The news and the real story

[Suff]

Recently the news has been playing up a story about Musk melting down because the virus is stopping his company, Tesla, from building cars in Fremont.

Whilst Musk is pretty hardcore and hardly a shrinking violet or a wallflower, being prone to opening his mouth and putting both feet in it, he is hardly the kind of crack brained idiot that the press like to make him out.

I have several searches running on a daily basis. Tesla stock price, Giga Shanghai phase 2, SpaceX Starlink and SpaceX Starship. So it is hardly surprising that I ran over an article which talks about the Musk/Almeda county tussle over getting the Fremont factory back to work.

For the last 2 months Tesla has been running a factory in Shanghai and also a factory in Nevada, full operational capacity, without any cases of the virus or any suspicion that the operations have caused any infections. Nevada never locked down so Tesla kept on operating and Shanghai came back onstream in February.

Tesla has created a playbook for operating in the virus and it covers every single thing that is needed to keep the workers safe but also working during the virus.

Almeda county, on the other hand, have refused to let Tesla restart operations, won't tell them why and the press are ridiculing him for being annoyed.

I love a good story and this one has a sting in the tail. Musk has stated that the HQ of Tesla (and by inference the taxes), is going to move out of CA and Almeda county. Just as Tesla is poised to become a half trillion dollar company and take over a large slice of the Electric Vehicle market.

If anyone believes Musk and the Tesla board will not do this, they are kidding themselves.

At least it reduces the boredom.

Not that boredom is a major issue, the SSD on my main machine is in the process of trying to fail catastrophically. Just as my Laptop one did 4 weeks ago and the spare laptop drive did two weeks ago after I connected it to my new CNC cutting machine....

[cromwell]

Yes, Musk is a pita but not a total idiot. You don't get to be where he is by being a dolt.
The media is being used as an attack dog imo, has been for quite a while. If you have the "correct" views you can be as sleazy a person as you want, and the media will go easy on you. For example Dianne Abbott's son or Brandan Cox. If say, Farage had behaved towards women in the way Cox did, he would have been slaughtered. But Cox has all the correct views (even if his behaviour towards woman contradicted them), so he got an easy ride.
Musk has obviously upset someone.

[Workingman]

It looks as though Musk is Marmite Man with some sections of the media, politics and businesses. Some love him where others hate him with a vengeance, there does not seem to be much middle ground.

[Suff]

Musk is pretty hard to take but he drives himself even harder than his workers. Driven is a given with Musk. I worked with a guy who told me Gates was much the same.

Perhaps it doesn't help that Musk comes from a ZA diamond mining family??