Open letter to Elon Musk

Dear Mr Musk,

I thought I take this opportunity to thank you for keeping me puzzled as well as amused with you tweets and other statements, not least your announcement to your ‘friends’ at the SEC that you now are the Technoking of Tesla while your CFO is now known as Master of Coins. I am not sure though the bureaucrats in New York will see the funny side of it.

First there is Tesla. I mean I am all in favour of saving the environment and electric cars, but, quite honestly, from what I hear and read your cars are not that well built and you just had to recall 150’000 of them to replace a microchip which could make the screens of your vehicles go blank, which I suppose is somewhat annoying when you’re hurtling down a motorway at 70 mph. And in comparison with the traditional car manufacturers you sell not that many vehicles (this may actually be positive since they don’t seem to be that reliable), which makes me kind of wonder how you can justify the lofty share price of Tesla, although I concur that this probably rather pleases you, having made you billions in the process and, for a short while at least, the wealthiest man on the planet.

Then there is Bitcoin: you bought loads for Tesla, which obviously made the price shoot up even more, only to tweet a week later that you thought the price of a Bitcoin was a bit high and promptly Bitcoin fell. Let alone the more recent collapse, which, I hasten to say, is not only your fault, but also the results of comments from government officials and central bankers from Beijing to Washington. You remember your previous troubles the SEC had with your tweets? Admittedly, the $20 million fine you had to pay back in 2018 must feel like small change to you, but count yourself lucky that Bitcoin is not regulated, because that’s exactly the sort of communication which gets you into hot water again. So what is now your actual opinion? Hand on heart: should I buy Bitcoin or not? And If I do buy, will you give me some advance warning before you make fun of it in your Saturday Night Live show, so I can sell before the price drops after you made fun of Dogecoin in your show? Should I give you some of my hard earned dosh to manage for me?

Doesn’t it strike you that your foray into Bitcoins is tarnishing Tesla’s ESG credentials? The amount of electricity used each year to mine new Bitcoins is higher that the electricity consumption of many countries. The University of Cambridge came up with a really interesting real-time estimate of the total electricity load and consumption of the Bitcoin network. So while your cars may be environmentally friendly, investing in Bitcoins hardly is.

And since I am mentioning all things digital, why did you offer to sell one of your tweets as a NFT (nun-fungible token)? And when some in my opinion crazy investor offered you $1 million for it you got cold feet and withdrew the offer? did you get scared you might have to part with another tidy sum in fines to the authorities? But then maybe it’s just a bit of friendly competition at home, since your romantic partner Grimes has recently sold some $6 million worth of her own digital artwork. In any case, it took the spotlight off yet another crash of one of your cars in Detroit, with the authorities apparently investigating whether it was driver error or linked to the autopilot feature which isn’t really capable of driving the car itself.

That brings me to the FSD (Full Self-Driving) capability: looking at the statistics over the past few years, there is no doubt, your autopilot has got better over time. But while Tesla is saying it’s safer to drive with the feature enabled, an article in Forbes magazine last October disagrees on the basis that your tests involve mostly motorway driving, something which for most of us is quite unrealistic. But then it seems that Tesla officially only endorses the use of the autopilot on motorways, however it seems not all your drivers are aware of this. Maybe your cars should come with an appropriate health warning, such as cigarettes: The FSD-feature of this car can damage your health (or even end it)!

In a recent survey, 37% of Americans have made personal investments based on one of your tweets and 48% of respondents who know of you said you were a genius, while a further 7% called you something much less flattering. Quite frankly I can see where both camps are coming from. But you’re certainly a particularly smart cookie, as probably no-one else could get away with all these antics.

Antics such as selling most of your possessions: Sorry, I am not interested in moving to Bel Air (at least not yet), and the price tag of your houses are way out of my league, but when are you going to arrange a garage sale of all your other stuff ? who wouldn’t want to own a hanky pre-owned by you? Or a pair of socks? Or your used sneakers? On the other hand it seems Grimes wasn’t best pleased with the idea. I can tell you, having been married for 23 years, the woman usually wins, or, if you want peace and quiet, at least make her believe she has won.

So, I suppose that’s it from me for the time being. But do keep these tweets coming, Sir, as they keep us puzzled and entertained at the same time, just maybe better not while driving a Tesla.