Musk Slams Customer for 'Publicly Criticizing' Tesla: 'Do Not Ask to Be Included ... and Then Complain' The Tesla founder took to Twitter to sound off with one less than impressed customer.
By Emily Rella
Our biggest sale — Get unlimited access to Entrepreneur.com at an unbeatable price. Use code SAVE50 at checkout.*
Claim Offer*Offer only available to new subscribers
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
Elon Musk is often riled up on Twitter, usually clapping back at negative comments or naysayers with memes or sarcastic riffs.
But when it comes to insulting the technology and work he's done on his beloved Tesla vehicles, he won't find anything funny about that.
One unhappy Tesla owner, James Locke, took to Twitter to lament how the beta version of Tesla's long-awaited Full Self Driving software (FSD) was unreliable and still had "lots of work to go."
Unfortunately I have to say I'm still having to intervene to correct #FSDBeta 10.69 in my area. Still lots of work to go.
— James Locke (@arctechinc) August 23, 2022
I know this is probably not a popular opinion but the focusing on the "Chuck" complex left is getting ahead of the needs of some more basic control issues.
Locke went on to say in follow-up tweets that the software was having trouble getting into right turn lanes and called the recent price hikes on the software "premature" given the issues he observed.
Musk clapped back upon reading Locke's less-than-stellar review of the software explaining that it was in "limited release for a reason" before publicly reprimanding him.
"Please do not ask to be included in early beta releases and then complain," Musk said bluntly.
But it didn't stop there. Another one of Musk's followers asked him if he had snapped at Locke because he was being unappreciative of Musk's hard work and urged him to apologize, but Musk wasn't having it.
"No. Let me make something clear: James contacted me directly to be included in *early* beta, which is only ~1000 cars, mostly employees," Musk stated. "Early beta explicitly has issues or it would be rolled out widely, so publicly criticizing something he had asked for is wrong."
He doubled down on another tweet shortly thereafter.
"Criticism, public or private, is welcome after we go to wide beta," he wrote. "Early beta has many known issues. The reason we release it to a limited number of cars is to discover unknown issues."
Earlier this week, Musk announced that Tesla's FSD software would be increasing in price, up to $15,000 (up from $12,000) in North American markets.
The price hikes will go into effect for any order made after September 5, while the original price will be honored for orders made before the 5th, but will be deprioritized, and thus delivered at a later date.
It's estimated that about 100,0000 drivers are currently enrolled in the FSD 10.9 beta technology.
Tesla's 3-for-1 stock split also went into effect this week, with shareholders receiving two additional stock dividends for each share that they already own, the second time in history that the electric vehicle company has done this.
As of late Thursday morning, Tesla was up 24% in a one-year period.
