Last week’s Tesla event, titled “We, Robot” in reference to the film with the same title but in the first person of the singular directed by Alex Proyas and starring Will Smith, has given rise to a great stir and speculation of many kinds, and also, very strikingly, to a very sharp drop in the company’s shares.
When at an event you see, in a completely tangible way—so tangible that those who were there as guests were able to touch, experience and interact with everything presented—things like completely autonomous taxis without steering wheels or pedals, equally autonomous buses with capacity for twenty people , and robots capable of walking among people, serving them drinks and enter into lively and natural conversation with them, the reactions are truly curious.
Granted, it is possible that many of the features seen at the event were, in some way, prepared: Some claim that the vehicles that attendees were able to test were, in fact, driven by remote control, and that the robots conversed so naturally because there were actors in charge of making them speak from a distance. Still, that’s something all companies do: celebrities concept cars The ones that automotive brands show off at industry exhibitions are little less than cardboard, and like that, countless other products.
Of course, the main protagonist of the event, <a href="https://www.world-today-news.com/spacex-manned-flight-successfully-launched-in-florida-currently-america-dw/" title="SpaceX manned flight successfully launched in Florida | Currently America | DW”>Elon Musk, did not venture any exact date on when these products could be available for the market, and even joked that his Time estimates are often overly optimisticsomething that we have all been able to verify on numerous occasions over the years.
But despite this optimism, the products that Musk presents, although late, usually become reality, and that is also a great truth that we can see not only in Tesla, but also in his other adventures, such as SpaceX or Starlink, which involve , if possible, infinitely greater challenges. Did anyone really believe at the time that this man was going to be able to recover and reuse rocket parts, revolutionize space transportation as he has done, or fill the atmosphere with satellites? Well there they are.
The products that Musk presents, although late, usually become reality
However, and despite all the obvious achievements of a person who has been able to revolutionize industries of enormous complexity, last Thursday’s presentation, brutally futuristic and above all, reasonably tangible, gave rise to a fall for the company that not only was quantitatively very important, almost 10%, but it has not yet recovered. It matters little that the company’s sales are going reasonably well, that it presents models with increasingly more autonomy or even, as it has just done, that it is capable of catching a rocket in flight while it lands to accelerate its reuse, making it clear that it intends to reach Mars soon, and turn Humanity into a transplanetary species: The shares of its only listed company have taken a stunning slap.
What makes the markets turn their backs on what is undoubtedly one of the great geniuses of our time? Obviously, devoting himself to vehemently exposing his political ideas in the midst of what seems like an enormous personality crisis, has helped him earn the dislike of half of the population of the country in which he lives, brutally polarized and who do not want to know anything about the other half, and of countless inhabitants of the planet who see that a “progressive” in the United States is like a conservative in the rest of the world, and that a “conservative” in the United States is like an extreme right-winger in any civilized country .
That a guy like Musk dedicates himself to supporting the presidential candidate that everyone believes will cause the biggest crisis in the United States in its entire history. and, potentially, a change in world hegemony with a possible change in the reference currency that could bring all kinds of catastrophes—those changes, historically, have been accompanied by wars—is something truly disturbing.
That he does so, furthermore, when that candidate hates everything that Musk represented, from electric vehicles to renewable energies, and that he agrees to betray all his principles to provide him with his support, also sounds like naked self-righteousness. It is not for nothing that many Tesla vehicle owners in the United States now carry a sticker that says “I bought it before Musk became an idiot.”
If the Republicans have always been petrol-heads and climate change deniers, what the hell is Musk doing supporting someone who is, no longer a Republican, but the most ultra of them all, responsible for a conservative, but reasonably civilized party, having become a true caricature of itself? same? At this moment it can be doubted whether the elections will be won by Kamala Harris or – God forbid – Donald Trump, but what cannot be doubted is that if the former wins, it will take many years for the Republican Party to recover. from the hangover of having handed over the reins to such a character, completely unworthy to reach not the position of president, but any position with a minimum of responsibility.
No wonder many Tesla vehicle owners in the United States now carry a sticker that says “I bought it before Musk became an idiot.”
Is the market actually discounting the fact that, after supporting Donald Trump, no one believes Elon Musk anymore, despite all his achievements? In the United States, the average Democratic voter has a college degree, while the average Republican voter today has never had one. For Musk, going from appealing to the university elite to aligning himself with the ignorant and climate change deniers may be a very difficult or impossible sin to atone for. And markets are not made or influenced by people without a university degree: to be a stock market analyst, you have to study a lot.
Has Musk become a burden on his companies? That would be a problem, because I have little doubt that his companies are what they are because of Musk. But if Musk came before, talked to you about the future and made you want it, now he comes, shows it to you, but many react by selling their shares and considering him little less than a clown, although has amply demonstrated that, at least in the technological aspect, it is not.
My grandmother already said it (and I listened to her)… “don’t get involved in politics.” Musk could have already had a grandmother like mine.
***Enrique Dans is Professor of Innovation at IE University.
