Two Readers Explain Elon Musk’s Changed Role At Tesla Better Than I Did

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Yesterday, when I wrote an article explaining what I think has happened with Elon Musk and Tesla in recent years that has led to the conundrum Tesla is in right now, or at least its latest “bet the company” move, I knew the reader comments would be great. As some readers have said, the discussions under articles are often better than the articles themselves. There were a lot of great comments under that article, but one stood out to me as an excellent one that deserved its own feature story, and then another one was a perfect followup along similar lines. So, I’m including both of these below. Lastly, I’m going to include a couple of segments from a new book about Musk, which relate to both of these comments.

For those of you who are tired of this topic, apologies, but no need to read further if you are. I do think it’s important stuff to consider and discuss, though, because Tesla is still one of the most important and influential companies in the EV world, and thus the world at large. What happens with Tesla may not be as important today as it was a decade ago, but it’s still extremely important.

Here’s the first comment, from “Jec,” that I thought deserved extra attention:

“I’ve worked in Executive Search for many years and happened to serve a larger number of entrepreneurs. They are an interesting lot. They love discussing and working with new ideas and visions. The have a strong drive to Force their idea to success. They are always ‘in the future’. Hate being forced to deal with the past or with minor problems. Always on to new revolutionary ideas, which gives them energy. Remember Musk and boneheaded questions? Instead of listening to Musk and his visions for the future, the analysts wanted information about the past quarter. Musk hated that.

“EVs have now developed to a state where the technology has matured, and there is no room for technological revolutions of the sort that gives energy to Musk. Now it’s a matter of optimizing and perfectionizing, which bores Musk. It’s ‘a game of pennies’.

“That’s why he cuts down on vehicle development, and moves to FSD, which could be a revolution and therefore interests Musk much more. Time has therefore come to leave the daily leadership to a person who enjoys optimizing business and let Elon move on.

“Else, his restlessness combined with his dominant behavior will increasingly become a liability for Tesla.

“In my experience, all entrepreneurs sooner or later hit a glass ceiling and can’t grow the company further, as their negative sides now equalizes their positive sides.”

I think that is mostly backing up what I wrote in part of my article, but expounding on it and explaining it even better. However, I do think that while many people agree with Jec that Musk needs to move on, there are also many people (especially TSLA shareholders) who think he needs to keep running Tesla in order to keep it revolutionary. They don’t want Tesla to be “just another car company” and strongly believe in Musk’s robotaxi, AI, and robotics plans.

Though, personally, I think more people would probably be wise to guard against the notion that “because someone succeeded before, they will succeed again in this other way.” Maybe Musk will be right on Tesla AI, robotaxis, and robotics. Or maybe, as he’s been wrong (or at least delayed) for the past several years, he’ll continue to miss targets on these things and burn money indefinitely without the expected return. I think everyone, pro and con on this, has to recognize that we don’t really know where these things will go — including Musk.

But, yes, what does seem clear is that Musk isn’t in it for incremental improvements and the normal running of a large corporation.

Here’s the second reader comment I wanted to highlight here, from Mike Sarcione:

“Successful entrepreneurs with the biggest egos fall really hard when they are either told they’re wrong, or even worse, ignored by others in authority. One authority to ignore him, current POTUS. His Administration ignored the “king” of global EVs, at the time, in crafting the IRA and EV aspects. Another authority to ignore him was the previous POTUS currently running again. However, Elon Musk saw an opening as that one would change his view of folks who would bend the knee and send lots of $. There was a potential for market uptick if he could get the bully’s followers to soften and accept EVs. Folks with big egos, lots of $, and media control have plenty of vent options for espousing their ‘way of thinking.’ Family isn’t first, his businesses aren’t first, his ego is first, and anyone who tries to hurt it, or help guide it with the best of intentions, fuels its misguided responses which ultimately requires corrections and self rationalization. In business, it’s what have you done for the shareholders lately that will ultimately decide his future. He needs an intellectual miracle. We’ll see whether the one he’s been banking on pans out. Eventually all emperors and empires get defeated, especially when they have divided interests. Between Chinese competition, personal family pressures, political fallout and intellectual failures, their are plenty of divided interests.”

This comment was not in response to that other one above, but it carries on from it. As that other commenter referred to it, entrepreneurs have a tendency toward “dominant behavior.” When they can’t be the dominant figure in the room, or in the story, they can have inflamed reactions. I think anyone who’s following on could see this is a big part of what happened with Musk and Biden. Biden didn’t acknowledge Elon in the way Elon felt he should be acknowledged and consulted. Similar to how Donald Trump ran for president after Obama made some jokes about him at the 2011 White House Correspondents’ Dinner, I think a big part of what got Musk into politics was the way Biden was ignoring him — not just at that infamous EV event, but Biden also reportedly ignored requests for meetings with Musk, or something like that. However, if this is true, one concerning thing here is how Musk can fall into traps, side tangents, and conspiracy theories just from not getting the praise and attention he thinks he deserves. Funny enough, as I’m writing this, I just remembered something I read earlier today:

That’s pretty wild if true, and the sad thing is, it’s probably true. (Side note: I guess this is a benefit of being King of the Global Town Hall.)

In that second reader comment, I loved that line “Eventually all emperors and empires get defeated, especially when they have divided interests.” And as he noted “Between Chinese competition, personal family pressures, political fallout and intellectual failures, their are plenty of divided interests.” Indeed. Though, while many Tesla fans would now like to see Musk step down from his role as CEO, I think another anecdote from that new book, Character Limit: How Elon Musk Destroyed Twitter, shows us that he won’t. He has said many times that he’d be happy to pass on the role of CEO, but there’s no one better to do the job. This is how he sees it. A more stark example of how he seems himself as the necessary leader of everything he gets involved in, as summarized by Rolling Stone, here’s the story of Musk promising the step down from running Twitter if the people thought he should, and then not doing so:

“Following a series of disastrous policy changes, Musk decided to hold an informal performance review for himself using one of his favorite Twitter tools: the polling feature. ‘Should I step down as head of Twitter? I will abide by the results of this poll,’ he tweeted in December 2022 before embarking on a flight from Qatar to London. When he landed, he found that ‘57.5 percent of the more than 17.5 million accounts that had voted were calling for him to resign.’ Between this rejection and the plummeting value of Tesla stock, Musk became withdrawn and unresponsive, with those who did manage to talk to him worrying that he was ‘in the throes of a manic event.’ Speaking with one confidante, ‘Musk choked up and began to doubt his ability to run the company’ in light of the poll results, saying, ‘I’m never going to recover from this.’ He would, of course, go on to hire Linda Yaccarino as a replacement CEO in the new year — though as anyone still active on the site that soon became X will tell you, it continues to reflect his worst impulses and warped worldview.”

Musk doesn’t want to give up control of Tesla. Like with Twitter, he believes that he’s the chosen one who is the best person to run the company. Though, whereas this Twitter poll told Musk what he didn’t want to hear and thought he wouldn’t hear, in the case of Tesla, shareholders just recently revived his massive compensation package and basically gave him a full stamp of approval to keep running Tesla however he sees fit. So, even if he’s bored with the day-to-day of Tesla and the incremental needs of a corporation like Tesla, I think he’ll continue to assume he’s the only one who can do the CEO job and will remain just where he is.