Sometimes it’s very hard to know if Elon Musk is saying something completely idiotic and believing it or is simply lying. At the same time, people hang on every word he says and think his forecasts come from the mind of Einstein or something (in fact, one major investor has erroneously called him our modern day Einstein). As just one example, he said that “money will stop being relevant at some point in the future” as a result of AI and robots doing all of the work. I’m sorry, but that is so ridiculously disconnected from reality and fanciful that it’s hard to think he could actually believe this, but I think he does. Yes, that is a dreamy utopian fantasy world that we’d love to see created, but that’s not how the world works and that’s never happening. There are many more examples in different fields of society, but the short and sweet of it is that Elon lives in a funny fantasy world in his head sometimes. Have hyperloops revolutionized transportation? Has he solved traffic in Los Angeles with tunnels? How are those low-cost solar shingles doing? By the way, SpaceX’s first mission to Mars was supposed to leave Earth in 2024. “DOGE” There are a handful of things from this week’s Tesla financials call that popped out to me in a similar way, as well as some other recent issues. I would just start with the DOGE issue, since it’s so dramatic and heartbreaking. On the call, Musk admitted that he “got a little too involved in politics” and that he “got carried away, frankly.” That sounds like a counterproductive hobby he picked up, but he dismantled some key institutions and norms in our society, and he abruptly crushed USAID, which effectively killed countless people. “Public health models estimate that funding cuts and the dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) have resulted in roughly 600,000 to over 760,000 deaths, primarily among children and vulnerable populations in sub-Saharan Africa,” Google AI summarizes. Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health’s Atul Gawande has estimated that shutting down USAID the way Musk did has resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths. “Gawande cited an analysis in The Lancet that estimated that USAID assistance—aimed at combatting diseases such as HIV, tuberculosis, malaria, and polio, reducing maternal and child deaths, and fighting malnutrition—had saved 92 million lives over two decades.” Admitting that he “got carried away,” but still not acknowledging the countless deaths he’s caused, doesn’t solve any problems created by his fantasy that 100% of USAID was fraud — a ridiculous, inane idea that it would take very little effort to debunk. Again, though, it’s just an example of Musk being very detached from reality — even while he wields so much power over it. Anyway, human lives aside (sarcasm), DOGE at least saved the US money, right? NOPE. Independent analyses have estimated that DOGE result in a net loss to the US government of $27.5 billion to $165+ billion. Great work there, Elon. Way to save the United States from financial ruin. And the consequences keep rolling in…. Tesla FSD Claims Getting back to Tesla, the matter of Elon Musk potentially breaking the law promoting Tesla FSD is getting into the news again. In December 2025, Musk tweeted that Full Self-Driving v14.2.1 would allow people to text while driving, “depending on [the] context of surrounding traffic.” Hmm … legally? I think we never covered this because we were waiting for more clarification about whether Tesla was taking on liability in the event of a crash if a “driver” was texting while driving. It seems that never happened. Musk also tweeted in May 2025 about how you could “Make your espresso on the road while your Tesla drives itself.” The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has sent a request for information to Tesla, on July 2, to clarify these posts — since, really, the human behind the wheel using FSD is supposed to be paying attention at all times. The NHTSA also references Musk saying FSD can “operate in all conditions” and that a previous FSD update would “substantially reduce” the need for the human behind the wheel to pay attention to the car’s driving. Does it matter if Elon Musk broke the law, or broke certain rules and regulations? He has done so before, with penalties being fines that would break most of us but which are essentially pennies to someone with the wealth Musk has. He also had to step down from certain leadership positions (CEO and Chairman) at Tesla in the past, but he was still running the show and was happy to just give himself the new title of Technoking. When you have the wealth and power of Elon Musk, it simply doesn’t matter. You get to play by your own rules. US Tesla Sales It’s been highlighted that Tesla climbed back above 50% of the US EV market in the second quarter, but that doesn’t mean its sales are up. In fact, its sales in the US were down 13% year over year (and 2025 wasn’t a good year for Tesla in the first place). Musk implied that a lot more people were buying Tesla vehicles because of FSD. “And we’re seeing in locations that have FSD approved, we’re seeing a very high take rate of FSD,” he said. “And in fact, I think, for a lot of people, they’re actually buying Tesla full self-driving with a car attached as opposed to a car with FSD. They’re coming into our stores in the US and they want the full self-driving and with whatever car comes with it essentially. So, clearly, this is a significant demand driver. And as we get approval for FSD in different countries, I think we’ll see a similar uptick in demand. So, yes, it’s looking very good on that front.” But Tesla sales were down in the US … the main market by far where people can use FSD. So, that’s a little confusing. Meanwhile, USA Today shares that “Tesla has reported more than 200 crashes involving its automated driver assistance systems, such as Autopilot and Full Self-Driving, in recent months. This data was compiled by the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.” Tesla just launched very limited Robotaxi deployment in Tampa a few days ago, and one of the vehicles was already spotted driving the wrong way on a one-way street. “A driver spotted a Tesla robotaxi going the wrong way down a one-way street a day after the company rolled out its driverless taxi service in Tampa.” 😬 And Then There Are The Robots … Tesla’s car business can dwindle, though, according to Musk, because its humanoid robot business will be MUCH BIGGER. That’s the pitch. Tesla is an AI and robot company now. And these robots are supposed to eliminate poverty, be able to perform surgery, bring in an “age of amazing abundance,” and just basically solve all of the world’s problems. Well, for the time being, after hyping plans to produce and sell 1 million of these robots a year initially from the company’s Fremont factory, and planning to produce and sell 10 million a year from its Texas factory, Musk is now cautioning people that it’s actually really hard to scale up production of these robots (who knew?), not to mention make them do all the things we’d want. “I really want to emphasize here that the production scaling challenge is very substantial,” said Musk. “This is going to be the hardest product to scale manufacturing that we’ve ever made at Tesla because everything on the robot is new. And the difficulty of scaling the production ramp is proportionate to the newness of the parts.” Hmm, remember “Production Hell” for the Tesla Model 3 and how that almost bankrupted the company? Remember how it took years to get the Model X into production because of the falcon-wing doors and giant windshield? Apparently, this is going to be much harder than any of that. Talk about pumping the brakes…. Musk also essentially claimed that other robot companies were cheating and lying, and that Tesla really was the sole leader in the race to build useful humanoid robots, no matter how it may look. “So you’ve probably seen lots of impressive demonstrations of robots on the internet,” said Musk. “But those demonstrations you’re seeing are preprogrammed or remote controlled. So there is no humanoid robot that is actually able to do generalized tasks. Optimus will be the first one that is capable of doing that.” Never mind that Tesla has deceivingly deployed teleoperated robots for hype demonstrations, and Figure’s CEO has denied doing such a thing despite people assuming it has done the same. “At one point on Wednesday’s earnings call, Musk explained that he was ill, as though it was an excuse for something, though it’s not clear why he would say that. He sounded perfectly fine, even if he was clearly stressing about Optimus,” Gizmodo writes. Hmm, the hype machine may be falling apart on the robots now…. It’s no wonder Tesla stock collapsed following the financials call. Checking the stock price just now, I see that it is down 29% from the start of the year. It’s down almost 20% in the past five days. What does the future bring? Who knows? But I can guarantee it’s not utopia, no need to work, and an “age of amazing abundance” thanks to Tesla AI and robots.
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