One very nice thing about Tesla diversifying more into semis and energy is that they will be immune to FUD. Big companies won't care one bit if Elon is a jerk on social media if they can save hundreds of thousands of dollars in fuel per truck.
This is a bit of a side topic, but something I've learned in the last 2 years due to personal wealth generation:
1. People, who don't have wealth, will...
- talk about you and assume they know you based on hearsay.
- envy you whether they know it or not.
- love you if they care about you regardless of the wealth, so don't bring it up with them
- hate you if you bring it up too much in a general sense.
2. People, who do have wealth...
- won't talk about you and assume nothing for the most part other than worry about any concerning behavior or reminisce about similar things they've experienced with wealth generation (Good and Bad).
- usually end up making a choice: own the narrative of their lives and be open about their wealth...or just stay private (or "stealth").
- don't care about you as much as you think they do unless they're close family and friends
- are, more often than not, have good values, principles, and discipline
In regards to Elon Musk and my learnings about social reactions to wealth, he's obviously been managing and dealing with being rich and famous for a very long time...decades. There's subtlety to it, but I get the sense he's limiting the amount of people that's in his inner circle and constantly stress testing his ability to garner great amounts of information that strengthen his intuition (amongst the bevy of other things he does)...and trying to share what he learns as much as possible to the general public.
Mind you, he's managing a 107M person social media account..in a social media app that he's trying buy...where he poopposts a lot mixed in with reality defining news points. His IRL inner circle is probably way more simple and intricate in the long tails than any one of us understands based on how rich and famous he is and for how long he's been rich and famous. I'm assuming he's made a call out to separate himself from the large swath of people just based on his motivations and ambitions...while finding those that can provide the BEST sources of information and intuitive understanding of the general world as he can to support his motivations and ambitions.