[V_Terranova_Jr]

> ... the idea that Musk hasn’t considered oil panning and should’ve just asked an engineer is ludicrous. The author assumes Musk must be an idiot despite all of the evidence to the contrary.

I don't see anything ludicrous in the author's article, even if it sneers at times. Though unquestionably successful overall, since Elon has a history of bad technical or PR/appearance-driven moves, I'm not sure what's wrong with mocking him for some of those things. He is successful despite doing some idiotic things, it's not that everything he does is brilliant and correct.

The article doesn't provide any internal Tesla evidence as to whether Elon considered it and disregarded oil canning (for whatever reason), or if people on his team told him about this likely issue and he blew them off, thinking he could just keep demanding his team bring him solutions instead of telling him about problems with his vision. Under the circumstances, either could validly be criticized as idiotic, in which case mocking him seems like fair game. This would hardly be the first such issue ("Falcon Wing" doors, display screens on the Model S, the incredibly ill-advised 'Full Self-Driving' labeling, etc.).