Sorry, Timmy, But 'Angry Elon' Can't Fix Tesla

An embarrassing Tesla fluff piece from The Wall Street Journal's Tim Higgins makes me wonder: Does Musk have something on Higgins?

I present to you the headline and graphic from a front page story in last weekend’s Wall Street Journal:

The story’s author, Tim Higgins, writes about autos and technology for the Journal. Four years back, he published a well-researched book about the rise of Tesla under Elon Musk.¹

Higgins is a very bright fellow, a fine writer, and a capable journalist. I met Tim when he interviewed me for his book. I like him and respect him.

In recent months, though, Higgins has become something of a soap opera scribbler than a hard-nosed reporter with his many weekend pieces on Musk. More like “The Sperm Donors of Silicon Valley” than Woodward & Bernstein.

This past weekend’s installment though, was so bereft of actual journalism as to be embarrassing.

Let’s review.

I. Elon Musk Is Angry

Musk, writes Higgins, is angry:

Angry that he was cast as a Nazi. Angry that some used his politics as an excuse to attack Tesla. Angry that he’s being scrutinized.

A. Cast as a Nazi

Oh, Elon is upset that he’s been cast as Nazi?

Did it occur to him if he gave a Nazi salute at a political rally celebrating Trump’s inauguration, he just might be cast as a Nazi?

Did it occur to him that he would cement that view when he followed up the Nazi salute with outspoken support for Germany’s far-right populist Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, whose platform calls for expelling illegal migrants, leaving the European Union, and cozying up to Russia?

My opinion: Yes, those things occurred to him. Musk knew exactly what he was doing when he gave the Nazi salute.

Regardless, though, of whether Musk’s actions were deliberate, Higgins might have mentioned the Nazi salute and the AfD support instead of simply furnishing a link (which mentions the Nazi salute only at the very end of a long article).

B. Attacks on Tesla

Elon is also angry about the use of “his politics as an excuse to attack Tesla.”

Here, Musk has something of a point: many of us are attacking Tesla in part because of Musk’s Trumpian politics, which include using DOGE to slash and burn its way through the U.S. bureaucracy (while achieving few benefits and many costs)² and calling for the impeachment of judges who stand in Trump’s way.

But many of us were attacking Tesla long before Musk entangled himself in U.S. politics. We were attacking Tesla because it is founded on endless fraud and lies, including (and this is but a partial list) lies about battery swaps, wall snakes, machines that build machines, $35,000 Model 3s, 4680 battery cells, the supposed benefits of the SolarCity bailout, solar roofs, the Semi, the Roadster II, everything about the Cybertruck (price, specifications, and exoskeleton), the imminent Tesla budget vehicle, and — of course — cars that drive themselves.

Not to mention, of course, the many shaky aspects of Tesla’s financial reporting.

Moreover, just how obtuse is Musk? Did he not realize it is a gross breach of fiduciary duty for a company whose customers tend to be left-of-center politically to lend massive support to a quasi-fascist presidential candidate who four years earlier had attempted a treasonous coup?

The cluelessness is even more astonishing when one considers that there is no single person in all of human history who has directly or indirectly collected more government largesse — by way of subsidies, tax breaks, direct grants, utility discounts, real estate giveaways, and laws and regulations designed to extract payments from his competitors — than Elon Musk. He is, truly, the all-time champion of milking taxpayers, ratepayers, and consumers.

So, did Musk not realize that one of Trump’s oft-repeated platform planks³ was to strip the EV subsidies and mandates on which Tesla built its business?

Musk’s political stances are doing far more than furnishing people with “an excuse” to attack Tesla. Musk’s politics are directly contributing to Tesla’s dramatically shrinking deliveries, market share, and margins.

C. Scrutiny

Elon’s also angry that “he’s being scrutinized.”

Well, imagine that. The world’s richest man — who spent $300 million to help elect the most corrupt and ignorant president in U.S. history; who then as the unelected co-president inserted himself into the operations of the U.S. government; and who is the all-time champion in racking up violations of safety, environmental, and securities laws — objects to scrutiny.

Is it just me, or are there others who thinks that, under the circumstances, some scrutiny might be expected?

Perhaps Musk would not be so shocked and angry about the scrutiny from the public and press had Tesla’s board ever attempted, even once, to scrutinize what he was doing while running Tesla into the ground.

II. Elon Musk ‘Can Unleash Something Fierce’

Yes, that’s exactly what Higgins writes:

Musk has always had an incredibly large chip on his shoulder—one fueled by perceived slights and personal grievances, critics expressing disbelief and the chorus of social-media doubters. But history has shown that it can unleash something fierce: Angry Elon.

And what might be the precise nature of that “fierce” thing? Why, that fierce thing would be focusing “on executing.”

Were you aware that a “focus on executing” is “fierce”? I had imagined such a focus would be disciplined, or determined, or carefully informed, but somehow the word “fierce” doesn’t come to mind.

In all events, a “focus on executing” should not include continuing to tell fabulous whoppers, should it? But that is exactly what Musk did during his recent interview in Qatar, with lies detailed in a recent Substack post from Motorhead:

• Musk: Tesla has “already turned around.”

  Reality: Tesla worldwide deliveries are down markedly in 2025 relative to 2024.

• Musk: Tesla is “strong everywhere else” but Europe. “There are no exceptions.

  Reality: Besides being down in Europe, Tesla’s 2025 sales are down in Asia and North America (Q1 deliveries in its biggest market, California, are off 21% year-over-year despite a rise in overall EV sales.)

• Musk: Tesla’s lower sales this year are “true for all manufacturers.”

  Reality: EV sales by other EV makers in the top six European EV markets rose by 27% year-over-year in April while Tesla’s sales in those markets dropped by 47%.

Does Higgins call out these lies? No, he does not. Not a single one of them.

Rather, he characterizes Musk’s responses as “salty answer after salty answer” and suggests Musk fans are drawing “hope” from the interview. The best Higgins can do is to say that analysts now estimate Tesla, in 2025, will experience a decline in unit sales relative to 2024.

Seriously, Tim?

III. Robotaxis and Robots

Will Musk be “executing” on building cars? No, as Higgins details, he will not. The car business has become “boring.” Instead, Musk’s focus “is all about ushering in a new era of robotics—driverless cars and humanoid robots.”

A. Humanoid Robots

Except to mention “humanoid robots” one more time, Higgins has nothing more to say about them. Which is a shame, as they are a complete joke, and all the serious companies in the robotics business are amused by Musk’s brazen ability to lie and laughing at the utterly pathetic capabilities demonstrated to date by the “Optimus” humanoid.

Tesla is no more going to develop, never mind profit from, truly useful humanoid robots than I am going to publish a novel that will be compared by critics with Tolstoy’s War and Peace.

B. Driverless Cars

Okay, but what about those robotaxis?

Here, Higgins does a slight bit better. He mentions that Musk has been promising autonomous vehicles for almost a decade. However, Higgins neglects to note the numerous times when Musk swore that next year would finally be the year, only to have next year come and go. All while collecting hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue for the non-existent feature.

It’s the difference between saying Musk is predicting Tesla will eventually have autonomous driving, and saying Musk on numerous occasions has broken his promises about when autonomous driving will arrive. Both statements are true, but the first one (Higgins’ choice) disguises the fact that Musk has repeatedly demonstrated he is not trustworthy.

Higgins also notes that both Waymo and Zoox have put fully autonomous vehicles on the road. That said, why not supply some data: Waymo has furnished more than 10 million paid autonomous rides compared to zero for Tesla, and is now conducting more than a quarter million paid trips each week.

I think I know why Higgins didn’t furnish such data. Because doing so would embarrass Musk. And Tim Higgins, contra Brutus in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, comes to praise Musk, not to bury him.

C. Ignoring a Massive Safety Risk

Higgins mentions David Faber’s recent interview of Musk on CNBC during which Musk reaffirmed “that Tesla is on track to begin offering driverless cars in Austin, Texas, by the end of June.” Tesla will, according to Musk, begin with 10 or so vehicles, but by the end of 2025, will have hundreds of thousands or even more than a million robotaxis on the road.

However, Higgins conveniently omits the part of the interview where Musk said Tesla employees will be remotely monitoring the fleet:

“We’ll be watching what the cars are doing very carefully and as confidence grows, less of that will be needed.”

As Ed Niedermeyer has pointed out, Musk’s statement strongly implies that Tesla intends to attempt “some kind of remote version of its current systems, where tele-operators are waiting to intervene in safety-critical situations.” If that is true, writes Niedermeyer, then the proposed approach is not only “shockingly unsafe,” but also “fundamentally different than how the rest of the industry uses teleoperation.”

Here’s the rest of Ed’s Bluesky thread:

In other words, Higgins ignored the elephant in the room. By Musk’s own admission, Tesla has not yet achieved anything close to the level of autonomous driving capability that would allow for reasonable safety.

Worse, Musk has chosen to compensate for that glaring deficiency by, as Niedermeyer says, doing something that should never be done: involving remote operators in safety-critical operations. Higgins, alas, evinces not the least bit of curiosity about this dangerous workaround.

Another crucial fact omitted by Higgins: unlike Waymo or Zoox, Tesla has eschewed LiDAR and radar, relying solely on vision. Many experts believe this cost-cutting measure forever dooms Tesla to failure, and this very recent video of the crash of a Model 3 using Full Self-Driving suggests those experts are correct.

IV. ‘That’s Good for Tesla’

Why would Musk’s renewed focus on Tesla be “good” for the company? In point of fact, it will be terrible:

• Musk has transformed Tesla from a profitable electric vehicle company to a speculative enterprise whose future depends entirely on breakthroughs in autonomous driving and robotics.

• Musk has staked Tesla’s future on autonomous driving despite having no realistic business model for robotaxis. (In that regard, both Waymo and Zoox remain deeply unprofitable.)

• Musk is about to commence a risky experiment in autonomous driving despite lacking the technology to do so safely.

• Musk has seriously damaged the Tesla brand by allying himself with Donald Trump. Imagine how much worse that damage will become if, as I believe is likely, Trump’s tariff policies reignite inflation, cause shortages, and trigger a recession.

• The president with whom Musk has allied himself is stripping EV purchasers of their tax subsidies and reversing the EV mandates of California and the other ZEV credit states.

• Musk, with his megalomaniac promises (Tesla can be worth $30 trillion!) has endlessly pumped Tesla’s share price to ludicrous levels, meaning the prospect of a massive share price collapse is far greater than the prospect of even a modest increase.

• Musk is determined to get the compensation package that Delaware courts have so far denied him. Texas’s lax corporate law would accommodate such an effort, which would result in a massive compensation expense for the company along with greater dilution for the shareholders.

It seems to me that what would be “good for Tesla” (or, at least, not disastrous for Tesla) would be to fire Musk, completely revamp the board of directors, and hire a new CEO.

Higgins glides over all the damage Musk has done. Instead, he tells us that Musk made “EVs cool and mainstream” and made Tesla “consistently profitable” because in the past he “executed.”

It’s astonishing that Higgins fails to mention that tax subsidies, tax abatements, EV mandates, and other governmental goodies have been indispensable to Tesla’s success, especially given that those goodies are now disappearing.

But never mind all that. Tesla’s future is now autonomous cars and humanoid robots. And for Tesla to succeed in those areas, says Higgins, Musk “just needs to execute.”

Yes, and I can win the Olympic Downhill alpine skiing event. I just need to execute.

V. What’s Going On Here?

What inspires Tim Higgins to write such obvious propaganda? To omit crucial context. To ignore important facts. To never once mention “Donald Trump.”

Curiously, almost contemporaneously with the publication of the Higgins piece, shameless hagiographer Walter Isaacson made a CNBC appearance trotting out the same “Elon is again focusing on Tesla” narrative that Higgins is trying to sell, and stock pumper Dan Ives (whose indulgence by the media is explained only by his garish outfits) began touting the “Elon is back” story while raising his target price to $500.

The seemingly coordinated “Musk is back to work” message, combined with the egregious omissions and Musk-friendly shading in Higgins’ reporting, raises a question for long-time critic, Mark Spiegel, who in tweeting out the headline and graphic at the top of this post, had this question:

Mark could, of course, clean up his language a bit. But I can certainly understand how this latest Higgins piece provokes the question.

1. I recommend the Higgins book, Power Play: Tesla, Elon Musk, and the Bet of the Century (Doubleday, 2021). But for those wanting the definitive history of Tesla, I recommend even more strongly Ed Niedermeyer’s book, Ludicrous: The Unvarnished Story of Tesla Motors (BenBella Books, 2021).

2. It’s amusing to read in the Higgins piece that Musk is now blaming Congressional inaction for the failure of DOGE. Musk evidently has forgotten the Op-Ed piece he and Vivek Ramaswamy wrote for The Wall Street Journal back in November explaining they would use “executive orders to roll back regulations,” claiming that such an approach “is legitimate and necessary to comply with the Supreme Court’s recent mandates.” Forgive me for noting that, responding to that Op-Ed, I wrote that they would accomplish nothing useful without involving Congress, and I was 100% correct.

3. One of the few Trump policies with which I happen to agree, by the way.