Tesla troll Param Sharma clearly revels in being public enemy No. 1, as he just bought another new Tesla and drove it from the backseat again in front of TV cameras. Also, he would like us to know he is very rich.

After SFist broke the story last week of a Tesla owner sitting in the backseat with the car in autopilot mode spotted repeatedly on Bay Area thoroughfares, the California Highway Patrol was quick to post images of him on social media, and a few days later arrested him and identified him as 25-year-old Param Sharma. They threw his ass in Dublin’s Santa Rita Jail for one night and impounded the Tesla, which one would have thought would be the end of this stupid story.


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But do not underestimate the boundless entitlement of legacy-wealth Tesla fanboys. The thread below shows you the tale of how Sharma simply bought another Tesla and immediately drove on autopilot from the backseat.

KTVU got a three-minute interview with the backseat driver, as well as plenty of footage of him remorselessly pulling the same autopilot stunt that landed him in jail in the first place. “I’ll just get a new Tesla every time,” Sharma told KTVU, making a strong case for Biden’s tax increase on the wealthy. “I have unlimited money to blow on Teslas. Like, if you take my Tesla away, I will get another Tesla. That’s how it works. I run Silicon Valley.”  

The segment’s reporter Jesse Gary correctly pushed Sharma on his claim that he has a significant career in the tech industry, considering there is no record of such.

“I’m a Tesla millionaire,” Sharma responded. “I started the iPhone movement, the Rich Kids of Instagram, backseat robo-movement.” He ends the interview with his umpteenth act of rhetorical fellatio of Elon Musk, declaring, “We’re going to put all of the Uber drivers out of business, Elon Musk is going to be moving United States of America, and it’s going to be beautiful.”    

“I’m rich as fuck. I’m very rich," he added, in the interview which KTVU says took place “not far from his mother’s high-rise apartment.” Wait, does this guy still live with his mom?

The above post appeared on Instagram since his arrest and release, and SFGate did some digging into Sharma’s background. They did not find career accomplishments! Instead, they found he’d achieved brief viral fame in 2014 as “Instagram’s richest troll,” and high school classmates who said he'd “encountered trouble with local police for another act of dangerous driving. He allegedly was arrested for driving on the opposite side of the road multiple times in Albany.”

He was also jailed for a stolen iPhone incident in 2014, and apparently CHP had previously arrested him for backseat driving in his Tesla in April as well.

Clearly this man is trolling for attention, and is quite high on his own supply of family wealth. But there’s more to it than that. The Verge obtained documents proving Elon Musk has been exaggerating self-driving capabilities, and Tesla’s use of the nomenclature “Full Self-Driving” mode is clearly designed to not only oversell the capability, but also to appeal to the kind of Tesla driver who genuinely enjoys endangering the general public because they have so much “Fuck you” money.  Not unlike with anti-maskers, there is a clear sense of joy in intimidating others and inspiring fear in pursuit of an unproven claim.

Sharma is due in court again July 6. Be a real shame if he were in some sort of car accident before then.

Related: Tesla Autopilot ‘Backseat Driver’ Scofflaw Spotted Multiple Times on Bay Area Roads [SFist]

Screenshot: KTVU