Tesla Directors, in Damage Control Mode, Want Elon Musk to Stop Tweeting

Urged Elon Musk to stop posting? Can someone please urge the POTUS to delete his account? Shameful behavior by so many.

Tweets that are “... impulsive, potentially inaccurate, poorly worded and thought out, and with such potentially dire consequences for himself...”. Can Tesla’s Directors & Board take care of 45 after dealing with Musk?

Everyone should stop posting on Twitter. Everyone.

S.O.S. The Mad Tweeters are multiplying.

Maybe the Tesla board can exchange tips and tricks with John Kelly and his staff in the White house on how to reduce tweeting and tweet fallout by otherwise hard-to-control, irrationally acting narcissists. Better yet, form a support group on Twitter.

Story needs an update in the last paragraph: Goldman Sachs confirmed they are working as Tesla's advisor Wednesday morning.

Quite a few hints in the press and in blind items of drug use by Musk. Rapper Azealia Banks tweeted several times last week that she was stuck in his home as an invited guest of his GF musician Grimes. Banks claimed Musk was high on drugs and despondent over his tweets about going private. This may not have happened, but it is in line with the many suggestions that he's a regular hard drug user. This would explain a lot of his strange & grandiose behavior.

What biased reporting about Tesla (not Elon Musk, the criticisms of him are fine). This "struggling company" makes the best-selling electric car in the world even including China, still has hundreds of thousands of reservations for it, makes one of the best driver assistance systems you can buy, has the biggest fast-charge network in the world, will probably sell over 250,000 cars in 2018, has the biggest and cheapest in-house supply of batteries, ... Tesla has a host of *challenges* as it continues to grow at breakneck speed to meet its goal of accelerating the world's transition to renewable energy. But it can make 250,000+ Model 3s a year, the car has glowing reviews, and the Model S and X are still unrivalled for performance and range. Why so biased?

If one wants to succeed as a leader and innovator, then one must take chances and have a large ego; which is most certainly the cause of eventual downfall in many more cases than the press reports.

Years ago, when I lived and worked in the Bay Area amid the dot com boom, I lost whatever illusions I had left about corporate America when I realized how incestuous boards of directors were, and thus rife with conflicts of interest, particularly given their hefty compensation. A salaried employee should be so fortunate.

Musk is a rich, arrogant white guy with a lot of ambition but no results for his major projects outside the electric car (which is losing money and still can't meet production). So he will get pretty much all the second chances he can use up until he finally crashes and burns. What a waste.

Tucker...DeLorean...Musk?

Mr. Musk has always struck me as a technocrat who doesn't merely think of big projects but conceives of bigly projects — projects that, in a kind of materialistic hubris, are obviously impractical. his tunnel scheme for Los Angeles rapid transit, for example. the "bigly" implies a certain failure to grasp reality, and this is evident in his tweets. i'm pleased that the Tesla board of directors is actually going through the motions as a board of directors. but i have rarely seen a modern BoD act as if it really did had a responsibility to direct the company it supposedly oversees. mainly because modern BoDs are staffed by people who think of their role as a vanity project. so: will Mr. Musk be ousted from his executive role, controlling shares be damned? this is a test of character for the board, and i for one am not holding my breath for the outcome.

This should be easy. "Funding secured." That's what he tweeted, that's what he now acknowledges isn't true. That tweet had a material effect to the point that trading was halted. The SEC needs to come down really hard and really fast. Otherwise, what's to stop Ford from saying "We've invented a car that runs on water" or Zuckerberg from saying "We've just signed up 10 million new users," only to say "Never mind" after sending the market into tumult. If at all possible, Musk should face criminal charges and spend a few weeks in jail--among other things, that would keep him away from his Twitter account. There's simply no excuse for what he has done, and fines alone likely won't be enough to get his attention to the point that he changes his behavior. There are certain rules that no one is, or should be, above, and lying about a multi-billion dollar business deal that never existed is about as lowdown rotten as you can get when it comes to screwing investors.

Corporate execs who call any one individual something like "pedo guy" without evidence, and who put their company at legal risk by blabbing on Twitter, shouldn't be managing their own wallet let alone large electric-car makers. Musk. Must. Go. Problem is, few people are as passionate about actually fighting the petro-auto-dealer-industrial complex as Musk has (or had...since he wants to sell at least some of Tesla off to the Saudis...the Saudis!) been, and it's a safe bet those among Musk in Tesla—and especially in the board—would prefer a Tesla that's weak or even outright collaborative with such enemies of the company (and environment). The board might be cautious and less twittery than he, but if they'll just pick a milquetoast or oil-megacorp saboteur to replace him then they're just as insane as Musk has become. They need someone with restraint over themselves and over the widespread corporate temptation to give away equity to those with a conflicting interest—if they want ANY chance of turning around gas-guzzler car culture, they need full control.

In the world of "if I did that...." The SEC would be considering actions against a CEO of less visibility, power and wealth. Let the lawsuits begin and justifiably so. "Funding secured??????"

Take the reins Elon! Lose the board and other dollar-obsessed kibitzers. As they say, "a camel is a horse designed by a committee". Elon build the best car and the best rocket system in history. What have the Directors built actually? Mansions? Portfolios?

Musk repulsed me when he made pedaphaelia comments about a British diver who helped rescue the Thai boys in the cave. His behavior has grown more shoddy. The Tesla Board has some heavy lifting to do, and perhaps it would be time to vote no confidence.

In some countries, the government would recognize that there is future for electric automobiles. Too bad American leadership is blind.

The Times’s hand-wringing here might make for good copy, but please....damage control? The only damage directors are attempting to control is that to their own careers. If Musk’s buyback succeeds, they’ll soon be out of a job. “Tesla has been...facing mounting questions from investors about the company’s ability to meet Mr. Musk’s ambitious financial targets...some members of the board have grown alarmed by what they see as Mr. Musk’s erratic behavior.” True, innovators of groundbreaking technology tend to stray from scripts written by lesser mortals. But proverbial “mounting questions” have followed Musk throughout his career - he eats them for lunch. And if his “erratic behavior” is cause for alarm, you’d never know it from the price of Tesla stock, up 16% since Musk’s tweet. With the exception of Solar City, an ideological foray into a concept long recognized as a loser by energy experts (consumer solar electricity), Musk has overcome far greater challenges in the past. Personally, I hope investors do dump the stock of a company whose first product was the fastest and longest-range electric vehicle in history, one powered by 6,300 cellphone batteries. Then, I can afford to buy more.

What is the media's fascination with Tesla ? National Public Radio reports as if it's the No. 1 U.S. automaker. Have you actually ever seen a Tesla on the road ? In a market where it's not unusual for over 17 million cars to be sold in one year, Tesla has sold 200,000 vehicles in all the years of its total existence (as of 2018).

If the Saudi's buy out Tesla it could make for an interesting ad campaign: "We just blew up a school bus full of children in Yemen, imprisoned and tortured a blogger who talked too much, and we do business with the family of Bin Laden - Please buy our automobiles!" I would suspect that many people who buy electric automobiles do so out of a sense of social responsibility.

The Directors' culpability and liability are the issues here. They are considerable, particularly since almost no one seems to be acting either "independently" (of Musk) or in the best interest of shareholders in a company valued at larger capitalization than General Motors. Musk's fall will be mighty...But everyone on the board should get busy throwing him out the window...Or they will follow.

Another day, another stable genius.

The Silicon Valley version of Donald Trump - let's hope he doesn't run for public office.

Stop tweeting? No, stop acting as a twit.

True is that Tesla is burning money very fast. Mr. Musk continually promises a profitable company. Every year. At some point in time, the investors will lose patience and stock will tank. Nevertheless, a lot of people is betting against Tesla. Are they right? We don't know. Mr. Musk should put his capacity to work and leave outside noise, which is not helpful for him nor the company. I want to add one more thing Tesla desperately needs independent COO. Andy

Musk is a symptom of our era where "visionary" CEOs are lauded for building companies that are built on marketing and numbers that don't make sense (Hello Uber) for anyone other than VCs and flippers. At least Musk did build electric cars and there were many fans. From all I have from both fans and detractors, the problem is that Tesla wasn't meant to be a mass market product. And yet that is what needs to happen in order for them to justify the valuation. The story has been hammered on and on about what a genius he is and it became more important than the company or the product. As the article suggests he is surrounded by yes-men at all times and clearly from his reaction to the rescuer in Thailand , is very thin-skinned.

Musk has been dating the Canadian musician/artist Grimes for a while now. Considerably younger than Musk, she is very talented but she's bizarre and I've seen interviews with her where she seemed to be on drugs (fine for a creative type like her, but not the best idea for a powerful CEO acountable to thousands of employees and investors). Most of us are familiar with the stereotype of the older man making a fool of himself in order to impress a young girlfriend; I wonder if there's an element of that at play here?

Tech companies come up to this hurdle - replacing the visionary entrepreneur CEO with a business person. It's a sign of growth, Tesla's Board needs to jump (and this might explain why Musk is talking about going private, as a way to avoid defenestration).

Elon Musk is a visionary and brilliant entrepreneur, but there are limits to overpromise, underdeliver. Even in Silicon Valley. Private equity might give him a longer timeline but I'm not sure taking financial pressure off will be a good thing for him.

As is so often the case, the same outsized personality traits that give someone the potential for extraordinary upside also put them at risk for destroying themselves and what they've built.

The Board would also do well to urge Mr. Musk to resign. He has shown zero results on paper. Maybe give someone else the wheel for awhile.

I think the reason people have given him a pass for so long is that he is very good at PR (or at least he used to be), and he is skilled at covering up his mistakes. Best example of this was the Falcon Heavy launch. They advertised it as launching a rocket to Mars, even though it didn't go anywhere near the planet. And they stuck in a $500,000 Tesla with a dummy in the drivers seat playing David Bowie for no reason whatsoever. And then, when it came time to land the rockets, one of them crashed. They knew what happened immediately, but tried to downplay this failure and wouldn't even acknowledge it publicly until days later. But even outside his behavior, some of his projects are also questionable. The hyperloop being the one of the biggest question marks. Not only do the test runs not run any faster than a bullet train (as people predicted) but its also incredibly dangerous to put a pressurised tube above ground stretching hundreds of kilometers and there's been no real attempt to address how he intends to overcome this. I think the curtain is starting to get pulled back on the wizard.