I could push back on some of these but I mainly want to ask about this:
> the way he publicly disparaged people who were killed by their Tesla using telemetric data that are supposed to be confidential
In the cases I've seen, Tesla pulled data showing that the people "killed by their Tesla" were either not paying attention at all (contrary to Tesla's explicit warnings), or were driving without the automated features enabled after all despite initial media claims to the contrary. Is this what you consider "disparagement" or do you have more egregious examples?
I did not particularly keep track, I do not dedicate my life to obsessively follow even massive dangerous idiots. There were at least 3 major ones.
That said, yes. What you said is evidence that he is mean-spirited and does not follow the rules he set himself. Of course, having an ethical behaviour sometimes means making hard choices. It is not about doing things that are understandable in context, it’s about doing the right thing, even if it is at a cost to you in the short term. He does not have any history of doing so.
These people are dead. Spitting on their graves because he is annoyed by their family is absolutely unethical. Particularly since their main failure was to believe the smoke and mirrors about FSD, which is itself another ethical clusterfuck.
If he had a beef, he could have sued for defamation, where he could have shown his data in an ethical and confidential manner. He knows the deal, he’s been in more than his fair share of defamation lawsuits, on either side.
I don't find it particularly mean-spirited to say "actually, our product didn't kill him, he wasn't using that feature." I don't even find it especially pejorative to note that the victim at that particular time was ignoring warnings and reading a newspaper; most of us do something foolish occasionally.
But that's just me. I doubt further debate on this would be productive.
Add how he took a multibillion payout while laying off 14% ish of Tesla staff. He seems to use shareholder Tesla equity to bail out his other misadventures. To add insult to injury he laughed with Trump about firing unionizing workers.
Oh he likes to bully people with lawsuits. Amber Heard comes to mind (he bullied the studio behind Aquaman).
- the pedo guy moment
- the hyperloop smoke and mirrors which are actually just his campaign against public transport
- the several union busting episodes
- the whole “Tesla is going to save the world” thing
- the multiple harassment cases
- the multiple instances of overwork, discrimination, and general lack of any consideration for his staff
- all the severance payments he failed to make after having fired a whole bunch of people
- the stupid ultimatum before one of the firing episodes, plus the utterly stupid “show your work” thing that came just after
- the multiple times he stiffed his creditors (either landlords, lawyers, contractors in general) or tried to do it
- the way he tried to force open Tesla factories in the middle of the COVID pandemic
- the multiple instances of pushing Russian propaganda verbatim (concerning.)
- most of the Neuralink saga
- the FSD vapourware that has been coming next year for a decade
- the way he publicly disparaged people who were killed by their Tesla using telemetric data that are supposed to be confidential
- the Media Matters lawsuit
Well, I could go on. He’d need to work quite hard to reverse his public image of massive arsehole at this point.