Musk's Tesla has yet to sell a lemon

Musk's X has decided not to buy one

Ford Motor Company (“Ford”) released the Edsel in 1957, a tribute to the late Edsel Ford. The vehicle was immediately panned as a “lemon” and Ford carried the stigma of the Edsel for decades. I remember a few lines attributed to Erma Bombeck not long after the Edsel was cancelled that went:

“And a loser named Vixen, she’s pregnant, drives an Edsel, and voted for Nixon”.

I got a kick out of Bombeck’s quick wit and pithy sayings. At one point she quipped “Our family grew up on leftovers. The original meal was never found”. I couldn’t stop laughing when I ran across that one.

In the car business, a bad design can affect sales for years to come. The Pontiac Aztec, the Ford Pinto (which had a nasty habit of bursting into flames if involved in a collision from behind) and GM’s first electric vehicle, the EV1, all tried to break new ground but died quite quickly.

Tesla has produced only a handful of designs and they have all been winners. The sleek Model S, the popular Model Y, the powerful Model X and the sensible Model 3 have all outsold many popular internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles produced by GM, Ford or Stellantis. Part of Musk’s brilliance is the self-discipline to pay attention to design and avoid major missteps.

In X, Musk flirted with a deal to hire former CNN anchor Don Lemon, but summarily canceled their prospective contract at the end of a one hour interview where Lemon was making every effort to be his usual obnoxious self and promote his left leaning ideology. Musk concluded that proceeding with a deal to air Lemon’s post-CNN show on X would be putting CNN on X, and wisely cancelled the planned partnership.

Lemon is no prize. He was fired from CNN for sexist comments about presidential candidate Nikki Haley, mysoginist comments about CNN colleagues, calling one woman “fat”, and asserting that men’s soccer players should be paid more than women players because “they are more interesting to watch”. I suspect that for Lemon, the men’s team is more interesting to watch since he is reportedly gay.

Musk didn’t boot Lemon off the X platform, just decided not to pay him to air his show on X. That made sense to me. Lemon was one reason I canceled my subscription to CNN since I couldn’t stand listening to him mouth off with leftist rants and related nonsense.

Lemon supporters and critics of Musk say the decision will cost Musk money and reduce chances of X profits improving, something they seem to imply would be a benefit of adding Lemon’s show. I hardly think so. Musk is not driven by profits. And, like many others I am sure, I would cancel my $11 a month subscription to X if the platform featured Lemon’s show just as I cancelled my subscription to CNN. The great thing about streaming services today is you can control what you view or listen to, and Lemon doesn’t make the cut for me. Twitter will continue to benefit from his presence in tweeting his leftist spiel to his 1.5 million socialist followers.

Musk has so far avoided Lemon’s. I hope he keeps it up.