Facebook Co-Founder Says Tesla, SpaceX Are "Scams" Elon Musk Got Away With

Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz recently took a jab at Elon Musk and said that his companies, SpaceX and Tesla, could be seen as "scams he got away with". Taking to social media site Threads, Mr Moskovitz said that people often argue that Mr Musk makes up for his antics through the value his companies bring to the world, however, he added that he is not sure the billionaire's success is legitimate. 

"The point is I don't really see these companies as dispensating impact, or at least don't give nearly as much credit to him as others do," Mr Moskovitz said. "If they were really built on outward lies, rather than just self-deceptions (rose-colored glasses), then we should really see them as scams he got away with," he added. 

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In his post, Mr Moskovitz said that he believes that Mr Musk accelerated the development of electric vehicles (EVs) by one to two years at most and he also stated that the Tesla CEO might have actually delayed it by "overpromising". The Facebook co-founder claimed that the billionaire attracted customers, workers and funding through his lofty promises for EV ranges, as well as autonomous driving and automated assembly plants. 

Mr Moskovitz also pointed to a recent report from Reuters that claimed that Tesla, through a direct order from Mr Musk, had exaggerated the expected range for its EVs on the vehicle's dashboard. He added that the higher ranges made Teslas "look heads and tails above the competitors and that was not true". 

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"I work in software, I get that delays happen. But these are *the* claims that positioned Tesla as massively ahead of the competition and created a belief that Elon can pull forward the future through sheer grit and ingenuity," Mr Moskovitz wrote. "The *belief* in those claims and the accelerated timelines is what made Tesla look like a leader so quickly; then they turned that cache into actual resources with fundraising. Estimating correctly wouldn't have looked revolutionary," he added. 

Mr Moskovitz argued that the Tesla CEO has a tendency to overpromise and under-deliver. He also had similar thoughts regarding SpaceX, but said he'll "try to enumerate at some point in the future". 

Meanwhile, Mr Musk on Thursday said that he does not want to discourage competition whether through Tesla's price wars or his updates to X, formerly known as Twitter. "The goal of my companies is simply to be as useful as possible, never to kill the competition," he tweeted in response to a meme about X. "Competing to serve the people is a good thing," he added.