[Dormant] Electric Vehicles

Not to be hyperbolic, but this reminds me of when cult members describe the process of them becoming disillusioned with the leader until they finally decide to leave. I'm serious when I say that modern corporations, especially in tech, can often be quite cult like. There is often some charismatic, visionary, larger-than-life personality at the center. Many of the people who work at these companies aren't so much employees as they are disciples. They are members of the leader's cult of personality. Many investors, too. They have fully bought in to the leader's vision, and some will follow their leader seemingly no matter what.

This person even has that kind of wistful tone of a cult member who had to leave the cult because they couldn't ignore the leader's increasingly problematic behavior anymore, but still believes in their vision and wishes things could have turned out differently.

There's nothing wrong with having a vision or wanting to build a better future, but be very, very cautious about any movement centered around a single personality. In the case of Musk, the warning signs have been there for a while. I think the best representation of this was when Musk guest starred on the Simpsons almost ten years ago, and was introduced as "possibly the greatest living inventor!" It was the height of Musk propaganda.

I will never buy a Tesla, so long as the Musk cult exists. I'm sure Teslas are good cars, but I will not support the cult of Elon Musk. He is too dangerous.

I sold the rest of my shares when the robotaxi was announced. Any FSD owner knows that’s laughable. The stock was in a slump and this boost was my cue to exit, stage left. The company has completely lost its way and is now a piggy bank for a fascist. I couldn’t in good conscience keep this company in my portfolio.

It’s gonna sting come tax time, but that means Tesla has made me a lot of money. Thanks Tesla, we had a great thing going but you will collapse under your hubris.

I took part of my proceeds and Yolo’d it at Rivian. Like Tesla years ago, it’s a diluted stock for a company with a good bit of cash, in a battle against time to produce a mass-market desirable car. They seem to have that with the R2 (I have a reservation) and I hope they can pull off the insanely difficult task of scaling successfully. The stock will either go to the moon or zero. The bet has much more upside than downside in my opinion. Also, their CEO hasn’t turned fully evil (yet).