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Tesla CEO Elon Musk.
- Tesla CEO Elon Musk has been right about electric cars needing to be cool - but he's been wrong about several other major aspects of the
transportation business. - Musk doesn't like to be wrong, so he's stuck to his guns when it comes to pitting Tesla against its competition and doubling down on various futuristic ambitions.
- His biggest mistake was in not understanding that self-driving cars would both steal electric vehicles' thunder - and create a new business opportunity that Tesla couldn't easily pursue.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk is clearly feeling some stress. At Tesla's annual shareholder meeting on Tuesday, he at times struggled to control his emotions while still rocking a very chic Belstaff motorcycle jacket (Musk's fashionable jackets should have their own Twitter account).
Investors in attendance mostly adored it. And who can blame them? Tesla shares have been very, very good to early risk-takers - they're up over 1,000% since the carmaker's 2010 IPO.
Musk's heart-on-his-sleeve - or more frequently, heart-on-his-tweets - approach is nothing like what we see from other auto-industry leaders, who tend to be steely, wizened veterans of what Musk has come to understand is actually a challenging business.
His attitude is refreshing, up to a point. It has been instrumental in leading Tesla to a market cap that's higher than established car companies that sell many more vehicles every year and post regular profits (Tesla has never notched a year in the black).
Musk's critical insight into electric vehicles was his major triumph - I'll explain exactly what it was in a second. But the CEO is also, by his own admission, prone to hubris, the classical flaw of tragic overconfidence. Of late, Musk has been wielding his hubris - which is by no means an unusual behavior - as a sort of propaganda tool, to both rally his troops and maintain excitement on Wall Street and in Silicon Valley, as well as in the media.
In response, we should give credit where credit is due. But we should also call Musk out on his whoppers. And there were a few of the latter on display when he spoke to investors on Tuesday.
Get the latest Tesla stock price here.