Has Elon Musk landed us in parallel universe where it's OK to say sorry?

The Tesla boss tweeted that he had "spoken in anger" and apologised after having describing cave diver Vernon Unsworth as a "pedo guy" in an earlier, and since deleted, tweet

Tesla founder and CEO Elon Musk (REUTERS)

Did we briefly enter a parallel universe this morning? One where people behave like adults?

There was perhaps a hint that Tesla boss Elon Musk had discovered a way to breach the walls between worlds this morning when the tycoon did something that looked about as likely as the Pope saying there might be something to this atheism lark after all: He issued an apology.

It was directed at a Thai based Briton, involved in the rescue of a junior football team trapped in one of the country's caves, whom Mr Musk had earlier described as a “pedo guy” without any foundation, and came via a Tweet (of course) penned in reply to a supportive post of a Quora article defending his conduct.

It’s probably worth running through a brief summary of how we got to this point: Mr Musk had offered to help out the team working on the operation through the provision of a mini sub.

As is de rigueur with anything involving the celebrity businessman, it generated roughly equal amounts of publicity and controversy.

The aforementioned British cave diver, Vern Unsworth, was less than complimentary about the idea, labelling it a “PR stunt”.

Mr Musk responded with the “pedo guy” jibe which, understandably enough, led Mr Unsworth to say he was considering legal action.

If he were to follow through with that, any settlement would surely represent only be fraction of the value that was wiped from Tesla through the fall in its share price that followed the spat. The stock is far more affected by sentiment towards Mr Musk than it is any cool headed analysis of the financial prospects of the business.

A notable analyst, Loup Capital Partner Gene Munster, then waded in with an open letter on behalf of unnamed investors, urging Mr Musk to apologise and take a Twitter holiday, which generated some nice publicity for him.

Mr Munster is living in cloud cuckoo land if he thinks Mr Musk is going to do that. The latter is no more likely to take a break from the micro blogging side than is Donald Trump. I thought the same about the chance of an apology too. Turns out I was wrong.

Mr Musk couldn’t resist qualifying it a bit by saying his inflammatory words “were spoken in anger after Mr Unsworth said several untruths & suggested I engage in a sexual act with the mini-sub, which had been built as an act of kindness & according to specifications from the dive team leader”.

However, he continued: “Nonetheless, his actions against me do not justify my actions against him, and for that I apologize to Mr. Unsworth and to the companies I represent as leader. The fault is mine and mine alone.”

Welcome? Certainly. And surprising. Perhaps the market will reward it.

But perhaps it would be better for investors to hang fire and see if this is anything more than an isolated incident.

It does rather seem as if Mr Musk’s dimensional travel machine is only good for a short trip. How can I say that? Donald Trump has just tweeted that “the meeting between President Putin and myself was a great success, except in the Fake News Media!”.

Yep. We’re back in our sad little world again.