I remember when I first heard about him, knew nothing about him. Just some guy who owned Tesla who was open-sourcing some EV tech. That sounded great!

That's about when it all fell apart. I learned who he was. Fired for incompetence. Fumbles basic questions (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HE_xHVYwHw8 tldr, guy asks about maglev and airbearings and Elon stumbles around a while to say... "wheels" 🤦‍♂️). He's not now, nor has he ever been a genius. I genuinely don't think he's even smart by any standard. I think he's just rich and that's it. I remember watching videos about Hyperloop, and the engineering behind it was painfully obvious how unsafe it was going to be, and somewhere between impossible and impractical to build/maintain. Like, that idea only works on paper, or in Sci-Fi. The test track they built rusted out and was poorly secured. And it rusted out largely, because the engineers didn't account for the water in the cement or something...

Or the Boring company. It could have been the best company if it were just called the Boring company but sold cool shit, like the flamethrower. I get the real reason behind it was to stop some public transit project, blah blah, I know, I get it, I've seen and heard it a million times. But the proposed idea he gave, the fact anyone looked at it, at him and was like "Yeah, this seem even remotely possible and definitely not a bat-shit crazy idea" astounds me. At best, it was a worse version of every single subway system ever invented anywhere on earth. At worse, a giant death trap machine that would make the Final Destination movies look tame.

I've riden on many planes, trains, and automobiles. And the only time I've ever felt really unsafe was in a Tesla. Poorly built, poorly designed. Yet people keep buying them. You have mechanics saying their a POS, you have tech folk saying it's a POS, you have the news showing you it's a POS. I don't understand. Hell, he's made so many claims that just haven't happened. Vehicles that he said were coming out, "next year"...

Explaining Elon to people, it's like explaining why "Solar freaking roadways" doesn't work and is a stupid fucking idea.