Can someone explain the reverence conservatives have for Elon Musk?

I think most conservatives are just bandwagon followers. So why is there an Elon Musk bandwagon?

To some Musk is their idea of John Galt, hero of Atlas Shrugged. And there's some truth in that. His first business, Zip2, an online business directory, was successful and Musk personally made about $22M when it sold. He then started what morphed into Paypal, and cleared about $175 million when that sold. He then bought heavily into Tesla and then started SpaceX.

That's four different businesses brought up to large scale & profitability, three of which he was in from the very beginning. It's an awfully good track record, even with the caveats. The caveats are that Tesla benefited greatly from EV tax incentives (those were there for every fledgling EV maker though); and SpaceX benefited greatly from a billion or two in a series of NASA grants & contracts while getting started (AFAIK SpaceX bid competitively for the contracts).

I think cons see Musk as a poster boy for old fashioned capitalism. I think the truth is he's a poster boy for great engineering management, plus industry cooperating with government. I personally think that he personally is kind of an ass, and I will always credit him for dragging the world's auto industries kicking and screaming into the electric age.

Here's how Musk describes himself (at times; don't expect consistency)