Is Tesla going up in smoke?

Elon Musk brought Tesla Inc. into this world, and he seems determined to take it out. The billionaire’s latest self-destructive act was an appearance last night on the podcast of comedian Joe Rogan, where, among other things, Musk confirmed Bob Dylan’s thesis that “everybody must get stoned.” It’s the latest in a long chain of Musk stunts, which Liam Denning admits keeps him neck-deep in entertaining column fodder but has troubling implications for Tesla. You know, the company Musk is supposed to be running? The electric-car-maker’s stock tumbled recently, as did its bonds. Its chief accounting officer quit after less than a month on the job. Its HR director followed him out and kept walking. “Tesla’s vital swing investors are backing away,” Liam writes. “The joke’s getting old.”
Musk often blames short-sellers for Tesla’s problems. And yesterday one of those, Citron Research founder Andrew Left, did in fact create a new headache for the company. He sued Tesla and Musk, claiming the billionaire’s August tweets about taking the company private were meant to manipulate the stock to burn shorts like him. Musk’s tweets did temporarily boost the stock, but also brought an SEC investigation and reinforced doubts about Musk’s fitness to run Tesla; and all those temporary gains are long gone. Still, Matt Levine suggests Left might be on to something: “Musk’s extremely public and intensely self-documented desire to burn short sellers … is a pretty plausible explanation for why he might announce a going-private transaction without actually intending to do it.”
It’s all more fodder for the argument made by Joe Nocera recently that Musk should give up his CEO job, at least, and let somebody else – maybe ex-Ford CEO Alan Mulally – take over, before it’s too late.
— Bloomberg