The erratic entrepreneur — tech billionaire Elon Musk is under fire on several fronts but is his empire unravelling?

TECH billionaire Elon Musk soared into Adelaide in a blaze of glory almost a year ago, feted by a beaming Jay Weatherill. But now it’s all going wrong for the eccentric entrepreneur, with bizarre antics and an attempted boardroom putsch.

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TECH billionaire Elon Musk soared into Adelaide in a blaze of glory almost a year ago, feted by a beaming Jay Weatherill.

The-then premier coveted some of the entrepreneur’s uber-cool gloss, hoping his Tesla company’s installation of the world’s largest lithium-ion battery near Jamestown would lend global credibility to his controversial renewable energy push.

Less than five months after Mr Musk’s appearance at an Adelaide Oval press conference, a gleeful Mr Weatherill officially launched the giant battery at Hornsdale wind farm — completed by Tesla in 63 days.

Former premier Jay Weatherill with Tesla's Elon Musk in Adelaide. Picture: Facebook

Fast forward another six months, and both men are in reduced circumstances.

Mr Weatherill is an Opposition backbencher, defeated at the March 17 state election.

More stunningly, Mr Musk’s aura has dimmed as his carefully manicured image starts to crumble.

Mr Musk’s meltdowns have been unleashed by a firestorm of criticism about Tesla’s safety record, a share price slump, cashflow crisis and delays for planned space tourism.

This week, he rebuffed a shareholder attempt to overhaul the electric car maker’s board and strip him of his role as chairman.

The failed putsch was triggered by fears over the company’s shaky finances and inability to meet production goals for its first mass-market sedan, the Model 3.

“This was, I have to tell you, the most excruciating, hellish, several months I’ve maybe ever had,” Mr Musk said at the company’s annual meeting on Tuesday, in Mountain View, California.

The Wall Street Journal reported corporate governance adviser Institutional Shareholder Services and large proxy adviser Glass-Lewis had, at the meeting, recommended making the chairman an independent board role.

Tesla cars displayed at a New York showroom earlier this week. Tesla stock rose this week after the company revealed it is nearing its Model 3 weekly production rate. Also, in a vote shareholders backed Elon Musk as chairman and CEO. Picture: Spencer Platt/Getty Images

“The complexity of large-scale manufacturing, and the challenges of successfully commercialising new technologies and new manufacturing and marketing techniques, suggest that shareholders would be better served by having Musk focus on running the company, and allowing an independent director to run the board,” ISS wrote.

Mr Musk holds a 22 per cent stake in Tesla, which frustrated attempts to challenge his authority.

After surviving the attempted boardroom coup, Mr Musk said he expected Tesla to post a quarterly profit during the July-September period.

Displaying a more ebullient mood, Mr Musk insisted Tesla would “quite likely” meet the target of producing 5000 Model 3 cars in a week by the end of the month and flagged plans to build 10,000 weekly next year.

Mr Musk’s troubles had been building slowly. As far back as October, 2016, The Economist magazine bluntly declared: “The entrepreneur’s finances are as jaw-dropping, inventive and combustible as his space rockets.”

It warned expectations were already sky-high, so it was hard to see how much more euphoria he could inspire.

“Mr Musk’s most extraordinary creation may not be cars or spacecraft but a business empire with a financial structure that works only if risky companies perform perfectly on ambitious plans,” The Economist said at the time.

An image from French energy firm Neoen showing the Tesla 100 MW/129 MWh Powerpack system in Jamestown. The world's biggest battery was officially launched in on December 1.

By late last month, there were fears the company would run out of cash and would need to raise more than $2 billion this year.

Early last month, Mr Musk confounded Wall St analysts with bizarre behaviour during a Tesla briefing call. He opened with a curious description of putting felt covers atop a battery pack in a production line, saying this had created a “flufferbot, which was really an incredibly difficult machine to work”.

Then, when asked his view about the company’s capital expenditures, Mr Musk fired back: “Excuse me, next. Next. Boring questions are not cool.”

A subsequent question concerned how many of those who had reserved a Model 3 sedan had actually gone ahead to buy one.

“These questions are so dry — they’re killing me,” he said.

On Twitter, he branded the two callers “sell-side analysts who represent a short-seller thesis, not investors”. Short selling is the sale of a security that is not owned by the seller, or that the seller has borrowed, in the hope that the price will go down.

Even more bizarre was Mr Musk’s response to a subsequent analyst’s note that suggested coverage of Tesla had reached “ a peak in negative sentiment” and that the company’s share price should rise as Model 3 production improved.

A Tesla car is seen charging at a Tesla charging station at the wind and solar battery plant outside of Jamestown. AAP Image/ Morgan Sette

In a series of missives on Twitter, he declared he was “going to create a site where the public can rate the core truth of any article and track the credibility score over time of each journalist, editor and publication. Thinking of calling it Pravda …”.

Pravda (Truth in Russian) was the official organ of the Communist Party of the former Soviet Union.

Fired by suspicion about Russia’s covert actions in the 2016 Presidential election, Mr Musk’s proposal prompted mixed reactions.

Ironically, for a darling of the Left, among the endorsements was one from President Donald Trump’s son, Donald Trump Jr, who retweeted: “This … So True.”

Tesla had been hit with a barrage of bad news. In mid-May, the Wall Street Journal reported US safety investigators had opened the third active investigation of a Tesla vehicle that crashed in Utah while the driver-assistance system, Autopilot, was said to be in use. A Model S sedan travelling at almost 100km/h rammed into the back of a fire truck stopped at a red light. The driver, who suffered a broken ankle, said she was looking at her phone before the crash.

This week, Mr Musk’s Space X firm said it would not launch a pair of space tourists to loop around the moon this year, which the Wall Street Journal described as the latest sign that technical and production challenges were disrupting his plans for human exploration of the solar system.

Mr Musk’s travails might have a direct impact in South Australia. The Liberal State Government is committed to the first two trial stages of a partnership with Tesla to create a virtual power plant — the contract was signed by Mr Weatherill’s government.

But the third stage, which would connect 50,000 home batteries to solar panels, could proceed only, Energy Minister Dan van Holst Pellekaan said last month, “subject to private finance and the trial’s success”.

Given the crucial third stage is dependent on private finance, raising this capital might prove a stretch too far. Mr Musk’s success near Jamestown might not override Wall St’s concerns about his financing and ability to profitably mass-produce cars.

But Mr Musk has not become a billionaire by following convention or appeasing critics. It is more than likely there is another surprise in Mr Musk’s bag of tricks.