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I assume the fear for stock holders is that without Elon people will evaluate the company like a regular car company and that would not be a net positive.

I think they're in some sort of stock price suicide pact at this point.

Fair points as a customer, but I think a stockholder would much rather Elon focus on robotics than gapless music playback.

Or just make better EVs. Tesla's not that competitive in charge speeds these days:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cy46Ag0djjk

That was an extremely weird criticism.

I bet their rear passenger seats don't even have toothpick disinfection modules.

This is some weird takes...

    - music apps and gapless playback: basically all major car manufacturer software is trash, I'd challenge you to find a car software that's better than Tesla
    - stretches without superchargers: to be clear, not stretches without places you can charge the car, right? Just places where Tesla's fast charging stations exist. Tesla has an order of magnitude more of these type of stations than any other similar network
    - Service centers: I have no knowledge here. From how silly the other arguments are, I kind of assume that this isn't fully true, but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and say it's true. Not awesome, definitely an area they need to get better in. But lets not forget, major manufacturer service centers are not exactly know for being quick/good/cheap
    - Color options: I guess it would be cool to have truly custom colors, but basically every mainstream car ever has had a limited set of colors to choose from, and individual dealerships almost never have every color of that limited set available

And the answer is to have them become like a normal car company? That's not an industry thats exactly excelling at the very points you're bringing up. You're obviously free to have your take, but we are at peak "Elon is the wurst". Hard to take this stuff seriously

> - music apps and gapless playback: basically all major car manufacturer software is trash, I'd challenge you to find a car software that's better than Tesla

Easy: _any_ car with Android Auto or CarPlay. Including a 10-year-old Toyota.

If Elon leaves, Tesla is cooked. Tesla nosedives every time his focus is on something else which is what's happened since he purchased Twitter, became a political activist and then left to work with Trump. The only reason Tesla trades at such high valuation is because of Elon and the cult following he built around the vision for the company. As soon as he's out of there the stock will lose all of its premium. Institutional investors like Ron Baron who are open supporters of Elon's vision will leave and the business will go to carmaker-like or negative margins. There is absolutely no evidence that Tesla can function at all without Elon but there is plenty of it floundering when he's not focused on it.

This sounds like all upside for the company eventually if it actually is capable of being a good car company. The stock goes down to the price of a car company and the company needs to focus on making good cars instead of wildly flailing around to different distractions.

So you're saying that existing shareholders should vote to shelve the company's plans to expand into autonomous driving, robotics and energy storage and convert the company into a traditional car company?

Yes. Camera only self driving is proving out to be a failure and the two other aspects should have been part of a different company. I don't own stock in Tesla so I don't care if the price drops while the company becomes a car company again.

Musk's focus is always on something else. He doesn't work much at Tesla anymore. Tesla employees call him a "pigeon CEO":

https://electrek.co/2024/04/22/elon-musk-pigeon-ceo-former-t...

> There's multiple stretches of 100+ miles of highway around me that have no supercharging capability

Genuinely curious where this is? It's not anywhere on the US Interstate Highway network for sure (OK, fine maybe there are a handful of 120 mile stretches here and there). There are holes in the middle of the interior west, but you have to work really hard to get 100 miles from a supercharger.

I mean, there are always legitimate criticisms to be made, but the breadth of the charging network is... quite frankly the best in the world?

There are more divided highways than interstates. There are US highways like US-101 or states ones like CA-99. Also, all of the US and state highways are called highways, at least when not in towns, not just divided ones.

There are areas of the west that have enough coverage for driving through but not for trips. You would be pushing it visiting the Wallowa Mountains in Oregon cause La Grande or Joseph only have slow chargers. Another is the "Loneliest Road in America", US-50 in Nevada, has 285 mile gap.

> There are US highways like US-101 or states ones like CA-99.

Neither of which has anything but a vanishing fraction of areas more than 100 miles from a supercharger.

Your other examples are real, though pretty spun. It's true! There are a handful of remote[1] areas[2] where EVs are still going to be... well, "less convenient" than a gas car. You can absolutely visit the Wallowas or transit Nevada in your Tesla, and people do.

Claiming "The USA is really big and has a lot of uninhabited desert" as evidence for corporate mismanagement of Tesla is... really weird, honestly.

[1] Just checked: the Pendleton charger to Wallowa Lake is 110 miles. So... not really "pushing it" except in a SR model 3.

[2] They didn't name it "loneliest" because of EVs!