Tesla Clout Goes Up in Smoke After Chaotic Summer

Tesla Clout Goes Up in Smoke After Chaotic Summer

Marcus Pearson

Elon Musk, billionaire CEO of Tesla, SpaceX, and The Boring Company, has had a difficult summer.

 

First the South African entrepreneur faced controversy for his unconventional solutions regarding the Thailand cave situation, where an entire soccer team of 12 young boys and their coach were trapped in a flooding cave for over a month. His solution included a child sized submarine to be sent in for the children. This was despite the many trained divers at hand to make the rescue, many of which who criticized Musk’s actions as reactionary and unhelpful. Musk responded promptly by calling an English diver “a pedo”, and would continue to double and triple down when later asked. Tesla stock dropped 4 percent according to Goldman Sachs after these comments.

 

The turgid CEO continued by announcing via Twitter that he would take Tesla stock private, meaning he would buy back all the stocks for hundreds of dollars a share. This never actually occurred, but caused mass confusion for his shareholders and investors, along with more controversy when it was found out his funding for the operation would come from Saudi Arabia, whose stance toward oil is directly opposite Tesla’s renewable energy goals. Tesla stock fell 7 percent after this.

 

Eventually everything culminated with Musk’s appearance on Joe Rogan’s comedic podcast, in which he tried to explain his recent actions by claiming to be overworked. While he probably meant to help his situation, Musk’s interview only threw more fuel on the fire, almost literally, as he was recorded smoking marijuana with Rogan in the same interview. While legal in California (where the interview was held), it did not help the growing number of people and investors questioning if Elon was still qualified to run three multi-billion dollar companies. Tesla stock fell 6 percent.

 

Elon Musk is a household name, and there have been many and varied opinions about him and his recent actions at OHS. Two such opinions, one from computer science teacher Kevin Trigger, and another from Business and Finance teacher Leslie Lemon, take two very different routes.

 

Mr. Trigger’s take on Elon’s recent actions was one of ambivalence, and all he had this to say: “Western civilization has become so desensitized in the past couple years, [that] we have the collective attention span of a goldfish. No one cares anymore”.

 

Mrs. Lemon instead went from commiserating Elon’s newfound infamy to joining the general consensus when made aware of his recent actions: “Tesla [and his other companies], are going to go down after this, it’s not a good look.”

 

Photo by Forbes / https://www.forbes.com/profile/elon-musk/#25dbd7b57999