People have been talking about Elon for years, even before he morphed from garden variety business magnate into first class internet wanker.

And while that transition looks to have been a textbook success, this more recent and more fascinating devolution from mildly annoying wealthy American to just genuinely wealthy American obscenity has finally caught my attention.

I now believe he deserves both our praise and study.

For a quick recap  – born to parents, Musk is Tesla Inc. He is SpaceX. He’s also The Boring Company; and Neuralink (and OpenAI), I think. He was the Pay, in PayPal too.

With circa US$200 billion sitting pretty in the kitty (we say that on the internet) as of last month, this Musk fella continues to fool everyone, everywhere except me.

I spent a lot of the weekend on the internet and I don’t know how much I’m able to share right at this moment, but for those who want to know how many electric vehicles were produced and delivered in the second-quarter by Elon Musk himself, we have the goods.

And what’s really amazing is this stuff is all available on the internet, if you know where to look.

Anyway, while I was studying the internet on Saturday night, Tesla – the company name Musk uses to hide the fact he’s been doing everything himself since changing the name of his first unicorn “PayWanker” to the more catchy “PayPal” – put out a release detailing exactly how many Tesla vehicles Mr Musk, aged 51, produced and delivered between April 1st and June 30th.

This is it:

  • Tesla Model S/X and Model 3/Y total produced Q2 2022: 258,580
  • Tesla Model S/X and Model 3/Y deliveries Q2 2022: 254,695

It’s true. Check it out.

Personally, I think that’s pretty good.

But apparently “Wall Street” analysts felt let down, guessing Musk would’ve got round to delivering 256,520 vehicles for Q2, or some 2,819 for each day – remembering Musk doesn’t do holidays or weekends and cannot get sick or die.

That’s 256,520 forecast, but just 254,695 actually delivered.

The “Bank of America” now reckons Musk’s current dominant 70% EV market share will be decimated in a few brief but spectacular years as the ye olde motoring giants like GM and Ford in the US, Volkswagen in Europe (but China-owned) and the likes of Hyundai and Kia wake TF up.

Legendary BoA analyst John Murphy says Tesla’s share of the market will just about equate to 10% by 2025.

John. Honestly.

The man’s only missed the quarterly combined analyst forecast by a mere 1,825 deliveries.

And let’s remember for a middle-aged white man doing everything hisself, there’s a lot going on at home.

Aside from visiting friends in hospital and sorting ex-family in court, Elon’s side projects are a lot for one man alone to handle. The internet says, apparently these satellites don’t launch themselves (Elon does it).

But there’s also innumerable distractions like the hating of Twitter and the hating of not having Twitter, as well as constantly pretending his other companies like this SpaceX thing and the Boring Company are really real companies and not just Elon doing everything his-self and then tweeting about everyone else doing it.

A lot going on. Yet this latest less-hinged strain of Musk still got pretty damn close to Q2 targets despite lithium and semiconductor supply letting him down, and all the while having to pretend his imaginary workforce in Shanghai got more COVID and have all been WFH, which he’s been pretending to hate, via his hated but preferred hate tool Twitter.

And for Chrissake, at the same time “Wall Street” forecasts deliveries at Musk-as-Tesla are going to keep spiking – up some 400% in the next few years from circa 850k to 3.3m.

Let me be direct – the man deserves some credit.

And his direct competitors – US firms led by Messrs Ford and General Motors who’ll each have 15% each of Musk’s EV market share by the end of 2024 – have so far given Musk-as-Tesla circa US$6 billion in credit (carbon ones but no less valuable) to date. So, he’s got form.

tesla musk
Data sourced from Tesla, compiled by GRID

Musk-as-Tesla and Musk-as-SpaceX have scored more than US$7 billion in US government credits, (NASA, DoD etc) contracts and squillions more in tax breaks, loans and other save-us-from-ourselves subsidies.

So let’s not measure Mr Musk by how many cars he can make. That’s silly. He’s just one man.

“BoA” says Musk, who’s been robbed of some $60bn this year out of the sheer injustice of it all, probably needed to get back in those factories and make a HEAP more EVs when he had the chance and no-one on the internet knew what he was doing.

“He (Musk) didn’t. He didn’t move fast enough,” it says. “He didn’t recognise what was going on in the market. He had tremendous hubris that they would never catch him, they would never be able to do what he’s doing, and they’re doing it.”

No they’re not. Stop talking crazy and being unAmerican, “Bank of America”, if that is your real name.

These last few years, carbon credit sales alone have twice been the difference between Musk-as-Tesla posting a snap-crackling profit or Musk-as-Tesla popping a loss, so Elon actually getting onto a factory floor in Shanghai and busting out some EVs is like… priority #26.

What’s more important is just everyone giving the man some more break(s) and a little bit more credit(s). This is what’s in the best interests of Musk-as-Tesla stakeholders.So far this year his stock is down about 35%. That’s still a lot more ouchy than the 20% and 29% shed by the S&P 500 and the tanky, tech-heavy NASDAQ indices.

So don’t worry about deliverables, ignore that Wall St thinks he’ll generate about US$750m in Q2 free cash flow (preferred measure). Particularly ignore that’s about 300% down on the $2.2bn from the previous quarter.

Just, FFS, let this chap land some social media punches. Plant some machines in the ionosphere. Drill some of those boring holes. Tweet some hate on Twitter – if not just outright have Twitter.

We’d all be a lot richer if Musk could just concentrate less on what he says he’ll do and concentrate more on saying more.