With the election mostly over–Alaska will be done counting in 2029 I assume–you would think that would be the end of silly season for at least a few weeks. You’d be wrong. We barely lasted a week. The Morning Dump doesn’t shy away from the absurd, as this whole endeavor is highly influenced by that other, superior Matt. He loves shenanigans. It’s just rare, even in autos, for so much to be happening all at once.
Let’s start off with an Elon Musk tweet/X post/whatever. The weakness of losing Twitter as a name is that “tweet” is a really clean way to refer to a social post. In response to another post, Musk said he’d be honored to hire disgraced NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang. That sounds crazy, but hear me out on this one, I don’t think it’s that crazy. Sure, Huang admitted to betraying his wife and maybe his country, but Cybertruck owners these days seem to think betrayal is a key part of the Tesla business.
Porsche’s new CEO isn’t having it, and took a rare pot-shot at Musk and Tesla for its flying car demonstration. Are you worried about Lamborghini not selling enough cars in the Middle East? Don’t worry, the Middle East is back, baby.
‘That Would Be An Honor’ Says CEO Of Tesla About Hiring CEO Of Company That Had Affair With Alleged Chinese Spy
I do not think that wearing a leather jacket all the time is necessarily anathema to running a technology company. Steve Jobs wore a turtleneck and jeans, right? It’s just that when you wear a shiny leather jacket all the time and get busted having an affair with, reportedly, a Chinese spy and a direct report … it makes the jokes a little too easy.
That’s what’s happened with NVIDIA’s Jensen Huang, a guy who was in charge of a company that made chips for people to build sweet gaming rigs and then suddenly found himself in the middle of the AI boom. What he does is key to the future, if you ask people like Elon Musk. He also may have committed a little “light treason” and people weren’t super jazzed about that, but then another, more traditional HR-related affair cropped up last night. He could get fired, though Huang is much like other tech titans (Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Sam Altman) in that they have enough equity in the company to make that super awkward.
This all sets up this exchange between longtime Twitter crank ZeroHedge and Musk:
@zerohedge That would be an honor
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 12, 2026
If you don’t want to engage with the current version of Twitter, I don’t blame you, so I’ll just say that ZeroHedge suggested that if Huang is fired, Musk should hire him, and Musk said “That would be an honor.”
The two companies are interconnected, as Bloomberg points out:
Musk, CEO of Tesla Inc., and Huang have known each other for at least a decade, and both men joined US President Donald Trump’s high-profile visit to China earlier this year. Musk previously expressed his admiration for Huang and said he expected to continue ordering chips from Nvidia.
Nvidia is a key supplier of graphics processing units to Tesla, which uses them to train artificial intelligence models for autonomous driving and robotics. Nvidia also supplies computing technology for Tesla’s driver-assistance systems, though the carmaker is developing its own chips.
For most companies, hiring someone like Huang would be a distraction, but Tesla is a company mostly immune to distraction. If Tesla wants to be more than an automaker, then Huang does have experience out of the automotive realm. In the current politics, Musk also has a certain smell to him, and an allegedly honeytrapped exec might be a step up for the brand and would leave Musk with time (as board chair) to focus on other things.
Of course, some may look at what Huang did as a betrayal, but that’s not so uncommon for Tesla if you ask Cybertruck owners.
Update: Huang resigned this morning.
Tesla Cybertruck Fans Are Suddenly Very Upset
Are you ready to feel sympathetic for Cybertruck owners? Fairly or unfairly, the average Cybertruck owner is stereotyped as a person who proudly doesn’t care what other people feel. That’s probably not most of them, though, and as someone who has loved some truly dumb cars, I have some empathy for those who see the cancellation of the truck as terrible news.
Automotive News did a whole roundup of angry owners:
An online petition with more than 5,000 signatures as of Nov. 11 calls for Tesla to reconsider plans to kill the 3-year-old truck.
“The decision to discontinue Tesla’s Cybertruck platform has sent shockwaves through the community of enthusiasts and hobbyists alike,” wrote Troy Meekhof, who started the Change.org petition.
“For me, and countless others, the Cybertruck represents the daring, forward-thinking vision that makes Tesla a trailblazer in the industry,” wrote Meekhof, also known as The Cybertruck Guy, who posts his road trip adventures on YouTube. Tesla should expand “human-first vehicles,” he said.
I also think that the Cybertruck might have the highest proportion of owners who have made doing YouTube videos about “owning a Cybertruck” into a hobby or a career, which makes the backlash extra harsh. Although, if we can get two more people blogging about Murano CrossCabs, we might at least tie them.
Porsche CEO Takes The Air Out Of Roadster Launch
The Tesla Roadster reveal was, um, a lot. While I have questions about the feasibility or legality of the jumping car, I thought the presentation was amusing.
I guess Porsche CEO Michael Leiters doesn’t quite agree. From Bloomberg again:
Porsche AG boss Michael Leiters took a swipe at the gimmicks surrounding Tesla Inc.’s Roadster presentation, saying that the flying car and Porsche’s Mission S concept target different customers.
“We want to completely steer clear from any kind of effects and shows,” Chief Executive Officer Michael Leiters said Wednesday at a conference in Berlin. Porsche wants to showcase tangible technical innovation instead, he said.
You know what is tangible and innovative? Bringing back the 944.
Lamborghini Says Middle Eastern Customers Are Getting Cars Again
The war in Iran spilled over to much of the region, with that country launching drones and missiles at many of the Arab states aligned with the United States. This had the knock-on effect of impacting the sales of extreme luxury cars.
Per Reuters, some of that is turning around:
“September and October saw an improvement in our ability to deliver the vehicles,” Chief Marketing and Sales Officer Federico Foschini said at a briefing with journalists
The situation should be positive also for November, but it is difficult to make predictions further ahead, he noted, speaking at the company headquarters In April, Lamborghini had said that the conflict in the Middle East had forced a complete stop to sales and deliveries in the region
The Middle East region accounts for about 450 cars sold a year for Lamborghini, roughly 5% of its annual volume, but historically produces high profit margins, in line with industry peers
Of course, nothing is ever settled, and, at best, the war seems in a bit of an uneasy pause.
What I’m Listening To While Writing TMD
I watched The Blues Brothers movie with my kiddo last night, and it was just as incredible as I remembered. I did have to point out who James Brown was, though. I’m not sure this James Brown performance from Letterman in 1982 is the one I’m going to use to explain James Brown to her, but I appreciate the suggestion, as it’s quite the show.
The Big Question
You can swap the CEO of any non-automotive company into an automotive one (past or present). What are you doing?
Top photo: Nvidia; Tesla
I’ll bet I could get more than 5k signatures to remove all existing WankPanzer trucks from the roads today.
5k signatures would take all of 10 minutes.
You spelled “m” wrong.
Jim Sinegal from Costco could run a car company
Jensen Huang was on my wish list of people to replace Musk. Now I see that they are cut from the same cloth, although Musk is a lot more open about his poor ethics, baby momma collection and treason. I need to redo my list.
At least Huang didn’t rub everyone’s noses in it.
It’s funny how that works.
Is Google and evil corporation? Sure.
But when you say “name some evil corporations” my brain immediately goes to the clowns sitting front row with The Orange One, and I’d say Tesla, Facebook, Amazon before taking a minute to think of others.
I don’t think that Google and Amazon are intentionally evil.
They could and have in the past put more effort into avoiding being evil.
Twitter made an effort to be proactively not evil, and someone was so pissed that he bought the company because it was insufficiently evil.
Facebook was evil from the start, and Tesla pretty much hid whatever evil the had until Covid made them crazy.
Apple and Jobs was always a mystery. Steve J was a terrible person bud did good things. Steve W. Is a great person but kind of ineffectual. I always thought that people who thought they knew Jobs politics were delusional. He knew his customers politics for sure. Bill gates was the opposite. Probably a good guy but fine with being the public villain.
TBQ: Everyone thinks a job is easy if they don’t have to do it.
There’s no substitute for having a deep understanding of the product and industry.
Can we go back to 2006 and replace basically any automotive CEO with the guy from Arizona who has kept the price of a can of tea at $0.99?
A true hero
Beat me to it, that was my first thought.
TBQ: CEOs are swappable. Their main purpose is increasing shareholder wealth, whether by increasing sales and/or decreasing costs. Lou Gerstner left RJR/Nabisco to run IBM and did very well. He knew how to scrap non-performing product lines and market the profitable ones. I won’t talk about John Sculley, though.
CE9 of Harlet Davidson to Stellantis. Just for the lateral move.
Is Harlet Davidson their new brand of “Chick Bikes”? If not, it ought to be.
Incoming: a completely inappropriate brand name & marketing for Ram to use for marketing “chick trucks”
Only Rams
Ma’am?
Damn typos!
But why not?
Dear Cybertruck owners, try harder. Only 5,000 signatures? Mass Effect stans are stomping you into the dirt!
Also Huang is already gone from Nvidia, having resigned this morning.
Clearly he never watched the TV show Archer. Anyone who has watched Archer knows what a Honey Pot is.
Danger Zone!
RAMPAGE!
PHRASING!
And, make sure she doesn’t leave her vagina IN THE SINK!!!
MAWP
Oh ha ha! Make fun of the deaf guy! This isn’t funny Lana! Lana? Lana? LAAAAAAAAAAAAAANAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!
Dukes!
It’s like the robber stealing $192 from the 7-11 getting 10 years in jail, and CEO stealing $200,000,000 and getting a $100,000 fine, no jail.
Fines are the cost of business. If you can commit a crime and just face a fine then it is only a crime to be poor.
True.
Arrested development heavy TMD, love it
Can the POTUS count as a CEO? Because that’s a swap I’d like to make.
Nobody with a CEO-sized ego would choose to be Musk’s underling.
This. You don’t rise to the top by being a nice person with a reasonable ego.
This smells an awful lot like Microsoft giving ActivisionBlizzard’s CEO a golden parachute. There’s a definite “Bros before ‘Hos” mentality at the top of tech.
seems like it is a “Bros and ‘Hos” mentality.
I’m kind of surprised Tesla decided to kill the Cybertruck. If nothing else, I expected Musk would demand they keep making them out of spite. Pissing away $470,000,000 to watch his candidates get bitch slapped up and down the ballot has almost no impact on his finances.
Does Musk wasting an absurd amount of money only to get a giant middle finger from the electorate have anything to do with Tesla’s financials? Not really. Do I enjoy finding excuses to mention it? Fuck yeah I do.
The funny thing is, with that $470 million, he probably could have developed a second generation Cybertruck (or at least a good chunk of it) based on the same platform.
But hey, it’s his “money” (in quotes because it’s all just pretend based on stock prices).
The best part of the half billion he lost on the election is that it was REAL money. Most of Elmo’s wealth is based on the valuation of the companies he owns. But you can’t give a TV network your Tesla shares to run your commercial, you have to actually pay them.
Very frustrating watching people puss away money that could be used for something actually useful.
Let’s play the “what would you do with $469,696,969?” game.
Go Karts. That’s where I would start. (My version of pissing away money)
But seriously, you could feed and house a lot of people.
If we want to play that game, let’s consider what Musk could do with just half of his brief “trillion” dollar net worth.
My go-to would be to feed the entire freaking world for a decade or more.
And he wouldn’t even notice that $500b was gone. Again, theoretically, if his trillion dollar net worth was real and liquid.
For a guy trying to promote living in space, how about developing a totally self sufficient net zero town in a depressed real estate area, and keeping the rent or lease to own at half the going rate.
He could also just go live in space himself, since he’s so keen on the idea.
He promised that he would be living on Mars by now. We need to hold him to that promise.
“I spent a lot of money on booze, birds and fast cars.
The rest I just squandered”.
– George Best
Praying for Blue Texas to be the downfall of his whole stupid house of cards.
From your lips (keyboard) to gods ear
You know what? And I know this probably won’t go over well with some… but seriously. Screw that guy. Not only are his products behind the Ai that’s out there decimating the job market but in doing this he scews over his own company and all of the employees who work there. Someone with all of their fingers in the product like he is, they aren’t going to be able to find a replacement for him. Right when all of this was peaking too. Way to go moron.
Screw that guy? Sounds like that’e exactly what the spy did.
Jensen would fit right in at Tesla with Elon, they’ve both had affairs with their executives and played shady games with getting their products into China.
Being morally bankrupt is a commonality.
CEO hell, get someone hard working who can do the job for less than millions of dollars per year. Clearly the CEOs are not working thousands of times harder than the worker if they are acting how they act. Nope.
In every company I’ve ever seen, there is a certified Old Codger that knows exactly what the company needs. A Machinist, an old engineer, a welder, a wrench turner from Lower Mississippi that makes James Brown seem to speak English to name a couple certified old farts off the top of my head.
Take one of these Old Codgers and put them in the CEO office. This does three things:
First, it gets the to shut up and do something other than bitch. Improves productivity right there.
Secondly, in my experience, these old Codgers actually are wise and have a lot of good ideas. The times that managers get promotions by listening to an Old Codger and stealing ideas is shocking.
Thirdly, given the service that an Old Codger has given the company for decades, even a silver parachute on the way out the door is a well deserved send off for a loyal employee.
Yes, and not to sound old fashion but more of the C-suite people need to be people who know how to makes thing other than just make shareholder value, like actually make physical things.
If you set aside the possibility that he may be a knowing or unknowing Chinese asset, seems like Huang might actually make a better CEO than Musk? Hard to tell with these guys, seems like he pushed at least one really good technology investment that paid off long term at Nvidia, but A) not sure if he’s done much else? It seems Nvidia is well enough managed and run to B) not only luck into their tech being the best suited GPU for “AI” data centers but to take that advantage and run with it.
Otoh without the LLM boom I wonder if any of us would have ever even heard of him, when I first got on Robinhood circa 2017 Nvidia was one the default stocks and while I was familiar with the company their stock was worth hardly anything at the time and only got the huge valuations between Covid chip shortages and then LLMs.
“For me, and countless others,”
Actually, I think we can count the others…
“An online petition with more than 5,000 signatures”
I’d say that’s about how many Cybertruck enthusiasts there are. Considering Musk initially projected 250k sales per year, only getting about 5k signatures says shutting down production is the correct decision.
There are dozens of them. Dozens
Yeh I lol’ed when I read the numbers on that, I doubt 5K diehards is even close to enough sales to justify a 2nd generation.
Remember when Ford announced they were going to replace the Fox body Mustang with the Probe? They got tens of thousands of letters against the idea. PHYSICAL LETTERS!
How much more work is it to sent an actual letter than it is to click on an online petition.
THAT is how real enthusiasts let companies know what’s up.
A pinch before my time though I seem to recall reading that in Car and Driver in the ’90s, pretty wild though to your point, that requires actual effort (and even some expense) unlike taking 15 seconds to fill out a change.org petition.
Pretty sure sending a physical letter would be anathema to the kind of person who buys a Cybertruck though.
My lawn.
Get off it.
(Ties onion to belt and shouts at cloud)
Like us Autopians pining for more manual gearboxes. PS I’m pretty sure I could easily get 50,000 folks to demand that they do it now and not next year.
I’m sure there’d be more online signatures on a petition to rename the Cybertruck as “Crappy McCrapface”
I vote for the name DumpsterFire
“an allegedly honeytrapped exec might be a step up for the brand and would leave Musk with time (as board chair) to focus on other things”,,,like having more kids with more women!
TBQ: would love to see the My Pillow Guy calling the shots at Tesla. A match made in heaven, there would be so much winning.
I mean, Tesla has already done the models: S, 3, X and Y
Now, introducing the models: C, H, 3(redesigned), A, T and R (for Roadster, of course)
Huang running Tesla would be a big affair
I like it. Tesla could also start using full names that sound tech-adjacent like Celsius, Hypothesis, Obsidian, Apollo, and Decibel.
Coming soon: a very angry Ford Motor Company. Especially about the “Model T.”
Oh man a “person” with a Fight Club avatar asking Elon to hire Jensen Huang might be one of the most ironic things ever. But maybe Jensen also offered to buy his employee a horse in exchange for special massages… Also I think you should swap the Cybertruck picture with Tobias Fünke saying, “There are dozens of us! Dozens!”