Cyberflop

In 2017, when Trump began his first (but, alas, not only) term as President, I was still in the afterglow of having driven a Tesla Model S at a special event sponsored by the brand.  It was at that time that the shark that Tesla would eventually jump started swimming around the company, as Elon Musk began undermining what had been the biggest success story in American auto manufacturing for a new company since Walter Chrysler founded the company that bore his name.  

In 2017, Musk unveiled the second generation of the Tesla Roadster,  and he started taking orders for the car immediately, with a thousand people paying $250,000 for a new car.  That totals to $250 million, a quarter of a billion bucks, that Musk pocketed.  To this day, no one who paid for a Mark 2 Roadster has received a car; it's never been produced.  Instead, Musk focused on entering the truck market with a newfangled pickup that was styled to look like a television remote - the Cybertruck.  What?  A truck designed to resemble a futuristic vehicle in a Hollywood movie?  Why not freshen up or redesign the cars in the rest of the lineup? Nah, too boring.

Musk promised miracles with this vehicle.  The stainless-steel panels would be easier to maintain.  They would be bulletproof.  It would be priced at the same level as and have a bigger payload than conventional pickup trucks.  And the braking system would channel energy used to bring the truck to a stop back into the electric motor in order to make the brakes last as long as the vehicle itself!

Uh, yeah.  The Cybertruck has panels that get dirty easily and are hard to clean, bullets can still have hideous pockmarks on the panels, it costs about a hundred grand, the payload is smaller than an F-150, and Musk's ballyhooed regenerative braking system is an implausible idea that must've come out of one of those sci-fi books he loves.  

I'm tempted to say that Tesla has become the automotive equivalent of one of those real-estate companies that sell worthless properties to land speculators for enormous sums - "You didn't buy any property there, did you?  I swear there was a lake!" - but that's not entirely true, because unlike the second-generation Roadster, the Cybertruck actually got produced.  But not very well.  Not only are its stainless-steel panels worthless, they don't fit properly onto the truck, and their edges are so sharp, you could peel a potato with them.  The single windshield wiper is so pliable, it's limper than an overcooked ramen noodle, and the slope of the windshield is so low-slung that rain water cascades up it.

Also, the Cybertruck is so big and bulky that one can easily hit a pedestrian if you don't look carefully enough, and if the cameras aren't working (a typical problem with the Cybertruck), you could run over someone and not even realize it until after its too late.  For that reason, the European Union has banned the sale of the Cybertruck in its member states for its failure to conform to EU pedestrian impact standards - standards the American automobile regulatory system does not have, thanks to a lax regulatory culture in Washington and the demand for monster wagons on light-truck chasses.  And when it comes to providing safety for those outside the vehicle as well as those inside, the Chevrolet Suburban and the Ford Expedition aren't exactly all that much better.  And all of those SUVs and pickup trucks posing threats to smaller vehicles are the reason we don't have cars like the Volkswagen Polo and Renault Twingo offered for sale in These States. 

Did I happen to mention the Cybertruck's loose-fitting plastic gas-pedal cover?

Road testers at auto magazine and on auto-news YouTube sites have known about the Cybertruck's defects for months, but the Cybertruck's flaws are only coming to the fore now among the general public thanks to Tesla's current woes and Musk's megalomaniacal  desire to dismantle American government. Tesla has become the auto industry's most discredited brand; the Cybertruck has become the auto industry's most discredited Tesla.

Tesla at this point is probably beyond saving, but Musk will remain unscathed because he'll still have his billons as well as his profits from Starlink and SpaceX (which has numerous government contacts.  Butt the Cybertruck should prove that, far from being another Walter Chrysler, Elon Musk is turning out to be another Malcolm Bricklin. 

Having failed to start his own car company, Malcolm Bricklin decided to sell us the Yugo instead. 

Promises, Promises, Promises . . .

Not too long ago I said that Tesla enthusiasts and owners who wanted to save the brand from Elon Musk should try to buy enough stock to make Musk a minority stockholder.  Uhh, yeah . . . there's just one thing wrong with that strategy - Elon Musk already is a minority stockholder.

How does the Musko Man stay at the top at Tesla?  How does he remain CEO of the company?  Well, you know how he's always talking about how features on Tesla cars like self-driving technology are coming soon?  And then it doesn't happen?  That's Musk's game.  He's been promising that these wonderful and fantastic features will be available for Teslas next year for over half a decade.  Because he keeps promising how these features will soon be available, as early as next year, he leaves the board of directors no choice but to stick with him.  Except that, like Paul McCartney's mythical grandfather in A Hard Day's Night, he'll cost you a number of breaches of promises.  

But maybe it won't be Musk's decimation of the federal government or his unfulfilled promises that do him in.  Maybe the thing that does him in will be one of his own products - a product he's actually delivered. 

I am, of course, talking about the Cybertruck, Tesla's first (and likely only) truck model, which receives over-the-air tech updates and looks like a TV remote with wheels.  As with most Tesla products these days, the Cybertruck breaks down a lot, but now it has a newly documented problem, which has led to a recall of 46,000 vehicles produced.  Apparently the problem is that an exterior trim panel can, in the company's own words, "delaminate and detach from the vehicle," which increases the risk of a crash and create a road hazard. 

In other words,  these trucks literally fall apart on the road.

I'm old enough to remember when Tesla quality was celebrated - right about the same time Trump began his first presidential campaign.  Quality has long since fallen by the wayside since then, and the Cybertruck is fast becoming an amalgam of Tesla's manufacturing flaws - all rolled up into one literally and figuratively ugly travesty.

Donald Trump, Car Salesman

I understand there was an auto show at the White House.

Donald Trump probably wanted to be an automaker.  Why not?  Henry Ford.  David Dunbar Buick.  Walter Chrysler.  Arthur and Louis Chevrolet.  John and Horace Dodge.  They all achieved something Trump still hasn't - they turned their surnames into reputable brands.

Geez, even John DeLorean was more successful at that.

Trump has never made cars - if he had, he would have made Malcolm Bricklin look like Alfred P. Sloan - but thanks to his buddy Elon Musk, a real automaker, he got to sell them.

The trouble is, featuring the entire Tesla lineup at the White House and presenting an infomercial for the press was ethically dubious at best, illegal at worst.

And to remove all doubt that he wasn't just showing them off, Trump even had a list of the prices of the vehicles in Tesla's lineup in his hand - and made sure a camera caught it.

Better that Trump wasn't at a real auto show, though, because he'd be checking out the spokesmodels and grabbing them by their (*SHUT YO' MOUTH!*) in minutes.

One thing, though - after promoting fossil fuels as the linchpin in our energy supply and getting donations from Big Oil, why is Trump suddenly so simpatico with electric cars?  (Not that he could drive a Tesla - like that other evil New Yorker Robert Moses, Trump never drove a car in his life.)

Trump pulled this stunt at the White House to help his benefactor Musk at a time when Tesla sales and stock prices are plummeting in response to Musk's job slashing in the federal government at a time when he should be slashing prices on his cars.  And who's going to buy these cars as a result of Trump's shameless promotion? Certainly not the average American, who's likely unemployed or about to be and likely couldn't afford a Tesla even with what passes for gainful employment these days. 

Even Tesla owners are jumping ship.  Onetime Tesla owners like Sheryl Crow are selling their cars as a way of getting back at Musk, and Crow donated the money she made off selling her car to National Public Radio.  Those keeping their cars are actually buying badges of other car brands and putting them on their Teslas (well, sure, how about a Volkswagen emblem on a Tesla sedan, seeing as the ID.7 isn't coming to These States after all!).

Only one thing wrong - you can't rebrand a Cybertruck.

Let me get something straight.  I love Teslas.  I always have.   True, the brand may have suffered a drop in quality and reliability since the its heady days in the mid-2010s, when Trump began his first presidential campaign.   I test-drove one, though, and I loved it.  And so you can understand why I'm upset to see what Musk is doing to his own company.  Tesla is too good a car to go the way of the DeLorean, which went down in a cocaine-trafficking setup.  The company must be saved.  And there are two things that must be done in order to save it.  First, Tesla's board of directors must fire Elon Musk.

The second thing?  Discontinue the Cybertruck.

Electric Shock

Elon Musk got into a little trouble with the Securities and Exchange Commission.  It seems that he was accused of pretending to take his company private to increase the price of Tesla stock, and now he has to step down as chairman of the company's board of directors . . .but he can still be the chief executive officer.

Meanwhile, Jeff Sessions has apparently decided that Musk will not be arrested for smoking marijuana during a potcast - er, podcast. 

This is rather awkward for the only domestic competitor to what passes for Detroit's Big Three these days, as Tesla is all about the future while GM, Ford and Fiat Chrysler are increasingly stuck in the past.  Ford and the Chrysler brand group have all but committed themselves completely to gas-guzzling SUVs and pickups, while GM pays lip service to developing more electric vehicles or even keeping the ones it already makes up to date.  We need Tesla to show the Detroit Three how to make electric vehicles, and profit from it.  You don't do that by causing the stock to be inflated.      

Did Musk lie?  More likely - this is just my personal take here - he wanted to take Tesla private and wanted to buy out the stock, but he didn't have the money.  He must have thought he had it, and he thus made a promise he realized too late that he couldn't keep.  It's not a lie if you believe it.

Whatever.  Anyway, I doubt Tesla will suffer from this setback too much.  It makes good cars, they're perfect in every way, and I say that from the experience of driving one.  Elon Musk is not the reincarnation of Preston Tucker, who had his own bad break with the stock-market cops and only built fifty of his sedans.  Tesla is indeed the future.  GM, Ford and Fiat Chrysler ought to wake up and create more modern vehicles.