The question about views on climate change is a common red herring tossed into these discussions, but let me answer it this way: If Tesla turns out to be the second and much bigger coming of Solyndra, as I think it will, it cause a huge wave of public skepticism toward investment in clean energy technology. As far as personal premium/luxury BEVs themselves are concerned, they're a piss-poor, horrendously expensive way to reduce carbon emissions, mostly sold to people of means who want to believe we can consume our way out of the carbon crisis with flashy greenwashing gestures like buying a new car every couple of years and slapping an HOV lane sticker on it. There's a reason Musk reacts with such vitriol every time someone suggests that mass transit infrastructure (or any one of a number of other public initiatives) would be a better use of the money that has gone to EV subsidies.

With the essential help of enormous government subsidies, Musk succeeded in creating a cult brand around EVs and little else. It's an achievement of celebrity and branding, not engineering or manufacturing. Which is not to take away from it necessarily, he has proved the EV concept, but he has yet to show that EVs can be financially sustainable over the long run without constant public money injections.

Meanwhile, his application of Silicon Valley management techniques to industrial manufacturing is a total disaster of scrapped alien dreadnought plans and cars being taped and zip-tied together in a tent. The machine-learning-on-wheels he calls "Autopilot" is dangerous and undercooked, and could be easily rolled out by any of Tesla's competitors if not for the fact that they have at least some scruples about beta testing their software on public roads. His impact on home solar generation has probably been net negative as Solar City was a debacle which had to be bailed out by Tesla shareholders and has been in a tailspin ever since, despite massive subsidies forked over to build the Buffalo Gigafactory by the state of New York.

If the whole point is to build a green energy future, why has Musk used Tesla as a piggy-bank to prop up his celebrity billionaire lifestyle by borrowing enormous sums against the value of his Tesla stock? It has created perverse incentives harmful to the long run health of Tesla itself. A restructuring to shed debts and shore up its balance sheet would be the best possible move they could make if the goal is to remain a viable entity replacing ICE vehicles with EVs into the indefinite future. But Musk will never do this voluntarily, because his goal is to keep the stock price propped up.