Elon Musk is a FRAUD

I'm sick and tired of Elon Musk and his most recent exploits with the Thai cave rescue just solidified my belief that he is a fraud.  Look, I get he is an amazing entrepreneur, smart, and does a lot for future looking engineering.  But, he is just out of hand at this point.

For those who don't know the story, Musk designed some ridiculous child-sized submarine and brought it to Thailand to use for the rescue of the trapped soccer team in the cave.  It was not used because it was not practical.  Chiang Rai Gov. Narongsak Osotthanakorn, the head of the rescue efforts, said of the device: 

"Even though their equipment is technologically sophisticated, it doesn’t fit with our mission to go in the cave."

The device: 

Chalk that up as a failure for Musk.

My overall problem with Musk is that he tweets out ridiculous ideas and plans and everyone gets all fired up about it, and there is ZERO follow through.

Case One: The HyperLoop
This is his big plan to shoot people in tubes at high speeds around the country like some Futurama bullshit or whatever.  

Cool idea.  Hasn't happened yet.  He tried to outsource the pod design to students in a competition, then got cucked big time by an unaffiliated company, Hyperloop One who had a successful test before him.  Then, he tweeted he had government approval to build NYC to DC hyperloop, of which no government officials knew anything about.  Classic fraud move right there.

Case Two: The Boring Company

This one is his plans to build a tunnel network around the country like a bunch of mole people to solve traffic.  To show his commitment, he dug a glorified pit on his SpaceX property then left it because it was economically unfeasible.  Then he sold hats and flamethrowers and called it a day.  Visionary stuff right there.

Case Three: Tesla

This is more of a stretch but I can still rip him here.  As of know he has only succeeded in making very expensive, niche market cars that are cool, yeah, but again not practical.  I am no literary analyst but I am sensing a theme.  His attempt at a mass market car, the Model 3 has been wrought with failure.  It took him forever to hit the 5k a week production goal he set early on, yet people compare him to Henry Ford!  One of the goats of industrialism! Musk doesn't even sniff the category Ford is in.  How did he hit this goal, you ask? From CNBC:

 "Unnamed employees told Businessweek they were asked to walk through raw sewage that had spilled on the factory floor in order to "keep the line going." The factory also provided free Red Bull energy drinks to battle exhaustion, fueling a zombie-like trance they called the "Tesla stare," 

Not to mention  "One analyst, Efraim Levy of CFRA Research, wrote to clients that he does not believe the rate of 5,000 Model 3s per week is operationally or financially sustainable". (CNN Money ) 

Also, Tesla has only had two profitable quarters in eight years and is swimming in debt.
The stock has a had a pretty poor year relative to the market.

Case Four: SpaceX
Ah. The creation that will save our Earth and colonize Mars.  This is probably the Musk brand I have the least problem with besides Paypal (for obvious reasons) and maybe OpenAI.  Fairly successful.  I mostly want to use one example of Elon being completely ridiculous to further my point he is a posturing scrub.  It is the time he launched a Tesla Roadster into space while David Bowie's "Starman" played on the car stereo for the mannequin.  

He just seems more concerned with being cool STEM future guy and not actually doing anything.  I hate having to rag on Elon Musk because I am a big technology guy and am hoping to get bailed out by future technology for a lot of things.  I am just tired of people telling me Musk is the most intelligent person on the planet and he is a visionary and blah blah blah.   This doesn't even get into how he cries like a baby on Twitter anytime he gets criticism.  Until he starts delivering on all these high-tech promises, he is a FRAUD.

-Crockpot