© Steve Jurvetson – https://www.flickr.com/photos/jurvetson/18659265152/ used under the créative commons license

Oh Elon.

I suppose we saw it coming years ago in his hysterically petulant response to a cave rescue expert politely declining his back-of-a-fag-packet scheme for rescuing children from a cave. Now he’s Trump’s right hand man/power behind the throne, it’s as if he turned up for the part of movie superhero (the real Tony Stark!) and got handed the script for the scenery-chewing villain instead. Of course, he’s not the first motor mogul with a dark side. Henry Ford was a notorious anti-semite and, at the risk of triggering Godwin’s Law, Volkswagen was a pet project of Hitler himself.

But Tesla?

Tesla is, or was, something truly groundbreaking. I’ve only driven one once and it left an indelible mark on me – by far the best car I’ve ever taken the wheel of. And that matters. While the legacy motor manufacturers were tentatively dipping a toe in the market with small, mundane runabouts, Musk dive-bombed into the pool, producing a big, powerful, sexy EV that blew away all the competition, no matter what drive train. Low carbon transport was suddenly cool and desirable, with not even a single stray thread of a hair shirt. Musk even opened his IP to others to use for free as he saw the internal combustion engine as the real competition, accelerating progress across the EV sector.

I said many times “This is the way to do it!” And now we see the company’s stock price falling as fast as the sales figures.

The statistic that Musk should have been sensitive to is that the average US Tesla owner is five times more likely to vote Democrat than Republican. His customer base is the very people who will be most horrified by his antics, and the Tesla brand is so closely associated with him personally – a toxic combination from the company’s point of view.

You could draw a parallel with what he did to Twitter (recently described as the worst takeover in history in financial terms), but he uses Twitter/X as a way of amplifying his whims and worldview, so it has a use for him even if it is haemorrhaging money. In contrast, Tesla feels personal to Musk. If he didn’t care, he wouldn’t have stooped to that humiliating pop up car showroom on the White House Lawn.

While I’m getting the same schadenfreude as many from seeing an over-reaching billionaire get his comeuppance (go anti-woke, go broke!), part of me wishes Tesla wasn’t the, um, vehicle for that backlash. Some point out the shine was coming off anyway with the crass and childish Cybertruck a deeply unworthy successor to the cool elegance of the Model S – and reluctantly I have to concede they’re probably right.

Ho, hum. It was superb while it lasted.