Cleantechnicha headline: Elon Musk Has Gone Off The Rails, Will He Take Tesla & SpaceX With Him?
https://cleantechnica.com/2022/06/18/elon-musk-has-gone-off-…
This is a story I hoped I would never have to write. Elon Musk and Tesla have been very popular topics on CleanTechnica. Readers and writers have enjoyed exploring the tech, growth, and innovation of Tesla, and Musk’s role in that. Over the years, we have written hundreds of articles about him and his company, and it must be said — we are in the click business. The number of “hits” we get on the stories we write determines how much money comes in the door, and putting “Musk” or “Tesla” in the title guarantees a story will get a fair number of them. So, what follows may be going against our own best interests, but at some point, someone has to point out that the emperor really is walking about while wearing no clothes. [Editor’s note: Different writers on our team have had different views on Elon Musk (and Tesla products) over the years. In the interest of allowing different opinions to be expressed from people with the same overall mission (advancing cleantech), we have published op-eds across the spectrum on this topic — and plenty of others. Clearly, not everyone on the team will align with every article. Steve Hanley is a Tesla owner who has long appreciated Tesla’s role in the industry, but like many Tesla owners, his relationship with the company has become complicated. The comments under this article show that as well as the article itself. To pretend or assume the Tesla community only includes people who 100% support everything Elon Musk does and says at this point would be misrepresenting the Tesla community — massively.]
Here’s the truth. Elon Musk is now a danger to himself, his companies, and the hundreds of thousands of supporters who have made him the wealthiest person in human history. In the past few weeks, he has become more and more unhinged. It all began to unravel when Elon the Magnificent decided he and he alone should be the sole arbiter of what people could and could not say on social media.
Free Speech, Elon Musk huffed! Well, here’s how the great man will handle free speech once he gets his hooks into Twitter. This week, a group of dissatisfied SpaceX employees penned an open letter to Musk begging him to stick to his knitting and stop making asinine comments in public, comments they said that brought the company into disrepute. The Verge has seen that letter, which reads in part:
“Elon’s behavior in the public sphere is a frequent source of distraction and embarrassment for us, particularly in recent weeks. As our CEO and most prominent spokesperson, Elon is seen as the face of SpaceX — every Tweet that Elon sends is a de facto public statement by the company. It is critical to make clear to our teams and to our potential talent pool that his messaging does not reflect our work, our mission, or our values.”