him sexually harassing an employee 6 years earlier.
I was always confused and intrigued what was going on behind the scenes when Tesla was so obviously and publicly rejected by the Biden administration in that manner.
Musk was even then a polarising figure, but given Tesla was arguably more “American” than even the self-proclaimed traditional American car companies, it seemed a weird, self-defeating, perhaps emotional, position for the administration to take.
Tesla not being unionized was the main guess I heard about it at the time. The legacy auto industry has a history of outsized political influence leading to many dumb decisions on politician's part from an administrative success perspective.
I don't know either really, I'm just reporting remembered second-hand sources.
Except there is nothing in musks history that suggest this. His actual behavior was always consistent with who he is now. He just became more aggressive as people pointed it out.
He did not leaned a little right. He had the same political opinions, but less of narcissist rage over not being admired.
In the past (early Tesla - SpaceX - Boring Company - Hyperloop - crypto) he seemed apolitical and only to really care about setting up the building blocks for a new, different society on Mars. Maybe a pipe dream, maybe megalomaniac, but just very cool and very futuristic. He didn't seem very political aside from a libertarian bent.
Somewhere along the road he devolved into a petty and weird character, and then went off the deep end into full spectrum alt-right weirdness.
He is the same type of talented hype man as Jobs was, with the same sort of reality distortion field. Otherwise SpaceX reusable wouldn't have happened. And even Jensen Huang was supremely impressed how fast xAI built up data centers.
He obviously always held the normie billionaire libertarian "taxes bad, regulations bad, unions bad" right positions, enjoyed "politically incorrect" jokes and had some weird preconceptions like obsession with male heirs that might not be overtly political but line up with certain more fringe right views. Maybe he chose to hide some spicier views about the apartheid era.
But there's also definitely been a change. He publicly endorsed Democrat candidates on numerous occasions, including against normie business-friendly Republicans. Think his metamorphosis in actual unfiltered views is best shifted from the "I absolutely support trans but all these pronouns are an esthetic nightmare" to his current campaigns...
Are you implying that "moving right" necessitates lying about basic things constantly?
Also, didn't Musk publicly quit Trump's advisory councils over exiting the Paris Agreement back in 2017? Why does that rift not qualify for your "separating politics" hypothesis?
I think as the left has become more homogeneously college educated they are less likely to wholesale accept blatant lies and falsehoods. For someone like Musk this will naturally push them to the right because he incessantly lies/bullshits so often and has a visceral negative reaction when being called on it (the cave fiasco comes to mind).
If the right will welcome people like Musk with open arms (always a natural fit anyways, he's rich as hell) then why wouldn't he pull the mask off? Despite most Tesla customers being presumably left leaning, his heel turn doesn't seem to have had much negative impact on the things that matter to him so far, for example his net worth.
He always was an arrogant, over-privileged arsehole. But having an army of "fanboys" will have amplified his character flaws. Ditto his involvement with Trump et al.
Closing in? Try all but irrelevant outside the US. It's not going to be a make you give much thought when considering an EV purchase. Vastly different situation five years ago.
Tesla might maintain its current level of sales/revenue while losing 95% of its market cap. Whether it’ll survive the market cap deflation is the question.
The market can remain irrational more than you can remain solvent. But the writing is on the wall for the valuation.
I don’t think you do recall correctly. Electrek has European EV sales at +33% in 2025 over 2024. It’s not possible for Norway to turn a negative in the rest of Europe into an overall positive. https://electrek.co/2025/12/11/global-ev-sales-jump-21-in-20...
I mean, when you look through the site's article history and all you see is numerous negative doomer posts about every single business Musk is involved in: SpaceX, Grok, Tesla, Optimus, Musk himself, you name it, and not a single positive or even neutral post about anything, that's probably a sign that this author is not who you should be going to in order to receive objective, unbiased, rational discussion on the topic.
If you look through the site's article history and you don't see a single positive or even neutral post about Musk, it's clear that the firehose of Musk-sycophancy on his own website has broken your brain.
This is a website that took Hyperloop seriously because Musk casually threw it out there...
EDIT: I found a source[0], but that characterization is pretty misleading. The article even say that in internal discussions, "Musk wasn’t alone in pushing for electric controls." All it says about Musk is that pushed for "virtually everything" to be electric, but it doesn't say he pushed anything about the door manual release (you know they'd include that in the article if they could).
[0] https://archive.ph/BwZTx
I mostly agree, but I would have agreed with a similar article 10 years ago, and that would have been a fairly widely held opinion (e.g. Bill Gates was famously short Tesla).
So I wouldn’t be so sure as this piece is in Tesla’s downfall, and the emotive language doesn’t help this look like an objective analysis.
I also don’t like articles that take the industry consensus or expert opinion as a priori the correct opinion. Tesla wasn’t built by consensus; even the door handle example that is here touted as a negative almost certainly helped Tesla more than its harmed by being one of many unique features.
Man I miss the times when Musk was known as a pioneer in EVs and reusable rockertry, and not for his Twitter hot takes.
I remember he made some disparaging comments about other tech billionaires that while they were focused on ad revenue and social media engagement, he was out there working on the important stuff...
Elon Musk is an interesting case study in that he exposes how submissive and docile most men are around other men that they consider their superiors. He has an obsessive fan base of males who hang on to his every word, no matter he says. Even those who aren't obsessed with him tend to treat him with an odd sort of reverence. This site itself contains many of them. They consider him like a king.
Is he - or any other man - deserving of this? No. But men just can't help worshipping other men. Christianity is another good example. As is the military, showing that most men are naturally drawn to placing themselves within a hierarchy of other men, with one at the top, even if it ends in their demise.
I used to really like and admire Musk. You could say I was a fanboy. I am still asking myself what the fuck happened? Was he faking his true character all this time and managed to dupe me? Did he suffer some brain damage which changed him this drastically? Was it too much social media, was it covid-related, was he poisoned? Did too much money and power get to him? I would seriously like to know. By know, knowing about his chronic tendency to lie about the most basic stuff (such as being really good in a fucking computer game), I assume he duped me, and this makes me really, really dislike him a lot. And I can't be the only one. I hope he fails in all his endeavors.
You were duped. Tesla‘s paint it black video is from 2016 and one the first obvious lies. People called Musk out on his BS 10 years ago, but he successfully managed to keep a "genius" imagine in the media up until COVID-19 hit. Media sentiment changed around 2020/2021 to adjust to reality of Musk being a massive fraudster.
Important point here: the discussion is about his character, but you’ve made it about his intellect.
I don’t think anyone can doubt that Musk is super smart. I’ve heard silly things like - he doesn’t do anything, it’s all his employees or board or assistant - but reading the history that’s obviously false.
It does seem some people can’t cope with the idea that someone is often an asshat is also brilliant. And I’m afraid it’s true with Musk.
> I don’t think anyone can doubt that Musk is super smart.
It's also worth keeping in mind that super smart people can say and do lots of really dumb things. Smart != wise.
I have this [flagged] comment from 4 years ago, recounting my own perception of the events, and I stand by it
>pre-2018, he was a journalists' sweetheart. they were singing him praises and they didn't bring up attention to his misdeeds
>at some point around that time, he had pissed them off with the "who owns the media?" tweet, and they did a 180 degree turn. he didn't suddenly become eccentric then, his eccentricity started to get extensive negative attention. there's a plethora of media sweethearts who get away with far worse things without a peep from checkmarked firebrands
>in other words, you've changed your mind on cue, and you never had an independent opinion to begin with
The "you're a sheep" rhetoric. Great!
Pre-2018 he had already made some substantial lies, (cf. https://elonmusk.today/)
somebody should look into who owns the @elonmusk account that originates these stories...
Thai Cave rescue happened in 2018. It should have already made obvious how completely deranged Musk was to everyone, even if they were not paying close attention before and were dazzled by self-driving cars and Mars colonization promises.
I think that marked a turning point for many. He had been known to say dumb things in the past but that was monumentally stupid own goal. Worse, he was given multiple chances to take a step back but just kept digging.
When Elon was a teenager he bullied another kid about his father’s suicide until the other kid pushed him down a flight of stairs. He has always been like this. His character was never a secret. Everything was in plain view but you didn’t want to see it.
He had a PR team working overtime to boost his image. Remember he had a cameo in movie Iron Man 3 back in the day.
He meticulously worked on his image for decades.
You were younger and more gullible, he still had a PR firm and didn't tweet his every "thought".
I ran into him and the group of obsessed hangers on in 1997-8 or so. He was a nutjob then.
> Was he faking his true character all this time and managed to dupe me?
Yes.
People's true nature reveals once they stop caring about money.
To be fair, he was really good at faking.
> I am still asking myself what the fuck happened?
I think the Scott Adams piece the other day[0] described the system dynamics well:
"Once you’re sufficiently prominent, politics becomes a separating equilibrium; if you lean even slightly to one side, the other will pile on you so massively and traumatically that it will force you into their opponents’ open arms just for a shred of psychological security."
I think Biden giving credit to GM[1] and being used as a political football, prior to Musk entering politics in a big way himself, drove him away from the left and (by process of elimination) toward the right. Once you're down the rabbit hole, the rest is history.
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46646475
[1] https://www.businessinsider.com/gm-ceo-joe-biden-elon-musk-t...
The big event just before he announced he was now voting Republican in May 2022 was newspapers reporting on him sexually harassing an employee 6 years earlier.
I was always confused and intrigued what was going on behind the scenes when Tesla was so obviously and publicly rejected by the Biden administration in that manner.
Musk was even then a polarising figure, but given Tesla was arguably more “American” than even the self-proclaimed traditional American car companies, it seemed a weird, self-defeating, perhaps emotional, position for the administration to take.
Tesla not being unionized was the main guess I heard about it at the time. The legacy auto industry has a history of outsized political influence leading to many dumb decisions on politician's part from an administrative success perspective.
I don't know either really, I'm just reporting remembered second-hand sources.
Except there is nothing in musks history that suggest this. His actual behavior was always consistent with who he is now. He just became more aggressive as people pointed it out.
He did not leaned a little right. He had the same political opinions, but less of narcissist rage over not being admired.
In the past (early Tesla - SpaceX - Boring Company - Hyperloop - crypto) he seemed apolitical and only to really care about setting up the building blocks for a new, different society on Mars. Maybe a pipe dream, maybe megalomaniac, but just very cool and very futuristic. He didn't seem very political aside from a libertarian bent.
Somewhere along the road he devolved into a petty and weird character, and then went off the deep end into full spectrum alt-right weirdness.
He is the same type of talented hype man as Jobs was, with the same sort of reality distortion field. Otherwise SpaceX reusable wouldn't have happened. And even Jensen Huang was supremely impressed how fast xAI built up data centers.
He obviously always held the normie billionaire libertarian "taxes bad, regulations bad, unions bad" right positions, enjoyed "politically incorrect" jokes and had some weird preconceptions like obsession with male heirs that might not be overtly political but line up with certain more fringe right views. Maybe he chose to hide some spicier views about the apartheid era.
But there's also definitely been a change. He publicly endorsed Democrat candidates on numerous occasions, including against normie business-friendly Republicans. Think his metamorphosis in actual unfiltered views is best shifted from the "I absolutely support trans but all these pronouns are an esthetic nightmare" to his current campaigns...
Are you implying that "moving right" necessitates lying about basic things constantly?
Also, didn't Musk publicly quit Trump's advisory councils over exiting the Paris Agreement back in 2017? Why does that rift not qualify for your "separating politics" hypothesis?
I think as the left has become more homogeneously college educated they are less likely to wholesale accept blatant lies and falsehoods. For someone like Musk this will naturally push them to the right because he incessantly lies/bullshits so often and has a visceral negative reaction when being called on it (the cave fiasco comes to mind).
If the right will welcome people like Musk with open arms (always a natural fit anyways, he's rich as hell) then why wouldn't he pull the mask off? Despite most Tesla customers being presumably left leaning, his heel turn doesn't seem to have had much negative impact on the things that matter to him so far, for example his net worth.
> Are you implying that "moving right" necessitates lying about basic things constantly?
Not OP ... but it would be consistent with observations. It is a party that admires lying and rewards it.
No. He is the same person. It just happens in a certain time, what he was selling aligned with what you were buying.
He always was an arrogant, over-privileged arsehole. But having an army of "fanboys" will have amplified his character flaws. Ditto his involvement with Trump et al.
I find it odd to completely disavow someone because you don’t agree 100% with their politics.
I mean Werner Von Braun was a Nazi party member and knowingly used slave labor. Doesn’t make his rocketry advancements any less impressive.
Or Charles Darwin’s views of superior races.
Or Gandhi’s gray area views of pedophilia.
I mean if you’re going to discounted every person with a view you find distasteful your list of people you admire is going to be blank.
You may find Musk’s views distasteful but he’s had an enormous impact on EV’s, rocketry, hell space in general. I think it’s pretty awesome.
>I find it odd to completely disavow someone because you don’t agree 100% with their politics.
"politics":
https://hsph.harvard.edu/news/usaid-shutdown-has-led-to-hund...
https://www.cgdev.org/blog/update-lives-lost-usaid-cuts
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...
This is the nuanced view. In todays polarized world, it is sadly completely unacceptable. At least there are two of us now! ;)
Purity tests are extremely common in left wing politics in the USA.
Closing in? Try all but irrelevant outside the US. It's not going to be a make you give much thought when considering an EV purchase. Vastly different situation five years ago.
Wasn't Tesla Model Y globally the most sold car in 2023 and 2024. And second most sold car in 2025 (Toyota RAV4 was the most sold model).
Given that, objectively speaking I could not call Tesla irrelevant.
Tesla might maintain its current level of sales/revenue while losing 95% of its market cap. Whether it’ll survive the market cap deflation is the question.
The market can remain irrational more than you can remain solvent. But the writing is on the wall for the valuation.
It's not a very good comparison as Tesla has far fewer models than other carmakers.
The number of models doesn’t seem that relevant? If anything it would make Tesla’s numbers all the more impressive being a niche market EV.
Of course its relevant as Tesla is valued to much more than the other makers despite selling in total fewer cars.
Tesla is indeed a niche maker, but their valuation does not reflect that fact.
It's literally the best selling car in Norway with a over 50% increase in sales YoY.
Norway is an anomaly.
Examples for Europe, 2025 vs. 2024:
Edit: I fail list formattingNorway representing a wopping 1% of EU car sales. [1]
[1] https://www.best-selling-cars.com/europe/2024-full-year-euro...
The rest of the European market is a "bloodbath".
https://electrek.co/2026/01/06/tesla-full-2025-data-europe-t... https://www.reuters.com/business/tesla-registrations-slump-f...
Is this important market?
Norway is just 5-6 million population. Does being number 1 in Norway even mean anything?
UK is near 70million. Germany 80million. What about the stats for those? How many Teslas were sold as percentage in UK?
IIRC Norway is one of the few markets where EV growth is positive rather than negative, due to their abundant electric gen and other factors
I don’t think you do recall correctly. Electrek has European EV sales at +33% in 2025 over 2024. It’s not possible for Norway to turn a negative in the rest of Europe into an overall positive. https://electrek.co/2025/12/11/global-ev-sales-jump-21-in-20...
I mean, when you look through the site's article history and all you see is numerous negative doomer posts about every single business Musk is involved in: SpaceX, Grok, Tesla, Optimus, Musk himself, you name it, and not a single positive or even neutral post about anything, that's probably a sign that this author is not who you should be going to in order to receive objective, unbiased, rational discussion on the topic.
If you look through the site's article history and you don't see a single positive or even neutral post about Musk, it's clear that the firehose of Musk-sycophancy on his own website has broken your brain.
This is a website that took Hyperloop seriously because Musk casually threw it out there...
[dead]
Does he need to deliver? The past few years have demonstrated that you can just lie about the next big thing.
Has SpaceX not delivered?
You can do that longer than people think, but not forever.