Mistaking Charisma for Progress (and What It Costs Us).



It’s 1985. I’m a kid sitting on the shaggy marbled carpet in Western Sydney, Australia. It is hot, a classic summer afternoon. The curtains are drawn, and I am transfixed on a glowing television screen.

I’m so close to the screen that my mum doesn’t even need to warn me my eyes will go square, I’m already thinking about it. The remote is in my left hand, tethered to the TV by a thick cable. I can’t put it down. No one’s changing the channel this afternoon.

Wednesdays by Ben Rennie is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

The soundtrack pulses, and then: that sleek, stainless steel DeLorean rips through time and space (and takes my heart with it). With its gullwing doors and flux capacitor, this car symbolises the future, possibility, and audacity.

In a flash, at 88 miles an hour, the DeLorean becomes a time machine, transporting us through the film’s plot and into something bigger: a cultural imagination of the future. It's clean, fast, and brave. I am all in.

Tesla, delorean, back to the future

For a long time, Tesla felt like that.

When Tesla first appeared on the scene, it carried the same cinematic weight as the DeLorean and Marty McFly, hitting 88mph. Here was a car designed for the roads we had yet encountered. A whisper-quiet machine with lines so sharp they cut through the noise of every combustion engine on the planet. But more than the product, it was the story worth telling. The audacity of it all. When I first saw a Tesla, I was in awe of Elon Musk, who had built a time machine into the future. A vision of tomorrow you could lease today. A DeLorean without the DeLorean ego!

Musk turned Silicon Valley's ambition into myth-making, disrupting the auto industry and the cultural psyche. Tesla was a belief system, a lifestyle brand powered by a fuelless narrative. It redefined innovation, merging Apple's utopian promises with Steve Jobs's swagger and John DeLorean's outsider rebelliousness. It was an apex moment. For a brief time, it felt like the future had arrived.

But like all-time machines, Tesla was built with a paradox baked in.

The same force that propels something forward can also be the force that tears it apart.

The myth of Musk became larger than the mission. The theatre of one man's brand overshadowed what began as a bold, necessary disruption. The politicking, the performative free speech, the erratic posts, the culture war commentary, the obsession with being at the centre of the narrative all chipped away at the very foundation Tesla was built on.

The issue isn’t about who Elon Musk has become. It’s how tightly the company, its products, people, and purpose are tethered to him. When a founder becomes the brand, the brand becomes fragile. When the architect of a vision becomes its greatest liability, the structure can’t hold.

We’ve seen this before. The DeLorean was a symbol that couldn’t survive on symbolism alone. It collapsed under the weight of its mythology. It was immortalised in pop culture, yes, but never truly viable. It was a promise that couldn’t bear the pressure of reality.

And now, Tesla is teetering on that same edge, no longer buoyed by belief but dragged down by the myth that once lifted it.

And while I’m not American, I’ve been watching this play out with a vested kind of curiosity. As Australians, we’ve got enough political theatre to keep us busy. Yet, you pay attention when the most powerful voices on Earth (actually, let me rephrase, the Planet) start shaping the cultural narratives that ripple across the globe.

I’m not interested in left or right. I’m interested in fairness. In transparency. In culture. In creativity. I care about the systems we build and who gets to shape them. And right now, we’re living through one of the most extraordinary chapters in human history; a time of transformation, terrifying unknowns, and possibilities.

My kids sometimes ask me what’s happening in the States. Why is it like this? What’s happening over there? And my answer is usually the same.

It’ll be okay.

There’s always been good and evil. Positive and negative. Light and shadow. It’s nothing new. It’s just louder now, more televised, more algorithmically amplified.

But if the movies of the 1980s taught us anything (the ones we grew up on), it’s that good does win eventually. Sure, good might get bruised along the way. Good might be outnumbered. But good will find its way.

Think of The Karate Kid, The Goonies, E.T., Star Wars, and, of course, Back to the Future. The odds were always stacked. The villains always had the upper hand, louder, stronger, and better resourced. But good? Good endures, it adapts, it listens, and in the end, it gets back up. That was the message, which to me is always quietly radical and persistently beautiful.

That’s how I saw Elon as a kind of Batman figure, the rogue billionaire with a homemade utility belt and a chip on his shoulder who uses intellect instead of violence, code instead of fists. He stood apart from the institutions that had failed us, governments too slow and corporations too complicit. He was the outsider who got things done, the one who dared.

But over time, the cape started to slip. And beneath it, something else emerged.

He started to feel less like Batman… and more like the Joker.

Heath Ledger’s Joker in The Dark Knight was unforgettable. Wild-eyed, electric, and irresistibly chaotic, he didn’t just challenge power; he dismantled it, grinning. He was so good and committed to the role that we all left the cinema a little changed. We smiled like we had a little Joker inside of us. Maybe there was something seductive about the burn-it-all-down energy, about walking away from the wreckage with a shrug.

And Elon? I get the sense he liked that version of himself. A little bit too much.

Because the Joker doesn’t build, he detonates. He doesn’t reform systems; he torches them. He doesn’t pause to ask what comes next or who’s left to pick up the pieces. That’s someone else’s job. That was Batman’s burden. But in our world, we’ve stopped waiting for heroes in cowls to clean things up.

Now, it’s us.

Society has become the Batman. Every day, people like us, designers, parents, and Builders. The Voters, Coders, Consumers and the Creators. The people who wake up every day to try (quietly and relentlessly) to improve things. We’re the ones left to mop up the mess. And we’re getting smarter at it, way more connected, and I think, a lot more principled. The people are voting with their wallets now, with their time and voices. In time, the Jokers are found out, and eventually, they’re left on stage alone, shouting into the silence, wondering where the applause went, where the punchline landed.

Meanwhile, Marty McFly, well, he’s all of us. A pair of scuffed Nike Bruins, a puffy red vest, some faded blue Levis and a good friend by your side. That’s all we’re after. Most people aren’t trying to conquer galaxies or rewrite the rules of the universe. We want a future to which we can belong. A world we recognise. One where we can still laugh, create, fail, and try again.

If we go too far back, I wonder if we can find our way forward again. And if we race too far ahead, too fast, do we want to see what’s waiting for us in the future?

So I stay here with the people I love right now. On a planet that’s far from perfect but beautifully present. Fragile and flawed, but still our home. I don’t need to go to Mars to feel alive.

This place, this blue dot, feels enough.

That said, I genuinely hope Elon finds what he’s looking for on Mars. I do. I hope he builds the rocket, steps out onto red soil, and looks back at Earth not with detachment but with a kind of awe. Maybe even a hint of regret. Maybe in the silence of that alien world, he’ll remember what this one gave him and what it still needs.

Perhaps he’ll find peace among the pioneers and engineers who follow him. A colony of the brave and the brilliant, drawing blueprints for survival in a place where nothing grows. But Mars, let’s be honest, isn’t built for the rest of us. It’s not where the soul lives. It’s not where laughter echoes through backyard barbecues or where kids ride rusted bikes down cracked suburban streets. It’s not where the scent of wet earth rises after summer rain or snow falls on the Redwoods.

Most of us don’t want to flee this place. We want to fix it. We want to repair the systems we've broken, reimagine the industries we've outgrown, and pass on something better than what we inherited. And the brilliance, the infrastructure, the innovation that Tesla helped build? That belongs here, too, on this wildly imperfect, impossibly beautiful planet we still have time to save.

Because if Tesla has a future, and it does, it's not as a car company. It's something so much more.

The brand has lost its story, the heartbeat that once made people believe, but it hasn't lost its potential. There is still something there: a different arc and a quieter legacy.

Tesla could become something else entirely. Not a car company, but a catalyst.

A global energy provider turning its gigafactories into community power plants. A battery storage powerhouse where rural towns use reimagined Tesla tech to store solar energy for schools and hospitals. A backbone for renewable grids in cities that want to move forward without leaving people behind.

Imagine a world where backup batteries power homes during heatwaves, blackouts, and floods, where technology doesn't just serve the privileged but becomes a lifeline for entire communities.

This new future in the Tesla story isn't about acceleration or range but resilience, hope, and connection. It is not a symbol of personal ambition but a platform for collective progress.

It already has the infrastructure, engineering minds, patents, and physical presence. It could become the platform for a cleaner, more equitable world, not as the poster child for progress but as the power source behind it.

Earth's future will be powered quietly, efficiently, and without fanfare, precisely as we need it.

Maybe that’s the arc all truly great innovations take. They begin with myths wrapped in big personalities, bigger promises, and headlines too heavy to hold. But the ones that last? They end in usefulness. They become something we rely on. Something we barely notice. Like clean water. Or sunlight. Or electricity.

Tesla, as a car brand, may not survive. But Tesla, as a practical innovator in the climate and energy space? That story is still unwritten.

We must ensure it’s not a sequel or a nostalgia-fueled repeat of old narratives and broken power structures, but instead another brand that's not chasing relevance in a world that has moved on. But something new, something vital, a foundation.

History shows us how this story ends.

We saw it with DeLorean, a vision too attached to a man who couldn’t separate design from ego. We saw it with American Apparel, where Dov Charney’s behaviour unravelled years of cultural momentum, reducing a progressive fashion movement into a cautionary footnote. We saw it with WeWork, where Adam Neumann’s charisma eclipsed the business model until the entire empire crumbled under the weight of its hype. Even Uber, for all its reach and scale, barely survived the shadow of Travis Kalanick.

These are not isolated cases. They serve as reminders and warnings of what happens when innovation becomes inseparable from ego, when vision loses its humility to serve others, and when mission becomes mythology.

And yet, somehow, we keep repeating the pattern. We keep backing personalities over principles. Hype over humility. Because it’s easier to believe in a single, magnetic individual than in the slow, quiet, patient process of real change, but here’s the truth: building a brand around a human makes it vulnerable to their flaws. Their contradictions. Their collapse. And when they fall, they take the story with them.

So let the new innovators step forward. Let the next generation of climate-conscious, human-centred, purpose-led creators rise to solve real human problems, building quietly and consistently around principles that won’t fracture under pressure.

The success of a brand doesn’t come from ego; it comes from empathy and utility. From solving something that needs to be solved. And when you ignore that long enough, people stop showing up and they stop believing, taking their wallets with them.

Tesla will not survive in its current form; as a car company, it is already in decline. But that’s not failure. That’s evolution.

By 2030, Tesla cars will be collector’s items. Not because they changed the world but because they captured a brief, golden moment when belief outpaced reality. They’ll appear in online marketplaces and suburban garages, resting beside rusted John Deer tractors or salvaged Land Rovers, pieces of the past, artefacts of ambition.

And the market? It’s already moved on to braver designers and intentional brands, rooted in purpose and committed to solving deeper problems with solutions that scale through principle.

Not every time machine is meant to last. Some are built to show us what's possible and to point us in the direction of what comes next. Every endpoint is a new beginning.

As Doc Brown pulls the DeLorean away from Marty's house at the end of Back to the Future, Marty cries in a panicked voice, "Doc, there isn't enough road to get to 88!" To which Doc coolly replies, "Where we're going, we don't need roads."

I do not doubt that statement will be true one day. But road or no road, we still need direction. And in a free democracy, we get to choose it.