The billionaire hate crew often misses that he wasn't a billionaire before he co-started Tesla. Tesla was a scrappy underdog company for a long time; for a good while the most shorted one on the stock market [note: hearsay]. There was a lot of charme in helping it and its somewhat noble goal become successful.

And even if you hate the company's products: They're pretty good at fulfilling their original mission by spawning a lot of successful competition.

Tesla's team has done a great job at making electric vehicles a common thing and they can be proud of that even if the company fully folds tomorrow.