Elon’s Wild Ride

It appears the great Tesla chase has taken a curious turn, and the boys in the suits have gone and moved the goalposts while the game was still afoot. This week, the Trump administration, no stranger to ruckus or favor trading, threw a mighty fine lasso around the neck of the federal crash-reporting rules and yanked’em clean off the books — at least for some.

Under the new order handed down by the Transportation Department, automakers who deal in half-smart machines–known among the learned as “Level 2 systems”–can now keep many of their fender-benders to themselves. And who might be riding highest in that buggy?

Why, none other than that much-hunted fox of a man, Mr. Elon Musk.

You see, Mr. Musk, who has been squealing louder than a stuck pig about the “unfairness” of having every ding and scrape pinned to his good name, now finds himself in a twisted position.

Thanks to these rules, Tesla can trumpet a spotless record without the bother of every little bump making the evening news. It’s a fine thing for stock prices — which jumped like a frog on a frying pan, nearly 10% in one day — and a finer thing still for Mr. Musk, who’s still getting hunted by regulators, rivals, and the high-minded folk of polite society with a fury fit for a witch trial.

Critics, including Wall Street types and other men with softer hands than farmers, said the new rules smell of favoritism, like last week’s fish. They point out that while Tesla gets to walk around the mud puddles, full-self-driving outfits like Waymo — backed by the mighty Alphabet family — still have to slosh through everyone, boots and all.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, filled with lawyers who can say something’s fair while holding a thumb on the scale, insists nobody’s gettin’ special treatment. “No ADS company is hurt,” they said, which is the kind of talk a man uses when he just sat on your hat and tells you it improved the fit.

In truth, under the old rules, Tesla accounted for more than 800 of 1,040 reported crashes in a year — a mighty big chunk of the pie. The new rules politely look the other way unless the car is wrecked to the point it needs a tow, unless the unfortunate driver meets the Grim Reaper, or unless the airbags make their sudden, uninvited appearance.

Meanwhile, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy–a man who talks about China like it’s the Big Bad Wolf waiting to blow our little houses down because he knows it will–said this is all to beat the Middle Kingdom at the self-driving game. “The stakes couldn’t be higher,” he said.

Musk, never shy with a compliment for himself, has long argued that his Teslas are safer than a Sunday stroll and that if the bureaucrats would only stop peeking through his keyhole, they’d see he’s saving lives, not endangering’em. Maybe so. But the hunt is far from over.

Tesla’s sales have taken a whipping lately, with Mr. Musk’s habit of sidling up to some of Europe’s far-right flamethrowers and cozying into President Trump’s cost-cutting cabal. His fortunes now ride on the promise of driverless Teslas filling the streets like tumbleweeds in Austin, Texas, come June.

Waymo’s already there, waiting, wagging its tail.

Mark my words–they’ll keep hunting Musk until they catch him, or he slips the noose for good. Either way, the chase itself is the thing, and America, God bless her, does love a good foxhunt.