> or it's just Elon repairing his image and trying to rescue Tesla (whose sales are cratering)
I'm not going to say for sure that it's true, but this is not a conspiracy, or even a super genius move by Elon. I think it's a very natural and plausible instinct given the circumstances. He can't have avoided noticing the crash in sales, and the back of the mind can realize things the consciousness is in denial about. It would just register in his mind as "need to detach my image from this enemy".
I'm not going to say for sure that it's true, but this is not a conspiracy, or even a super genius move by Elon. I think it's a very natural and plausible instinct given the circumstances. He can't have avoided noticing the crash in sales, and the back of the mind can realize things the consciousness is in denial about. It would just register in his mind as "need to detach my image from this enemy".