Confronting the whole world, Elon Musk is angry, vowing to bring Tesla into the era of 30,000 billion USD capitalization without relying on electric cars

Elon Musk is angry, and this is supposed to be a good sign for Tesla.

These days, the WSJ has described Elon Musk as a man who feels wronged.

After quietly leaving the White House in frustration, he has become particularly sensitive. Angry that he has been likened to a fascist. Angry that some people are using his political views as an excuse to attack Tesla. Angry that he is being scrutinized.

This is not new. Musk has long carried a huge “bottle of anger” on his shoulders – nurtured by the hurt, the contempt and the skepticism that permeates social media.

But history has shown that this can create a powerful force: Elon anger. Like the Hulk tearing his clothes off and going berserk, Musk often goes silent before he explodes. These days, he seems to be boiling over, his eyes burning with anger, his vision glowing red with rage.

And Elon anger may be a good thing for Tesla investors. It could make him focus on execution, on proving people wrong. A determined Elon could send humans into space, could make electric cars mainstream.

But investors haven’t seen Elon “execute” anything in a long time.

Instead, they’ve seen the promise of a low-cost Tesla that could sell 20 million cars a year seemingly abandoned. They’ve seen the Cybertruck fail. They’ve seen the company’s profits shrink and sales fall for the first time in more than a decade.

Which worries investors, who fear Musk has become too distracted by Washington politics. Even board members seem uneasy.

But fans of the power of an angry Elon found hope in signs over the past week that he might be making a comeback. First, Musk delivered a series of scathing responses to concerns about the state of his companies via video conference in Qatar on Tuesday.

When asked when he would turn Tesla around, the CEO replied: “It’s already turned around.”

What evidence does Musk have? It’s basically the same response Tesla fans have come to expect on social media: “Look at the stock price, man!”

Since Musk announced on April 22 that he would be reducing his involvement in the Trump administration, Tesla shares have surged 43%. That puts the electric carmaker back in the rarefied position of being worth more than $1 trillion. Still, the stock is down 11% for the year and 29% from its all-time high.

Analysts estimate Tesla will end the year with fewer sales than it did in 2024, a reversal from just a few months ago, when they were expecting sales to be up this year compared to last year.

Musk’s vision for Tesla’s future isn’t limited to the boring business of selling electric cars. Instead, it’s about ushering in a new era of robotics — self-driving cars and humanoid robots. Musk has been saying for about a decade that Tesla’s self-driving cars are near. Meanwhile, Alphabet’s Waymo and Amazon’s Zoox have put fully autonomous cars on public roads.

On Tuesday, in his second public appearance, this time on CNBC, Musk continued to emphasize that Tesla remains on track to begin deploying self-driving cars in Austin, Texas by the end of June.

The plan, he said, would start with about 10 cars on the road in the first week, then increase to dozens more each week and possibly reach 1,000 in just a few months. He added that by the end of next year, there will be hundreds of thousands of self-driving Teslas — if not more than a million — on the road.

In an interview with CNBC, when pressed about his recent performance in Washington, Musk bristled: “Why attack this when we’ve made so much progress?”

While defending his DOGE-related efforts, Musk has also begun to emphasize that he is retiring from politics, having realized that Congress is less interested in cutting spending. “I’ve come to the conclusion — perhaps the obvious one — that it’s essential to drive GDP growth,” he tweeted on Friday. “@DOGE has done and will continue to do a great job of delaying America’s default, but government waste means that only breakthrough productivity improvements can save the country.”

And his solution is robots.

Seeing “Angry Elon” in action has electrified his supporters, just as “Optimistic Elon” did nearly a year ago at Tesla’s annual shareholder meeting. His enthusiasm — dancing on stage — seemed to indicate that he was finally refocusing after more than a year of being distracted by the Twitter acquisition.

After shareholders re-approved his massive compensation package, Musk took the stage to paint a rosy picture of Tesla — filled with humanoid robots and self-driving cars that he said could help push the company’s valuation past $30 trillion.

Now, supporters are hoping “Angry Elon” is ready to make a real impact.

“Elon’s wartime mentality has kicked in,” a popular X account called Autism Capital tweeted after Musk’s appearance at the Qatar conference. Others echoed the sentiment. “Elon is in wartime CEO mode,” one social media account wrote on Wednesday. “He’s not joking around anymore. All focus is on execution.”

Tesla was founded on a seemingly impossible idea: Make electric cars cool and mainstream. For much of its existence, Tesla faced skepticism that it could not succeed. Musk was the one who convinced investors and customers that the vision was possible.

All he had to do was execute. And when he did, everything changed. Tesla hit a turning point in late 2019 and 2020, becoming consistently profitable and cementing Musk as one of the most successful entrepreneurs of his generation.

Of course, past success is no guarantee of future success.

Even Tesla’s global lead in electric vehicles is under threat from Chinese rivals like BYD, which last month surpassed Tesla in sales in Europe for the first time.

Musk, who has long praised his Chinese rivals, says he doesn’t care about the sales race. “I don’t really think about competitors,” Musk told CNBC. “I just think about making the best product possible.”

He just executes.