Edit: actually less vindicated but more happy that I don't have to hear from people how great Elon is any more.
Same with Tesla and his other previous companies - just an accidental stroke of luck for an incompetent fraud.
But last week has shown his true colors. He's no visionary. Just your neighborhood slavedriver with mastery in storytelling. At this stage I am willing to use deceptive to describe Elon. On a public square he broke his persona. He's weak and dangerous as far as I am concerned.
Since then, though, Musk has focused on a lot of misses that have spectacularly over-promised and/or undelivered. Neuralink seems to be based on over the top futurism and a lot of questionable promises considering current technology state (particularly considering the current overpromise of AI, with self-driving cars still way far out). Same with his Hyperloop concept. The Boring Company has so far been quite unimpressive, cars in a small one lane tunnel is not very innovative and does not seem to bring anything that existing AGT systems cover already. Then there's Twitter, where it seems there was no vision at all, and you half get the impression that he only bought it because he was miffed at the content moderation.
Tesla in particular seems to be a missed opportunity with New Musk at the helm. It seems to me that to get to the next level, Tesla could use some care to iron out the QC issues... they are not known as super reliable cars at this point on certain aspects, but it does not seem like it is insurmountable to bring quality standards up to the top brands. Were I a Tesla investor, my concern would be that Musk's constant distractions with things like Twitter are truly going to hamper the efforts of his primary companies... and looking at the post-Twitter stock price of Tesla, it seems I'm not the only one with such a concern.
How so? If anything, things that he promised had an over-optimistic timeline. He promised a reusable rocket that can land itself - and it did, late, but so far it's the only one that can do so.
> his Hyperloop concept
It's a concept - something he specifically said none of his companies would be implementing.
> current overpromise of AI, with self-driving cars still way far out
I was quite skeptical, however, the current state of self-driving is quite good. The vehicle requires practically no intervention. Still a long way to go, but I am super impressed by how far they've come. Check it out. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EbYuuu0G9Ko
> Tesla could use some care to iron out the QC issues
I am sure, there is always room for improvement. So far, my wife's 2020 Model 3 has been reliable. No issues as yet.
Maybe he's always been this way but his profile was lower? The first thing that sticks out to me is the the submarine pedo-guy incident of 2018. Somehow he went from an eccentric inventor who I honestly believe was genuinely making a real effort on a longshot solution to "How dare you joke about my submarine!" a few days later. So weird.
Something very similar is also written in Cal Newport's Deep Work book, where Jack Dorsey's typical day is outlined just as a series of interruptions.
I guess that tweeting between these interactions is not that time-consuming for him, + he actually sleeps at the workplace and is 100% focused on work.