Elon Ruffled

 

A judge in Delaware has said Elon can't have his $55.8bn pay deal.

The story is covered by many news outlets including here and here.

The gist of it is that a Tesla share-holder thought that it was too much money for the company he has shares in to be paying out.  And also that Musk “enjoyed thick ties with the directors tasked with negotiating on behalf of Tesla, and dominated the process that led to board approval of his compensation plan”  They argued the huge pay award was designed to ensure that Mr Musk, "would continue to dedicate his attention to the company".

What!? You mean while he also continues to dedicate his attention to Twitter, SpaceX, The Boring Company and sticking microchips into people's heads?

And now Elon has taken umbrage in true Donald Trump style with some whining on Twitter (as we all call it)

He tweeted, "Never incorporate your company in the state of Delaware.  I recommend incorporating in Nevada or Texas if you prefer shareholders to decide matters." 

Err - I think in this case a shareholder HAS managed to decide matters.

He then posted a poll asking his followers whether or not Tesla should "change its state of incorporation to Texas, home of its physical headquarters"

I don't know what the Venn Diagram of Tesla shareholders and Musk Twitter followers looks like but it doesn't sound like a particularly relevant bit of market research.

What amuses me most on this story though, is that the shareholder in question is a former thrash-metal drummer (according to Newsweek) who not only "made a mohawk that lights up while I'm playing drums" but who also only owns 9 shares in Tesla.  Brilliant.

Arrogance

Back in 2022 I posted about people showing arrogance - they didn't seem to care about motoring law.

Today, I have two more examples (although the second one isn't strictly illegal - it's more a case of "Rules of the road")

Firstly, M'Lud, I give you these cyclists:

Four people who rather than queue up to turn right, went straight down the straight-ahead lane and then through the red traffic lights.

Unfortunately for them, there was an unmarked police car behind them and they all got fined.

Good.

Here is the full BBC story and the footage.

Meanwhile, don't we all hate BMW drivers who refuse to use their indicators?

Let's have a heated debate!

This was the most read BBC News article this afternoon - an electric bus caught fire. It's still on their front page.

There was no mention on the front page yesterday of this bus fire:

It was on their local Gloucestershire page.

Why not the front page though like today's one?

Anything to do with it not being in London?

That won't have helped but let's be honest, it was almost certainly because it wasn't an electric bus.  I've raised this bias before.  Not sure what it will take to change this.

Talking of electric vehicles, don't we all hate electric scooters?  Usually ridden with no care and attention either on the road (ignoring the rules of the road) or on the pavement (ignoring the safety of other pavement-users)

That is why the Mayor of Paris found it so easy to get them banned.

And people riding them look like tossers.

However, according to The Conversation, e-scooters are actually displacing four times as much demand for oil as all the world’s electric cars at present, due to their uptake in China and other nations where mopeds are a common form of transport.

So they are a good thing!?

Talking more of electric vehicles, The Tyre Extinguishers have been at it again.  This time targeting a Tesla Model X in Bristol.  The news sites seem perplexed that an "anti-gas-guzzler" pressure group would target an electric car but they did point out back in 2022 when I last gave them a mention, that their beef was more with SUVs - a sentiment I agree with albeit for completely different reasoning. To quote them from today's story,

"Electric cars are fair game. We can't electrify our way out of the climate crisis. The danger to other road users still stands, as does air pollution (PM 2.5 pollution is still produced from tyres / brake pads). A child killed by an SUV doesn't care if its (sic) electric or petrol."

Their grammar isn't too hot - that "(sic)" was added by drive.com.au together with another one where they talk about "SUV vehicles"

But then the electric side of the argument did point out that regenerative braking produces no brake dust - a fair point well made.

And drive.com.au also point out that, 

"Under Victoria's Litter Act of 1987, it is an offence to place leaflets on any vehicle, as the leaflet could be blown away by the wind or disintegrate in rain – with fines of more than $950 applicable for each instance."

Victorian law doesn't apply in Bristol but the potential for bits of paper (and don't forget the trees they were made from) could be floating around the River Avon doesn't sound very climate-friendly.

Three different stories for debate in one article - who would have thought that electric vehicles could be so controversial?

Look away now!

Two stories have caught my eye so far this year.

One from my default Aussie site which is about yet another Tesla crash.  This one is unusual though for two reasons:

1. It seems to be the first one involving a Cybertruck and...
2. It wasn't the Tesla's fault

They've reversed the picture for some reason - maybe to appeal to a right-hand-drive audience:

But this is good news for Tesla in that their vehicle has come out of it considerably more unscathed than the Toyota that crashed in to it:

Although it does raise questions about safety for any other vehicles, or indeed pedestrians, who do get entangled with them.

The other story with something to look away from was one I found in Autocar but I can't view it on my laptop because they won't show it to me unless I switch off the ad-blocker that I don't have. They instead rather unhelpfully show me how to switch off various ad-blockers that I don't have.  I found the story here on Just-Auto instead so Autocar can sod off.

The gist of this is what LG will be showing at the big tech show CES in Vegas next week.

They have technology that allows drivers and passengers to see different things on the same display screen.

Except Land-Rover had that over 10 years ago.

And, judging by the photo,

the LG version works by the driver looking away from the display.

This to me appears a little dangerous.

He'd better hope there isn't a Cybertruck coming the other way.