Elon Musk Had an Extremely Hardcore Week
Reading Time: 6 minutesThings happened at all of his businesses. Most of them were not good., Elon Musk’s extremely hardcore week at Twitter, Tesla, and SpaceX.
Elon Musk has had the kind of week he might call ‘extremely hardcore.’
Let’s start with the one development that’s positive for just about everyone: Thousands of Tesla’s charging stations will soon be accessible to non-Tesla electric vehicles. The carmaker has 40,000 ‘Superchargers‘ positioned alongside highways in all 50 states and the District of Columbia; these can charge Tesla models’ batteries in just a half-hour, but can’t be used for other electric cars, thanks to a plug shape and outlet exclusive to Tesla. This presented a disadvantage both to the auto manufacturers now playing EV catchup as well as to the Biden administration’s ambitious climate and clean-car mission. While more Americans are buying EVs in startling numbers—especially newer models not manufactured by Tesla—worries over these cars’ range capabilities, as well as the cross-country (in)availability of non-Tesla-brand chargers, have been a barrier to increased sales. Superchargers make for 60 percent of the nation’s fast EV chargers, and Musk, Tesla’s CEO, has never followed through on his prior proposals to open up those chargers to all EV types.
So, to advance its $7.5 billion goal of constructing a plentiful, convenient network of 500,000 EV chargers across the United States, the Biden administration has turned to an unexpected source: the Superchargers we have on hand. Last week, Department of Transportation officials leaked a budding plan to force Tesla into changing its Supercharger strategy: denying the company any 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law subsidies delegated for charging-network buildout until existing stations can be utilized by non-Tesla electric-car drivers. That seemed to do the trick. On Wednesday, the White House announced that Tesla would open up 7,500 of its public chargers for compatibility with any EV by 2024. At least 3,500 of the realigned plugs will be Superchargers, and the remainder will likely consist of the slower Tesla chargers available in travel destinations like hotels. The corporation also promised to establish even more Superchargers stateside and manufacture them in its Buffalo, New York, factory. The refurbished and brand-new Tesla chargers, supported by government funds, must be built domestically, compatible with all EV-charger-related apps, and functional 97 percent of the time.
Some Tesla owners and investors are unhappy about having to share their precious Superchargers in the future; some climate activists are worried that the new chargers will not be required to source power exclusively from renewables; some observers are skeptical the Supercharger switch will help the cause of universal charger standards. Nevertheless, the core players seem happy with this deal. President Joe Biden took to Twitter to personally credit Musk and his company. In turn, Musk thanked the president and tweeted that ‘Tesla is happy to support other EVs via our Supercharger network.’ Tesla and Musk stans got hype that Biden finally acknowledged their king, in spite of his long-running feud with the chief executive (and Musk’s hostility toward ‘all’ government subsidies, even though he arguably wouldn’t be where he is today without them … lots of them). Overall, a bright spot in Musk’s week—new government funding, plenty of future goodwill from non-Tesla owners, and a squashed presidential beef (for now).
And then there was the rest of Musk’s week.
On Tuesday, Platformer reported that Musk got upset about his Sunday night Super Bowl tweet garnering lower engagement numbers than Biden’s post on the same subject. So upset, in fact, that he flew to Twitter’s Bay Area headquarters to demand an explanation, forced Twitter engineers to wake up at around 2:30 a.m. Monday morning, and threatened to fire them if they didn’t tweak the platform’s code to boost Musk’s profile way more, which they went ahead and did. (He’d already recently fired a principal engineer for the crime of showing Musk data that demonstrated a decline in his Twitter reach.) Then, after users noticed that Musk was everywhere on their feeds—even if they didn’t follow his account—the CEO posted taunting memes about his omnipresence. That seemed to confirm Platformer’s reporting, but on Friday, Musk tweeted that coverage of this algorithmic tweak was ‘incorrect,’ insisting that ‘a review of my Tweet likes & views over the past 6 months, especially as a ratio of followers, shows this to be false.’ He doubled down later, reasoning that ‘if many people who you follow or like also follow me, it is highly probable that the algorithm will recommend my tweets,’ and further announcing that ‘in coming months, we will offer the ability to adjust the algorithm to closer match what is most compelling to you.’ What about the people who kept seeing Musk as their No. 1 recommendation for ‘Who to Follow’? Well, obviously, that’s just ‘a function of an account’s popularity.’ (Musk is clearly rather sensitive about his Twitter metrics.) Regarding the current state of the feeds: ‘The algorithm needs & will get major upgrades … please expect to see many bugs & silly logic!’ The Chief Twit did apologize that users may be seeing ‘so many irrelevant & annoying ads‘ and claimed to be taking corrective action.
Also on Sunday, Musk got into it on Twitter with former NASA astronaut Scott Kelly. The day before, Kelly tweeted a request for Musk to ‘restore the full functionality‘ his SpaceX company’s satellite internet service, Starlink, so that war-weary Ukrainians who depend on the service could utilize it for defense capacity against Russia, likely through connected military drones. (Shortly after Russia invaded Ukraine early last year, Starlink provided the invaded nation with terminals to keep its internet operational in the midst of wartime; this also extended to the Ukrainian army’s communications.) Musk, whose previous commentary on the Russia-Ukraine war has raised international concerns, retorted that Kelly should not ‘swallow media & other propaganda bs,’ deemed Starlink ‘the communication backbone of Ukraine,’ and implied that any fixes to the satellite system’s issues would ‘enable escalation of conflict that may lead to WW3,’ presumably referring to the Ukrainian military’s dependence on the hardware. He stated separately that SpaceX has ‘not exercised our right‘ to turn the satellites off, which is quite the way of saying that millions of Ukrainians now depend on his whims.
Lightning round! On Wednesday, Musk told the World Government Summit in Dubai that before he can step down as Twitter CEO like he previously promised, he ‘need[s] to stabilize the organization and just make sure it’s in a financially healthy place,’ which could take until the ‘end of this year.’ Also on Wednesday, several stateside Twitter users reported glitches with their service: getting their accounts locked for ‘suspicious activity’ and losing access to their direct messages and likes, apparently for no good reason. When security researcher Jane Manchun Wong called out the bugs, Musk attributed them to a ‘synchronization lag between our Portland and Atlanta data centers.’ (Notably, Musk shut down Twitter’s other major data center in Sacramento back in December.)
This marks the second platform breakage in as many weeks—on Feb. 8, users from around the world found themselves forbidden from posting new tweets, sending DMs, or following new people. More of the site’s high-profile users are getting fed up: Dave Davies, co-founder of the legendary rock band the Kinks, tweeted at Musk that his promotional posts for an upcoming Kinks anthology release were getting flagged for ‘sensitive content.’ This is likely because the Musk-era algorithm is trained to view words like Kinks as some sort of weird sex thing.
Back to Tesla: On Tuesday, workers at Tesla’s Buffalo Gigafactory—the same one that, by chance, will be required to make all those new EV chargers—launched a unionization campaign. By Wednesday, 30 of those organizers had been fired; they subsequently filed a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board alleging direct, illegal retaliation. The company denied any union-busting. (Notably, Musk is infamously anti-union, and Tesla is the only nonunionized major car manufacturer in the U.S.)
And then came the big one: On Thursday, the company announced a mass recall of nearly 363,000 EVs equipped with its Full Self Driving Beta feature, after the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration formally expressed concerns over the beta’s safety. According to the federal agency, the tech—which allows vehicles to take over certain aspects of driving when requested—can have trouble registering basic road infrastructure like turn-only lanes, yellow lights, and stop signs. Tesla has promised a patch by April, although, as David Zipper noted in MediaDownloader, there are no guardrails in place to ensure that the beta’s safety can actually be accounted for, now or in the future.
Well! That seemingly wraps up the week in Elon Musk. If there’s a lesson to be found in this deluge, it’s that maybe—just throwing it out there!—one erratic, online-poisoned, stubborn, and vain ultrabillionaire should not have direct control over so much important modern tech and infrastructure. At stake with Twitter is global political discourse, dissent, and free speech; at stake with Tesla is the viability of electric cars as a climate solution, and the viability of the overall EV sector as a key employer for the planned domestic-manufacturing renaissance; at stake with SpaceX and Starlink is a war-torn country’s very welfare, as well as its defense capacity against a hostile invader. If Biden was able to make nice with Musk at least for this week, it’s because his administration used its bargaining chips to get Tesla on board with its plans. But there are a lot of people with a lot less power than Musk who are fully at his mercy. Maybe, if we’ve reached the point where the very future of our planet is vulnerable to the mood shifts of a dude who gets angry for getting less Twitter engagement than a head of state, things have gotten a little too extremely hardcore.
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