Quote:In the Year of a DramaKing: Elon Musk

From staff cuts at X to a new AI company, this was another zany year for the billionaire

Quote:John Oliver dedicated the final episode of 2023 of his show, “Last Week Tonight,” to taking down billionaire Elon Musk, poking fun at his idiosyncrasies and warning of the potential danger that could come from his immense power.

For 30 minutes, Oliver touched on Musk’s acquisition of Twitter, Musk’s hard turn to the right politically, his occasional embrace of antisemitic conspiracy theories, and the accomplishments and setbacks he has faced leading Tesla and SpaceX.

“Elon has made news all year, from test launching the most powerful rocket ever built to just this week having to recall 2 million cars due to safety concerns. He even challenged Mark Zuckerberg to a cage fight, to which Zuckerberg replied, send me location. And may I suggest to both of them: interior volcanoes,” Oliver said.

Quote:Musk responded to Oliver on Monday in a post on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter.

“Oliver was great several years ago, but stopped being funny when he sold his soul to wokeness where humor is basically illegal,” Musk wrote.

Musk has repeatedly attacked mainstream media outlets and accused the press of trying to smear him and his businesses.

Quote:hreyansh Jain was ecstatic in March when he picked up his first electric vehicle, a brand-new 2023 Tesla Model Y. He used a sizable chunk of family savings to buy it with cash.

“We were over the moon!” said Jain, an electronics engineer in Cambridge, England.

His exuberance came to a “grinding halt” one day later, with 115 miles on the odometer, Jain told Reuters. As he drove with his wife and three-year-old daughter, he suddenly lost steering control as he made a slow turn into their neighborhood. The vehicle’s front-right suspension had collapsed, and parts of the car loudly scraped the road as it came to a stop.

“They were absolutely petrified,” Jain said of his wife and daughter. “If we were on a 70-mile-per-hour highway, and this would have happened, that would have been catastrophic.”

The complex repair required nearly 40 hours of labor to rebuild the suspension and replace the steering column, among other fixes, according to a detailed repair estimate. The cost: more than $14,000. Tesla refused to cover the repairs, blaming the accident on “prior” suspension damage.

Jain is one of tens of thousands of Tesla owners who have experienced premature failures of suspension or steering parts, according to a Reuters review of thousands of Tesla documents. The chronic failures, many in relatively new vehicles, date back at least seven years and stretch across Tesla’s model lineup and across the globe, from China to the United States to Europe, according to the records and interviews with more than 20 customers and nine former Tesla managers or service technicians.

(December 17, 2023 at 10:23 am)Thumpalumpacus Wrote: I saw one of those on the road here last week.

They're uglier in person.

(December 16, 2023 at 5:49 am)zebo-the-fat Wrote: Yes, but the second launch did much less damage, he is getting better with each attempt. The next thing he needs to do is sort out the fuel situation after the hot staging, probably not a huge problem.

(December 23, 2023 at 10:44 am)Fake Messiah Wrote:

(December 17, 2023 at 10:23 am)Thumpalumpacus Wrote: I saw one of those on the road here last week.

They're uglier in person.

I just saw one!

(December 20, 2023 at 3:46 pm)Nanny Wrote: I won't give elmo a dime of my money voluntarily (I know he drinks taxpayer money by the liter).