Elon Musk takes a 9-minute private jet flight

Tesla boss Elon Musk likes to present himself as the savior of the world and as a pioneer of electromobility. As a result, he sometimes competes against the greats of the world when it comes to the climate crisis. But now he is accused of being a hypocrite. Preach water, and drink wine. That’s one sentence you need to throw at Elon Musk right now.

Because the billionaire himself isn’t squeamish when it comes to blaming other environmental sins. Musk recently attacked Bill Gates, saying the Microsoft co-founder only talked about the climate crisis, but did too little himself. But now Musk must listen to this accusation himself and in an even more serious form. Because the Tesla boss was caught on a nine-minute flight.

Musk flew from San Jos, California to San Francisco, That would have been an hour’s drive in an (electric) car and under good traffic conditions. To cover such an ultra-short distance in a private jet, on the other hand, is downright absurd. This trip was recorded by the Twitter account @ElonJet: the operator Jack Sweeney uses freely available air traffic data and tracks the billionaire’s flights. Those are usually much longer, but he recently caught Musk doing a climate sin that can hardly be justified.

@ElonJet Musk is an eyesore

Musk previously offered 19-year-old Sweeney money to delete his Twitter account. He clearly didn’t or refused to do that. Musk has mainly cited security risks and also business interests as an argument, but the particular case also shows that there are other reasons why he might want to kick @ElonJet off the grid.

Musk-critical users were correspondingly dissatisfied with the nine-minute flight: “Elon is selling Tesla as a ‘green’ company, using his jet to cover this short distance, causing more pollution than I do with my car in a year.” Wow, what a hero,” wrote one. But of course, there were also Musk fans who jumped on the side of their Messiah hero, pointing out that Tesla was already doing huge things for the climate and that such a flight hardly carries any weight.