The Atlantic: "Elon Musk's Luck Runs Out"

[Pluvious]

The man we love to hate,
turns out he's got feet made of clay.

Elon Musk’s Luck Runs Out
Why he didn’t see this coming
By Hanna Rosin

For a while, it seemed as if DOGE Elon and Tesla Elon could exist in the same space-time continuum. One of them carried out Donald Trump’s ruthless cost-cutting mission while the other pitched cars that appealed most to people who were highly likely to oppose that mission, or even rage against it.

As activists spray-painted stop doge on Teslas at dealerships and anti-Tesla protests spread all over the world, there still was no concrete proof that Elon Musk had to amend either version of himself.

Then this week came Tesla’s first quarterly earnings report since Musk started his work with DOGE, showing the company’s profits down 71 percent from the same time last year. After a conference call, one major investor said Musk was “delusional.” Suddenly it seemed as if Musk was on a “Kanye West–like trajectory,” according to Patrick George, editor in chief of InsideEVs and our guest this week on Radio Atlantic.

...

Covering Tesla in the 2010s, the kind of hate mail we would get from people whenever we’d criticize the company or put something negative in one of the reviews of the Tesla, whatever—there were so many people back then who were such true believers in what he was doing, I mean, thinking that he’s saving the world. And I’m kind of sad for those folks now who really believed in this environmental mission of the company. Those are the ones who are dumping their Teslas. Those are the ones who feel abandoned right now, who feel betrayed by this guy they once believed in who has very much gone to what they perceive as the dark side.

https://www.theatlantic.com/podcasts/archive/2025/04/elon-musk-tesla-doge/682566/