I get the sense that a lot of the distinction is that at SpaceX he has a by-all-accounts extremely competent lieutenant in Gwynne Shotwell running the day-to-day operations and probably, to some extent, helping keep him grounded, whereas it has always seemed like there's been a bit of a non-Elon leadership vacuum at the top at Tesla. To the extent that there has been other top management, they don't seem to last that long, and seem to have trouble earning his trust, which I imagine makes challenging his nuttier ideas harder to do.
