PayPal only worked UX-wise because of Levchin and Thiel, a former Mafia member told me once. Musk never had a knack for keeping things spic and clean - it's well known how he interferes in codebases to add in his shitty bad-practices code, or how he advocated for using Windows over Linux at Paypal.
Musk is a business genius alright, but not what I would call a product genius like Jobs was.
True in the sense that it's made it worse. The "giant touchscreen and fewer knobs" UX sucks once the novelty wears off. Then there are things like the "yoke" and the retracting door handles...
I think many Tesla fans confuse novelty for improvement.
I think there's good evidence here: Teslas consistently have high review scores, and are selling in huge numbers. E.g. The Model Y was the top selling car in the world for Q1 this year.
Edit. The 'top selling car' figure is contested (see below) and depends on how you define single model. However multiple news sites (including reuters/The Verge etc) have reported this story without retraction. We also have more recent stories saying the Model Y is the highest selling car in Europe for H1. Whatever way you look at it, these cars are selling very well.
I rented a Tesla while on a business trip a few weeks back (not by choice, the rental agency just gave it to me in the Economy class) and I absolutely hated the UI. The basic car interface has converged on its standard form after decades of desiggn, and that means that when I get into most cars I immediately know how to adjust the various settings to my preferences. Having to spend 15 minutes sitting in a rental car parking lot digging through the menu at 1am just so I could move the wing mirrors and seat was an incredible pain. All the settings I care about were like 3 levels deep in some menu, and that sucks! Sure having a lot of knobs in view isn't as "aesthetic" from a premium product perspective, but damn does it make it easy to change things quickly.
Musk is a business genius alright, but not what I would call a product genius like Jobs was.