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Elon Musk's Twitter Poll Has More to Do With Death Than Taxes

Death and taxes. The adage says these are the inevitable things in life. Elon Musk started a Twitter poll to decide whether he should sell 10% of his Tesla stock, worth around $21 billion. In his words, it has to do with allegations of “unrealized gains being a means of tax avoidance.” What he did not mention is that it also has to do with death.
Elon Musk Asks If He Should Sell Tesla Stock Options 7 photos
Photo: Tesla/Twitter
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The first death is that of his stock options. You may prefer the technical term for that: “expiration.” As Lora Kolodny also reminded us on Twitter, Musk told Kara Swisher at the Code Conference 2021 in September that he would have to sell these options to not lose them. Getting 50% of $21 billion and paying the rest as taxes is better than getting 100% of nothing.

The other deaths are the ones Musk wants to perpetrate. Human beings and animals are not directly affected, so there’s no murder involved. What Musk wants to kill are stories that would not resonate well with his followers.

Although selling stock options about to expire is perfectly reasonable, it may send the message that Musk does not believe in Tesla’s current market cap. Scott Galloway brought that hypothesis up on Twitter. The marketing professor calls Musk’s poll a “cloud cover” for that. In other words, Musk would be trying to kill the idea that he is selling stock just to pocket the money.

Another Twitter user remembered a recent story about Musk selling his stock options to end world hunger. Dr. Jin SEO wrote that “EV Jesus needs to unload, but he needs a palatable cover story.” By saying he will abide by the decision pointed by the poll, Musk puts the responsibility for it on the responders.

Tesla follows the same strategy when it places using FSD or Autopilot on its customers’ shoulders. After all, these are beta software with clear legal disclaimers. If people get distracted from overreliance on these systems or because they think the cars are more autonomous than they really are, that’s their own fault. Three people already died under these circumstances. Another one perished in a crash with emergency vehicles involving Tesla vehicles on Autopilot. NHTSA is investigating Tesla for that.

Musk is famous for creating distractions. With his new poll, he seems willing to kill another story: the “late-breaking issues” with FSD 10.4. We have written about that on November 6, but we can give you a quick summary.

Tesla committed to releasing a new version of FSD every Friday. In each release, new beta testers are added to a group that already counts 11,704 cars, depending on their Safety Scores. We know that thanks to FSD’s first recall, which happened due to early braking issues with FCW (front collision warning) and AEB (automatic emergency braking) with FSD 10.3.

Tesla said it fixed the problem by pulling the software back from cars that received it, preventing others from getting FSD 10.3, and disabling FCW and AEB in these vehicles without telling their owners about that. When the time came for FSD 10.4 to be released, Musk said it had “late-breaking issues” that should be fixed until November 7.

Musk is entertaining his followers and the press with a discussion about whether or not he should sell stock options that will soon expire. That seems like the perfect way to obliterate concerns about what FSD 10.4 may bring to the roads with an even larger group of “beta testers.” It also slays discussions about how Tesla tests safety-critical software.

It is ironic to see Musk use a stock options sale story to distract people from Tesla deploying a beta software that may get them distracted while driving. With the excuse of avoiding traffic deaths, it may increase them, such as with the head-on collisions FSD 10.3 would have caused if attentive drivers did not prevent them.

Death and taxes. The latter is coming for Musk as most of his followers and responders are saying he should sell his stock options. The former seems to have been accomplished with all relevant topics the sale discussion has silenced. Try to keep them alive: they may do the same for you on the roads, whether you are driving a Tesla or not.







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About the author: Gustavo Henrique Ruffo
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Motoring writer since 1998, Gustavo wants to write relevant stories about cars and their shift to a sustainable future.
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