I think I agree with everything except that.
What I'm saying is we can't have everything that's positive about Telsa, but completely discard Musk.
What we _should_ hope for is for the current version of Musk to become a better version of Musk - say, one that can build a viable EV company and help bring about a global transition away from combustion-powered transport, but without the vile personal attacks, impulsive stock-price-affecting comments, absurd PR stunts, overworked workforce etc.
I'm well aware that the world doesn't currently have clear answers as to how people can make such profound changes to their personality, but I think it is where more discussion and research needs to be in order for the world to find and develop the leaders who can steer us through the big challenges.
It was fall 2016 that Musk made 3 unilateral, and delusional strategic decisions: the Alien Dreadnought, Solar City, and HW2. I call it the ASH doctrine: Musk's 3 point plan to reduce Tesla to ashes. Before that, I thought Tesla had a chance, but since late 2016 I've been on Tesla deathwatch. And now, here we are, no solar shingles, no $35k Model 3, no full self driving, no money, no profit, no credibility, and no surprises to anyone who has been watching this without Musk approved rose coloured glasses.
The bonfire of his vanity is gloaming, and yet the fans are still fanning the flames.
Maybe we could look at Uber, but it's too soon to tell. And The new management there seems earnest, but I'm not sure they're looking so hot from an actual business perspective.
I don't know, how visionary and/or toxic would you consider the founders of Tesla to be before they got the boot?
If we're just looking into this question to understand how important neurosis is in creating greatness, I think we need the more obvious counterfactual first.
But better is relative.
Otherwise someone responds with an example and you just say that it doesn't count.
That's what underpins my point of view on this: if we were better at supporting talented-but-flawed people through personal transformation instead treating them with hatred and ridicule every time they misstep, we could have more great leaders and more great companies.
Just for an anecdotal counterpoint, I endured severe burnout and ruined my health to the point of almost dying. I'm still struggling to regain my health 3 years later.
To be fair, it's not 100% sure that the burnout caused my health issues (multiple pancreatitis attacks and major relapse of a dormant neurological condition), but some doctors said it was likely that stress had contributed. Personally, I'm certain that the two are connected.
Things were quite grim for me too and I suspect my life might have been at risk had I continued on the destructive path.
But I was able to correct and turn things around - though the recovery has taken as long as 10 years (depending on when you start measuring from) and is still in progress.
But I know my life is not in danger anymore and I’ve had a long enough period of things steadily getting better that I can be confident of that continuing.
I’m quite confident your stress contributed to your health issues; I’ve extensively researched the mind-body link, and that’s been the key to my recovery.
You can contact me (email in bio) if you’d like any pointers.
Regardless, best wishes in your journey.
Some industries operate under almost continuous crunches, the video games sector is notorious for this, and it might be that this is the case here too, and that my friend is just lucky to be on a team that is spared being overworked. It doesn't matter that people work on something they're passionate about, at a certain point it gets too much for anyone. I also got close to a burnout, and I did learn important lessons about managing my work life balance, working passionately while avoiding toxic stress, etc [wrote too much personal stuff, pasted under].
To get back to the point though, I wonder whether I would be able to remember these lessons and manage my work-life balance correctly, if I thought my work was as world changing as what Tesla and Space X are doing. I am deeply grateful that people like Elon Musk and the many others in these companies are willing to make decisions that might deprive them of time with their loved ones, potentially affect their health too, to bring such a change about.
I mean, the overarching goal of Space X to make life multi-planetary might seem like PR fluff to some, but I agree that we will extinguish ourselves if we stay on one planet. I would prefer that governments pool resources and achieve this public good through public means, as I find dangerous that a private company might end up having a monopoly on affordable space access. However, our governments fail on this and can't even agree on curbing climate change effectively, though it is a much more obvious danger, so I can only support Space X in their endeavor, and wholeheartedly wish them success.
-- [the personal stuff] I once worked 6 months without a single day off (work weeks of about 90 hours), which to some may appear like a manageable amount of stress, but I was in my early 20s and didn't know how to do this properly. We did make our deadline and things that needed to happen in that time frame did, but after it, lo and behold, the cough I'd had for a month for no apparent reason suddenly stopped. Good that it did too, as my throat was so irritated I was coughing a bit of blood in the end. Sorry for the gory detail there, but just to point out that being overworked does have some very real and physical repercussions, besides also leading to painful life choices. Not realizing my grandfather was in his final days when he was admitted to the hospital with a bad cough, and not getting there in time to say goodbye, is my personal low point in this regard, and something I have regretted ever since. I wish I hadn't needed to make such a terrible error in judgement to learn this lesson, but I did not make this mistake again, and prioritizing family and friends over work, however important whatever task or deadline might seem in the instant, is something I very much kept it mind since. It has made me much happier, and hasn't negatively impacted my work output in any way I can measure.
Loosers like to celebrate failures of people doing better than them.
This zero-sum mindset that you're a 'loser' to even suggest ways a company might be a great company, without you know, the founder being an asshole is dangerous and actually shuts down constructive criticism.
> What we _should_ hope for is for the current version of Musk to become a better version of Musk
Or alternatively, he gets punished like he should be (e.g. SEC violations), cedes control and the next person who looks up to people like Musk realizes that there are rules to follow and not following them have real world consequences.
People forget about the issues that come with the concentration of wealth, which is unfortunately one of the negative externalities of letting Musk get away with what he has done.
I too want a world where a company like Tesla succeeds, but I also don't want a world where we mix this acceptance of free markets with acceptance of socialism where it benefits small amounts of individuals much more so than the masses.
Last I heard the established automakers were basically laughing at the quality and amount of automation on their production lines. Has this changed?
https://www.investopedia.com/news/teslas-hyperautomated-asse...
Well does another SpaceX/Tesla exist? I don't think so. So it's very possible that that is true. Maybe the trait to start impossible companies and to work impossible hours is actually the same trait.
1) Increasingly more expensive gas and more rigorous fuel-consumption standards.
2) Massive increase in lithium ion battery production from consumer electronics;
3) A willingness of VCs to bankroll years of massive losses;
4) A federal program of offering massive subsidies to electric cars.
These things didn't exist 15 years ago. (Which is not to say that Tesla doesn't deserve a lot of credit for capitalizing on them, but Tesla's success is not evidence that existing car manufacturers were "sitting on their asses." It's also just factually wrong. Toyota and GM both produced electric cars in late 1990s, early aughts, way before Tesla was founded. But at the time, consumer surveys showed that they would only buy electric cars if they were sold for tens of thousands of dollars less than a gasoline car. All those phenomena closed that gap: exploding gas prices made gasoline cars relatively more expensive; federal and stage governments offered up to $10,000 in total incentives for buying an EV; and lithium ion battery technology resulted in major improvements in weight and range.)
The fact remains that none of the existing car manufacturers decided to even try to compete with Tesla until it was painfully obvious that Tesla's going to "make it" (i.e. Model S) and that consumers love their electric cars.
That happened about 5 or so years ago. Not 10 years ago. Not 15 years ago. It happened because of Tesla/Musk, and would likely be very much delayed if it wasn't for him.
They had a chance to improve technology, satisfy consumer demand (Apple showed a decade ago that consumers don't know what they want) and help save the planet, but they didn't. Shame on them.
Edit: I don't want to be argumentative, I think we mostly agree. I'm just saying that the rest of the companies all missed a huge market opportunity, same as I keep saying for all computer companies that make shittier laptops than Apple...
You're just completely wrong on the chronology.
The federal tax credits were in place for the 2009 tax year: https://www.tesla.com/blog/tax-incentives-why-roadster-costs.... The Roadster was released in late 2008 (only 150 units shipped in 2008). Almost all of Tesla's capital raise came after 2010: https://www.forbes.com/sites/jimcollins/2018/04/25/a-brief-h....
> The fact remains that none of the existing car manufacturers decided to even try to compete with Tesla until it was painfully obvious that Tesla's going to "make it" (i.e. Model S) and that consumers love their electric cars.
Again, your chronology is completely wrong. By the time the Model S came out, GM had already been selling the Chevy Volt for almost two years. And throughout both cars' run, the Chevy Volt has been selling at approximately the same volume as the Model S (both car sold 110-130k units through the end of 2017). The Nissan Leafs also came out in 2010, and more Leafs had been sold as of the beginning of 2018 than total Tesla vehicles.
To recap: other car manufacturers (GM and Toyota) were first to market with EVs, in the late 1990s. They were also first to market with mainstream popular EVs, in 2010, two years before the Model S.
Finally we can even take things like the federal automotive bailouts. Ford, for instance, took a sub-inflation rate loan of $5.9 billion from the taxpayer, which they unsurprisingly have not paid back. It was supposed to be used to develop fuel efficient vehicles. A literal check for $5.9 billion just blows every point in your list out of the water. Yet, Ford not only dawdled but most recently announced they've cancelled every sedan/car in their line except the Mustang and one upcoming vehicle. That leaves them 90% of their lineup distributed towards trucks, SUVs, and commercial vehicles. And the next time gas prices spike, we can bet they'll come begging for another handout from the taxpayer. Just brilliant business acumen by these guys.
Tesla has done a good job making popular, well-rated cars. But this idea that they were "first" while others were "sitting on their asses" is just completely factually incorrect. Competing car manufacturers dipped their toes into EVs years before Tesla even existed, and everyone rushed to build mainstream EVs in the same 2007-2012 time frame, with Nissan and GM releasing their products first.[1]
[1] Also, I don't see the relevance of the Ford loan? I'm not the one trying to add a moral dimension to the history of EVs. There is none. The relevance of the federal subsidies is not "oh, Tesla took subsidies." But rather that subsidies were necessary to make EVs attractive to consumers. The EV1 was canceled because consumer surveys in the late 1990s showed that you'd have to sell an EV for $28,000 less than a gas car to get consumers to buy it. Rising gas prices closed up a lot of that gap, along with advances in battery technology improving range. But the $10,000 or so in federal and state tax credits also played a huge role in making EVs palatable to consumers.
I think Tesla has revolutionized the automotive industry by making a desirable electric car, the technology they have within the car is nothing exclusive to Tesla. Other companies can build electric cars, but Tesla made the first truly desirable electric car.
SpaceX has 100% revolutionized space flight and I hope this continues.
This is exactly my point. Tesla didn't happen because of Musk's intelligence, or talent, or ingenuity, or genius. It happened because of Musk's drive. Before Tesla/Musk, electric cars weren't even part of the public consciousness (even though they were completely technically feasible, as you agree). It was a revolutionary idea.
Musk is a world-class rent seeker.
You can argue that someone else could have stepped in, but that someone had to be an outsider, not an established car manufacturer. That is something like Tesla and Musk, but with another name.
It's hard to say what would've happened in a hypothetical timeline. But Tesla didn't invent the underlying technology, the traditional car makers were already working on it. Tesla wasn't responsible for EV subsidies in 2008, it was a combination of exploding gas prices, middle east instability, the Iraq war, and Obama getting elected. Good chance that the EV market would've taken exactly the same course without Tesla.
Sure there was that Toyota with NiMH batteries. How many of them were sold for enirety of its production run.. 2000? 4000? With Toyota resources and vast marketing force?
My friend had a 1990 VW Golf electric smallseries with lead batteries. It was also fun to ride.. as an experience. Like a hot air balloon ride. But not a very practical everyday car. It was also so obscure it has no own Wikipedia page.
Tesla took the EV business from the dumpster and made it mainstream.
To the extent that any electric cars are mainstream (and I would ague they are not--Toyota sells more RAV4s each year than all the cars Tesla has ever sold in its history), several mainstream models were released around the same time. The Chevy Volt and Nissan Leaf came out in 2010, and the Model S in 2012. The Volt and Model S have sold a similar number of units, with the Leaf selling about double that.
People here in suburban Maryland don't give a shit about high performance, "cool," cars. But they love RAV4s, and Nissan Rogues, and Honda CR-Vs. Each of those models sells more units every year than Tesla has sold in its entire history.
And of course old ICE designers are incapable of marketing their EVs as anything but cute. That's why they never could have made this market what it is, on their own?
People don't give a shit about sports sedans. The Prius proved there was a market for a cute little car that was environmentally friendly, and that's what's driving most of the EV market right now. When someone releases a sub-$30k cross-over SUV (you know, the cars people actually buy), then you'll see EV sales really take off.
And the stats I read show the Tesla model S leading the Leaf?
Is their success hanging on Musk calling someone a pedo? Because much of that hate came from unwarranted stuff like this.
Him doing stupid things (arguably getting involved in the Thai cave situation at all, let alone calling the guy rude names) has added more fuel to the fire recently, but it was definitely a fire that was already burning strongly.
A reasonable person might have liked Musk until this flurry of misplaced opinions, that were better kept for himself. After this they may have liked him less or not at all.
But have you seen many articles on the subject of how even when you approach criticizing Musk in a perfectly reasonable way supported by evidence you're all but guaranteed to get a vitriolic reaction from rabid fans, downvotes, insults, threats, get your comments deleted, etc.?
In real life (not a bubble where you only get the news that support your views) there's actually a lot less criticism for Musk than any other CEO in his position gets. Especially since both himself and Tesla have been involved in plenty of polarizing situations bordering a scandal. He's still a media darling not because he doesn't deserve criticism but because criticizing him is a PR nightmare and most publications would rather avoid it. Or at the very least they do it "softly" and let it die out quickly.
Example: If any other company (think Uber) charged you 6000E for a promise that wasn't fulfilled even years later and that even killed some people they would be nailed to the cross. Tesla is praised for the very same. Until a few months ago every Tesla website had the Autopilot description as "Fully self driving, safer than a human driver". Now, in civilized countries at least, they are forced to use more generic language like "most", "potential for", "in our opinion". How many articles tackled this? And how many tackled his Thai cave PR stunt?
People have a serious messiah complex when it comes to Musk. Had he never been born, the automotive industry would still be moving towards electric cars. The first Prius predates Tesla by six years, and hybrid cars have done far more than Tesla has to push the industry in the direction of electric vehicles.
SpaceX has done far more than Tesla to push the rocket industry towards reusable launch systems but even then, had SpaceX never existed another company would have developed one within 5-10 years anyways.
This seems unlikely. Up until Spacex actually landed a rocket, every other launch provider in the world considered it a ridiculous goal. The launch industry was concentrated around 3 groups, none of which had any incentive to innovate. There's Bezos's Blue Origin, but given their anemic development rate, and the fact they were almost certainly heavily influenced by Spacex, I don't see them as a viable alternative in the universe where Musk does not exist.
VTVL was a thing before SpaceX
> almost certainly heavily influenced by Spacex
Blue Origin was founded almost 2 years before SpaceX
Unless you think that Musk is a once in a generation rocket engineering genius directly responsible for designing their reusable systems, it stands to reason that they would have been invented anyways (but probably more slowly).
The 'oldspace' industry was so absolutely antagonistic and dismissive of reusable rocketry, there's no doubt in my mind that it would not have been pursued. The whole idea was associated with the Shuttle, widely considered to be an albatross for NASA.
Those young engineers you mention would have vanishingly little influence on development of any new rocket program in a deeply bureaucratic, ossified system. Who even are these 'other' rocket companies developing rockets? ULA is the product of government contractors simply supporting Atlas and Delta. Until Bruno, there was no real possibility of a new rocket program. There's Ariane, Roscosmos, China, and India, so mostly impossible for US citizens. It's very likely Ariane would not even be developing a new rocket if it wasn't for the specter of SpaceX.
The most important thing to understand is that rocket development wasn't progressing. It was excruciatingly stagnant, entirely dependent on the government to take the initiative, and subject to constant political muddling.
Musk created the environment and goals that let these engineers achieve incredible things. Without that environment, I don't see these engineers having the same accomplishments.
For me, Musk's major failure was with the children who were lost in a cave and his pedophile tweet. Everyone has flaws and makes mistakes, but that mistake showed me how flawed his personality is. It was classic narcissism behaviour, right from textbook.
Further, Musk didn't get involved until asked to do so, deferred to other experts, and praised the efforts of everyone else involved: https://www.quora.com/Whats-the-full-story-behind-Elon-Musks...
Clearly narcissistic behavior.
I think there are very few among us that could juggle the responsibilities he's got and keep up the schedule he's got and not get tilted now and again. It's part of being human, which seems to be lost on a lot of people today. It's also why a schedule like that is a really bad idea, for anyone, and why one of the most productive things an ambitious person can do is build a good team.
[I let you decide if this is pure PR, or real apologies.]
I've run out of fingers to count how many times over the last few months I've see keyboard psychiatrists apply 'narcissism' as a catch-all for any kind of outlier behaviours.
I'm no Musk fanboy, but the narcissism trope feels particularly way off in his case.
I want to be a Musk fanboy. I am very much into the things he's innovating. I care about those things (solar power, electric vehicles, (self-)sustainability in general, though SpaceX not so much). He's become a if not the face of those ideals I find important. That's why that particular tweet was so disgusting and ultimately disappointing to me. I did not see it coming!
I actually didn't feel at all disappointed by the tweet. I feel disappointed by people's lack of concern for a guy who's fighting the good fight who is clearly going through something awful.
But of all the pieces of shit we have talked about, none of them are creating companies which can vertically land 70m by 3.7m rocket boosters from orbit. Compared to utility of Musk's initiatives to the society, he is actually a pretty nice person. Heck he is okay even in normal standards. Please consider the contents of both scales and judge responsibly.
I feel shame when I meet them, but they do exist. And the rest of us shouldn't get a pass because we suck.
You haven't seen them at their very worst, in the moments where they did the things that haunt them for decades.
That's the point here - some people do less nasty stuff than others, but all of us have treated others horribly at some point.
"Pieces of shit" may not be the best phrasing. I'd say "When you meet a person, no matter what they seem like, you can be highly confident that they have done something wonderful for someone at some point, and that they have mistreated someone horribly at some point."
And can't you just accept that some people are good?
Everything people do is out of some sort of greed. Some of it results in good deeds others not so much.
You volunteer or donate to charity because it makes you feel good, boosts your ego, and/or inflates your sense of self worth but you ARE being helpful in the grand scheme of things.
If you're consistently doing good for reasons which are in no way indistinguishable for pure goodness, to me it's the same. Call it "boosting your ego" or "inflating your sense of self worth". Some people just feel good knowing they've helped other people. I don't see how these people can be considered "shit".
Mr Musk deserves credit for running with the idea despite incredulity, but it wasn't due to his vision.
From this, Elon founded spacex thinking he will build the rockets himself. A founding tenet of spacex was to decrease the cost of access to space. To achieve this, they set about trying to reuse rockets in the very the beginning. Their first rocket, the falcon 1, had parachutes on board to test first stage reusability. Later, on the first 2 launches of their falcon 9 rocket they again tried using parachutes. It became apparent that using parachutes wasn’t working and so, in 2011, they began the grasshopper program to practice their rockets propulsively. Within 4 years from the start of the program, spacex was successful and had landed a first stage from a rocket launching a payload
To suggest it wasn’t part of the original inception of spacex or it was just an off the cuff response is blatant exaggeration. Listen, Elon has quite a few problems and in my opinion he should not be in charge of the day to day management of his companies. He should be the ideas man, pushing the companies vision and letting others get bogged down in implementing his ideas.
If Musk isn’t actually pushing the buttons at Tesla then the magic is gone.
Being a leader he has to split his job and find competent people who specialize in that field to do that job. EM seems to have problem trusting or delegating parts of job that he currently does.
I don't follow his twitter that much, does he ever praise his VP's and let them have limelight with his massive followers?, all the major twitter news seems to be about "him" doing something. I know it's his personal twitter, but he uses it to represent Tesla.
Just need to take a look at how tides have turned so quickly against Elon in the last year. Seems very odd. And the short sellers could quite easily be hedge funds backed with big money interests.
Most of Musk's troubles are of his own doing. He took enormous risks in rushing the Model 3 to production and frankly they have been disastrous. His SEC troubles (which are just starting) are entirely of his own doing.
Elon is Big Industry.
Have you ever stopped to wonder that maybe people "don't like him" because he's a jerk and his company loses vast amounts of money? Don't need a tinfoil hat.
The shorts don't want Tesla to fail. The shorts don't even think Tesla will fail.
The shorts just think the market cap of Tesla is insane. It's higher than much larger, profitable automakers who can provably make and sell cars at scale.
For Tesla to be worth its share price it has to grow by two orders of magnitude. I won't even say that that won't happen. It could. But it'll take years. And when it does the stock won't be worth more than it is now.
On top of that there are risk factors. What if energy density of batteries doesn't substantially improve and all electric vehicles continue to be unappealing to large chunks of the population due to range anxiety? What if all electric does win (it's going to eventually) but the other companies are able to compete well enough and Tesla just becomes another Ford?
Their share price is just out of control. The market can stay irrational longer than I can stay solvent, but I can totally see how someone with very deep pockets could find shorting Tesla a good bet even if they don't want it to (or even think it will) fail.
With AI and cheap energy logistics is going to go to become irrelevant with respect to total cost and at that point what do I need Amazon for? I'll be able to ask my phone to re-up my staples and for everything else I'll purchase from the manufacturer directly. All the profit is going to go to attention and trust, which means profits are going to be centred in high value brands and influencers. If anything, I'd prefer the opposite of Amazon. Some online store that just sells the best two of _everything_ that's irrelevant (toothpaste, etc) so I don't have to think about it. Plus AWS is overblown. Sure it's got good financials, but over time, AWS is a commodity play and commodity plays lose margin over time. There is some lock-in, but it's hard to lower prices for newcomers without reducing prices for the locked-in.
But back to Tesla: You're right. It's not smart to bet against Musk. It will stay irrational for some time because great men like Musk will make the very most of their situation. Also, with this volatility I wouldn't go with puts. Leveraged shorts or selling calls sound like much smarter plays if you are going to bet against TSLA.
The manufacturer cannot easily sell to end users, as it requires fine tuned delivery platforms and most of all, discoverability. SEO alone is not enough for a manufacturer to get noticed, so Amazon will benefit from being the de facto “search” for products. Anecdotally I and most of my friends and family already do this. It’s rare that I have intention to purchase <sub big ticket item> and google it.
As for Tesla, yeah I think it’s time to bet against him. There were many many “great men” like Musk in the 80’s and 90’s that made 1 too many misssteps and ruined their companies. Elon is on a razor’s edge.
Now, you're 100% right about discoverability. But Amazon is misplaying here if that's the long game. They should be a quality filter, not a cheap marketplace of knock-off Harry Potter toys.
You're also right that Google isn't nailing it. Really, I would argue that tastemakers are still leading the way for physical goods; with rating systems coming in a distant second. Ultimately I think a web of trust is going to develop to solve many of these problems, but that is largely a task of user interface, since enumerating trust and context is too onerous to push on a user. Besides, making it explicit is provably gamed as much as possible, see LinkedIn's "skills" for example.
Or Google could get its act in gear and cut amazon out of it. Hard to tell what will happen.
I actually don't find their share price to be out of control at all. They have assets other companies would only dream of at this point. The data alone on miles driven is extremely valuable in the race to self driving cars. Their supercharger network is extremely impressive and growing every day. Not only do they build the best electric car, but they've built out the infrastructure that many analysts seem to just discount. Not unlike what Amazon did (and is still doing).
It's not clear to me that Tesla is in the lead on driverless cars, or that driverless cars will initially be all electric. The economic benefit of being electric might outweigh the fact that it will spend a quarter of its time charging, or it may not. If we move to an Uber Style On Demand model of car usage rather than ownership I am not sure.
And I'm still not saying that Tesla won't succeed, or even that they will not at some point be the most profitable automaker. But their share price is so inflated that you have to believe they will do it very quickly to pay it. There's a very strong chance that the market as a whole is going to outperform TSLA even if they succeed for the next 5-10 years first
Walmart had the funds to overcome and mimic what Amazon was doing early on as well and they didn't. Why not? Some companies are set in their ways and have trouble seeing the future...or at least be willing to sacrifice short term revenue goals for long term gain (often times big profitable companies act this way).
TBH, I own a Tesla. I agree they are likely not the leader in the best technology for driverless cars, they are definitely the leader in affordable driverless cars. The interesting thing is autopilot gets better and better on streets you drive over and over again. Tesla's have ruined my experience for driving any other car. I'm sure someone else will make some great electric cars in the future as well, but right now there is nothing that compares to it overall.
Edit: To add one other point on my initial paragraph (and coincides with my last). Tesla not only gathers the data but has the autopilot features to be able to test changes to the algorithms in place and improve them over time. Even if the big 3 started collecting this data they are far behind in the ability to even simulate much less enable it for real feedback on the roads.
They are. GM is investing billions into self-driving cars and electric vehicles. Every other major car manufacturer has similar initiatives.
If you're wondering why they don't gather teh big datas like Tesla, perhaps it's worth considering that the benefit of this is more of an internet meme than an actual, useful idea. Pretty much everyone serious in the field is using LIDAR, not trying to make up for it with petabytes of bad bumper video.
Maybe Tesla's ahead of some of them. (I'm not sure they're ahead of Waymo.) But they've still not learned how to make an affordable car at scale. They're having a hard time getting to a $35k car, and estimates put the lowest Model 3 at $41k to produce. Average American car price, including trucks, is below $34k, and those are being sold at a profit.
And again, all of this is not to say that Tesla won't succeed. They probably will. What they've done is impressive. I just think there's a very good chance that they're on a long, difficult, slow ramp up to being a major car company, in which case their current share price will have been a bad investment.
Edit: also, I left out another huge risk factor: Their CEO. They have a visionary leader who is clearly overextended and shows signs of fraying to the point where he's possibly breaking laws over Twitter.
That's not only being the GM of electric vehicle, they are much bigger than that.
I'm pretty sure they are overvalued right now because what they do is for the greater good, but they are also much bigger than what shorter want us to believe.
Short sellers thesis is that the company is overvalued and that the market will come to see this and correct itself.
If they are wrong they will lose money. If they are right they will make money. There's no reason to ascribe to them malice.
Most CEOs ignore short sellers and get on with their job of running their company.
Why are people still saying this? Is 300 miles then 200+ mph recharge rates not enough for 90%+ of people 100% of the time, and the other 10% of people most of the time?
And for someone who doesn't live in one of the densest cities, it's nowhere near 90% of the time.
I understand that a company wants good PR, but I think you need to keep it real, like if a dude posts a video of Tesla self driving on some roads instead of Musk sharing it they can not do it or share but put a include the message that you mustk keep your hand on the wheel and pay attention. The reality is that now a Tesla has a non zero chance of driving you into a large object and killing you, when this happens your public image suffers when you promised autopilot but if you instead market this as a drive assistant that collects and learns how to drive and in future will become autopilot then the backlash will not affect you.
I know that in small print and the big TOS this things are very clear but the PR and social media activity of Tesla and Musk contradict those terms.
And ofc, Tesla gives stories to people who write favorably about it. Elon has his one sided twitter propaganda outlet.
One of the greatest issues is that despite lots of people online, only a few people have voices that are noticed.
That should be market thing, really. Is the business sound or just cool? The difference matters.
> My concern is not for Musk's feelings, but for the way society goes about choosing, developing and critiquing the next generation of ambitious leaders, of whom we'll need plenty more if the world's increasingly complex problems are to be solved.
The question is also, if you build something large and ambitious, does it cancel out the bad things that you done in the process of building it? Do we want to celebrate large and ambitious in expense of ethical?
If another guy builds smaller company and resist pressure to be cool, but there is less price on employees, less lies to investors and public, the business side actually works, is that other guy really lesser?
> I should add that this applies whether we're talking about corporate leaders or political/community leaders.
Absolutely. Which is why it matters whether who we praise as role model is has ethical limits and considerations too. It matters very practically whether he/she is able/willing to foresee whether the dream business can work out - or whether he/she goes purely by own "I want it to be true" feelings.
If not, then it would surely be better for the conversation to be less about how crazy or unstable or reckless Musk is..."
This seems like a false dichotomy. The headline of this piece has a reference to Tweeting and the article by extension concerns his at time provocative social media presence. I am someone who is rooting for Tesla and the mainstreaming of purely electric cars and reusable rockets. And there are many investors who are actively rooting for his successes as well. But he doesn't do himself any favors by calling someone a "pedo" on Twitter or stating "he's secured funding to take the company private" etc. We live in world of hyper-sensationalized news cycles, something he's well aware of. I would rather the media and public discourse focused on the positive aspects of his entrepreneurial endeavors. But when he as CEO gives them lots of fuel and easy path to do otherwise he's kind of part that problem in that no?
Like you say, there's nobody like him, nobody effectively pursuing the same goals, and we truly do need him, so I hope he gets out of this relatively unscathed. On the other hand, you can't just lie about material stuff like this and be trusted to lead a company.
Well, maybe it's something different..
Stanford psychologists find that when online comments pile up against an individual’s questionable behavior, people are more likely to see it as bullying and start to feel sympathy for the offender.[1]
[1] https://news.stanford.edu/2018/08/09/moral-outrage-goes-vira...
That really misses where a lot of the hate for Musk is coming from. If he had never started it in the first place, the shorters would not stand to win anything. They both want him to fail, but are also heavily invested in him having tried first.
Also side note. Musk didn’t found Tesla, he bought in and kicked out the real founders. The company would likely not be where it is today without Musk, but I doubt it would have failed completely, likely just be worth less and working on becoming profitable with smaller anbitions.
I was curious about this so I went to the Wikipedia article...
> The company was founded in 2003 by Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning, although the company also considers Elon Musk, JB Straubel and Ian Wright as co-founders.[1]
The [1] linked article (https://www.cnet.com/news/tesla-motors-founders-now-there-ar...) details a bizarre and complicated situation. It seems that Musk was declared to be a founder of the company retroactively as a result of a lawsuit related to the thing you described.
I am a big fan of Musk however I think that simply because he appears (and in many cases is) to be doing great things for society does not license him to also make the short sighted decision that he did.
full disclosure: I hope the company goes private and think it could do much better if it was not beholden to shareholders or stock market speculation. I think he wishes he never took it public and left it private like Spacex
One where CEOs don't lie, don't insult heroes, don't cyberstalk journalists etc. Musk has only himself to blame for the pushback he is getting for being such a collossal douche.
Because the alternative to him and his companies not existing is not simply that we get all the positive aspects of those companies but just provided by someone nicer.
I am struggling with the idea that if you are rich and famous, if you are a tech celebrity, somehow laws shouldn't apply to you. I don't agree that he should be given a pass.
My central point is that we're not currently very capable or supportive at helping talented-but-flawed people reform, and that if we could become better at that, the world would probably be far better off.
There are billions of dollars invested in Tesla's demise through shorts. Yes, quite a few people need Tesla to fail. A lot of those people also own media companies. Musk isn't being hyperbolic when he says the short sellers "are desperately pushing a narrative that will possibly result in Tesla’s destruction."
> what kinds of people it will take to lead the next generation of such companies, and how we can identify and develop them.
This was something I was thinking about the other day as well, except I wasn't thinking about Tesla. I was thinking about Apple and how Jobs clearly didn't prepare for his inevitable death. Had it been anybody else, I would have been able to explain it away as not being able to predict the future, but Apple has suffered through Jobs leaving once before. More or less the exact same thing happened both times (to the company after he left, I mean. Not to Jobs himself, obviously). So why didn't Jobs do a better job of finding and cultivating a successor?
edit: added clarification
Because people aren't exactly replaceable like spare parts. If your biggest edge is a person, and the unique value they bring through their work. Then its almost impossible to replace them.
Apple is still one thing. I think something like Amazon will be far harder to imagine without Jeff Bezos.
Don't worry, this is just Tesla PR working overtime trying to mop up the latest folly. HackerNews is lapping it up, of course. Not everyone feels sorry for Elon Musk. He can quit at any time.
Dude needs a handler. His continued success probably depends on him getting one and being able to hand over the reins a bit, at least in terms of what he says in public. And he needs to work on the Ambien issue.
None of this means Tesla and SpaceX, which have deep benches of smart people, need to fail. None of it has much to do with those businesses at all. Fame takes a toll on a man.
You do realize these are people you're talking about, not some animals to do your bidding?
https://twitter.com/sanofius/status/1001824999496404992?lang...
You believe that? From the guy who would angrily call reporters if they didn't call him a Tesla founder (which he isn't)? He wants to give the reins up?
>The number of people who are capable of building and running companies like these is vanishingly small
Yeah, we never invented anything until Elon Musk came around. There aren't 10-20 car companies, run by CEOs you've never heard of, plugging away at EVs as we speak.
Yes, while SpaceX has _something_ going for it — though not as much as people like to think, Tesla isn't anything to write home about.
Nissan is the market leader in electric vehicles, not Tesla. Tesla survives only because the cult status means people are willing to wait more than they otherwise would.
SpaceX does some cool things - as a rocket enthusiast I pay more attention than a space fan arguably should - but a) I'd attribute that to Shotwell more than to Elon, and b) keep things in perspective, rockets are _not_ more expensive than payloads, except for really light payloads, where I'd pay more attention to the less-exciting light launch segment.
And SpaceX is very much rooted in the US de-funding NASA, and extracting both engineering projects and subsidies from it.
How can you say Tesla isn't anything to write home about when, according to many many credible automotive critics, they've invented several of the best cars of all time?
Love or hate Musk sure, but it's crazy to deny his accomplishments.
Maybe we do? It's worth remembering that the folks who took us to the moon in the first place were government employees and federal contractors. No rockstar leaders with a tweeting habit.
Musk has accomplished a lot, and it's upsetting to see the personal attacks against him. His tweets are a little reckless, but whose aren't these days?
But that doesn't mean we want the future of our tech industry to look like Tesla and SpaceX rather than Toyota and Boeing.
Do you think it was really less noisy? Wasn't it started by threat of Soviet rockets flying over your heads? Threat of third world war? The sputnik moment? With a pinch of charismatic leadership of JF Kennedy? Famous "We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard (...)" The president who got assassinated? I doesn't sound like less noisy period.
And without the threat you ended up buying Soviet-era engines and Russian organized trips to ISS. Until Musk and SpaceX happened and put you back in leadership position.
The original Tesla Roadster was no idea of Elon Musk and also not developed by Elon Musk. It was 3 engineers from the Valley who had the idea of the Tesla Roadster. Elon Musk was a Series A VC at Tesla at the time being. The founders had the idea of developing a hybrid as a following to the Roadster like the Fisker done at the time. At time it happend, I don't know how, that Elon Musk booted those original founders out, because Elon wanted an electric only car.
The real question is, were they adequately compensated for their contributions (I've no idea myself).
In the same way Dick Cheney chose the best VP (which happened to be himself).
> History absolves him.
History absolves nothing. We've got no idea whatsoever how Tesla would have fared without a self-aggrandising marketer at the helm.
Chances are it might have killed fewer people.
I think you give these people waaaaay too much credit. They have no imagination of some other future without Musk. They are people who reaction to emotion and give in to their baser instincts (to shit on something because he gives them some pleasure).
The last 3 years (in the US) has taught me a big lesson: people are dumber and meaner than I ever thought. And, to be precise on the "dumb" part, I know many very book-smart people who are just dumb, because while they have all that book smarts, they make very, very dumb life decisions.
I wish we could redefine the word "smart" to be more broad. Just because you scored really high on the SAT doesn't mean you are smart.
So yes, these people would rather see SpaceX or Tesla never happening, as a "bad" person doing good deeds invalidates much of their worldview.
Every person I can think of who was a profoundly influential inventor, scientist or company leader has had some notable personality idiosyncrasies.
Think: Nikola Tesla, Edison, Einstein, Newton, Howard Hughes.
I'm happy to hear of counter-examples.
Sergey Korolyov, the "father of cosmonautics", when asked about his biography, directly instructed the writer to write about hundreds and thousands of scientists, engineers and workers that made conquering the space possible. After WWII, no less, to boot.
From what I get, he was very humble and humane. And he was influential inventor, scientist and company leader, all at once.
Richard Feynmann is one other example. But I believe you will find something in him you would consider idiosyncrasy.
Feynman now has a rep of womaniser and mysoginist. Hell, people tell about personal flaws of Gandhi and MLK.
It's part of the package.
I haven't seen a lot of evidence to suggest that Musk is an asshole. He deeply cares about what he is doing but he also seems to care about people. He is sometimes impulsive and perhaps volatile when he's running low on sleep. I have never heard of him subjecting others to something he would not subject onto himself.
Even if he is a complete asshole. If he advanced the advent of electric cars and space travel by a hundred years then I'd take it.
I think he is just annoyed by bullshit, human stupidity & bureaucracy. I mean who wouldn't...
People are too sensitive & overreacting over nothing.
People being so emotionally invested in personalities that they’d rather halt technology progress for hundreds of years than endure some tweets.
> Do we actually want Tesla and SpaceX to fail?
This is an issue for anyone trying to change things, haters hate anyone successful and do just want them to fail.
Elon does also though have a ton of fans (of which I'm one) so he does get the benefits too.
But the haters don't seem to bother him, it's just the short sellers who could bankrupt Tesla. But that's their job.
Also though this stress seems to be more about Tesla than SpaceX which is still private and plus it seems that Gwen Shotwell is able to take a lot of the decisions there.
uh... yeah, sure.
> it's just the short sellers who could bankrupt Tesla. But that's their job.
that's not how this works.
Let's be clear that the thing that the only thing that could actually cause Tesla to go bankrupt would be failing to produce and deliver products as promised. Short sellers, at most, may speed up the clock a bit.
When trying to do something new and difficult - the status quo can easily throw rocks; and it takes 10x the effort clear up bullshit than to generate it.
Defenitely! I do not think it is good for the world to have even more concentration of economic power in the hands of the US.
I hope EVs succeed, and that private space companies start venturing to space in earnest. I just hope that other economic blocks are able to rip the rewards - ideally developing countries, including China and Russia.
We already have a terrible situation with most internet companies being american.
Economic power is extremely schewed.
Not to mention it is seriously flawed thinking on several levels - what is preventing the world from competing with those companies? It isn't the presence in the US proving viability and their failure would not encourage development in "better" places, the opposite in fact. If they want it they'll have to compete. Not everybody can do so right now but breaking other people's legs doesn't make you run faster.
I think this hits at the crux of the issue around the performance/behaviour of Musk and other leaders of hugely ambitious companies.
And I think it highlights the importance of thinking about what kinds of people it will take to lead the next generation of such companies, and how we can identify and develop them.
I've never been any kind of Musk fanboy, and like most people I've looked on at his recent behaviour with some combination of bemusement and astonishment.
But when I see the hate and vitriol heaped on him, I'm compelled to wonder just what kind of alternative universe people are wishing for.
Do we actually want Tesla and SpaceX to fail?
Would we rather that Musk had just never founded Tesla and SpaceX, that the world didn't have any companies doing what those companies are trying to do, and that we were left to be content with the previous status quo in the automotive and space industries?
If not, then it would surely be better for the conversation to be less about how crazy or unstable or reckless Musk is, and more about how he and other leaders of today and of the future can pursue their ambitious goals, but to do so in a way that is responsible and balanced.
The alternative is not some as-yet-unknown-person-other-than-Musk doing the same thing but doing it better.
The number of people who are capable of building and running companies like these is vanishingly small and they will inevitably have extreme personality traits - some positive and some negative.
My concern is not for Musk's feelings, but for the way society goes about choosing, developing and critiquing the next generation of ambitious leaders, of whom we'll need plenty more if the world's increasingly complex problems are to be solved.
I should add that this applies whether we're talking about corporate leaders or political/community leaders.