Its not hyperbool is literally just false.
The stock price in 2018 was essentially flat.
The stock price in 2016 is flat.
You made an argument about 200% and at best its like a few %, meaning your argument is total nonsense. Literally made up with nothing to back it up.
And even if the stock went up a bit based on announcement, that doesn't even remotely prove that that stock raised 'saved' the company.
> These are feats of marketing, not feats of engineering.
No what are actually feats of engineering, and actually had impact on the stock price is when Tesla from 2017 to 2018 made the first EV that was produced over 5000 times a weak and had significantly possessive margin. And when they turned a mud field in China in to a working factory in about a year.
That is when the stock ACTUALLY started to go up. When Tesla proved they could produce cars at very high volume and good margin.
So you are just flat out factually wrong on this and I don't know why you are trying to hold on to your take. The data is right their anybody can look up the data and instantly know that you are wrong about this.
> It is undeniable that Tesla is successful in large part because of the cult of personality that Musk has built, largely on Twitter.
That is just total nonsense. Tesla successful brought the first modern Li-Ion EV to market before Musk was famous. Even when the Model S came out Musk was not very well known. Actually releasing the Model S successfully and getting car of the year is part of why Musk did get more famous.
So Tesla already had like 5 years of growth before Musk got all that well known. Also, you vastly overrated, twitter, far fewer user, use it then you might think.
People were attacked to Tesla because they made actual real EV that you could buy, that had a charging network. Tesla had a message about EV saving the environment and that message reached 100x wider then Musk twitter. People don't spend 50k+ on items because of a guy on twitter.
> That has bought his company the good grace to do preorders with ridiculous turnaround times and to lose money year over year on the stock market while keeping an astronomical valuation.
Well turns out they very actually undervalued not overvalued. And they didn't actually lose that much money, and didn't raise that much money.
They showed they were profitable with the Model S and they were a sustainable company. Then they went into Model 3 and everybody knew this was capital intensive and they guided for loses for a few years.
Do yourself a favor and compare how much money Tesla raised and what their evaluation is compared to companies that are in this space now, Rivian, Lucid and so on.
Tesla actually operated handled their cash very well and did a lot with not that much money.
> The rest of Tesla-the actual car making thing-is something that an organization of several thousand engineers could have certainly done without Elon Musk given the amount of cash they had, and probably could have done better without Elon Musk. They just needed Elon Musk to raise the cash.
And who heirs the engineers? Who defines strategy? Who decides what people should have leadership positions and so on. Tesla was not a company with 1000s of engineers when Tesla became CEO, its was a company about to go bust who had not delivered a single car.
This is HN, building a company from tiny to gigantic is a huge achievement that doesn't just 'happen'.
There were Tesla competitors many had just as much or more cash then Tesla, but they failed. Why? I thought if company just had money they would magically start mass produce cars.
> He is exactly like Steve Jobs: a briliant marketer with a cult of personality, who people think of as an "inventor" because he likes to spend time doing that.
That you think they are the same just proves that you have not really been paying attention beyond surface level. They are very different in their approach. And with both its not actually marketing.
Being an "engineer at heart" is part of his marketing game, just like it was for Elizabeth Holmes and Steve Jobs. Also, being an engineer at heart doesn't make someone a good engineer. Tesla has accomplished incredible feats of engineering, but that doesn't mean that _Elon Musk_ has accomplished them. Also, the fact that Elon Musk is an incredible marketer shouldn't be taken as a dig: he is clearly the best marketer of his generation and Tesla undeniably would have failed without him. It's when he or his followers get fantasies about Elon Musk being brilliant at everything that I get upset.
As to credibility as an engineer, let's look at the other examples of Musk's engineering work (the ones we know _Elon Musk himself_ was responsible for):
* The hyperloop is a ridiculous concept that defies physics and engineering. Musk personally wrote the "white paper" for it. He wrote that white paper because the California legislature was proposing high speed rail from LA to SF (that would be a ridiculous waste of money), and he didn't like their proposal.
* The boring company makes tunnels. They are not particularly cheap or fast to dig, unless you compare their tunnels to tunnels several times the diameter (as Elon Musk does in his marketing material).
I have no problem with Tesla and I hope they become a successful car company. There is a good chance that my next car 3-5 years from now will be a Tesla if the company proves itself capable of surviving a bear market and the quality issues go away. Musk has been great for Tesla in the growth phase, but they may need a new CEO for the next stage of life.
This old sad meme again.
Do you mean he is not a technically certified engineer? Because a lot of people are not that but go into engineering, specially in software.
What would you suggest qualifies somebody as an engineer?
Musk studied physics and was was accepted as PhD student for material science at Standford. Many people from that path go into engineering fields. Musk didn't finish his work on ultracaps and instead created a software company where he was the main software engineer. He actually wrote the code and lead the team of coders at a company that sold for 20+ million. Does that not count as engineering?
And Elon did actually work on the actual Falcon 1 rocket. Both on design and on the actual hardware.
He is not the Chief Engineer in name only. He does what a Chief Engineer does. He is in every technical review meeting with senior engineering leaders and make top level decisions, he defines the strategy and direction of the engineering work. He fundamentally makes a the choice of material/manufacturing process and so on, and takes responsibility if it doesn't work out.
There are plenty of domain experts who have interacted with Elon who have talked about how he actually has the knowlage to talk with all the engineers about domain specific details in those peoples field. And those people were not working at Musk companies.
> * The hyperloop is a ridiculous concept that defies physics and engineering.
Funny then as it was validated by engineering teams of both Tesla and SpaceX with the best simulation tools available in the industry at the time. Please tell me what defies physics.
> * The boring company makes tunnels. They are not particularly cheap or fast to dig, unless you compare their tunnels to tunnels several times the diameter (as Elon Musk does in his marketing material).
Well the bought a commercial tunnel boring machine to start of at. So of course those are not faster. But the point of the company is to make it faster. Are you suggesting that they have made their next generation tunnel boring machines slower then currently commercially available designs?
Where do you get your knowlage about tunneling prices and speed? Do you have some sort of internal knowlage about cost from the boring company?
The Boring Company just raised 600M$ but so I guess at least some investors who look at the tech don't think its trash.
- 2016 - model 3 preorders with no backing except a drawing.
- 2018 - cybertruck, semi, and full-self-driving preorders with one single prototype of the vehicles.
- And after each one of these, there is a huge bump in stock price. 200% is hyperbole.
These are feats of marketing, not feats of engineering. A CEO spending a lot of time in detailed engineering reviews doesn't make you an engineer, it means you enjoy doing detailed engineering reviews.
It is undeniable that Tesla is successful in large part because of the cult of personality that Musk has built, largely on Twitter. That has bought his company the good grace to do preorders with ridiculous turnaround times and to lose money year over year on the stock market while keeping an astronomical valuation.
The rest of Tesla-the actual car making thing-is something that an organization of several thousand engineers could have certainly done without Elon Musk given the amount of cash they had, and probably could have done better without Elon Musk. They just needed Elon Musk to raise the cash.
He is exactly like Steve Jobs: a briliant marketer with a cult of personality, who people think of as an "inventor" because he likes to spend time doing that.