I have the opposite impression. I have consumed tons of hours of interviews with Elon and he comes off as more technically sound and speaks more substance than any other large org CEO I can think of. Karpathy worked directly under him. I haven’t worked for Elon but know people that did and experience is similar. What makes you think you are right?

edit: typo

I think that's being unfair and I really don't like Elon Musk.

But I don't think it's fair to say Elon is stupid / a bad engineer. When John Carmack speaks well of his talent, I take that seriously.