He owns the companies. He can call himself whatever he wants - doesn't make it true. He got lucky with Tesla - good timing, a pliant customer base willing to ignore all the things Tesla got wrong but still was willing to spend untold amount of money.

I am entirely skeptical he designed anything and considering the duds he's pretending are revolutionary (Boring, Hyperloop, Mars nonsense, Cybertruck, etc) but instead are failures it seems unlikely he could be so right about one thing and so wrong on others.

Trump is rich also