Over the last 2 months, I have lost all respect for Elon. And I have a long history of Tesla / Elon fanboi-ism in HN. I am also a Tesla owner. But the recent twitter tirade from Elon absolutely broke me. He predicted "zero cases" in April from COVID, and has simply doubled down in conspiracy theories since that tweet. Everyday he relentlessly retweets conspiracy theories about COVID deaths and concludes half truths and lies about the virus.<p>He also suddenly found his "Free America" spirits, while being completely numb about how the Chinese government shutdown its cities and lied about the virus.<p>Now it is all starting to fall in place. When I bought my car in late 2016, Elon promised FSD in 3-6 months. We are still decades away from FSD and my Tesla still randomly phantom brakes on Autopilot<p>This factory saga is the latest where he unleashed his followers to wreck havoc on a county health officer, who is anyways under pressure of re-opening. And of course, not to mention that he has no concerns about workers in the factory.<p>I think the conclusion is fairly simple - Elon is not special. He is the same old.
<i>“I love my job personally, just tired of feeling like a chess piece,” this [Fremont employee] said. They also said they wouldn’t feel safe assembling cars right now because it requires such close-quarters work. “We get lured in by the ‘Tesla Dream’ of saving the planet only to get treated so poorly that even though I love my job, I’m not willing to risk my health for him.”</i><p>Silicon Valley used to be famous for people like Bill Hewlett and David Packard, Andy Grove and Gordon Moore, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak. In the latest generation, we have people like Zuck and Peter Thiel and Elon. No wonder our reputation is worse than Wall Street's.
This article from the NYT (<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/09/business/coronavirus-elon-musk-tesla-california.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/09/business/coronavirus-elon...</a> ) seem to indicate that all of that fuss was to open a week early because Musk really wanted to.<p>Somewhat pathetic to sue your local government for that.
Damn <a href="https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1259945593805221891" rel="nofollow">https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1259945593805221891</a><p>> Tesla is restarting production today against Alameda County rules. I will be on the line with everyone else. If anyone is arrested, I ask that it only be me.
Move the HQ to Nevada! I would like to live in a world where you can live other places than the Bay area/Seattle/NYC and work for great companies.
Tesla already executed on the changes needed extremely quickly in China, where they seem to have done both 1. Much more successful and effective lockdowns and 2. Brought things back online competently fast.<p>Seems like policy makers in the US fail on both counts, no?