Elon Musk is playing Twitter footsie with the fringe right – The Verge

Elon Musk has always had a certain manic energy on Twitter, but in the past week, his output has taken a more troubling turn. Musks ongoing standoff with Alameda County health officials had inspired him to share a wave of disinformation, something he hasnt backed off from even as much of it has been removed from the platforms themselves. But now, Musk seems to be moving into a more troubling part of the online sphere, and he risks taking a lot of his fans with him.

Last night, Musk tweeted a confusing combination of the rose symbol for the Democratic Socialists of America and the red pill meme, a Matrix reference that has become a touchstone for anti-feminist communities online. Its hard to say what Musk meant by all this, but it was clearly taken as a dog whistle by prominent red-pillers like Mike Cernovich and Infowars Paul Joseph Watson. It was also retweeted by Ivanka Trump, which caused Matrix co-creator Lilly Wachowski to curse both of them out.

Its all very surreal and confusing, and its debatable whether Musk meant to stir any of it up at all. But it fits a larger pattern of signaling to far-right figures that is harder to discount. Since the Alameda fight started, Musk has been a regular fixture in the replies of coronavirus skeptic Alex Berenson and stunt journalist James OKeefe who has also been vocal about the counting of coronavirus deaths. And Musk has spent the past month promoting discredited reports about the dangers of coronavirus, describing shelter-in-place orders as fascist, and dismissing the validity of existing case and death statistics on the viruss spread. Along with Fox News, Musk was an early proponent of the antimalarial drug chloroquine as a treatment for COVID-19, an idea that has been discredited by clinical trials.

None of the tweets are particularly scandalous on their own, and its not as if screwing around on Twitter is some horrible crime (court order notwithstanding). But Musk has been through a lot on Twitter, from the Unsworth Affair to the Securities and Exchange Commission debacle. He knows what it means to his fanboys when he starts talking to another public figure, and he knows how quick that same crowd is to pile onto anyone who tries to call him out on it.

Platforms like Twitter are very fertile territory for a particular kind of huckster who can use the limitations of the medium to sow confusion and build a following. Berenson is building a following this way, and red-pillers like Cernovich and the Infowars crew are running a more advanced version of the same hustle. These hucksters have become surprisingly powerful under President Trump, and it may be that Musk is trying to tap into that, figuring that currying favor with the Infowars crowd will help him keep his factories open. Or it could be hes just spent too much time online and is grateful for all the allies he can get. Still, its weird to see one of the most prominent figures in the tech world playing coy with this sort of thing and for anyone who respects Musks work with Tesla and SpaceX, its an alarming shift.

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Elon Musk is playing Twitter footsie with the fringe right - The Verge

Elon Musk’s friend and a top SpaceX engineer has left the company to join a fast-growing rival rocket startup – Business Insider

A startup that hopes to 3D-print entire orbital-class rockets has picked off a top engineer from SpaceX.

Zach Dunn, the now former senior vice president of production and launch for SpaceX, started out as an intern at the rocket company 13 years ago and most recently reported to founder Elon Musk. But as of June 8, Dunn whom Musk considers a friend will start his new job at Relativity Space.

"Zach made a significant contribution to SpaceX," Musk tweeted on Monday. "I wish him well as he tries something new."

Zach Dunn. Zachary Dunn/Relativity Space Relativity Space is a venture-capital-backed rocket company founded in 2015 by Jordan Noone and Tim Ellis, who are former employees of SpaceX and Blue Origin (Jeff Bezos' rocket company), respectively. The startup has already secured a launch site in Florida and raised more than $184 million, according to PitchBook. Its backers include former Walt Disney executive Michael Ovitz andJared Leto, the "30 Seconds to Mars" rock star and actor.

The company's first big goal is to 3D-print a rocket within 60 days of a customer's order, then use it to launch a payload into orbit.

That rocket, called Terran 1, will stand about 95 feet tall, have 10 engines, and be capable of launching a small to medium-size satellite or other payload into space for about $10 million. The largest size that a payload can be is about 2,750 pounds (1,250 kilograms), or about one Fiat 500 hatchback's worth of mass.

Relativity says the typical lead time for ordering a launch vehicle is about 12 to 18 months, and that Terran 1 will decrease the complexity of a rocket by having 99% fewer parts, since they can be seamlessly integrated into a larger part using proprietary "Stargate" 3D printers.

Relativity Space's rocket factory. Relativity Space

To create such an unprecedented capability, Relativity needs a mastermind to build out and run its "factory of the future" a 120,000-square-foot facility in Long Beach, California.

The company announced this week Dunn would be that person.

"Zach brings immense creativity, audacity, and leadership to a critical piece of Relativity's company vision. He will be instrumental in our goal of developing the factory of the future using large-scale 3D printing," Ellis said in statement emailed to Business Insider.

Relativity knew of Dunn's accomplishments at SpaceX and that he rose through the ranks at the company.

"What wasn't he involved in? At each opportunity Zach would gravitate toward the hardest engineering problems our industry had to offer, and demonstrated success each and every time," Ellis said. "In an organization with some of the very best engineers in the world, this is a feat worth recognizing and we are confident Zach will bring the same success to our 3D printing factory."

Dunn will lead a new division at Relativity called factory development, which a spokesperson said will join two preexisting engineering teams: the launch vehicle development group and the avionics and integrated-software group.

"Initial focus of the Factory Development team is to deliver Relativity's first rocket, Terran 1, to its first orbital launch. After our first successful launch, we will continue to develop the core technologies needed to scale Terran 1 production and beyond," the spokesperson said.

Relativity hopes to launch Terran 1 for the first time in 2021 from Cape Canaveral, Florida, where it's renovating an old military launch site into a modern commercial complex.

An illustration of a Terran 1 rocket by Relativity Space launching from the US Air Force's Launch Complex 16 in Cape Canaveral, Florida. Relativity Space

Relativity is a competitor for SpaceX's small-launch business, which the latter company announced in 2019.

However, Ellis previously said Relativity hoped its 3D-printing technologies would one day join SpaceX on flights to Mars aboard Starship, a towering new vehicle Musk's rocket company is developing, building, and testing at the southern tip of Texas.

"What do you need to make on another planet? We think there needs to be another company focused on this piece of the puzzle," Ellis told Business Insider in 2018. "I would love to launch our factory to Mars and then figure out how to scale and sustain that society very quickly."

This story has been updated.

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Elon Musk's friend and a top SpaceX engineer has left the company to join a fast-growing rival rocket startup - Business Insider

Why Is Elon Musk Tweeting About The Red Pill? – Forbes

Musk just reanimated a dead meme. (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)

Lately, Elon Musks erratic tweeting has been generating headlines, as the billionaire has been calling for America to return to work amidst a global pandemic (wont somebody please think of the shareholders!) and announcing his sons name as X A-12 via Twitter - its still unclear which syllable Musk and Grimes use to refer to their son.

Musks recent Twitter drama was especially amusing, as Musk randomly tweeted to his followers to take the red pill, accompanied by a rose emoji, often associated with the socialist cause.

So, why was Musk referencing The Matrix and making vague political allusions?

Well, the Red Pill has long been used as a metaphor for accepting harsh realities over blissful ignorance, a meme often utilized by the alt-right, who seek to market their unpleasant ideas as the hard truth, rather than deranged incel fantasies which paint women as biologically inferior.

Theres a spectrum of shaky beliefs associated with the Red Pill meme, and its impossible to know what Musk is really referring to, because he deliberately left it open to interpretation. But Ivanka Trump gave a deliriously cheerful response, gleefully acknowledging that she has swallowed whatever bizarre delusion fermenting in the brains of people who unironically use the phrase, take the red pill.

Hilariously, Lilly Wachowski, co-creator of The Matrix, joined the conversation to put both pill-poppers in their place, also sharing a link to Brave Space Alliance, an LGBT social service organization, and encouraged people to donate to the cause.

Its a bizarre, bitter irony that The Matrix, the creation of two trans-women who imbued their own sense of alienation and displacement into the story, has been completely co-opted by the alt-right, who dont even recognize the existence of transgender people.

In The Matrix, the detachment that Neo felt, his suspicion that something was ever-so-slightly off about his world, proved deeply relatable, reaching far beyond the intention of the original allegory.

Perhaps its not surprising that the Red Pill meme proved so popular in the dark corners of the internet; The Matrix highlighted the unreality of modern life, the sense of isolation that our society often induces, the nameless dread that draws so many into believing hateful narratives.

Memes tend to evolve quickly, becoming distorted far beyond their original meaning, and in a sense, it doesnt really matter that the Red Pill was meant to symbolize the brutal reality of gender transition. Sadly, it means something different now.

But whatever Musks intentions, I think we can all agree that it is incredibly embarrassing for an adult to be tweeting about the Red Pill in 2020, a fact recognized by Grimes mother, Sandy Garossino, in a now-deleted tweet that seemed to be directly referencing Musk.

Outdated Matrix references aside, I suppose its somewhat comforting to know that even the rich and famous are losing their minds during quarantine; the relentless boredom is sending us all down some weird online rabbit holes.

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Why Is Elon Musk Tweeting About The Red Pill? - Forbes

The way of the future: Howard Hughes Co. is pitching Elon Musk on a Vegas Tesla HQ – CNET

"Show me all the blueprints. Show me all the blueprints."

Elon Musk, being an outspoken gazillionaire with an interest in engineering, inevitably draws more than a few comparisons to Howard Hughes, aka the guy responsible for the Spruce Goose and the subject of my favorite Martin Scorcese film.

That's why it's funny and a little ironic that he's recently been approached by the Howard Hughes Corporation about moving Tesla HQ to Las Vegas, according to a report published Thursday by ABC News 3 Las Vegas.

So, you might be a little lost at this point. First, Howard Hughes is dead, but his businesses (well, some) live on, and real estate company Howard Hughes Co. is among them.

Why Las Vegas? Well, Hughes spent a significant amount of time in Vegas towards the end of his life and invested heavily in real estate there. His company still owns a good deal of it, including the Summerlin community, which you probably know as a place where rich people with dark secrets were often murdered on CSI.

Now, Elon's tiff with California over its coronavirus shelter-in-place restrictions on businesses is well-documented at this point. Several municipalities have been throwing themselves at him to have either a new Tesla factory placed with them or, to act as a new headquarters, free from California's pesky worker protections and higher costs of doing business.

The Howard Hughes Company's pitch came from current board chairperson Bill Ackman over Twitter -- aka Musk's favorite medium after Soundcloud -- and pitched him on not just Summerlin but also planned communities owned by the company near Dallas and Houston. They even made a sizzle reel to help sell it.

Vegas' mayor pro tem even got in on it, suggesting that the city could name a street after Musk's newest son, X A-12. The levels of thirst on display here are unreal. Can you imagine Google Maps trying to pronounce X A-12 Lane?

Will Musk actually move Tesla out of California? At this point, that's unclear. Doing so would be a massive expense for a company that only now has been able to turn a Q1 profit for the first time in its history, not to mention the logistical headaches. But, if he does, in the end, decide that the Golden State isn't the place for him, he won't be lacking for options in where to go next.

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The way of the future: Howard Hughes Co. is pitching Elon Musk on a Vegas Tesla HQ - CNET

This what it’s like to be Elon Musk’s neighbour – indy100

Elon Musk recently announced hes selling most of his possessions, including the bulk of his property portfolio.

Lucky for residents in California, where two of his homes have now been listed for sale.

According to a new investigation by Esquire reporter Rachel Monroe, Musk is the neighbour from hell.

Or rather, his SpaceX project is.

Helpfully, she also summarised her findings in a Twitter thread and it doesnt paint Musk in a flattering light.

Monroe alleges that a few years ago, SpaceX began moving operations to Boca Chica, a quiet [retirement] community by a wildlife preserve. It didnt stay that way.

Soon there was 24-hour construction, bright lights on site at night and large trucks making noise at all hours.

Since 3 May, there have also been rocket tests happening in the wee hours of the morning.

Residents are warned in advance, says Monroe, by the police arriving around 10pm and informing them there will be tests at dawn.

Which leaves people living within a mile of the site chosen for a test the difficult choice of staying put and hoping the test succeeds or fleeing to another location in the middle of a pandemic.

Despite SpaceXs promises that there would be minimal disruption and a handful of tests, including pledges to rarely force closures of the local beaches, Monroe says the public beach has been made to close constantly this month due to SpaceX testing.

She accused Musk of taking over public resources and the company of essentially lying to residents.

The retirees living in Boca Chica have apparently been told they have to move because SpaceX says its not safe for them to remain there.

But according to a report in Intelligent Living, its actually because Musk is planning to build a SpaceX Village resort, including 100 electronically bookable rooms and regularly planned activities, such as volleyball tournaments, rock climbing, kayaking, and spaceport lounge events and parties.

Monroes thread wraps up with a quote from Musk in 2005, when SpaceX were briefly forced off their site by Lockheed Martin.

Somebody else builds a house next to you and tells you to get out of your house, like, what the hell? . . .

Were going to fight that issue, because it is just fundamentally unfair.

Between the rockets, the Red Pill tweets and his conspiracy theory about coronavirus, could Elon Musk prove to be the worst neighbour of all time?

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This what it's like to be Elon Musk's neighbour - indy100

Tesla Model 3 convertible makes the EV that Elon Musk wont build – SlashGear

Tesla doesnt make a convertible Model 3, but that doesnt mean you cant enjoy the wind in your hair in Elon Musks smallest car as long as you have the budget for it. The Model 3 has already come in for some interesting mods, not least a pickup version, but now one customs company has sliced the top off completely.

Its the handiwork of Newport Convertible Engineering, a company which has made a business out of turning normal cars into cabriolets. Back in 2014, in fact, the mod-shop revealed its Tesla Model S convertible, turning the automakers premium electric sedan into an open-topped model.

Now, its the smaller and more attainable Model 3 thats in line for the circular saw. Gone is the roof and the rear glass; in their place is a fabric soft-top, which folds down onto the rear deck. That way you get to listen to the sounds of nature as you whip through it, without a gas engine to get in the way.

There are some style considerations to bear in mind. Most noticeable is the fact that the B-pillar is still in place, right between the front and rear doors. Thats partly because it allows a brace over the top of the Model 3 convertible, which is presumably needed to maintain stiffness: sedans arent designed to just have the roof chopped off, and can end up twisting disconcertingly if they dont have sufficient reinforcement.

The other issue is that the B-pillars are where Tesla embeds some of its cameras for Autopilot. Get rid of them, and youd lose the all-important driver assistance technology, which is part of the charm of the Model 3.

Then theres the cost. Newport Convertible Engineering says that itll cost around $30,000 to make the conversion, and thats not including the Model 3 itself. Your money only gets you a manual top, too. If youd like a powered hood, thats almost $40,000 on top of the cost of the EV.

Is it worth it? Certainly, youre not likely to see many other Model 3 convertibles on the road. The company says itll take 2-3 months to do the swap, which includes body reinforcement and new trim to work around the cuts.

For most, itll all be more trouble than its worth. Still, theres undoubtedly a market for electric convertibles, though so far weve not really seen many attempts at the category. Teslas upcoming Roadster the release date of which remains somewhat nebulous at this point will have a removable roof panel, and the original Tesla Roadster was a convertible too. Neither could be described as affordable, however.

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Tesla Model 3 convertible makes the EV that Elon Musk wont build - SlashGear

Elon Musk | SpaceX

Elon Musk leads Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX), where he oversees the development and manufacturing of advanced rockets and spacecraft for missions to and beyond Earth orbit.

Founded in 2002, SpaceXs mission is to enable humans to become a spacefaring civilization and a multi-planet species by building a self-sustaining city on Mars. In 2008, SpaceXs Falcon 1 became the first privately developed liquid-fuel launch vehicle to orbit the Earth. Following that milestone, NASA awarded SpaceX with contracts to carry cargo and crew to the International Space Station (ISS). A global leader in commercial launch services, SpaceX is the first commercial provider to launch and recover a spacecraft from orbit, attach a commercial spacecraft to the ISS and successfully land an orbital-class rocket booster. By pioneering the development of fully and rapidly reusable rockets and spacecraft, SpaceX is dramatically reducing the cost of access to space, the first step in making life on Mars a reality in our lifetime.

Elon also leads Tesla, which makes electric cars, giant batteries and solar products.Previously, Elon co-founded and sold PayPal, the world's leading Internet payment system, and Zip2, one of the first internet maps and directions services, which helped bring major publishers, including the New York Times and Hearst, online.

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Elon Musk | SpaceX

Elon Musk v public health: a timeline of the Tesla factory standoff – The Guardian

On Monday 11 May, Elon Musk attempted to fashion himself into a hero of the anti-public-health movement when he dared authorities to arrest him for restarting production at Teslas northern California car plant, in defiance of the local shelter-in-place order. Neither Musk nor anyone else was arrested, but his action placed state and local officials in the difficult position of figuring out whether and how to enforce coronavirus restrictions against a litigious billionaire who is also a major employer.

On Tuesday, his cause gained the support of another hot-headed executive with an overactive Twitter account: Donald Trump. California should let Tesla & @elonmusk open the plant, NOW, the president tweeted on Tuesday morning. It can be done Fast & Safely!

By Tuesday evening, Musk and the local government appeared to have reached a compromise. How did we get here? Heres a handy timeline of what led up to Musks meltdown May:

6 March

On the day that global confirmed cases of Covid-19 surpass 100,000, Musk declares on Twitter: The coronavirus panic is dumb. The tweet sets the tone for Musks approach toward the deadly pandemic, repeatedly downplaying the risk of the virus and opposing public health measures.

11 March

16 March

Six counties in the San Francisco Bay Area become the first locales in the US to order all non-essential businesses to close and require residents to shelter in place. Included in the coordinated public health order is Alameda county, home to Teslas only US car factory, in the city of Fremont.

Musk emails his employees to say that he plans to continue working, signaling that he does not plan to shut the factory.

On Twitter, Musk promotes chloroquine, an unproven treatment for Covid-19 that would become the darling of Fox News and Trump before being largely abandoned amid reports of dangerous cardiac side-effects.

17 March

The Alameda county sheriffs office announces that Tesla is not an essential business and therefore can only maintain minimum basic operations under the public health order. Tesla does not comply.

18 March

Musk tweets that Tesla will manufacture ventilators if there is a shortage. There is no indication that Tesla ever took any steps to do so, though Musk tweets about having a long engineering discussion with the medical device maker Medtronic on 21 March.

19 March

Under pressure from local officials, Tesla agrees to halt production at its Fremont factory by 23 March a week after the public health order.

On Twitter, Musk predicts that there will be probably close to zero new cases of Covid-19 in the US by the end of April. He also asserts falsely that children are essentially immune to the virus.

Californias governor, Gavin Newsom, issues a statewide shelter-in-place order.

23 March

31 March

Musk tweets an offer to ship FDA-approved ventilators to hospitals. The devices turn out to be BiPap machines, which are commonly used to treat sleep apnea, rather than the much more expensive mechanical ventilators that hospitals use to intubate severely ill patients.

Bay Area officials extend their shelter-in-place orders through 3 May.

26 April

Musk promotes a YouTube video by two California doctors using misleading statistics to argue against shelter-in-place orders. The video is removed by YouTube for promoting harmful misinformation, and the doctors are jointly and emphatically condemn[ed] by the American College of Emergency Physicians and the American Academy of Emergency Medicine.

27 April

Bay Area officials again extend their shelter-in-place orders, this time through the end of May. Tesla is forced to call off plans to reopen its plant on 4 May.

28 April

Musk adopts the rhetoric of anti-lockdown protesters in a late-night Twitter rant, tweeting, FREE AMERICA NOW and Give people their freedom back! He also falsely describes the shelter-in-place restrictions as de facto house arrest.

29 April

Musk unleashes another rant during Teslas quarterly earnings call with investors, declaring public health measures fascist and demanding: Give people back their goddamn freedom.

Tesla beats analyst expectations for the quarter, delivering its third straight quarterly profit despite the major coronavirus disruptions.

1 May

Another Twitter diatribe by Musk wipes about $13bn off Teslas market value, after he declares that he plans to sell almost all physical possessions, including his house(s), and then opines that Teslas stock price is too high imo. Teslas stock price drops about 9% following the tweets.

4 May

Musks partner, Claire Boucher, a musician who performs as Grimes, gives birth to the couples first child, a son named X A-12.

7 May

Newsom announces new rules to allow some non-essential businesses, including some manufacturers, in California to reopen on 8 May. He also says that local rules supersede statewide rules, if they are stricter.

8 May

9 May

Tesla sues Alameda county, alleging that the countys continuing shelter-in-place order is unconstitutional.

On Twitter, Musk declares that Tesla will now move its HQ and future programs to Texas/Nevada immediately and threatens to stop manufacturing in Fremont. Musk also attacks the local public health officer, Dr Erica Pan, calling her unelected and ignorant.

County officials say they have been working with Tesla on a safety plan to allow the factory to reopen.

11 May

Tesla resumes production at the Fremont factory in defiance of the public health order. Musk tweets, If anyone is arrested, I ask that it only be me.

Alameda county officials tell Tesla that it is violating the public health order and say they hope it will comply without further enforcement measures.

12 May

Late in the evening, Alameda county announces that it has received Teslas safety plan and agreed that Tesla can begin to augment their minimum business operations this week in preparation for possible reopening as soon as next week. The county says it will work with the local police force to verify Tesla is adhering to physical distancing and that other safety measures are in place.

Musk tweets a photo of an ice-cream sundae with the message, Life should be lived. The photograph was posted on Instagram by a food blogger in 2017 and re-shared by the Italian restaurant chain Buca di Beppo that same year.

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Elon Musk v public health: a timeline of the Tesla factory standoff - The Guardian

Elon Musk’s First Wife Justine Musk Talks Their Messy Divorce

In the late spring of 2008, my wealthy entrepreneurial husband, Elon Musk, the father of my five young sons, filed for divorce. Six weeks later, he texted me to say he was engaged to a gorgeous British actress in her early 20s who had moved to Los Angeles to be with him. Her name is Talulah Riley, and she played one of the sisters in 2005's Pride and Prejudice. Two of the things that struck me were: a) Pride and Prejudice is a really good movie, and b) My life with this man had devolved to a clich.

At least she wasn't blonde. I found that refreshing.

When I first met Elon, I wasn't blonde, either. I was an aspiring writer in my first year at Queen's University in Ontario, Canada, sprung from a small hometown and recovering from a difficult case of first love with the older man I'd left behind. I liked older. I liked poetic and rebellious and tortured. I liked a guy who parked his motorcycle beneath my dorm-room window and called my name through the twilight: Romeo in a dark-brown leather jacket.

Elon wasn't like that. A fellow student a year ahead of me, he was a clean-cut, upper-class boy with a South African accent who appeared in front of me one afternoon as I was leaping up the steps to my dorm. He said we'd met at a party I knew I hadn't been to. (Years later, he would confess that he had noticed me from across the common room and decided he wanted to meet me.) He invited me out for ice cream. I said yes, but then blew him off with a note on my dorm-room door. Several hours later, my head bent over my Spanish text in an overheated room in the student center, I heard a polite cough behind me. Elon was smiling awkwardly, two chocolate-chip ice cream cones dripping down his hands. He's not a man who takes no for an answer.

"Elon's wealth seemed abstract and unreal, a string of zeros that existed in some strange space of its own."

He was a scientific type, at home with numbers, commerce, and logic. I was not the only woman he pursued, but even after he transferred to Wharton he kept sending roses. When he'd return to Queen's to visit friends, I found myself agreeing to have dinner with him. Once, in the bookstore together, I pointed to a shelf and said, "One day I want my own books to go right there." I had said this before to a girlfriend, who laughed and spun on her heel. But Elon not only took me seriously, he seemed impressed. It was the first time that a boy found my sense of ambition instead of my long hair or narrow waist attractive. Previous boyfriends complained that I was "competitive," but Elon said I had "a fire in my soul." When he told me, "I see myself in you," I knew what he meant.

After I graduated, I taught ESL in Japan for a year Elon and I had by then gone our separate ways. Back in Canada I took a bartending job, worked on my novel, and debated whether to go back to Japan or to grad school. One night I heard myself tell my sister, "If Elon ever calls me again, I think I'll go for it. I might have missed something there." He called me one week later.

After graduation, he'd moved to Silicon Valley. He was sharing an apartment in Mountain View with three roommates and building his first dot-com company, Zip2. I soon flew out for the first of many visits. One night, over dinner, he asked me how many kids I wanted to have. "One or two," I said immediately, "although if I could afford nannies, I'd like to have four."

He laughed. "That's the difference between you and me," he said. "I just assume that there will be nannies." He made a rocking motion with his arms and said, happily, "Baby."

Then he took me to a bookstore and handed me his credit card. "Buy as many books as you want," he said. No man could have said anything sweeter.

Two years later two months before our January 2000 wedding Elon told me we had an appointment with a lawyer who was going to help us with a "financial agreement" that the board of his new company wanted us to sign. When I looked at him, he said quickly, "It's not a prenup."

Although I'd been dating a struggling 20-something entrepreneur, I was now engaged to a wealthy one. Elon had sold Zip2, which partnered with newspapers to help them get online, in 1999, the year before, and was worth about $20 million overnight. He bought and renovated an 1,800-square-foot condo: We now had a place of our own. He also bought a million-dollar sports car a McLaren F1 and a small plane. Our day-to-day routine remained the same (except for the addition of flying lessons), and Elon's wealth seemed abstract and unreal, a string of zeros that existed in some strange space of its own. I made uneasy jokes that he was about to dump me for a supermodel. Instead, he proposed, getting down on bended knee on a street corner.

Most of his newfound fortune he rolled over into his second company, an online banking institution, X.com, that later became PayPal (the online payment company). It was this board that was supposedly urging him to get a "financial agreement." What I didn't understand at the time was that Elon was actually ushering me into a period of "mediation," which, I now know, means anything done or spoken is confidential and cannot be used in a court of law. But I had no time to research mediation, or learn that it rarely serves the interest of the less powerful person in the relationship. Years later, I came to learn these things. But two months after our wedding, I simply signed the postnuptial agreement. I trusted my husband why else had I married him? and I told myself it didn't matter. We were soul mates. We would never get divorced. A life without Elon was unthinkable, something I'd realized a few months before he proposed, as we napped together one spring afternoon before a friend's wedding. With my arm slung across his chest, I felt that he was my own private Alexander the Great.

Still, there were warning signs. As we danced at our wedding reception, Elon told me, "I am the alpha in this relationship." I shrugged it off, just as I would later shrug off signing the postnuptial agreement, but as time went on, I learned that he was serious. He had grown up in the male-dominated culture of South Africa, and the will to compete and dominate that made him so successful in business did not magically shut off when he came home. This, and the vast economic imbalance between us, meant that in the months following our wedding, a certain dynamic began to take hold. Elon's judgment overruled mine, and he was constantly remarking on the ways he found me lacking. "I am your wife," I told him repeatedly, "not your employee."

"If you were my employee," he said just as often, "I would fire you."

By the time eBay bought PayPal in 2002, we had moved to Los Angeles and had our first child, a boy named Nevada Alexander. The sale of PayPal vaulted Elon's net worth to well over $100 million. The same week, Nevada went down for a nap, placed on his back as always, and stopped breathing. He was 10 weeks old, the age when male infants are most susceptible to SIDS (Sudden Infant Death Syndrome). By the time the paramedics resuscitated him, he had been deprived of oxygen for so long that he was brain-dead. He spent three days on life support in a hospital in Orange County before we made the decision to take him off it. I held him in my arms when he died.

Elon made it clear that he did not want to talk about Nevada's death. I didn't understand this, just as he didn't understand why I grieved openly, which he regarded as "emotionally manipulative." I buried my feelings instead, coping with Nevada's death by making my first visit to an IVF clinic less than two months later. Elon and I planned to get pregnant again as swiftly as possible. Within the next five years, I gave birth to twins, then triplets, and I sold three novels to Penguin and Simon & Schuster. Even so, Nevada's death sent me on a years-long inward spiral of depression and distraction that would be continuing today if one of our nannies hadn't noticed me struggling. She approached me with the name of an excellent therapist. Dubious, I gave it a shot. In those weekly sessions, I began to get perspective on what had become my life.

"'If you were my employee,' he said just as often, 'I would fire you.'"

We were breathing rarefied air. The first crowded apartment we'd shared in Mountain View seemed like ancient history from our 6,000-square-foot house in the Bel Air hills. Married for seven years, we had a domestic staff of five; during the day our home transformed into a workplace. We went to black-tie fundraisers and got the best tables at elite Hollywood nightclubs, with Paris Hilton and Leonardo DiCaprio partying next to us. When Google cofounder Larry Page got married on Richard Branson's private Caribbean island, we were there, hanging out in a villa with John Cusack and watching Bono pose with swarms of adoring women outside the reception tent. When we traveled, we drove onto the airfield up to Elon's private jet, where a private flight attendant handed us champagne. I spent an afternoon walking around San Jose with Daryl Hannah, where she caused a commotion at Starbucks when the barista asked her name and she said, blithely, "Daryl."

It was a dream lifestyle, privileged and surreal. But the whirlwind of glitter couldn't disguise a growing void at the core. Elon was obsessed with his work: When he was home, his mind was elsewhere. I longed for deep and heartfelt conversations, for intimacy and empathy. And while I sacrificed a normal family life for his career, Elon started to say that I "read too much," shrugging off my book deadlines. This felt like a dismissal, and a stark reversal from the days when he was so supportive. When we argued over the house or the kids' sleeping schedule my faults and flaws came under the microscope. I felt insignificant in his eyes, and I began thinking about what effect our dynamic would have on our five young sons.

In the spring of 2008, eight years after our wedding, a car accident served as my wake-up call. The moment of impact seemed suspended in time: The details of the other driver's face, looking at me in horror as she held a cell phone to her ear, were so clear it was like the distance between us didn't exist. There was a crunch of metal as her car plowed into mine, and when we skidded to a halt, my first thought wasn't, Thank God nobody's hurt. It was, My husband is going to kill me. And in my mind's eye, I could suddenly see myself: a woman who'd gotten very thin, and very blonde, stumbling out of a very expensive car with the front-left wheel smashed in.

I barely recognized myself. I had turned into a trophy wife and I sucked at it. I wasn't detail-oriented enough to maintain a perfect house or be a perfect hostess. I could no longer hide my boredom when the men talked and the women smiled and listened. I wasn't interested in Botox or makeup or reducing the appearance of the scars from my C-sections. And no matter how many highlights I got, Elon pushed me to be blonder. "Go platinum," he kept saying, and I kept refusing.

"I had turned into a trophy wife and I sucked at it."

Not long after the accident, I sat on our bed with my knees pulled up to my chest and tears in my eyes. I told Elon, in a soft voice that was nonetheless filled with conviction, that I needed our life to change. I didn't want to be a sideline player in the multimillion-dollar spectacle of my husband's life. I wanted equality. I wanted partnership. I wanted to love and be loved, the way we had before he made all his millions.

Elon agreed to enter counseling, but he was running two companies and carrying a planet of stress. One month and three sessions later, he gave me an ultimatum: Either we fix this marriage today or I will divorce you tomorrow, by which I understood he meant, Our status quo works for me, so it should work for you. He filed for divorce the next morning. I felt numb, but strangely relieved.

Eight years after I signed the postnup, I began to understand just what I'd done. I had effectively signed away all my rights as a married person, including any claim to community property except our house, which was to be vested in my name once we had a child. But my lawyer is presenting a legal theory that could render the postnup invalid. A postnup, unlike a prenup, requires a complete financial disclosure because of something called "marital fiduciary duty": the obligation of one spouse to be honest and straightforward in financial dealings with the other. Around the time we signed the agreement, Elon was involved in a significant merger between X.com and a company called Confinity. Together, the two became PayPal and raised the value of Elon's X.com stock by millions of dollars more than what he reported on the postnup. Whether this was deliberate or an oversight, according to my lawyer, it could render the contract fraudulent, and thus invalid if it weren't for the protection of mediation confidentiality. That period ended not when we left the lawyer's office or when we got married, but only once we'd signed. The question that will determine the outcome of our divorce case, which has been winding its way through the California legal system for more than two years, is a legal one: Should mediation confidentiality trump marital fiduciary duty, or vice versa? Two years after our separation, we ended up in court. The judge ruled in Elon's favor, but stressed that the case was "a long cause matter" and immediately certified it for appeal. Resolution is at least a year away.

In the months after our separation, I dyed my hair dark and cut it. I also developed a friendship that gradually deepened into romance with a man I'd known casually for years. One night he took me to a reading of Eve Ensler's new play. "This is power-woman central," he said, as we watched Arianna Huffington hold court in the front row. As he pointed out other prominent women in the audience, I realized the kind of social world I'd been living in: The females who populated it were the young wives and girlfriends of wealthy men, or the personal assistants who catered to them. Women disappeared after some point in their 30s, and any female ambition other than looking beautiful, shopping, and overseeing the domestic realm became an inconvenience. Being in that audience, watching that staged reading, I felt myself reclaim the freedom to write my own life.

Although I am estranged from Elon when it comes to the children, I deal with his assistant I don't regret my marriage. I've worked through some anger, both at Elon for rendering me so disposable, and at myself for buying into a fairy tale when I should have known better. But I will always respect the brilliant and visionary person that he is. I also can't regret the divorce (our case was bifurcated, which means that even though the property issues aren't settled, our marriage is legally dead). Elon and I share custody of the children, who are thriving. I feel grounded now, and deeply grateful for my life.

And something unexpected happened: Throughout the divorce proceedings, his fiance and I discovered we liked each other. People were puzzled that I didn't want to poke chopsticks in her eyeballs. "It's kind of like a French movie," observed a friend, and I sent Talulah an e-mail:

I would rather live out the French-movie version of things, in which the two women become friends and various philosophies are pondered, than the American version, in which one is "good" and one is "bad" and there's a huge catfight sequence and someone gets thrown off a balcony.

She responded, Let's do as the French do.

She is, by all accounts, a lovely, bright, and very young person, and better fitted to my ex-husband's lifestyle and personality than I ever was. Although she had dark hair when she and Elon first met, she is now blonder than I've ever been.

Justine Musk is the author of Bloodangel, Lord of Bones, and Uninvited. She lives in Los Angeles with her five sons and two dogs.

Originally posted here:

Elon Musk's First Wife Justine Musk Talks Their Messy Divorce

What would Elon Musk name you? This website may have the answer – Hindustan Times

Elon Musk announcing that his son is named X A-12 Musk created quite an online chatter. In fact, the tech giant, during a podcast interview, also revealed the meaning of the unusual name and how to pronounce it. Now, a creative mind, Richard Reis, has come up with a website which, taking a cue from X A-12, guesses what Elon Musk would have named you if he was your dad.

Reis shared about the website on Twitter and wrote, I just launched the @elonmusk name generator on @ProductHunt! Get your name Elonified. He also announced the existence of the site while replying to a tweet by Elon Musk.

Heres the tweet Reis shared on his profile:

The idea sat well with people and now many are trying to get the Elonified version of their names and the results are very interesting. A few also changed their profile name to the new name the website generated.

Here are some such posts Reis retweeted:

If you are wondering what your name would be, you can see that in a few easy steps. To start with, visit the website https://elon-name.netlify.app/?ref=producthunt. You will have to type your name in the search bar, then press generate and voila!

So, what name would Elon Musk give you?

The rest is here:

What would Elon Musk name you? This website may have the answer - Hindustan Times

Elon Musk reflects Silicon Valley’s ‘move fast and break things’ culture – San Francisco Chronicle

Some might be shocked that Elon Musk had openly defied the local governments shelter-in-place order, a move that helped force the county to allow him to reopen the Tesla factory in Fremont next week, risking the safety of workers and the public to make luxury cars. We arent. While Musks move may be controversial, the attitude behind it is too common in Silicon Valley.

Silicon Valleys foundational ethos is to move fast and break things. When Facebook first made that their motto, Mark Zuckerberg meant to capture his companys, and Silicon Valleys ethos of radical innovation that if you werent moving fast enough to break things, youd be left behind. But weve come to understand that for too many Silicon Valley firms, moving fast means breaking things at other peoples expense. And permission is not necessary.

Musks impatience to reopen the Tesla factory puts workers at unnecessary risk, and could still lead to dozens or hundreds of COVID-19 deaths via community spread. Zuckerbergs impatience about spreading unvetted news and political ads through Facebook has spread misinformation, undermined confidence in the media, and threatened our very democracy.

Startups like Lime flooded San Franciscos streets and sidewalks with e-scooters in the spring of 2018, seemingly overnight. Despite a cease-and-desist letter from the city attorney around unlawful public safety impacts and thousands of citizen complaints, companies continued to operate until the city instituted a permit program balancing mobility and climate goals with safety and public space protections.

Just last week the state attorney general and city attorneys from San Francisco, Los Angeles and San Diego filed a groundbreaking lawsuit against Uber and Lyft, alleging these corporations broke laws regarding minimum wage, paid sick days, workers compensation, unemployment insurance and more.

Uber, Tesla, Google spinoff Waymo and others are competing to put driverless cars operated by artificial intelligence on our streets, with little pause on live testing after fatal accidents. Under the hood of that experiment is the growing question of AI systems being rapidly deployed in health care, hiring, criminal justice, and education with little guidance.

Move fast and break things has made a virtue of disregard for our well-being and safety. And the consequences are particularly disturbing when these things broken are actually peoples lives.

Take, for example, the on-demand independent contractor model embraced by Uber, Lyft, DoorDash and Instacart. In their rush to dominate the market, theyve rejected the employer-based protection of their workers that we expect. Last week, we released the results of a large survey of ride share and food delivery workers in San Francisco, the heart of the gig economy.

We found that the gig economy, a supposed emblem of Silicon Valley entrepreneurship and opportunity, is actually impoverishing drivers. Shockingly, 20% of drivers we surveyed might be earning nothing once estimated expenses are accounted for. And 13% of food delivery drivers use food stamps to feed themselves, 32% reported sleeping in their car and 21% of workers had no health care, despite San Franciscos health care security law.

In this, Silicon Valley has not been so innovative after all, but replicated a common pattern of generating poverty jobs in the pursuit of profit.

What would be innovative is a public health system that eradicates the racial inequities in poor health and vulnerability. Or a food production and distribution system that generates living-wage jobs. Or a reliable public information and voting access system to ensure a well informed and engaged public drives our democracy.

Perhaps it is time for Silicon Valley firms to slow down and stop breaking things, and instead help create a California that works for all.

Chris Benner is director of the Institute for Social Transformation, and a professor of Environmental Studies and Sociology at the University of California Santa Cruz. Kung Feng is executive director of Jobs with Justice San Francisco.

Originally posted here:

Elon Musk reflects Silicon Valley's 'move fast and break things' culture - San Francisco Chronicle

Tesla’s Elon Musk expected to unveil ‘million-mile’ battery later this month – Pocket-lint

Tesla plans to announce a cheaper, longer-life battery for its Model 3 sedan.

The battery will first launch in China sometime later this year, or maybe even early next year, but the goal is for Tesla to bring down the cost of its electric vehicles. According to Reuters, Tesla CEOElon Musk has been telling investors he will reveal more advanced battery technology in late May. He's reportedly teasinga battery that is low-cost and designed to last for a million miles of use.

Dubbed the million-mile battery, it's being jointly developed by Chinas Contemporary Amperex Technology (CATL) and Tesla's team of academic battery experts. The new battery is said to leveragelow-cobalt and cobalt-free battery chemistries, plus chemical additives, materials, and coatings, all of which should help reduce stress and allow the battery to store more energy, longer.

Future batteries, with even better energy density and storage capacity and lower cost, will be rolled out to Tesla vehicles beyond China.

With more than one million EVs capable of connecting to and sharing power with the grid, Musk is also planning to harness Tesla's global fleet so that the company can "achieve the status of a power company" like Pacific Gas and Electric in the US, Reuters said.

Finally, Tesla reportedly plans to use a highly automated battery manufacturing process to cut labor costs and increase production. In fact, it'll use terafactories 30 times the size of the companys massive Nevada gigafactory. Tesla is also looking into using recycled metals like nickel, cobalt, and lithium, and it will use CATL's exclusive, inexpensive way of packaging battery cells.

Add it all up, and Tesla is clearly focused on scalingbattery production and improving the cost per kilowatt-hour of the batteries.

Here is the original post:

Tesla's Elon Musk expected to unveil 'million-mile' battery later this month - Pocket-lint

Elon Musk and Grimes’ Baby Tops This Week’s Internet News Roundup – WIRED

As of this writing, it's been about two months since most of the United States started sheltering in place to slow the spread of the coronavirus, since bars and restaurants closed, since schools closed, since the Covid-19 hospitalization numbers started to rise in New York. It's been a long time, but it's felt even longer. Meanwhile, one-in-five Americans has filed for unemployment since mid-March, and even though the majority of them expect to get their jobs back eventually that eventuality might be pretty far off if people keep crossing state lines to go to restaurants. Speaking of reopening, the White House rejected the Centers for Disease Control and Preventions reopening guidelines because they werent lenient enough. Still, at least drug dealers are being inventive in the face of international lockdowns. But those are just the broad strokes of the last week. What else have folks been talking about online? For starters, all of this.

Ad Infinitum

What Happened: Who could have foreseen that the President of the United States really wouldn't like an ad taking him to task for his Covid-19 response? Oh, thats right, everyone.

What Really Happened: As the coronavirus continues to dominate headlines and control the world, attention continues to be paid to President Trump's response to the pandemic and his administration's handling of it. It's a response that has seen a shortage of coronavirus tests, questionable comments about injecting disinfectant, and a lot of miscommunication on proper guidelines. Then, last week, this ad appeared summing up where things are right now as the result of the Trump administration's efforts.

As explained above, the video came from The Lincoln Project, a political action committee dedicated to, in their words, holding accountable those who would violate their oaths to the Constitution and would put others before Americans. What some people might not know about The Lincoln Project, however, is that its a group funded by a number of Republicans, including Kellyanne Conways outspoken husband, George. For anyone wondering if the president saw it, he did.

As might be expected, President Trumps middle-of-the-night tweetstorm, made headlines, because of course it did. But it also sparked another question: How did Trump even see the ad? There's actually a theory out there about that.

The president's response, however, didn't dissuade those responsible for The Lincoln Project.

The Takeaway: If Trump was hoping his tweets would slow the spread of the ad, they didn't.

Wherefore Are Thou, Task Force?

What Happened: Last week, word started to spread that the Trump administration might wind down the coronavirus task force. Once that word got around, though, the plan shifted.

Read more:

Elon Musk and Grimes' Baby Tops This Week's Internet News Roundup - WIRED

Nobody tells Elon Musk what to do. Maybe that’s the problem – San Francisco Chronicle

The notoriously willful CEO Elon Musk is picking a fight over his companys Fremont plant. Tesla and its workers will be the worse for it.

Owen Thomas | on May 13, 2020

Photo: Gabrielle Lurie / The Chronicle

Tesla has reopened its Fremont car factory in defiance of county rules prohibiting car manufacturing during shelter-in-place.

Welcome back to Tech Chronicle. The attention economy never closed, but I hope this fine newsletter will reopen your eyes to the tech worlds many challenges.

The four words no one in Silicon Valley wants to hear: You cant do that.

In tech, rules arent meant just to be broken, but disrupted, subverted, refactored and routed around.

Why is Elon Musk insisting on illegally restarting production of electric cars at Teslas Fremont factory, when official permission for a safe resumption of manufacturing seems tantalizingly close?

Having studied Musk for decades, I can only conclude that he doesnt like being told what to do, whether its following rules for officers of publicly traded companies or obeying local health orders.

There is some value to his defiance. When Musk invested in Tesla 16 years ago, electric cars seemed hopelessly uneconomical, unsexy, unwanted. Musk ousted Teslas inconvenient founders, took control and with some help from the federal government got vehicles on the road that woke peoples imagination of what might be possible. He forced automakers in Detroit and Tokyo to take electric cars seriously. That the electric car market seems viable today is a real achievement.

Photo: Frederic J. Brown / AFP / Getty Images 2019

Elon Musks showmanship, like his November unveiling of the battery-powered Cybertruck, has helped sell Tesla vehicles.

But its one thing to break unwritten rules, and another to break written ones. That is what Musk is doing by insisting on reopening Teslas car plant before proving to local health officials satisfaction that it can be done safely. (Those who have worked on automotive assembly lines doubt the work can be done at a social distance and wearing protective equipment.)

Musk has 34 million followers on Twitter, and his provocations play well with his base there. But Teslas future car buyers are another matter. The Bay Area is a big center for electric vehicles. Its also a region where local shelter-in-place orders, despite the short-term economic pain, are popular and for the most part voluntarily adhered to. Musks conspiracy theories about the coronavirus pandemic first he doubted the seriousness of the disease, then dismissed the need for protective measures are unlikely to win him new customers outside his current fan base.

Photo: Jae C. Hong / Associated Press 2019

Musks tweets have often landed him in trouble.

Its also unlikely to make recruiting easier. The pitch for working at Tesla is that youre making the world a better place and saving humanity. How does putting co-workers at risk of infection fit into that vision?

Musk has said that hes going to pick up Tesla and move it out of the Bay Area, factory, headquarters and all. For his electric-car rivals, thats an open invitation to start poaching engineers now. Theres no rule against that.

Owen Thomas, othomas@sfchronicle.com

I attribute everything that has gone wrong to coronavirus. Quibi CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg, trying to convince the New York Times that starting a streaming service that doesnt play on TVs is a microbes fault

It would have been Google I/O this week. Oh well. Cisco reports earnings Wednesday, if you want to hear from another videoconferencing vendor thats not Zoom on why theyre not Zoom.

Alex Kantrowitz on Twitters move to make working from home permanent. (Fun fact: Twitter used to have an account for its office called @twoffice that appears to be defunct.) (BuzzFeed News)

Dominic Fracassa on Jack Dorseys donation to the Give2SF fund, which I guess makes up for the money Twitter employees wont be spending locally. (San Francisco Chronicle)

Brian Heater on how the iPhone has become Hollywoods favorite new camera. (TechCrunch)

Tech Chronicle is a weekly newsletter from Owen Thomas, The Chronicles business editor, and the rest of the tech team. Follow along on Twitter: @techchronicle and Instagram: @techchronicle

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Nobody tells Elon Musk what to do. Maybe that's the problem - San Francisco Chronicle

Go read this Wall Street Journal story about Elon Musks personal finances – The Verge

In one of a series of wild tweets posted last week, Elon Musk stated he would be selling almost all physical possessions and that he would own no house. He appears to be actually following through with that promise, as chronicled in a great story in The Wall Street Journal about Musks personal finances that you should go read.

According to the WSJ, despite being worth an estimated $39 billion on paper:

...he has to borrow, sometimes a lot, to pay for his lifestyle and business investments without liquidating shares that help him maintain control of the companies he runs. About half his Tesla stock is pledged as collateral for personal loans, an April 28 financial filing shows. Maintaining his equity stakeabout 20%, or around $29 billion at its current valuationis important for him to keep control over the Silicon Valley auto maker.

Musk also doesnt take a salary at Tesla, but he apparently became eligible for stock options worth more than $1 billion this week. To get that money, he will need an eye-watering $592 million to exercise the option, according to the WSJ. Its not clear if Musk has the money on hand to exercise that option or if the money raised from the house sales will be used to help pay for the sum. Mr. Musk said he wasnt selling his possessions because he needs the money, the WSJ reported.

The article also lists a few times Musk has said hes cash poor. Heres one example:

Before Tesla went public, Mr. Musk told a judge during a contentious divorce with his first wife that he had run out of cash and had taken on emergency loans from friends to support his family and pay living expenses.

Heres another:

Last year, Mr. Musks ability to access cash came up again during a defamation lawsuit over comments he made about a man involved in the rescue of a Thai soccer team from a flooded cave in 2018. A lawyer in the case said in a filing that Mr. Musk had described himself as financially illiquid.

The whole article has a lot of history about Musk, interesting information about his finances backed up by regulatory filings, and numerous quotes from Musk himself, and I sincerely recommend taking 10 minutes to read it in full.

Oh, and if you were wondering the status of Musks houses: he has listed three California mansions for sale and plans to sell four other houses in Bel-Air, according to the WSJ. Once the houses are sold, Musk does not know where I will stay yet, but will probably rent a small house somewhere, he said in an email to the WSJ.

Follow this link:

Go read this Wall Street Journal story about Elon Musks personal finances - The Verge

Elon Musk reveals how Covid-19 has impacted use of Tesla Superchargers – The Driven

Tesla CEO and co-founder Elon Musk has shared an interesting chart that reflects how the various stay-at-home measures to contain Covid-19 across different global regions has reduced use of Tesla DC Superchargers.

Breaking the globe up into North America (NAM), Europe, the Middle-East and Africa (EMEA), China and Asia-Pacific (APAC), the chart shows three very big dips first China, then in tandem, North America and the Europe/Middle Eastern continent (Tesla does not have outlets in Africa, and two only in the ME UAE and Jordan).

The dips in these three regions are significant. China, North America and Europe all saw a dip of as much as 70% from before governments responded to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Notably, Chinas supercharger use saw a 10-week turnaround from when Supercharger use first dipped. Now, it seems more or less back to normal, albeit with what seems to be a monthly peak.

North America and Europe on the other hand have started to recover, going by Supercharger use but still have a fair way to go.

Standing out like an annoying blip is Asia Pacific, where Supercharger use only reduced by about 15%. In the Asia-Pacific region (excluding China), Tesla sells vehicles in Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand.

Tesla Supercharger usage by region pic.twitter.com/1y2zL2Jizt

Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 14, 2020

In response to a breakdown of how the chart could be interpreted (that 1. China is back at around 90%+ of its previous trend 2. APAC barely even flinched 3. North America and EMEA saw almost identical pullbacks to China and to each other and both are starting to recover), Musk replied, Exactly.

Exactly

Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 14, 2020

But there are some deeper takeaways, that perhaps are better explained by the numbers of Superchargers in different regions.

Looking at Teslas own Supercharger map, it is clear to see that there are far larger numbers of Superchargers in North America, Europe and the Middle East, and China.

Therefore, there are more Superchargers not being used, perhaps equating to larger dips in non-use.

From an Australian perspective, while Australia does not have a shelter-in-place order such as in the US, it has had a lockdown on all but essential travel. Of course, Australia (and New Zealand for that matter) is a very limited market both in terms of electric vehicles and Tesla Superchargers so not much impact overall for the Asia-Pacific region.

Other regions in the Asia-Pacific however notably Hong Kong, South Korea and Taiwan did not have shelter-in-place measures as noted by the Japan Times.

With very low infection numbers for Hong Kong and Taiwan in particular (1,041 and 440 respectively according to data collated by John Hopkins), it might be presumed Musk is sharing the chart to bolster his argument that North America be allowed to return to work.

Bridie Schmidt is lead reporter for The Driven, sister site of Renew Economy. She specialises in writing about new technology, and has a keen interest in the role that zero emissions transport has to play in sustainability.

See more here:

Elon Musk reveals how Covid-19 has impacted use of Tesla Superchargers - The Driven

Coronavirus has Elon Musk acting like just another used car salesman – The Guardian

What has happened to Elon Musk?

A highlight reel of the billionaire Tesla CEOs activities since early March includes his pooh-poohing the coronavirus panic as dumb; keeping his northern California factory open in defiance of local public health orders; falsely asserting that children are essentially immune from the virus; providing a giant platform to promoters of an unproven and potentially dangerous treatment; predicting (inaccurately) that the US would have no new cases of Covid-19 by the end of April; attempting to re-open the factory before the end of the local shelter-in-place order; and calling shelter-in-place orders fascist. (Lets not even get into the drama over whether the BiPap machines he donated to some hospitals count as ventilators.)

Musks dissemination of misinformation about the virus is not without consequences

Musks dissemination of misinformation about the virus is not without consequences. He has more than 33m followers on Twitter and a fan base that tends to exalt him as a cross between Tony Stark and God. A recent study published as a letter in the Journal of the American Medical Association Internal Medicine linked his tweet about chloroquine, an anti-malaria drug that was subsequently touted as a potential Covid-19 treatment by Donald Trump, to a dramatic surge in online demand for the prescription medication. They werent aware of it, they werent interested in it they were trying to buy it, John Ayers, a UC San Diego professor of medicine and one of the studys authors, told the Guardian in an interview.

The chloroquine document that Musk shared was an example of what the infectious disease expert Carl Bergstrom has described as quantitative bullshit the use of statistics and data to persuade someone by overwhelming and intimidating them, without any allegiance to truth or accuracy. Last week, Musk was apparently taken in by another pair of coronavirus bullshit artists, this time a pair of doctors from Bakersfield, California.

Drs Dan Erickson and Artin Massihi held a press conference to promote the idea that Covid-19 is much more widespread and much less deadly than what ivory tower figures such as Dr Anthony Fauci have said. Docs make good points, Musk tweeted, with a link to a YouTube video of the 50-minute press conference. (YouTube removed the video for spreading misinformation, but not before it received millions of views; one of the doctors has gone on to make appearances on Fox News.)

The docs did not make good points. After opening his remarks by defining science like a high schooler writing a term paper (What is science? Essentially, its the study of the natural world through experiment, through observation, so thats what were doing) Erickson presented testing data from the chain of urgent care clinics they own. The clinics have performed 5,213 Covid-19 tests and had 340 positive results, which they claimed means that there is a 6.5% rate of infection in the local population. The pair performed the same math (positive tests divided by total tests) on the statewide numbers of 33,865 positive tests out of 280,900 total, to arrive at a 12% infection rate for the state. From there, they calculated that California has had a total of 4.7m infections and calculated that the death rate for people who contract Covid-19 in California is just 0.03% much lower than that of the seasonal flu.

None of this stands up to scrutiny. In order to assume that the rate of infection amongst a small number of people can apply to the entire population, you have to use a random and representative sample. But the people who are getting tested at urgent care clinics in California are neither random nor representative; they are people with severe symptoms or who are performing certain essential jobs. Figuring out the actual infection rate across the broader population will require careful sampling that avoids this selection bias.

The Bakersfield duo used their meaningless numbers to argue that shelter-in-place orders must be lifted a position that Musk clearly also holds. (In an extraordinary joint statement, the American College of Emergency Physicians and the American Academy of Emergency Medicine jointly and emphatically condemn[ed] the pair, and suggested they were releasing biased, non-peer reviewed data to advance their personal financial interests without regard for the publics health.)

The issue is not that Musk has staked out a contrarian stance on the coronavirus. There are difficult debates that need to be had over how and when to restart the economy in order to minimize long term economic harms and maximize public health. We can and should have that discussion, and we should do it without impugning the moral character of everyone who argues for a faster loosening of restrictions.

But its increasingly difficult to take Musk seriously when he makes his argument by cherry-picking numbers or relying on blatant misuse of data. Please, make your case, but make it using real facts, and not by playing fast and loose with numbers in an effort to mislead the public about what is actually happening. Otherwise you look and sound a lot less like the brilliant engineer and entrepreneur, and a lot more like just another used car salesman.

See the article here:

Coronavirus has Elon Musk acting like just another used car salesman - The Guardian

Elon Musk: A timeline of his comments during the coronavirus outbreak – Business Insider – Business Insider

Throughout the coronavirus pandemic in the US, Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has been outspoken about his thoughts on everything from ventilator shortages to possible treatments to the severity of the virus overall.

Now, Musk has gone a step further, calling US shelter-in-place orders "fascist" during a brief, expletive-laden rant during a conference call following Tesla's first-quarter earnings report on Wednesday.

Musk has a history of speaking out during times of crisis. In 2018, for example, Musk offered to build a "kid-size" submarine to rescue 12 boys and their soccer coach stuck in a flooded cave in Thailand. When a British diver called Musk's actions a "PR stunt," Muskcalled the diver a "pedo guy" in a since-deleted tweet. (The comment sparked a defamation lawsuit, but Musk has since been cleared).

He's also frequently shared his thoughts on everything from Tesla short-sellers to the media, and has landed in hot water over erratic tweets like his "funding secured" fiasco in 2018.

But as the coronavirus crisis continues to affect the US and the number of confirmed coronavirus cases in the country has surpassed 1 million, Musk's recent behavior has been scrutinized. Government officials have reportedly questioned whether Musk delivered the number of ventilators he promised, and everyone including Ariana Grande's mother and Musk's own fans have called his statements on reopening the economy "irresponsible."

Here's a timeline of Musk's behavior throughout the coronavirus crisis.

Read this article:

Elon Musk: A timeline of his comments during the coronavirus outbreak - Business Insider - Business Insider

How Elon Musk Became Elon Musk: Elon Musk’s Early Years

Visionary entrepreneur Elon Musk is the co-founder of PayPal (PYPL), Tesla Motors (TSLA), and SolarCity (SCTY),and is the founder of SpaceX. His astounding success has given rise to comparisons of Musk andSteve Jobs, Howard Hughes, Henry Ford, and Bill Gates. Amid an often difficult childhood, Musk developed a relentless work ethic (he is known to work as many as 80 to 100 hours per week) and a tenacious single-minded vision.

On September 7, 2018 Musk appeared to be smoking marijuana while interviewing for a podcast. Coupled with the exit of Tesla's head of human resources and chief accounting officer, that news saw the stock drop in trade. This was just another addition to the string of bad news for the company, including a shareholder lawsuit against Musk and the company for his infamous tweet on August 7.Musk had tweetedthat he is considering taking Tesla private. The company later decided against the move.

We look at the early life and education of the man behind a string of companies that have disrupted multiple industries.

Elon Reeve Musk was born in 1971in Pretoria, one of South Africa's three capital cities. His father was an engineer and his mother was a model and nutritionist. He is the oldest of three children in an ambitious family. His brother Kimbal Musk is currently a venture capitalist and environmentalist. His sister Tosca Musk is an award-winning producer and director.

After his parents divorced when he was a child, Musk lived mostly with his father. Musk started school a year early, attending the private Waterkloof House Preparatory School and later graduating from Pretoria Boys High School. He read voraciously and was also an avid fan of comics. Self-described as a bookworm and something of a smart aleck, he was bullied in school and withdrew to his books at the expense of his social life.

At the age of 10, Musk was introduced to computers with the Commodore VIC-20. He quickly learned how to program and at the age of 12 sold a game called Blastar to Spectravideo for $500.

In one telling incident at that time, Musk, along with his brother, planned to open a video game arcade near their school. Ultimately, their parents nixed the plan. But apparently the only thing stopping them was the need for a city permit which had to be applied for by an adult.

Musks intellectual aptitude did him few favors as a child. He found few friends in the tough-minded Afrikaner culture he encountered in school.

"I had a terrible upbringing. I had a lot of adversity growing up. One thing I worry about with my kids is they don't face enough adversity," he would later say in an interview.

Musk attended the English-speaking Waterkloof House Preparatory School, and later graduated from Pretoria Boys High School. The years were lonely and brutal, from his descriptions.

They got my best friend to lure me out of hiding so they could beat me up. And that hurt, Musk said. For some reason they decided that I was it, and they were going to go after me nonstop. Thats what made growing up difficult. For a number of years there was no respite. You get chased around by gangs at school who tried to beat the (expletive) out of me, and then Id come home, and it would just be awful there as well.

If there was a point of bright escape for Musk; it was technology. When he was only 10, he became acquainted with programming via the Commodore VIC-20, an inexpensive home computer. Before long, he had become proficient enough to create Blastar a video game in the style of Space-Invaders. He sold the BASIC code for the game to a magazine called PC and Office Technology for $500.

At 17, Musk moved to Canada to avoid serving in the South African military, whose main duty in the late 1980s was enforcing apartheid. He would later obtain Canadian citizenship through his mother.

After emigrating to Canada, Muskenrolled inQueen's University in Kingston, Ontario. It was there that he met Justine Wilson, an aspiring writer. They would marry and have five sons together, twins and triplets, before divorcing in 2008.

After two years at Queen's University, Musk transferred to the University of Pennsylvania. He took on two majors, but his time there wasnt all work and no play. With a fellow student, he bought a 10-bedroom fraternity house, which they used as an ad hoc nightclub.

Musk graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Physics, as well as a Bachelor of Arts in Economics from theWharton School. The two majors speak to the direction Musks career would take later, but it was physics that made the deepest impression on his thinking.

(Physics is) a good framework for thinking, hed later say. Boil things down to their fundamental truths and reason up from there.

Musk was 24 years old when he moved to California to pursue a PhD in applied physics at Stanford University. With the internet exploding and Silicon Valley booming, Musk had entrepreneurial visions dancing in his head. He left the PhD program after just two days.

In 1995, with $28,000 and his younger brother Kimbal at his side, Musk started Zip2, a web software company that would help newspapers develop online city guides. The company got bought out, and Musk used his Zip2buyout money to create X.com, which he intended to shape into the future of banking. X was merged with a company called Confinity and the resulting company came to be known as PayPal. Musk was then ousted from the company before it wasbought by eBay.

After PayPal slipped away, Musk helped generate funding for an electric car startupcalled Tesla. You probably know the rest.

His early interest in reading philosophy, science fiction, and fantasy novels is reflected in his sense of idealism and concern with human progress. He aims to work in the areas he has identified as crucial to our future, specifically the Internet, the transition to renewable energy sources, and space colonization. With his work with PayPal, Tesla Motors, SolarCity, and SpaceX, he has defied critics and made advances in all three of these frontiers. (See also4 Real-Life Tony Starks.)

Read more:

How Elon Musk Became Elon Musk: Elon Musk's Early Years

A lot of exciting news: Elon Musk reveals just how far ahead of the game Tesla is now – The Driven

A number of significant tidbits of information came forth from Teslas first quarter earnings report for 2020, which added together have confirmed just how far Tesla is ahead of the electric vehicle game.

Not least is the fact that the Californian auto maker has posted a modest but still positive $US16 million ($A24.5 million) profit, even amid the economic challenges of the Covid-19 pandemic which has seen Teslas Model 3 factory in Fremont, Alameda County, shut down by government order to help contain the spread of the highly contagious virus.

Musk is railing against the extension of closures, going so far as to call the stay-at-home measures fascist during the companys earnings call, but Tesla has fared better than fellow car makers Ford and GM and other auto makers have also faced factory closures, as noted by Giles Parkinson on Thursday.

Exactly

Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 1, 2020

While Musks opinions on how to get back to a flourishing economy as the pandemic seemingly comes under control in some US states have divided many, one thing is clear: following Musks vision, Tesla has already put itself in a position to ride the waves of the crisis.

And car makers are reportedly worried. CleanTechnica author Alex Voigt last Sunday shared on Twitter comments made by VW boss Herbert Diess in an internal meeting that Teslas autonomous driving systems was giving him a headache.

500,000 Teslas function as a neural network that continuously collects data and offers the customer a new driving experience every 14 days, with improved features,Diess was quoted as saying by Voigt.

No other automaker can do that today.

Diess showed his Top Managers a graph illustrating Tesla 2 times as high stock market valuation & explained Tesla did do that despite all the valuable brands like Porsche, Audi, Bentley..

Diess concluded his confidence Tesla to increase volumes

"We still have a long way to go."

Alex (@alex_avoigt) April 26, 2020

Tesla, which has just released its latest Full Self Driving feature the ability to detect and stop at traffic lights and stop signs will soon be collecting data from 1 billion intersections a month as the feature is rolled out across markets, giving the company access to far more valuable and voluminous information about autonomous driving as drivers effectively label objects for Tesla as they drive.

No wonder car makers are worried.

Autonomous driving aside, other developments shared by Musk during the Q1 2020 earnings call also reveal Teslas strong hand.

Learnings from the ramping of production of Teslas first mass-volume electric car, the Model 3, have afforded the car maker the opportunity to leapfrog ahead of its own production schedule for its next mass-volume vehicle, the Model Y.

First deliveries of the Model Y began a full three months ahead, and Musk reported that it is now Teslas first vehicle to become profitable in its first quarter of production, with more Model Ys produced in its first quarter than were Model 3s in its first two quarters.

Thus the Model Y ramp has been even faster than the Giga Shanghai ramp, said Musk. In other words, we are ahead of the schedule that we were ahead of already.

Both profits and Teslas ability to ramp production quickly can be attributed to the incremental efficiencies Musk has spoken about in past earnings calls, and which for the Model Y have been partially revealed by auto engineering expert Sandy Munro as he bit by bit tears down a Model Y to reveal cost cuts and improvements.

One significant improvement noted by Munro is the Model Ys octovalve (see video at the bottom of this article), a key component of the Model Ys heat pump which replaces the Model 3s resistive heating system.

We also introduced a revolutionary new heat pump which allows the [Model] Y to have better range, said Musk, adding that it makes the Model Ys driving range slightly better than Model 3 despite being a bigger car that weighs more.

Other efficiencies are in the works for the Model Y, says Musk, including a single piece casting for the rear third of the Model Y body that will also reduce the weight, cost and noise/vibration of the Model Y.

The Model 3 has not been left out of the picture, as Tesla continues to work towards localisation of parts in Shanghai, allowing it to drop the price of the made-in-China Model 3 to RMB291,800 ($A63,859 converted) so that Chinese drivers can access the countrys new energy vehicle subsidies.

Last but by no means least in the vehicle department came another announcement from Musk that the Model S is now capable of 400 miles (643km) driving range, although according to Musk the EPA scored its official rating at 391 miles due to user error.

The real Model S range is 400 miles, but when we took the last EPA test unfortunately the EPA left the car door open and the keys in car overnight so the car lost 2% range, he said.

To be clear, for the Model S for the past two months, the true range has been 400 miles.

Which leads to a final but possibly the most significant announcement from the Tesla Q1 2020 call: that with Battery Day is now slated for the third week of May, either in California or Texas depending on Covid-19 restrictions, and the latter location is a nod to an announcement expected in weeks around what may now be known as a Tera-factory.

There will be a lot of exciting news to tell, Musk said. It will be one of the most exciting days in Teslas history.

Bridie Schmidt is lead reporter for The Driven, sister site of Renew Economy. She specialises in writing about new technology, and has a keen interest in the role that zero emissions transport has to play in sustainability.

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A lot of exciting news: Elon Musk reveals just how far ahead of the game Tesla is now - The Driven