Elon Musk just canceled a spacecraft launch, settled a lawsuit over paying ex-twitter employees for what must have been at minimum hundreds of millions of dollars and federal judges in California and Maryland certified separate class action lawsuits against the carmaker and its CEO personally.

(An illustration from Dante descent into the nine planes of hell. It seems appropriate. JP)

But there is more, much more.

One of the reasons people buy particular models of car is the resale value. The idea that you might get back a high proportion of your purchase prize is a compelling one.

The resale price of a Tesla is collapsing, at least, according to Mike Taylor, writing for the Cool Down. He suggests the collapse might be do to the many controversies, some of them political, surrounding the controversial figure.

Mike Taylor writing for The Cool Down in article entitled: New report reveals stunning trend in used Tesla vehicle prices: ‘Quite exceptional’ reports that the value of used Teslas is collapsing.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/report-reveals-stunning-trend-used-004500645.html

The cost of a used Cybertruck has dropped the most over the last year: 30.4% to $83,963. The Model S is down 22.6% to $26,534, the Model X is down 16.8% to $37,747, and the Model Y is down 12% to $29,216. The most affordable offering is the Model 3, which is down 8% to $23,318.

“The fact that its average used car sale price would dip below the industry average, which includes inexpensive mass-market vehicles, is quite exceptional,” Electrek reported, noting used Tesla prices are down 4.6% year over year, while the market is up 1.2%.

Why is this important?

“It’s proof that the Tesla brand has taken a massive reputational hit and there’s no clear recovery in sight,” Electrek stated. (My emphasis. jp)

The other day I was reading an article in which Elon Musk claimed that if you want to be amazingly rich, all you have to do is work 120 hour weeks. I immediately discarded the nonsense classifying it as one of those ridiculous screeds where wealthy people attempt to appear virtuous against all actual evidence. (I will not link to it – if that kind of braggadocio is your cup of tea, you can look it up.)

However, we do have an insight into how he makes money from an investigation by CNN and discussed in an article from The Cool Down.

Cody Januszko writing for The Cool Down has an article entitled: Small businesses forced into bankruptcy after multimillion-dollar deal with Tesla: ‘It’s been horrible’

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/small-businesses-forced-bankruptcy-multimillion-004500053.html

CNN’s recent investigation sheds new light on Tesla’s business practices. Many of the small businesses that Tesla contracted were not paid for their labor or products, forcing at least two of them into bankruptcy.

“It’s been horrible. If I didn’t have my family, I don’t think I would have made it,” Jennifer Meissner, one of the business owners who went bankrupt, said.

Unpaid contractors have filed liens against Musk’s companies. Liens are legal claims against property that allow a creditor to take the property if the debt isn’t paid.

CNN’s financial analysis shows that more than $110 million in liens have been filed against Tesla over the past five years, with a potential $24 million still owed.

It would appear to me that if you don’t pay your bills, you can accumulate a lot of money. These small businesses, at least the ones still surviving, are making legal claims against Tesla, so something about payments that is very bad is happening. Let us see what develops.

In international news surrounding the fellow, Elon Musk, we have this burst of disaster journalism. Musk’s AI, Grok, has been superseded in China by the local’s AI system. What do you think? Several hundred million in losses? That is just a guess. I would think providing an AI system for cars produced in China would be in the tens of billions of dollars but I might be mistaken.

Joe Wilkins writing for Futurism has an article entitled: Elon Musk Just Suffered a Humiliating Defeat in China

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/elon-musk-just-suffered-humiliating-134518373.html

So far, 2025 hasn’t exactly been a year of resounding success for centibillionaire Elon Musk’s AI efforts.

The richest man on earth has struggled to get xAI’s Grok off the ground, with setbacks taking the form of privacy scandals, misinformation controversies, not to mention a highly-public white supremacy episode.

And now, more than a month after Musk promised to roll Grok out to Teslas “next week,” it turns out a Chinese AI model will be taking the chatbot’s place.

According to Bloomberg, Tesla’s Chinese division is planning to introduce in-car voice assistance via DeepSeek and Bytedance’s AI models at some point in the near future.

It would seem that the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune are falling with intensity upon Musk and his empire. Of course, there are many critics who might find the barrage just and fair. Well, there are a lot of points of view out there.

What are the business ethics issues here? Corporate citizenship would be a good call. Tesla does not seem interested in paying taxes or benefiting the nation to whom it owes so much.

Of course, we could do Stakeholder analysis. The government, it could be argued always seems to come up on the short end of the stick on these deals with Elon Musk, — cars, spacecraft and DOGE all seem a bit problematic. What about the American People? Elon Musk seems to me more of a well paid parasite than any kind of benefit. But we could do the full shareholder analysis. How would we classify Elon Musk with his enormous wealth and powerful connections purchased for many millions of dollars? Would we call him a Super Stakeholder? His needs seem at times to outweigh citizens, nations and economic systems. All these appear as little more than pawns to our class of oligarchs.

Sometimes, it seems like we are reading a new and cruel version of the Iliad and the Odyssey where the gods of Greek mythology walk the earth and interfere with the destinies of men. These billionaires seem every bit as capricious as Hera and Zeus, and their depredations are equally cruel.

We cannot escape reading about these people, however godlike they think they are. The news will continue to roll in.

Let us see what happens to him and his empire next week. I’m sure it will be interesting.

James Alan Pilant