Tesla co-founder and CTO JB Straubel stepping down

SO they should not use the cash that the government made accessible to them (because Fiat refuse to manufacture electric vehicles) and thus, not increase their EV production capacity?

This makes no sense. That's up to regulators to prevent Fiat from selling polluting cars, not to Tesla to refuse financial help that allow them to accelerate their growth.

For me personally the treatment of their workers, their anti-unionisation efforts, and their misleading advertisement of the autopilot, together with Musks extremely off-putting public behaviour. And no I don't want spaceX to fail.

>Why not save your hate for companies damaging democracy or workers rights, which seem like more serious charges?

I think many people, including myself at this point have similar opinions about Facebook et al. There are relatively few large tech companies left that I look at optimistically.

One thing I find annoying is that Tesla and Musk seem to always move the goal post to point where it suits them best. For me stuff like self-driving taxis and sattelite internet are prime examples. It looks, at least to me, like running away from rwality faster than it can catch up.

One last point regarding luxury cars and safety. Tesla is proud of being the top performer at the NCAP crash test. And all of a sudden that comparison is unfair just because the numbers aren't positive for Tesla?

1) Tesla Had 3 Times as Many OSHA Violations as the 10 Largest US Plants Combined[1]

2) Elon Musk personally doxxing a market analyst who provided in-depth analysis of Tesla financials, by calling his boss and threatening to sue if he continued his side project of covering Tesla [2]

3) Committing blatant securities fraud by claiming he would sell Tesla to Saudi Arabian investors for $420 a share, and promising 'the short burn of the century' a few weeks before doing so.

4) Bailing out a failing Solar City run by Musk's family(cousins) with Tesla shareholder money on the promise of a product that turned out to be vaporware. [3] After the merger solar city sales are now approaching zero and it's becoming increasingly clear it was a bailout [4]. Multiple lawsuits are ongoing.

5) Claiming that Tesla cars bought today will appreciate in value to over $250,000, so it's actually an investment not a purchase.[5]. Generally making crazy statements about imminent "million robotaxis" while still not having a 'Summon' featured promised in a few weeks months ago because "parking lots are very hard"(recent tweet)

For me at least, the transition was a slow one - from "What they're doing is hard, but I hope they succeed" to "They're probably going to fail, but at least they have good intentions" to "If they don't fail, the precedent set is staggering to what you can get away with".

There's the famous James Comey saying of 'The Chickenshit Club' - prosecutors unwilling to take on corporations for fear that a loss or long case would damage their win ratio, leading to entities with a large legal team getting away with anything they want. Fundamentally the problem is consistently making statement that they know to be untrue under the guise of this being targets to be met. A generous person would of course call them "ambitious goal". But someone who has studied them closely would know it's an attempt to pump stock that has historically worked, but has recently started failing.

When blatant market manipulations, hazardous working conditions, highly questionable accounting practices, false marketing claims, doxxing critics and lies are allowed to succeed, laws don't really exist and companies operate within their bounds only because they don't want to take the 0.1% risk that they'll actually be punished in a way that threatens their continued operations.

If you believe in capitalism and regulated efficient markets, you will hope that a company that breaks the rules as often as Tesla doesn't go unpunished. But the SEC will never bring down a company who's stock is still high, as their primary goal is to protect shareholder value. To fully uncover the extent of their damage, they will have to fail first.

[1] - https://www.thedrive.com/news/26727/tesla-had-3-times-as-man...

[2] - https://www.marketwatch.com/story/elon-musk-allegedly-silenc...

[3] - https://mansionengineer.com/2018/08/10/elon-musk-tesla-and-t...

[4] - https://i.imgur.com/iQUJkbE.jpg

[5] - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-07-16/musk-stan...

Somewhere around 2013, he claimed Tesla would launch a "fully autonomous, L5" in 2 years, but it would take another 3 years of regulatory approval. Clearly a gross misrepresentation of facts.