Hopefully now that Musk is no longer dabbling in politics (and alienating his electric car buyers, who are mostly Democrats), his rockets will stop exploding.

Edit so being distracted was a net benefit for Tesla and Spacex? Down voters have not addressed this assertion, must be true.

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platevoltage 4 days ago | parent | next [-]

He has never stopped dabbling in politics. He just finally realized that doing it behind the scenes like his peers do is the best way to do it. It's insane that he thought doing it the other way would be good for him.

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HarHarVeryFunny 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Surely anyone who has bought a Tesla since he did start meddling in politics is a Republican.

Before that, I'd assume it was mixed - I think people were buying because EVs were seen as futuristic, and there was non-partisan support for Musk when his main association was visionary rather than political/nutjob.

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r3trohack3r 4 days ago | parent | next [-]

I suspect this is net good for the EV space at this point in history.

Tesla was a virtue signal brand from day one[1]. Their core insight came from Palo Alto et. al. You’d drive through the suburbs and many driveways had two vehicles: a [insert gas guzzling luxury vehicle] and a Prius. One vehicle to signal wealth/status - the other to signal environmental consciousness. But the eco vehicle was a compromise; compared to the jaguar it sat next to, it was a clunker.

Tesla’s GTM strategy was that you could buy a vehicle, without compromise, from them to signal to your social circles how much you cared about the environment. And it worked.

They broke the oil cartels with a direct to consumer sales strategy and kicked off the EV market.

But now that market’s needs are well met. The eco virtue signal crowd has multiple vendors selling decent products to meet their buying preferences.

There is a fairly large untapped market though that won’t convert off of oil. That demographic overlaps well with the 2025 MAGA coalition. And, with Elon’s involvement in that coalition, Tesla EVs are now a new virtue signal for a new demographic.

You have people buying EVs that were rolling coal as recently as 2 years ago.

[1] The brand being built around eco virtue signaling is well documented in early interviews with original founders - a quick search will turn up many direct quotes talking about them driving through California suburbs doing market research and discovering exactly that.

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HarHarVeryFunny 4 days ago | parent [-]

It seems to me it was the Roadster that kick-started Tesla by making electric sexy and desirable - high performance and expensive rather than something low performance bought for ideological/eco reasons. The Tesla model S which followed wasn't cheap either, and also emphasized high performance with the dual motor and plaid options. These seem more like wealth signalling than virtue signalling.

	▲	r3trohack3r 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		Yes - the originals were luxury cars built for wealthy people to virtue signal environmental consciousness. They were meant to fit in next to the other luxury cars in those driveways - where the Prius did not.

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kcb 4 days ago | parent | prev [-]

The vast majority don't require the CEO of a companies politics to match theirs when buying a vehicle.

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sephamorr 4 days ago | parent | next [-]

The vast majority of CEOs keep quiet about their politics so it doesn't become a problem.

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mikeyouse 4 days ago | parent [-]

Also, the CEO of Ford or BMW or whoever makes $10M or $20M or whatever and that’s basically the end of the story. Musk owns such an enormous portion of Tesla still that boycotts materially impact his net worth and his future ability to buy as much political clout.

	▲	LanceJones 4 days ago \| parent [-]
		~17% I believe?

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whycome 4 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Look how far VW has come

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AngryData 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I would think the best way to keep SpaceX rockets from exploding is to get Musk as far away as possible from any engineering decisions. I firmly believe that SpaceX has only done as well as it has because the engineering is so far above Musk's knowledge that actual aeronautical engineers can do what they do and throw some technobabble at him to shut him up when he suggests dumb thing.

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simonh 4 days ago | parent | next [-]

Multiple current, and more significantly former SpaceX engineers have confirmed Musk was the driving force behind the engineering decisions that lead to reusability for Falcon 9.

He’s also been very much in the driving seat on engineering for Starship, and we’ve yet to see how well that works out, but the success of F9 is there to see.

	▲	AngryData 4 days ago \| parent [-]
		There are also stories from engineers at both SpaceX and Tesla that they do everything possible to keep him away from any engineering decisions because he doesn't know what he was talking about. His brainchild of the cybertruck was suppose to be a monolithic bent stainless steel shell that he spent years trying to accomplish and fired many engineers over who said it wouldn't work, and we see how that turned out with strips of low quality stainless glued onto aluminum parts that are suppose to be load bearing with a regular steel undercarriage that will still rust away.

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ACCount37 4 days ago | parent | prev [-]

The whole notion that "Musk doesn't know anything about technology or engineering" is incorrect. Probably stems from all the people trying to reconcile their hatred for Elon Musk with SpaceX's outstanding successes.

Quite a few major engineering decisions at SpaceX go all the way to Elon Musk himself. One of the best known is probably the decision to make Starship land onto the "chopsticks" of the launch tower, removing the need for dedicated landing legs.

Elon Musk made this suggestion back in 2020. Most of the engineers tried to talk him out of this crazy idea. So he took the few engineers who thought it was plausible and assigned it to them.

We even know for certain that this wasn't a success that got attributed to Musk after the fact - because this story was first printed in a biography in year 2023, when it wasn't clear whether this ambitious landing method would work in practice. The first "return to launch tower" attempt was only made in year 2024, and succeeded on the first try.

	▲	AngryData 4 days ago \| parent [-]
		Musk has no engineering degrees, has never worked in any engineering capacity, has no patents under his belt, and has constantly run into engineering blunders directly attributed to his lack of understanding in SpaceX and all his other businesses. I think you are delusional if you think Musk has any more engineering knowledge than a highschooler with a B in science, nothing he has ever said or done has shown otherwise. On top of that I have seen numerous stories out of SpaceX itself that Elon has to be distracted away from anything important because he thinks he knows better than people with decades in aeronautical engineering.

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actionfromafar 4 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Sure, but if there’s any correlation it’s probably better that he’s absent. SpaceX has competent leadership in Shotwell.