Tesla (TSLA) shares were lower in early trading, following a report from the Wall Street Journal claiming executives at both Tesla and SpaceX are concerned about Elon Musk’s illegal drug use. Musk denied the report, saying he is subjected to random drug testing by NASA. Yahoo Finance’s Seana Smith and Brad Smith weigh in on what the report means for shareholders. For more expert insight and the latest market action, click here to watch this full episode of Yahoo Finance Live. Editor's note: This article was written by Eyek Ntekim
No. I interacted with him on two occasions during the PayPal days. They were pitching PayPal as a payment mechanism for a bunch of our verticals. Even back then he was weird, awkward, and cringe. I think there is video of him back then taking possession of a McLaren and you can see how cringe he was.
EDIT: Found it.. On rewatch, it doesn’t really show how insufferable he was in person. It’s funny to see how x.com gets recycled though.
Then he immediately wrecked his (uninsured) McLaren:
https://www.thedrive.com/news/32191/did-you-know-elon-musk-wrecked-an-uninsured-mclaren-f1
I don’t understand people buying such high-end toys and not bothering to pay for some training.
Seriously. Racing school was fun and only $1,500! Yeah that was serious money for me, but I thought it was a good investment/ birthday present. For him though… That’s like a quarter.
Uninsured is also just strange. Even if I bought a junked supercar, rebuilt the thing myself, and didn’t care if I wrecked it, I’d still insure the thing.
I feel like Elon is the type of guy who views having insurance as weak. Like someone or something having an even minute amount of authority over him is unthinkable.
Today, yes, but back then he was just another dot com millionaire. Remember, that footage was before PayPal, so he probably had about 300M, tops. A million was still only a fraction of his wealth, but it was still a noticeable fraction.
Even so, I seriously doubt the $1500 he could have spent to learn to drive the thing properly would have been a serious expense.
Holy receding hairline, Batman!
Nothing money couldn’t fix apparently.
Lol i love how he called it X .com way back then and they renamed it to paypal.
Some prophetic words from the finance there.
That’s not just a McLaren, that’s probably the most famous McLaren of all time.
I was thinking he wrecked his F1 but I think that was Rowan Atkinson…
According to another comment Musk wrecked his McLaren but so did Atkinson (twice!).
It’s like crazy high-performance sports cars are hard to drive.
I won a competition to drive a Ferrari F458 on a track. It was dope but it took me several tries to even pull away cleanly (this is after an hour long lesson about the track and 30min hands on with the car).
One of the Ferrari guys took it and warmed it up for me after which it behaved much better but it’s a long story to say that I can see an inexperienced driver screwing up badly in a super car especially when cold.
And the McLaren F1 is an older more raw car than the F458.
If I were into cars and had the money, I think it would be part of the joy of getting my new toy to pay up for a few days of track time with a good trainer.
But I guess I’m not surprised Mr. “I know more about manufacturing than literally anybody else” would be pretentious enough to just wing it and fuck it up gloriously.
The schools are worth the cost. It cost me $1500 for a 3 day course way back in '98. Same racing school is now $2050. I can say I gained a lot more control of my car after that.
That sounds reasonable and fun. Compared to the cost of a McLaren F1, it’s peanuts.