The IT Nerd

The owners of Telsa cars have had their personal data leaked. 404 Media is reporting that a website called DOGEQWEST which is a direct shot at Elon Musk’s involvement in the activities of the Trump Administration has posted what it claims to be a searchable map of the names, addresses and other personally identifiable information of every Tesla owner in the USA. And to make things even more interesting, if you want to call it that, the only way to get your name removed is to prove to the website’s operators that you’ve sold your Tesla.

Now it isn’t clear how accurate this data is, or how this data was obtained. But 404 Media has confirmed that at least some of the data is accurate. On top of that, while the website doesn’t openly advocate violence, the cursor for the website is a Molotov cocktail and it says stuff like this:

Under a heading that reads “Is DOGEQUEST a protest platform?” the website says “If you’re on the hunt for a Tesla to unleash your artistic flair with a spray can, just step outside—no map needed! At DOGEQUEST, we believe in empowering creative expressions of protest that you can execute from the comfort of your own home.”

So clearly this site is meant to twist the screws on Elon by making the brand so toxic that people avoid it and Elon loses money. The thing is that if someone wants to target Elon because they don’t like him or his political views, then they should target Elon and leave Tesla owners out of this. There’s no way that posting personally identifiable information about Tesla owners for any random human that wants to make a political point can be considered to be acceptable. Thus I really hope either the people who run this site have a change of heart (unlikely I know), or they get a visit from a three letter agency. Because this isn’t cool at all.

Last night, Elon Musk held an event called  “We, Robot” which introduced three things:

• Tesla Cybercab: The Tesla Cybercab is a futuristic, fully autonomous robotaxi designed without a steering wheel or pedals, positioned to revolutionize mass transit with extremely low operating costs. It features a sleek design with upward-opening butterfly doors and a compact cabin that seats two passengers. Musk said the Cybercab uses inductive charging instead of a traditional plug-in. The vehicle is expected to cost under $30,000. Regulatory approval will be needed before it can go into production, which is projected to begin by 2026 or 2027. 
• Tesla Robovan: The Tesla Robovan is a dustbuster-shaped electric passenger van featuring sliding glass doors, a bright interior, and carriage-style seating for up to 20 passengers. Pricing and release details were not disclosed. 
• Tesla Optimus: The updated Tesla Optimus robot is a humanoid designed to handle everyday tasks, such as retrieving packages or serving drinks. Optimus walked on stage and interacted with attendees, though its current capabilities are still limited. Elon Musk envisions the robot as a transformative product, with plans to produce millions of units at a price of around $20,000.

The thing is, as much as Elon likes to think he’s the second coming of Steve Jobs, people aren’t buying his act anymore. He’s been promising self driving cars for years, but has never delivered. He has shown off the Optimus robot before, and it did absolutely nothing. The Cybertruck is a truck that fails at doing basic truck stuff. I could go on. Elon has been a vaporware machine for years. And this is reinforced by this text that was tossed onto the screen before the event started:

If you can’t read that, here’s the time stamp via YouTube. In short this whole block of text should be considered “forward looking statements” which is another way of saying don’t rely on anything that Elon says as being fact. That’s a way for Elon to cover his posterior because he’s been burned before for saying stuff that doesn’t happen at all or in the way that he says it will.

All of this isn’t helping the stock price of Tesla:

Clearly the markets are not impressed by this event. Nor should they be. The fact is that Elon Musk is nothing but a grifter. And if he wants to change that perception, he needs to announce products that actually and consistently ship on time and function exactly as promised. For example full self driving needs to happen. The Cybertruck needs to not be a joke. If he does that, maybe he has a shot at being the next Steve Jobs. But until that happens, he’s more akin to being the next Donald Trump. And that’s not good company to be in.

You have to ask yourself why Elon Musk insists on doing thing that make him look stupid. The latest case in point is his trip to the World Robot Conference in Beijing. He brought his Optimus robot to show it off. But according to Gizmodo, here’s what happened:

The World Robot Conference in Beijing was a show floor of wonder last week. Humanoid Chinese robots played the zither, folded laundry, and bested humans at the board game Go. As these modern miracles unfolded, Tesla’s Optimus robot looked on, unmoving, from inside a glass box.

And:

While these machines puttered around, Tesla’s Optimus stared at them from a glass cage surrounded by the company’s electric vehicles. Optimus is a sleek looking humanoid robot but it hasn’t done well in its product demos.

Elon Musk famously unveiled Tesla’s venture into robotics in the summer of 2021 by promising the company would soon put humanoid robots in people’s homes. During the presentation, a stiff looking machine walked on stage with Musk. It turned out it was just a guy in a suit. In a video Musk posted to X showing Optimus folding laundry, someone is just off camera operating the machine remotely.

So in short, while other robots were doing robot things, Elon’s robot did nothing. Likely because it can’t do anything interesting. Or perhaps anything at all. That’s not a surprise from a guy who is famous for playing fast and loose with the truth when it comes to the products his companies make. So perhaps Elon might want to focus on making his products actually work and match what he promises via Twitter rather than showing up somewhere with something that is non functional which makes him look like a liar and a loser. Just a thought.

Tesla has a serious problem. So far this year, their sales have fallen off a cliff. And as a result, Tesla has had to cut prices to get people to buy their vehicles. But clearly that’s not working as unsold Tesla vehicles are piling up at such a rate, that you can apparently see them from space:

So where exactly are all those thousands of Teslas? They’re just sitting in lots. Using imagery from SkyFi, a satellite imagery marketplace, Sherwood was able to discover just where all those Tesla’s are being stored. Images taken of Tesla’s Texas Gigafactory from a random Thursday in October 2023 and a Thursday from March of 2024 show lots around the factory going from partially or nearly full to completely full in some cases.

Tesla is storing vehicles in other places around the country as well it seems. Satellite images from St. Louis’ Chesterfield Mall shows a lot outside the mall being filled with nearly 500 cars. Even the mall here in my own city of Moreno Valley, California has been used to store Teslas; I recently observed a few hundred Model Ys parked outside Sears. So while Tesla is still selling hundreds of thousands of cars, it would seem that the brand isn’t the hot seller it used to be. It makes you wonder how long they’ll keep acting like we don’t notice that they have thousands of unsold inventory piling up.

I think that this illustrates how bad Elon Musk is at running Tesla. While it is true that EV sales have generally slowed for car companies. No other car company has this issue. And some are bucking the trend. Hyundai for example has Ioniq 6 sales up 188%. So clearly the some or all of the blame for their sales issues has to land on Elon’s doorstep. And on top of that, this report could not have come at a worse time for Elon. I say that because he wants a new compensation deal from Tesla which is worth an insane $56 billion. There’s pushback from a huge wealth fund which may lead many others to vote against this pay package. On top of that, there’s word that Elon might quit Tesla if he doesn’t get this pay package. Which many would dance in the streets if that happened given how bad things are at Tesla right now. We’ll find out what is the outcome of that is next week when this pay package comes up for a vote. And I bet that many who will be voting will have images of unsold Tesla vehicles parked in lots in such numbers that they are seen from space in their minds.

Boy oh boy does Elon have a lot of issues at the moment. On top of sacking 10% of Tesla staff because sales have plummeted, then yesterday sacking the team behind the Supercharger network, which has to scare you if you have a Tesla or another EV with an NACS plug, the self driving capabilities of Tesla have come under scrutiny. An organization called The Dawn Project conducted tests on Tesla’s self driving capabilities, and the results were not good. In fact, if Tesla’s full self driving were to take a driving test, it would fail. To make matters worse, according to The Dawn Project, Tesla has not fixed any of these issues, but they also tried to silence them.

Classy Elon. Really Classy.

But we’re not done. The NTHSA has looked in this and said the following:

A comparison of Tesla’s design choices to those of L2 peers identified Tesla as an industry outlier in its approach to L2 technology by mismatching a weak driver engagement system with Autopilot’s permissive operating capabilities.

Translation: Tesla’s self-driving software lacks the necessary safeguards to protect people.

The NTHSA also said this:

Notably, the term “Autopilot” does not imply an L2 assistance feature, but rather elicits the idea of drivers not being in control. This terminology may lead drivers to believe that the automation has greater capabilities than it does and invite drivers to overly trust the automation. Peer vehicles generally use more conservative terminology like “assist,” “sense,” or “team” to imply that the driver and automation are intended to work together, with the driver supervising the automation.

Translation: Tesla’s marketing is kind of playing fast and loose with the term “Autopilot” giving consumers the perception that it is more capable than it really is.

The net result is that the NTHSA is taking another look into Tesla and self driving. And you can bet that this look is going to be far more involved than the last look that the government agency did. Which is a good thing because we all deserve to be safe on the roads. And if you have a company that might be throwing caution to the wind in order to sell cars, that company needs to be held accountable. That likely explains why Tesla cut the price on full self driving and gave away a free one month trial recently. Elon knows that accountability is coming, and it’s coming very soon.

Sucks to be you Elon.

A judge in Delaware just delivered a hard kick to Elon Musk’s ego yesterday by ruling that his compensation scheme at Tesla that should have delivered him $55 billon cannot stand. Here’s the details:

The ruling by Chancellor Kathaleen St. Jude McCormick comes more than five years after a shareholder lawsuit targeted Tesla CEO Musk and directors of the company. They were accused of breaching their duties to the maker of electric vehicles and solar panels, resulting in a waste of corporate assets and unjust enrichment for Musk.

The shareholder’s lawyers argued that the compensation package should be voided because it was dictated by Musk and was the product of sham negotiations with directors who were not independent of him. They also said it was approved by shareholders who were given misleading and incomplete disclosures in a proxy statement.

Defense attorneys countered that the pay plan was fairly negotiated by a compensation committee whose members were independent, contained performance milestones so lofty that they were ridiculed by some Wall Street investors, and blessed by a shareholder vote that was not even required under Delaware law. They also argued that Musk was not a controlling shareholder because he owned less than one-third of the company at the time.

An attorney for Musk and other Tesla defendants did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment.

But Elon Musk being Elon Musk reacted on Twitter:

Then he posted a poll:

Then he threw some shade on the state of Delaware:

I can only conclude that he’s not happy with this ruling. Likely because he needs the cash to float the operations of Twitter which he’s driven into the ground, and as a result is bleeding money. But that’s just a guess. Back to the ruling. Here’s the specifics of why Elon got smacked down:

McCormick determined, however, that because Musk was a controlling shareholder with a potential conflict of interest, the pay package must be subject to a more rigorous standard.

“The process leading to the approval of Musk’s compensation plan was deeply flawed,” McCormick wrote in the colorfully written 200-page decision. “Musk had extensive ties with the persons tasked with negotiating on Tesla’s behalf.”

McCormick specifically cited Musk’s long business and personal relationships with compensation committee chairman Ira Ehrenpreis and fellow committee member Antonio Gracias. She also noted that the working group working on the pay package included general counsel Todd Maron who was Musk’s former divorce attorney.

“In fact, Maron was a primary go-between Musk and the committee, and it is unclear on whose side Maron viewed himself,” the judge wrote. “Yet many of the documents cited by the defendants as proof of a fair process were drafted by Maron.”

McCormick concluded that the only suitable remedy was for Musk’s compensation package to be rescinded. “In the final analysis, Musk launched a self-driving process, recalibrating the speed and direction along the way as he saw fit,” she wrote. “The process arrived at an unfair price. And through this litigation, the plaintiff requests a recall.”

I am not a lawyer, but this sort of ruling doesn’t happen every day. Thus this must be so far outside the bounds of what is considered reasonable that the judge really had no choice but to deliver a ruling like this. Which sucks if you’re Elon as his bank account is one of the things that validates him as human being.

The Tesla Cybertruck is starting to create a lot of negative news now that owners are getting their hands on on them. Hot off the heels of this, comes news that Tesla recommends that you wash the Cybertruck frequently if certain substances get onto the stainless steel body. Don’t believe me. Have a look at this:

That’s just insane. I say that because car manufacturers have spent a lot of time and effort to stop this sort of thing from happening as long as you take care of the vehicle. Meaning you wash it on a regular basis, along with waxing it. I’ve never seen a car that requires you to immediately wash stuff off of it or bad things will happen. Though I will admit that you SHOULD wash your car as soon as you can if a bird poops on it for example. But that’s usually never a today problem as it can likely wait a day or two without anything bad happening.

While I am sure that this is written by a lawyer who is trying to cover Elon Musk’s posterior legally, it really doesn’t put the Cybertruck in a good light. Real truck owners do real truck things with their trucks and don’t give a second thought about having to make sure that it is cleaned immediately if a bird poops on it. It’s another data point that illustrates that the Cybertruck isn’t a rugged as Elon claims it is. Which means that if you’re looking for an electric truck and you do real truck things with it, you should look elsewhere.

Elon Musk owns 13% of Tesla’s stock. But apparently that’s not good enough for him as now he wants 25%. And unless he gets that 25%, he’ll take AI and robotics development outside of Tesla. Here’s the Tweets that brought this to light:

What’s the deal here? Well, Elon loves to play both sides of the AI fence. On one hand he is anti AI as he has said that AI poses an existential threat to humanity as far back as 2018. He’s also been critical of OpenAI (a company that he co-founded by the way). But he’s also claimed that Tesla has been working on AI and he claims that tech will blow the doors off of anything else. I’m mentioning this because I think that AI is acting as a smokescreen for Elon to simply get more control of Tesla. Why does he want more control of Tesla? I don’t know for sure, but the cynic in me says that he’s looking to make up for the fact that he’s sold Tesla shares to buy Twitter as that stock sale had him go from having 22% of Tesla stock to the 13% that he now has. Regardless, I think he has larger issues when it comes to Tesla. Tesla stock has lost nearly $100 billion in market cap since the start of this year. So maybe he needs to focus on that rather than accumulating more Tesla shares.

A reader pointed me towards what seems to be a really dumb move by Elon Musk. Apparently Tesla has removed the Disney+ App from Tesla vehicles in retaliation for Disney not advertising on Twitter. Which in part led to Elon’s very outrageous recent rant that was full of f-bombs and specifically called out Disney CEO Bob Iger. Though I will say that there is some uncertainty around this move. Let me walk through it with you:

Over the weekend, numerous Tesla owners began to report that Disney’s streaming app, Disney+, was suspiciously missing from their vehicles. 

Okay. But like anything that involves Elon, it isn’t that simple:

Other Tesla owners found that the app had also been removed from their vehicle. While others have reported that the Disney+ app is still there.

So what’s going on here? Is it gone or not? This might provide some insight:

According to a report from online electric vehicle news outlet Electrek, a source tells them that Tesla informed Disney that it was removing the Disney+ app last week. Tesla then altered its decision and said it would only remove the app from Tesla vehicles that have never used the Disney+ app before.

Along with this:

According to Electrek, Tesla did not provide Disney with a specific reason for the removal of the Disney+ app, but the message sent by the company was “read between the lines.”

So if I had to guess, Tesla is yanking the Disney+ app from a subset of vehicles to send a message to Disney that not advertising on Twitter is unacceptable to Elon. That really sounds like Elon got his feelings hurt and as a result is lashing out like an upset five year old in a toy store who is mad that mommy and daddy won’t buy him the toy that they want. Honestly, I don’t see this move having a material impact on Disney. But I do see it as adding to the financial crisis of Twitter as it will reinforce why no company should advertise on the platform. Along with creating negative press for Tesla that it simply did not have to create. And finally making Elon Musk look worse than he already does. None of which is good for Elon, Twitter, and Tesla. The question becomes, when stuff like this becomes fatal for all of the above. Especially Twitter who is bleeding cash at the moment.

Elon Musk has a lot of problems right now. And here’s one more that he has to deal with. The Harris Poll has put out their Reputation Quotient, and boy did Tesla take a serious hit. Tesla’s score fell 6.4% to 74.3 out of a possible 100. The only company that I could find that took a bigger hit was BP. As in the company that was responsible for the Deepwater Horizon disaster. But here’s the thing. Tesla was ranked so highly in the previous year’s Reputation Quotient. Meaning that it’s reputation fell more than BP.

So, why would Tesla take such a hit? I’ve got a few theories:

• Elon’s management of Twitter is casting a negative light on Tesla
• Elon’s embracement of the alt-right is casting a negative light on Tesla
• Elon’s lack of focus on Tesla is hurting Tesla
• All of the above

The fact is that from my perspective, it’s Elon’s fault that Tesla’s brand reputation has tanked the way it has. Now while I have always said that Tesla would have the high ground in terms of EVs until traditional carmakers got serious about EVs, I never thought that Elon would simply hand the market over to his competition. Because that’s what he’s doing by behaving the way he is at the moment. Including saying that he didn’t care if his companies lost business because of what he chooses to say.

Well, perhaps he should care as this is sure to influence EV buyers away from Tesla and towards other brands who don’t have an unstable personality as its CEO.