The latest reporting by Electrek reveals what amounts to a remarkable admission of guilt in Tesla’s fraud scheme.

Musk himself has previously said that Tesla’s stock is “worth nothing” if the company can’t solve autonomy, which attached a lot of Tesla’s valuation to autonomous driving.

Anyone with technical expertise recognizes that Tesla lags far behind industry leaders in autonomous driving, with this gap contributing to dozens of deaths. We now know the early capability claims were false, which should have shut down the program by 2018—as happened to Uber when both they and Tesla killed pedestrians yet only Uber was held accountable.

Tesla has misled the public about driverless technology from the beginning, contributing to fatalities while showing no signs of genuinely acknowledging or addressing these problems. Instead, we see innovation mainly in coverups—settling lawsuits out of court, declaring fresh starts, and intimidating investigators. The data suggests Tesla’s performance is actually declining over time because Elon Musk prioritizes money, hierarchy, and loyalty over engineering quality.

Throughout history, powerful groups have used such unfair systems to control others—similar to slavery in America or apartheid in South Africa. Since the 1700s, philosophers have argued that we can judge people’s character through clear, measurable standards based on ethical principles. However, some leaders try to manipulate these standards for their own benefit. They capture people’s attention and loyalty, steering them away from universal moral principles toward blind obedience to those in power.

Notably, Musk allows a “measure” to be invoked (like a dollar figure) when he knows it can be gamed to artificially paint legal failures into success.

Musk said the market is the ultimate scorecard for Tesla’s state of business.

That’s complete nonsense, of course.

Markets reflect perception, not performance—and perceptions can be entirely fictional. Enron serves as the canonical example of this disconnect. It’s remarkable that a CEO would fail so openly to grasp this foundational business concept. Imagine Bernie Madoff making the same claim, and the problem becomes obvious.

And then note how and why he himself contradicts a false market doctrine that he pitched.

The CEO was then asked if he was committed to staying as head of Tesla for the next five years, to which he answered ‘yes’.

But he said that he would need more shares in Tesla.

Musk claimed that it wasn’t about money but control over the company:

“I can’t be sitting there and wondering if I’m going to be tossed out. “Now let’s move on.”

See? He doesn’t let the market be the ultimate scorecard. He rejects his own blessing of the market, removes all its power, because he doesn’t want to be accountable when the market speaks.

He praises markets as the ultimate scorecard not to be doubted, then demands protection from market interference with his secret scorecard that only he defines.

At this point everyone should be able to see the puzzle pieces together, Tesla is a worthless fraud.

The 2024 Tesla strategy seemed to be they would tie public perception and fortunes of their Cybertruck to Trump’s madness and hate. Who can forget in 2016 how the CEO arranged their strange partnership, which included preventing the NHTSA from reporting Tesla driverless deaths?

However, that plan has predictably backfired. Hate platforms necessarily narrow, and thus plummet, market value, which is exactly what we’re seeing.

Signals of the crash come as Tesla has been trying to slow its death spiral by artificially inflating values again. A Cybertruck buyback program is being setup to float numbers far higher than the market. Electrek attempts to make sense of what looms to be the biggest disaster in automotive sales history:

We previously reported that Tesla refused to accept the Cybertruck, its own vehicle, as a trade-in more than a year after starting deliveries.

Tesla didn’t share an explanation at the time, but we assumed that the automaker knew the Cybertruck was depreciating at an incredible rate and didn’t want to be stuck with more trucks than it was already dealing with.

Now, Tesla has started taking Cybertruck trade-ins, at least for the Foundation Series, and it is now providing estimates to Cybertruck owners… 34.6% depreciation in just a year.

On Car Guru, the Cybertruck’s depreciation is actually closer to 45% after a year [more than double the rate of other brands] and that’s more representative of the offers owners should expect from dealers.

That’s entirely Tesla’s fault.

To be fair, the elephant in the room is how the Trump platform of hate is owed a lot of blame for tanking American markets and products.

People absolutely hate Tesla now, especially Trump people who Tesla supported the most, due to the divisive competitive and selfish agendas that use saccharin narratives to stomp on former allies and paper over self-defeat.

…the president used to mention Musk every few days but now has not posted about him in more than a month. Trump’s fundraising operation has largely ceased sending emails that name-check the Tesla CEO. The billionaire’s name, once a staple of White House briefings, now hardly gets mentioned at all. Even members of Congress have essentially dropped him… Republicans still speak favorably of Musk when asked about him.

Dropped him. Depreciated him. Still speak favorably when asked.

The Japanese have how many ways of saying yes, just to avoid saying the word no because that would undermine social heirarchy? 考えておきます

Better for the GOP to say nothing about Tesla now, apparently, and act like Trump wasn’t the guy just sitting in the driver seat who just sent the company into a tree and burned Elon Musk to death.

“Still love the truck, though” became a meme that represented the unthinking, know-nothing, foundations of the American mentality of dismissing intelligence and undermining progress. Cybertruck loyalists, who early on claimed appreciation of value was their reason for buying, now claim they will be holding on infinitely to maximize returns in a sunk cost. At least they will have a lot of spare parts available, until Tesla starts another scrap metal program and calls it the future of robotics.

This is the second story I’m reading today about a Tesla that lost control and crashed into multiple other vehicles, where only the Tesla owner is injured and then dies.

At approximately 2 p.m. on Sunday, May 18, 2025, a Tesla was traveling west on US-6 near the East Carbon junction. A heavy rainstorm caused conditions in which the Tesla lost control of the wheel and spun into eastbound traffic near milepost 259.

The Tesla crashed into a pop-up camper trailer being towed by a Ram 1500. While in oncoming traffic, an eastbound GMC Yukon hit the driver’s side of the Tesla.

The Tesla driver was killed in the collision. The Yukon driver obtained minor injuries, and the Ram 1500 driver was left unharmed.