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
The Blues Brothers! That’s a fun one to introduce the kids to. I remember watching it with my daughter for the first time after we got our first “real” television. It became an instant favorite of hers and was a movie we’d sometimes watch after her school band concerts going forward.
“We’ll never get that fat sound again, not without some more horns.” became a catch-all thing to say anytime either of us was trying to figure something out and the situation wasn’t looking too good.
I’m almost positive that movie lead her to tryout for band in the first place based on the timing of things. And now she’s playing trombone for her college marching band! Not a direct line from then until now, but it may have been 106 miles long and involved sunglasses.
I know that me typing this here means that I’m engaging with this stuff still. That it makes me a contrarian to my point I’m about to make. That being said, I am so tired of having to constantly see the media cover these freakish weirdo billionaires. Jensen is essentially a traitor at this point but sure let’s opine about how much it makes sense that he would easily slide right into the nazi adjacent weirdo freak’s grift machine at Tesla.
Put Elizabeth Holmes as CEO of Tesla.
*moonroof flies off at speed*
“You can see everything”
This affair is one of those events that have a very real risk of impacting all of humanity. HOW much that impact is might never be known.
For example, maybe a few dollars are not invested in AI and one last development check gets skipped to maintain profit and the evil AI gets released. Or maybe that same decrease in investment slows development and the evil AI is caught.
All I know, is the impact will be discussed and analyzed for a generation to come.
I’d put Zuck at Delorean. Instead of ruining the world, he’d ruin a car company that never had a chance. Plus we’d get smoked meats instead of coke!
the Cybertruck represents the daring, forward-thinking vision that makes Tesla a trailblazer in the industry
That’s the funniest thing I’ve read all week, truly.
JB doing the little piano solo was great, as well as the double gimme ten with Paul Shaffer.
“Can I take it to the bridge, David?”
I don’t think much of many ceos that aren’t founders.
Dr. Su (ironicly Jensen cousin) has done amazing things at AMD because she is an engineer and understands the market around and the product her company makes. She might stand a chance in automotive.
I think Sam Walton could also handle the job. Man of the people who understood economics.
The real answer is you find someone in automotive that understands it and all the mbas hate so much so they forced them out. That’s the person that needs to be CEO of automotive companies.
There is almost no chance they force Jensen out. It’s just lip service to act like they are doing something because of the 22% dip. If he did leave he would just start another company. Or maybe buy a small fabless company to get a head start.
Elon knows how to sell create urgency that’s all he did. Told his most loyal people their mars truck is going away while he is also trying to build a moon base. They want more they want the moon truck. He should do a going out of production sale and keep it up until it doesn’t work anymore. The rational people will buy something else.
Lol a whole 5k people. That supports keeping a production line open.
You could easily get more people than that to sign a petition to bring back (eg) the RX-7 (with a rotary, obvs), but I’m trying to think of the most obscure car that more than 5000 people would like to bring back; Autozam AZ1? Citroen 2CV (in OG, non-EV form)?
I bet I could get more people to sign a petition to bring back the AMC Eagle, Edsel, Corvair, or Tucker.
And they already have Cybertrucks.
TBQ:
Fuck it, we’re giving Gabe Newell control of Stellantis.
Another billionaire dweeb had another unseemly affair or two. Who cares? I mean, I know the right wing media and tech bros all decided that AI is the be all end all and it’s a huge bubble for our entire economy, but who give a f*** amirite?
Cause he’s married without a Prenup (from what I’ve read), and holds roughly 4% of the company’s shares.
A separation battle would be a very material problem to Nvidia and it’s investors.
Prenup wouldn’t matter here… they started the company after getting married. Stories are that she pawned her engagement ring for capital when the company hit hard times early, and she’s a proper engineer herself. It’s as much her company as his in many ways.
I love that: perhaps she could do an Ex Mrs Bezos and change the entire fucking world.
I care more that he was honeypotted by a foreign government.
Well, maybe. The winds (correlating to the reporting Gamer’s Nexus did earlier in the year) seems to be blowing in a way suggesting that it’s entirely possible Jensen was well aware that he was getting honeypotted and it gave him (and nVidia, with the Trump administration aware/involved) a plausible excuse to bypass export controls.
Yes. Sadly ours doesn’t, though.
So… arts orgs all around of every size are struggling. It was tight before the pandemic, but post audiences are still slow to return, the free money tap has closed, expenses keep going up, and they also need to pay their people because their expenses are going up. Add to that, the current AI and tech crowd doesn’t seem to see arts patronage the way older generations did.
Except for Jensen. He’s made major contributions to the SF Opera and is (was?) filling a significant funding gap with a multi-year commitment. Yeah, he’s a jerk and a dumbass and hate on him for being dumb all you want… but there’s a lot of singers, union musicians, union stagehands, and staff that are now deeply worried in an existential way. The Met is having to drawn down their endowment after having a future commitment fall apart spectacularly. That’s real, real bad. So you might not care, but these things tend to have broad implications.
He’s just another one of Elon’s horcruxes.
It’s really sad that we have to worry about one singular billionaire’s philanthropy in regard to the arts. Remember when we had a National Endowment for the Arts that functioned?
Sort of functioned, but yeah… the NEA being plundered is another pressure…
Creative in general is suffering because of Ai. I just watched what Adobe is about to add to their tools and its mostly just adding Claude and Ai on top of existing tools. Hardly anyone in the audience was clapping. Why? Because those people all know what they are seeing is a rapid destruction of their careers. I’ve been working in some form of creative for over 25 years and I am seeing whats happening now with Ai as an eventual fatal outcome to my career. I am lucky in that my wife and I have saved and so when it happens, we will be ok. But its sad. The only thing I’ve done for my entire career is being obsolete. And I don’t blame companies who see this and realize they can make advertising and so on almost instantly.
They had a round of layoffs in my department recently. And I’m sure its not the last. We have been told to use Ai as much as possible. I simply have no interest. As in- I do not give a flying fuck if you can rattle off a script and have Ai make what will probably be a passable video. I don’t care if it eventually gets good at it too. Making something involves feeling and I feel NOTHING whenever I do use Ai. Because as much as I look at this stuff I can instantly tell if something is made with Ai and when I see it I immediately don’t care.
Why not — Tesla has already given all its secrets to China so the damage will be minimal…
Might lead to better embarrassing stain protection on Tesla seats too…
I feel China has proven more reliable and trustworthy than Elon; this puts those secrets in a safer place.
Elons just hoping some of that honeypotting rubs off on him.
Ewww, I do not want to think about that…
MSS would definitely clone those babies. Or just sending more agents whatever was cheaper. Maybe a little of both. Tesla Shanghai would need a full daycare like whatever is going on in boca chica but on an industrial scale.
These two idiots are detrimental to democracy. Elon is responsible for millions facing death in the world. Thinking FSD is more important than the future of the US and world and worth financing Musk is a sad commentary on civic responsibility.
Congratulations, you have fallen for propaganda so transparently obvious the numbers it is based on suggest that not only did USAID single highhandedly force down all-cause mortality rate in the developing world (disregarding all other charities or national efforts), they somehow managed to raise 11 million people from the dead while doing it.
There’s lies, damn lies, statistics, and then whatever bullshit the Lancet is willing to publish in pursuit of the allmighty NGO dollar. (Spare me the claims about the Lancet’s integrity, they were willing to publish Wakefield’s “Vaccines Cause Autism” article despite zero statistical basis or mechanistic explanations, nevermind the massive ethics violations).
When I was in the peace corps in africa, the only USAID food I ever saw belonged to the local chiefs (read: warlords) who doled it out to their favored retainers. Anyone who thinks that foreign aide is not a destructive force needs a sharp reality check.
You are leaving out the parts where programs that did things like deliver vaccines, medications, AIDS and HIV medications literally used to keep people alive… were canceled. Literally 20 million people from around the world lost access to antiretroviral pills alone. And if those people continue to NOT get those medications they will in fact die. A projected 750,000+ are expected to die each and every year that program is not reinstated.
The program I just mentioned was shut down via the DOGE program, in which Musk oversaw. None of that above is propaganda. And so what the person you responded to said is actually true and so one of many reasons i will never buy one of Elon’s products.
Nope, I am not. Because I delivered those medications to tiny villages on the edge of the Nubian desert, and in doing so we destroyed the only hospital for 200 miles, which killed far more people than western aide ever saved. It’s probably the thing I am most ashamed of in my life. The hard truth is medicine, just like food, has an economic basis. And when western countries provide it for free as an act of “charity”, they utterly destroy any capability for a domestic health care industry or food production industries to develop, which in turn keeps the recipient nations dependent on their wealthy patrons (one may argue this is the entire point). Foreign aide sounds great from a cushy office just off the DC Beltway. When you see the actual effects it has on the recipients, month after month, it’s not longer a kind act of charity, it’s pushing drugs on an addict. Or if you prefer, it’s just colonialism by another name, one that the well-heeled donor class can feel warm and fuzzy about.
If you honestly, truly want the best for the developing world, USAID delenda est.
You didn’t address anything that I just wrote. Pray- please enlighten me. Not just me, but for everyone else on here. Please explain how stopping the shipment of HIV drugs has helped people. Go ahead. Either way, if you’d like to come back and actually respond to what I wrote- feel free.
I addressed everything you wrote, you just don’t like what you read; it probably made you feel icky and uncertain, which is the normal response from Westerners with no experience in the developing world when you point out colonialism is very much alive and well.
Shipping HIV drugs and giving them away for free to the impoverished in the developing world sure seems like a good, kind idea on the surface if you don’t bother to think through the ramifications. The problem is that even if you work through existing medical establishments (as we did some of the time), patients show up to get whatever is available for free but nothing they have to pay for. A generally universal rule for charities in the developing world is you can partner with existing establishments, but you can’t help them make money by charging for things you are giving away. So if you are distributing HIV drugs through a local hospital, that hospital does not actually make any money on the program. And then if you start running clinics in remote villages, people no longer go to the hospital because that costs money (not a lot, within their capabilities to pay, but free is still hard to beat). Within a very short timeframe, everyone is just looking to charity medical clinics for all of their needs, and the one local hospital that actually served them is bankrupt and all of the doctors and nurses leave for jobs where they can actually get paid. Then the Western charities pull out and the locals are completely screwed. The analogy to dealing drugs is rather obvious.
So, want to help the developing world? Go into business there- start a hospital or healthcare company, hire locals, buy your drugs at the best price you can, and sell them at a rate your patients can afford. Make it a sustainable practice, rooted in the local economy and independent of the whims of a foreign capital half the planet away. Virtually no Westerners will do this, because it’s unbelievably hard. It’s a lot easier to virtue signal with someone else’s money at an NGO, knowing you personally are insulated from any actual consequences, and this is just another step on the career ladder. The fact that this screws over your clients in the long run is something you can quietly sweep under the rug and not have to think about too hard.
Then there are damned talking points, fuccing talking points and unresearched talking points. See below IFSHIH, a thoughtful and referenced conclusion to Leon Skum’s DOGE antics. If they really wanted to cut waste, have Leon return the billions in federal $$$’s he ‘earned’ LOL
Wow – I guess I knocked over a hornet’s nest. So, yes, I too was a Peace Corps Volunteer and had over 10 years as Peace Corps staff. I was also a USAID contractor for a project in Northern Guatemala. I worked with nonprofits and educational institutions in other countries. I have also worked extensively in the private sector in Latin America. I certainly agree that not all USAID projects had positive effects, but overall it most certainly did and the answer was not suddenly shutting it down. I stand by my condemnation of Musk and DOGE.
I cannot imagine Jensen would want to be subservient to an idiot, no.
Starlink/Space-X has made it work. Somehow.
I admit that a lot of days Ms. Shotwell must go home and scream into a pillow.
Huang has already resigned this morning, and the gov’t would be wise to invalidate his passport. He’s definitely been doin’ some felonies/treason. This is exactly the kind of person I could see Musk drooling over, especially if he’s impregnated all of his mistresses.
I, too, would love to see Tesla continue to build the CT. I think it should be the ONLY model they offer.
The upset Cybertruck fans are bringing Tobias Funke “There are dozens of us!” vibes.
I’d rather be seen in Tobias’s jorts than a Cybertruck tbh
Eddy Murphy doing James Brown celebrity hot tubs is the best JB explanation.
https://youtu.be/yAJnpaFRrlw
You can make a great hot tub if you push your flaming Tesla into the swimming pool!
The clash of egos could cause the entire planet to collapse into a black hole…
This is not a widely known story but AMD almost bought/merged with NVIDIA 20 years ago. The thing that ultimately killed it was Hector and Jen-Shun couldn’t agree on who would be CEO. That argument changed computing history
I was working on a stealth joint project between the companies on the AMD side and the nature of the project basically pointed to some kind of merger. Project went into the black and I didn’t hear anything else until one day it was announced that there was a merger. I was like “yeah we bought Nvidia right?” and everyone was like “no, we bought ATI”. I was dumbfounded. Turns out who got to be CEO torpedoed the deal
I had the same thought about the seismic impact their combined (or opposed) egos would make couldn’t be anything less than vast.
From what I’ve read, the ATI acquisition was less about getting a graphics division (although that did help keep the company afloat during the Bulldozer years) and more about getting ready-made motherboard chipsets so that AMD could have complete control over its platform like Intel, right?
Partially. it wasn’t the primary but it was a nice bonus. Chipsets are much simpler than GPUs to design but buying them is faster
This was right around the time Fab 48 went live in Dresden and AMD had a lot of spare capacity. I know for sure they needed to fill it. Producing more GPUs would have filled that. NVIDIA’s or ATIs either worked
The other problem is FAB 48 cost $2b plus to make and the next one was projected to cost at least 3x that. AMD’s annual revenue was only around $4b so they needed to grow revenue to afford fabs.
Didn’t work actually and all the fans got spun off into the Global Foundries company
The funny thing is that Jensen’s cousin Lisa Su now runs AMD and they were openly colluding to keep hardware prices high. In a way, they all ended up under the same leadership after all.
I misread the question and thought of André Citroën as ceo of Tesla being the B perfect head transplant.
Non automotive? How about David Packard of HP for Tesla?
The worst being “Never get involved in a land war in Asia.”
And, You should bring up The T.A.M.I. Show for James Brown and a whole host of others.
TBQ: I’d like to see the CEO of Aldi or Costco bring a level of frugality but still quality to the auto industry. It’s a widely held belief that Kirkland Signature (and to a lesser extent, Aldi) sources their products from the big names. Imagine the same thing brought to the car industry. A commodity midsize CUV with a Toyota hybrid drivetrain sold direct to consumer would be pretty cool.
The problem is that the automotive market works on much lower margins than most consumer goods, so you can make a car with lots of parts-bin stuff but you aren’t going to be able to cut significant stuff. Maybe if you buy everyone’s old tooling as they release new models you can at least avoid that up front cost.
That said, having someone running the company that says “I don’t care if it doesn’t make money, we will keep building the Focus” (or insert your favorite massive hole in an automaker’s lineup) doesn’t seem like a bad idea.
grocery store profit margins are even lower than automobile manufacturers.
3 to 5% for automobile manufacturers vs 1 to 3% for grocery stores ( the lowest margin industry i am aware of).
Costco sells a membership. The stores are just icing on the cake and the justification for the membership. But it’s all about that sweet, sweet membership cash.
Costco isn’t subtle about who they source from. They have a magazine that highlights some supplier or another every month. The other nice thing about KS products is they’re targeted to be as good or better than name brands while being less expensive. I’ll take it.
I’d argue that Tesla is in fact steeped in distraction, rather than immune to it.
This is the best thing I will read today.
Like Axe.
There used to be a member of the commentariat around here whose name was “Elon’s backdoor musk.”
Always liked that name
The speed of his resignation indicates to me that there are other things that Jensen has done that were about to become public.
…that and they have earnings to report in 5 days…
Time for the IR/PR team at Nvidia to work their magic.
It’s entirely probable that Jensen (as well as the US government) knew that she was a spy and this was a deliberate attempt to have a cover story for nVidia deliberately violating export controls
agreed…there is rarely smoke without fire.
Even across an embedded video, when James Brown says “get up and party” I feel compelled to do just that. The enthusiasm is just so infectious. Dude had charisma for days.
Have you seen the T.A.M.I. Show?
Possibly my favourite bit is when the camera pans across the crowd during Night Train: the black girl in the middle of all the chaos looking like a deer caught in headlights, followed by the white girl on the bottom right completely losing it.
From about 1:33:20