Saying “never bet against Elon” does not actually make you look smart
The world’s richest man has been more of a main character in the news cycle than usual over the past 10 days, which is saying a lot. We had Elon Musk’s showoff of a “flying car” version of the future Tesla Roadster (“jumping car” more accurately describes this exercise in cold-gas vaporware), more announcements of steps to turn Starlink Mobile into a full-fledged network (never mind SpaceX’s severe shortfall of terrestrial spectrum) and Musk hyping a Tesla-SpaceX merger (SpaceX shareholders might want to hold their applause).
Whatever Musk says, you can expect one reaction from many people who should know better: Never bet against Elon.
That saying seems to come from Musk’s former business partner Peter Thiel, but it’s become a bit of a mantra–especially on X, where Musk has drawn a weird Greek chorus of sycophantic superfans who either don’t mind or outright cheer his racist rants about immigrants.
I understand how that phrase can be easy to invoke from the legit accomplishments of SpaceX and Tesla. I’ve experienced them firsthand–watching one Falcon 9 and two Falcon Heavy launches at Cape Canaveral, then doing a nearly-1,700-mile road trip in a Model 3 in 2022–and I’ve written my share of appreciative things about both companies, SpaceX especially.
But as a catchall rationalization of everything Elon says he’ll make happen, “never bet against Elon” amounts to weak-minded foolishness. Of course you can bet against the guy–and in three obvious cases, your wager could have paid off well.
Cybertruck: Tesla’s metal trapezoid of a truck may seem ubiquitous because of how easy it is to spot one of these things from a quarter-mile away, but in reality it’s sold worse than Ford’s Edsel.
Tesla’s slumping sales could use a boost right now. But instead of shipping a lower-cost EV that might help Tesla compete with the affordable electric cars from BYD and other Chinese automakers that are now racking up sales outside the U.S., the company introduced this $74,990-and-up monstrosity that isn’t street-legal in Europe.
I imagine that the reaction to that poor choice–and to the not-really-flying Roadster and to the still-vaporware Optimus robot that for some reason graces Tesla’s Georgetown showroom in D.C.–among China’s EV industry remains whatever “LOL” is in Mandarin.
Hyperloop: Musk’s notion of vehicles whooshing through low-pressure tubes at hundreds of miles an hour deserved skepticism when he revealed it in 2013 as a supposedly superior alternative to building high-speed rail in California (not that there isn’t much to critique about CAHSR’s management and design failures).
Musk not committing his own money and his own Boring Company operation to build hyperloop networks should have been a tell. Instead, startups lined up investors to build versions of this design in places like Abu Dhabi, then failed to pour concrete because the design proved unworkable.
Much closer to Washington, former Maryland governor Larry Hogan (R.) fell for this nonsense in 2017 and then watched the concept of a D.C.-NYC hyperloop unravel over the next few years. Elsewhere around the world–notably China–high-speed rail has kept rolling.
Political donations: Yes, Musk spending more than a quarter of a billion dollars to help Donald Trump get elected in 2024 may have helped in swing states. But what happened months later when Musk spent another $20 million in just one of those states, Wisconsin?
Dropping that much money there–plus briefly touting an illegal $1 million sweepstakes for voters–did not swing an April 2025 election for a spot on the state Supreme Court. Despite Musk declaring that “Western civilization” was somehow at stake should Brad Schimel (R.) lose, the people of Wisconsin voted for the judge’s Democratic opponent, Susan Crawford, by an almost 10-point margin.
One possibly relevant factor: Musk’s approval ratings in polls are now almost as bad as Trump’s, and Musk can’t claim anything like Trump’s cult of personality.
The appropriate response to any version of “never bet against Elon” is “citation needed.” Musk has done some extraordinary things but now seems extraordinarily detached from the societal circumstances that result in most people proffering dumb ideas having their peers tell them “that’s a dumb idea.”
Too many media-industry folks, meanwhile, need to stop bringing a “never bet against Elon” mindset to covering Musk’s predictions or pledges in what my fellow tech scribe Karl Bode mocks as “CEO Said a Thing” stories. Journalists do their readers a disservice when they fail to remind them of Musk’s spotty record of delivering on his promises–and freelance journalists do their own incomes a disservice by passing on such an easy way to pad out their word counts.
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