You don't need to be an 'investor' to invest in Singletrack: 6 days left: 95% of target - Find out more
I'm sure most of those following SpaceX's escapades have already seen this, but this is a fascinating interview with Musk from a few days ago.
Interesting to see him talking openly and enthusiastically for so long with someone he treats as a peer, he's coming across very differently to how some of the press portray him. Quite charismatic, more technical than I expected -he seems to have a nuts and bolts understanding of everything going on around him, an innovator rather than investor, and obviously has a huge enthusiasm for what he's working on.
I'm sure there's lots of takeaways from his mannerisms as well.
Well worth an hour (for part 1, anyway) of your time.
Yes, watched this last night. He does seem to know alot about what he's spending his money on. Looking forward to the next part.
While it's fascinating watching a billionaire showman recreate what the Mercury programme did with Alan Shepard sixty years ago, I do wish that the guy put as much energy into paying his tax as he did launching himself into sub-orbital space. From The Hill:
"Elon Musk paid less than $70,000 in federal income taxes between 2015 and 2017, and he did not pay anything in 2018, according to recent reports. He did pay his taxes in 2016 by exercising more than $1 billion in stock options".
If he paid his taxes, he'd still have enough cash left over for stunts like this and we'd have more money to fund infrastructure and fight climate change.
I can't really see any similarity between Shepherd/Mercury's suborbital flight and SpaceX's program.
Or where he failed to pay his taxes.
Or why you think that Musk paying (more) tax in the US would lead to the country paying money to 'fund infrastructure and fight climate change'.
I can’t really see any similarity between Shepherd/Mercury’s suborbital flight and SpaceX’s program.
Quite. That would be Bezos.
I'll leave this here for balance
If you think watching that is worth an hour of your time, feel free to listen to a bit about his background, the wealth he's comes from, the relationship his family had with apartheid South Africa, the abuse of worker rights, his tax evasion, his govt funding, and how he treats people from union involvement to being his first wife...
Don't always agree with the guy but he's a fascinating individual, prodigiously talented, and definitely not the billionaire investor some like to portray him to be. His hyper focus leads to some narrow minded thinking sometimes imo, but I like listening to him speak. He has this rare quality when being interviewed where he stops to consider the question, often for long periods, before formulating a response. It's not pre-rehearsed stock answers, you can see him working through the problems as he goes. I like that.
Thanks for that contribution nickc.
For the sake of your own balance, did you take the time to watch the link? I'm sure there's a few positives and insights you can take away.
know your enemy and all that.
he’s coming across very differently to how some of the press portray him. Quite charismatic, more technical than I expected -he seems to have a nuts and bolts understanding of everything going on around him
It's not just the press, it's his own social media rantings. The dude is a prize ****. The Thai cave rescue thing is a prime example - he came up with a crackpot idea of trying to go in there with a submarine, then he accused one of the divers of being a paedo. Utterly bizarre behavior, not what you expect from the CEO of a major company.
He has an engineering degree, so he does understand technical stuff, but his imagination tends to run away on him. One of the problems with engineers is they tend to be very arrogant about technological solutions and dismissive of people who disagree with them. Musk was so confident about self-driving technology he told his engineers to design the Model Y without a steering wheel, instructions they ignored because regulators would not allow it on the roads. He doesn't have a production engineering background and refuses to listen to any dissenting opinion so the Tesla production ramp-up was a horror show. Assembly line workers constantly had to bodge things to get the cars off the production line. Here's a famous example:
Yes the guy can be a tool but far from being a Mercury programme me-too SpaceX is now doing multiple manned orbital space travel and satellite launches that NASA can't. Tesla is the main reason that EVs are now at least 5 years ahead fo where we would be without it and its the only thing that's keeping the legacy automotive OEM's even partially honest.
Conversely the problem with people who do your job is they tend to make strange generalisations about people based on their occupation.
Oh, if only you knew what I do for a living.
SpaceX is now doing multiple manned orbital space travel and satellite launches that NASA can’t.
It’s not that they can’t, it’s that they chose not to. They decided that commercialising repeat activity to LEO was a better use of NASA’s budget. They were right.
The only two reasons that both Tesla and SpaceX exist today is government funding and the cult of personality around Musk.
Musk didn’t create Tesla, he was an early
Investor. Tesla was created as a technology company around software and battery hardware - that was someone else’s vision. Musk also didn’t guide Tesla until 2010, he was mostly involved in the technical aspects of the Roadster. Tesla only raised $150m in its first 6years, it was government bailout money in the financial crisis tied to environmental improvement in Automotive vehicles in 2008/9 that gave Tesla the ability to fund the Model S with $0.5bn of public money. This money was used to have Panasonic custom make a battery configuration for Tesla at an unprecedented scale.
Musk started SpaceX after a failed attempt to buy Russian rockets to give him cheap access to space. He than set about chasing the X-prize money and eventually the CCC project money.
From 2006 - 2009 Tesla and SpaceX couldn’t have survived without government money and Musk was moving money and staff between both companies to keep them alive. This technically wasn’t legal.
BUT, for all this, neither company would be alive today if not for Musk. Not so much his technical acumen, but his astuteness in getting the right people at the right time to do the right things. His ability to direct resources and encourage investmentX. This comes from him, his personality, his drive.
It’s infectious, it’s inspiring and people tend to overlook the worst when we feel for the cause.
I like the effect he’s had on two industries, but can’t quite bring myself to worship the man like so many seem to.
Musk also didn’t guide Tesla until 2010
And was forced to step down as chairman in 2018 by the S.E.C because he broke really basic laws about being a director (don't make shit up). Tesla was forced to appoint two further members to the board to essentially make sure that Musk couldn't make shit up in future as part of the deal.
About 5 years ago Musk would probably have sold you Tesla for a decent offer but GM chose to take a $2billion stake in Trevor Milton's vapourware at Nikola. In comparison $0.5 billion government money invested in Tesla looks like the deal of the century.
It's fascinating. I like Elon's ambitions in space. He's one of those people that is single handedly changing the world.
He’s one of those people that is single handedly changing the world.
By buying teams to do the work for him?
The Thai cave rescue thing is a prime example – he came up with a crackpot idea of trying to go in there with a submarine, then he accused one of the divers of being a paedo. He came up with a crackpot idea of trying to go in there with a submarine
Sounds like he was rather pee'd off by the instant dismissal.
But consider this. Whats his field ? Engineering. And is it numpties who work for him or a team of development engineers and scientists. People who excel at problem solving.
So the diver turns down someone with near unlimited resources and a team of highly qualified problem solvers.
As to the idea, that could have been discussed and looked at and if found to be unsound then dismissed, and in fact something that was to be moved by the divers.
" a tiny, kid-size submarine ... Light enough to be carried by 2 divers, small enough to get through narrow gaps. Extremely robust.” The idea behind it was to rescue the kids without them needing to swim or use air tanks"
Given the children would be weak from lack of food and being stuck there. Chances of them being able to swim underwater was an unknown. Plus 'submarine' is just a discriptive, but not in the true sense of a submarine as we know and understand it. It sounds more like a small diving bell.
As to the idea, that could have been discussed and looked a
Which would have been marvellous had Musk and his employees had a chat with those in the know during the design phase to work on a practical specification. At the point diver dude dismissed the offer it was already under construction.
By buying teams to do the work for him?
If he does so what? He's not Tony Stark. However he does seem to be buying all the right teams.
I've just started watching the everyday astronaut interview. 10 mins in, interesting, nice to see inside the site rather than the external cameras that are outside looking in.
I don't mind watching the 'fan' channel cameras like the Ocean Cam YouTube channel. They give the view of the tourist passing by which is what I'd be doing if I could go and visit the site.
Looking forward to the launch and probable explosion. Would be nice to see a successful launch and retrieval though.
If he does so what? He’s not Tony Stark. However he does seem to be buying all the right teams.
Not sure why you chose a Marvel character. The point is he’s not singlehandedly doing anything, the guy just throws money at projects for other people to do the work under his name.
Because he's obviously not some real life Tony Stark super genius working alone with the help of some robots Of course he has accomplished what he has done by being intelligent picking the right people to work with and motivating them. Doesnt devalue in any way what hes accomplished
Not sure why you chose a Marvel character. The point is he’s not singlehandedly doing anything, the guy just throws money at projects for other people to do the work under his name.
There's a thing people do in arguments where one side makes an assertion and the rebuttal is pretty much diametrically opposed. Oddly, it's found a lot less in real life than on the internet.
As an NHS worker, you're probably perfectly aware of the ineffectiveness of "just throwing money at projects for other people to do the work", without retaining control and direction!
What Musk has done, whether singlehandedly, or by throwing money at projects, or, more likely by doing something in between the two, is build a system to rapidly and iteratively prototype, build and test space-going vehicles.
The difference in development pace between SpaceX and competitors, government and commercial is phenomenal.
Anyway, as I said in the original post, it's a very interesting interview, well worth watching, regardless of your opinion of Musk and what he's doing.
The difference in development pace between SpaceX and competitors, government and commercial is phenomenal.
It is now. It wasn’t when they had to worry about contracts, funding and public opinion like every other company.
SpaceX were conservative when they started, ambitious when they got the CCC funding and Tesla money, again conservative when scaling the Falcon 9, then, when that contract was secure and Musk’s wealth was immense, they started Starship and Starlink. But neither of these projects are funded, they’re paid for by Musk/SpaceX, so failure IS an option. This isn’t the case for many other companies, especially ones with multiple products that can be affected by a single Engineering turned PR disaster.
Look at what happened to BP, Boeing and VW.
SpaceX’s rise has less to do with the dynamism of its leader and more to do with their freedom to fail and their means of funding.
I like the effect he’s had on two industries, but can’t quite bring myself to worship the man like so many seem to.
This sums it up for me. He's a capable businessman, and an engineer that has become more of a project manager (some have said micro-manager), lots of technical people move into project management (and often forget they're no longer engineers), his projects are just bigger and he is still able to wrangle the chaos apparently.
I'll admit I liked his requirements spiel, he's still a bellend though.
Unfortunately/fortunately he's been infected by the modern cult of personality bollocks, this promotes the businesses and attracts investment but perhaps detracts from the organisations themselves, people don't invest in Tesla/space X they invest in Musk...
It’s fascinating. I like Elon’s ambitions in space. He’s one of those people that is single handedly changing the world.
I'd he though? He's accumulating wealth from government contracts, and by making leccy cars the expensive option first (the affordable ones are coming apparently). But is he "changing the world" or just exploiting it in a slightly different way?
Anyway if you can stomach 50mins of fanboi video, here's 40 odd mins of Elon hate:
Daffy has put it much better than I could.
with their freedom to fail and their means of funding.
Who's responsible for getting that done then? Elon fanboys are insufferable, but painting him as 'just a billionaire buying toys' is way wide of the mark.
I like Elon’s ambitions in space. He’s one of those people that is single handedly changing the world.
If by changing the world you meant sending rockets into space so that he can advertise at you...then yes he's "changing the world". I wonder how long it takes before folk realise that their object of unearned hero-worship is just another money obsessed douche-bag grifter.
bindun @nickc. Watch this space.
That's one for the geeks, btw.
After reading the article, I do reckon you're letting your enthusiasm for all things Musk run away a bit.
Anyways, part 2 is up now, though not sure if anyone watched part 1 on the back of this thread.
The thing that the Elon haters don't understand is that he's way on the Autistic (or is it Aspergers) spectrum. He's brain is going a million miles thinking about rockets, cars etc.. human interaction is something he doesn't understand and therefore appears to be a d**k.
It's a trade off Uber high functioning in some areas, really poor in others.
Personally, I think his complete focus on improving the human condition is awesome. He breaks it down to first principles applies fierce logic to it. His lack of empathy (definition of a psychopath) gets him in trouble but also lets him cut through the BS.
I don't think Billionaires are necessary good for society but Elon is the most interesting and is trying more than the rest to do good. Tesla certainly has succeeded in acceleration of electric vehicles and Space X has the best chance of making us multi planetary Is his efforts misplaced... Maybe but give me him over all the other Billionaires spending their money on yachts, cars, real estate. Give me an interesting character over the rest of the self centered lot.
He’s brain is going a million miles thinking about rockets, cars etc.. human interaction is something he doesn’t understand and therefore appears to be a d**k.
His arrogant dismissal of anyone who questions his judgement is a major problem for Tesla. Pushing the boundaries of technology is great, but safety regulators are there because of the long history of promising new technology causing problems.
Personally, I think his complete focus on improving the human condition is awesome
Unless, of course, you happen to live anywhere near where he wants to build and test rockets
Unless, of course, you happen to live anywhere near where he wants to build and test rockets
His arrogant dismissal of anyone who questions his judgement is a major problem for Tesla. Pushing the boundaries of technology is great, but safety regulators are there because of the long history of promising new technology causing problems.
I'm hardly a Musk fanboi, but the problem with cars crashing in the USA is nothing to do with Tesla and everything to do with the fact that most American drivers are both lazy and distracted with mobile phones, coupled with higher speeds, no road policing, narrow lanes, and heavy goods vehicles moving at 75mph. No MOTs means that tyres are frequently damaged or worn.
You might think phone use is bad in the UK, but it's nothing compared to the USA. Almost every other driver is heads-down on a phone.
The only way you'll stop this is to fit a camera inside the cars themselves and either record people while they're using autopilot or cruise control, or have it figure out whether they're looking at a phone and disconnect if they are.
Bill Gates, Warren Buffett and Charles Feeney trump Musk in the billionaires doing good stakes and also don’t come across as total ****s which is nice.
Personally, I think his complete focus on improving the human condition is awesome. He breaks it down to first principles applies fierce logic to it.
Comes up with the Vegas loop somehow?
Fierce...
I’m hardly a Musk fanboi, but the problem with cars crashing in the USA is nothing to do with Tesla
The problem with Tesla autopilots is largely due to Musk pushing it as an "autopilot" instead of assisted driving. Musk's personality defects encouraged people to behave like ****s, so you get things like the video of the guy setting the "autopilot" and then climbing into the back seat and reading a book.
Yeah it's a bit crazy they've not been banned from calling it autopilot (even if they do clearly state on their web-site it's not yet fully autonomous). That said I doubt anyone has actually bought one thinking it is fully autonomous, some people just like to do stupid things whilst driving.
Presumably it's going to stay under the Autopilot name. Volvo call their system "Pilot Assist". Ford call theirs "Co-Pilot".
Stupid is as stupid does, and just changing a name won't fix anything.
musk-announces-30-million-donations-to-area-schools-brownsville
@Eulach; you see the issue here though right? I mean first off, he's just buying local politicians to look away from what he's doing; He got kicked out of his previous location in California for doing pretty much the same thing, He's just realised that the cost of doing this shit in Texas is $30M, which is chump change for him anyway.
Secondly he's still destroying a wetlands, restricting the rights of the inhabitants of the town, polluting the area, construction all day all night, breaking promises made about launches and what and how often tests would be carried out buying up plots of land, acting generally like an entitled asshole, but hey; he's palmed off the mayor with a bribe, so that's all OK. It's all forgiven.
Thirdly billionaires and the massively wealthy should just pay their taxes, then local officials wouldn't need to have bribes handed to them by these entitled assholes in order to build schools.
This doesn't make him a better person, for him $30M is just the additional cost of behaving the way he wants to, and as he's effectively got bottomless funds, he can afford to be an asshole.
Thirdly billionaires and the massively wealthy should just pay their taxes, then local officials wouldn’t need to have bribes handed to them by these entitled assholes in order to build schools.
The thing is Elon's not really as wealth as he appears, he essentially lives off loans raised against the value of his various companies shares (to avoid tax of course). Tesla is massively overvalued, if investors were to come to their senses and a proper readjustment were to occur he'd be scuppered. The only thing really keeping the share value up is the hype...
I have a feeling that the dam has burst and Musk is basically finished. Tesla was always more hype than reality, they couldn't make a profit selling luxury cars so they aren't going to be able to compete with Toyata, VW, GM, Ford, etc. making cheap cars. Automotive journalists are now flooding the internet with horror stories about Musk's complete disregard for safety.
He announced himself as a republican the other day and said something like "watch the left start their attacks".
He's just going to ramp up how much of a nob he is and blame everyone else. Classic rich old white man's tactics.
I have a feeling that the dam has burst and Musk is basically finished. Tesla was always more hype than reality, they couldn’t make a profit selling luxury cars so they aren’t going to be able to compete with Toyata, VW, GM, Ford, etc. making cheap cars.
Unlikely, I think. Every other car delivered seems to be a Model 3 and they're making slow but steady progress on the self-driving technology. Other manufacturers are lagging a long way behind on battery technology and in the US are basically throwing enormous batteries into bad designs and then selling at a loss to get market share. Tesla make a profit on every car they sell.
SpaceX is still a private company but has a potential market cap in the billions if he needs to raise more money.
Unlikely, I think. Every other car delivered seems to be a Model 3
The stock price of any company is essentially an "educated wish" Musk's claim to be the worlds richest man is based pretty much entirely on the stock value of Tesla; a company that doesn't really have a marker segment (it's value is it's novelty) and its place in the market is starting to be challenged, and has never made any money anyway (relies on carbon sales) Tesla cars are popular now, but fashions changes pretty fast and Tesla can't compete with established car makers in their segments.
As soon as it starts to slide, the value of Tesla is going to fall like a brick dropped from a plane.
He announced himself as a republican the other day and said something like “watch the left start their attacks”.
He’s just going to ramp up how much of a nob he is and blame everyone else. Classic rich old white man’s tactics.
A cynical way of getting in ahead of the news he's paid off his staff for being a revolting sex pest.
I think my opinion of him is lower than it would ordinarily be because of the army of tech bro sycophants lauding his every move.
A cynical way of getting in ahead of the news he’s paid off his staff for being a revolting sex pest.
Exactly.
Uncorroborated allegation from unnamed source comes out literally one day after he announces he's no longer supporting the Democ-rats, because "they have become the party of division & hate".
Offered a horse in exchange for an "erotic massage" ? Oh ok, entirely plausible scenario right there.
Every other car delivered seems to be a Model 3 and they’re making slow but steady progress on the self-driving technology. Other manufacturers are lagging a long way behind on battery technology and in the US are basically throwing enormous batteries into bad designs and then selling at a loss to get market share. Tesla make a profit on every car they sell.
No, they make money on selling carbon credits. They've never been able to sell cars profitably.
Their self-driving technology has some fundamental problems that mean it will probably never meet Musk's exaggerated promises. The basic problem is that it's extremely computing intensive and the required computing power increases exponentially according to how many parameters need to be processed. It might be possible to make it work on an expressway where all the traffic is going in the same direction and there aren't any cyclists, pedestrians, parked cars, etc. because that only involves processing a few parameters. Trying to process everything happening in a busy urban street is vastly beyond the processing power that Tesla can afford to put into a car.
On top of that, improving the system requires training it to recognize the relevant things in the video data. That requires a human to watch the video from the cameras and tag those objects in every video frame. This is very labour intensive and one person can only process a few minutes of video per day. It's pretty much impossible to make a viable self-driving car using the technology that Tesla has.
AFAIK, Tesla is working with Panasonic on batteries. They are using the same chemistry as everyone else. Teslas are expensive luxury cars, they are competing with BMW and Mercedes, not Ford and Nissan. To justify their stratospheric stock price, Tesla need to be able to sell a practical car for US$25k and make a profit. If they can't do that, they will remain a niche luxury car maker and their stock price would need to fall by about 90% to reflect that.
Tesla was always more hype than reality, they couldn’t make a profit selling luxury cars so they aren’t going to be able to compete with Toyata, VW, GM, Ford, etc. making cheap cars.
Toyota's EBITDA for 1Q 2022 was £8 billion on sales of 2.2 million vehicles. Tesla made almost $13 billion EBITDA over the same period on sales of just 310,000 vehicles. So Tesla can't make a profit? Tesla are also historically net +ve i.e. the company has made more in total profits than has been invested in it since start up.
Tesla don't have to make cheap cars (yet) as they are not demand constrained. Also legacy auto can't seem to make an EV for under £25k. Tesla's real competiition will be from Chinese companies like Xpeng and Nio.
All the best sociopaths/ psychopaths are charismatic.
Incidentally, when I read surface detail in my head Veppers is elon musk.
Also legacy auto can’t seem to make an EV for under £25k.
Nissan sell the Leaf in the U.S. for US$27K. After tax credits, that drops to about $20K. The Ford F100 Lightning starts at about $40k and drops to under $33k with tax credits. If Tesla wants to become the dominant electric vehicle manufacturer, they will need to sell practical vehicles at prices like that, and they will have to comply with safety regulators. So far, they've gotten away with cowboy stuff but you can't get away with that sort of nonsense if you aim to be a market leader.
Tesla’s battery and motor technology is almost unique. Only Lucid have equivalent cells and better motors/controllers. Every other manufacturer is using prismatic cells, which are easier to make, but less efficient as it requires additional busbars and more connections, which increases resistance and decreases efficiency. Tesla’s are also some of the most aerodynamically efficient designs out there. Their software is also quite clever for both running and charging. I don’t think Tesla is going away - it may lose market share over time, but I still think it’ll be a big player in the future.
if you aim to be a market leader.
They're not aiming any more they are the EV market leader by a huge margin.
and they will have to comply with safety regulators. So far, they’ve gotten away with cowboy stuff
All Tesla cars have a Euro NCAP five star safety rating and the Model 3 has the highest NCAP score of any vehicle since the NCAP test was tightened up in 2018 so please explain to me what cowboy nonsense they are engaged in cause it looks like its working.
so please explain to me what cowboy nonsense they are engaged in cause it looks like its working.
The best you can do is one article from a journalist who clearly has an agenda casting up stuff that may have happened 6-7 years ago (except for the diesel generator bit I'll give you that)?
As for Tesla cutting safety corners well the evidence from 22.5 billion miles travelled by Tesla cars is just not there.
Tesla aren't going away so just deal with it.
The best you can do is one article from a journalist who clearly has an agenda
If you take a look through that Twitter thread, it's not just one article, it's a bunch of journalists who started out with very positive views of Tesla and then saw how toxic the company and Musk are.
Journalists have an agenda, that agenda is to report on important events. Good journalists do that honestly. Dismissing news that you don't like as "an agenda" is exactly the sort of toxic behaviour that Musk and his fanbois use to try to deflect any criticism of his behaviour.
The key thing here is that Tesla cars aren't self-driving and the technology they have cannot support a self-driving car, but Musk refuses to acknowledge reality and attacks journalists who question things. Tesla fanbois keep proving that self-driving doesn't work by crashing and dying. Journalists' have a responsibility to report on that. It's not an agenda, it's their job.
Uncorroborated allegation from unnamed source comes out literally one day after he announces he’s no longer supporting the Democ-rats, because “they have become the party of division & hate”.
Offered a horse in exchange for an “erotic massage” ? Oh ok, entirely plausible scenario right there.
Musk is an idiot if he believes the Democrats and not the Republicans are the party of division and hate.
Alternatively he is cynical and playing to an audience of the gullible, credulous and insincere. So when he was asked to comment on the sexual assault allegations (before they were published) he asked the reporter for more time before he would respond further. He didn't. However he now knew the story was about to break, and in turn made the comment about being a republican and how he would now be the subject of dirty tricks and smears. And there are millions ready to lap all that shite up.
he is cynical and playing to an audience of the gullible, credulous and insincere.
This. He's just a smarter version of Donald Trump.
so please explain to me what cowboy nonsense they are engaged in
Did you see the story earlier this week of the guy who couldn't get out of his Tesla that was on fire? The doors are electrically operated, and (because they were on fire) the electrics had failed?
There were similar cases a few years ago, so this doesn't seem to be an issue they've got under control.
Tesla the company makes money, Tesla cars do not.
The company makes money through carbon credits & stock market / bitcoin manipulation
As Benedict Evans says, musk is a bullshitter who delivers. This really confuses a lot of people because it's such an unusual combination.
I think he is an engineering genius, who has created 2 firms in which highly driven engineers can do extraordinary things.
Tesla is obviously massively over-valued, and will presumably come back to earth when VW ships a million EVs next year, and the carbon credits fade away.
The self driving stuff is fatally flawed - his "robo taxi" nonsense is decades away. Manufacturing quality isn't great, and they haven't got anything like the degree of manufacturing automation they envisaged. Yet.
Someone complained about tax earlier in the thread. He doesn't take a salary - almost all his wealth is in the form of stock in his companies. The tax bill only happens when you sell. He exercised a bunch of options last year and paid 12bn in tax. I guess that's the largest personal tax bill in history?
This year he will presumably sell/have sold a bunch more to raise the equity portion of the Twitter deal. If he ends up doing 20bn of his own cash, he'll pay another 6bn or so of capital gains tax when he sells.
Did you see the story earlier this week of the guy who couldn’t get out of his Tesla that was on fire?
Probably written by a journalist with an agenda that cars shouldn't be mobile crematoriums. Did they give equal space to Tesla's PR response? No? Must be a Democrat Fake Media hit job.
I think he is an engineering genius, who has created 2 firms
He bought nothing to Tesla (an existing company when he joined) but money. He's a computer nerd who bet some of his Dads wealth on what became PayPal, and then used the money he earned from selling shares to invest in Tesla. He has no engineering skill.
Tesla's look sh1t - absolute zero style. Way out of my price range - I say that, I could afford the lease costs easily, but it's a tin box on wheels. I don't use a car enough to spend silly money on one.
There are FIVE vehicles at my house of 4 people - son has a car and a company Caddy, and we've got a little Aygo as a learner for my daughter = shop run car for us - stupid cheap motoring.
Tesla fanbois keep proving that self-driving doesn’t work by crashing and dying.
Slight exaggeration. As far as I know there is only one lawsuit against Tesla for the self driving allegedly injuring someone. In any case Tesla's success is not dependent on self drive working but don't let facts get in the way of your prejudice.
Anyone see the recent documentary (C4 or C5) - shocking treatment of staff at Tesla
Tesla is obviously massively over-valued, and will presumably come back to earth when VW ships a million EVs next year.
Current waiting time for an ID3 is a year, so VW have some ground to make up. It takes 30 hours to make a VW; 10 to make a Tesla. And then you have to find a place to charge it.
VW have some ground to make up
Using VWs own figures for their future battery production capacity VW's EV business will be six times smaller than Tesla by 2030. Like I said above Tesla's competition is coming from China not Germany.
He bought nothing to Tesla (an existing company when he joined) but money. He’s a computer nerd who bet some of his Dads wealth on what became PayPal, and then used the money he earned from selling shares to invest in Tesla. He has no engineering skill.
This pretty much nails it. He's a nerdy guy with marketing skills but he leaves the engineering to others and throws tantrums when he doesn't get what he wants.
Their self-driving technology has some fundamental problems that mean it will probably never meet Musk’s exaggerated promises.
Have you taken a look at YouTube at some of the videos posted recently? Zero intervention drives across San Francisco at rush hour suggest that decent progress is being made.
Musk is partially right when he says that self-driving isn't computationally that intensive. Right now it's happening on some pretty weak computers in the existing cars.
What is crippling is the training of the neural networks. This is insanely energy and time intensive. It takes years for the human brain to become good at something, but almost no effort once trained. Similar thing here.
Musk is a privileged knob, but it's undeniable that he has pushed electric vehicles forward by leaps and bounds. Same with SpaceX, which makes Boeing look like a schoolchild launching a box of cheap fireworks.
Say what you want about Musk - I won't defend his personality, but when it comes to electric vehicles a lot of people on here have been hoodwinked by propaganda from oil companies and legacy manufacturers.
Jesus, some way off whack comments about Tesla from people who have never owned one!...but hey, it's STW after all! 😀
I have the second generation Model S 100D and it has been absolutely flawless performance and build wise. It is the best car i've ever owned. The Summon feature can be a bit flaky, but other than that it's tough to criticise.
@tekp2 - in my experience the self drive is fine, roundabouts, motorways, city driving, not even a hint of a problem...i've done over 80k in it.
If Tesla crack FSD and I admit its a big if but if anyone is going to do it it will probably be them, the underlying tech will be applied to a frightening number of simpler tasks currently done my humans.
Jesus, some way off whack comments about Tesla from people who have never owned one!
As the wise and insightful Taylor Swift said " Haters gonna hate, hate, hate, hate, hate"
I’ll caveat this with, I’m not a fan or hater of musk.
He’s not done anything new with stock market/share price shenanigans. That shit has gone on for years, he just does it via Twitter/insta/other social media. Wealthy people/institutions have done this since forever.
Tesla will remain, the cars may slip, but I still reckon his drive wasn’t really ‘cars’ but the battery technology and ultimately licensing that to others.
They also have a smart charging network, and that is years ahead of anyone else. Charging at home and commuting back and forth is great, but the big thing putting people off EV cars (whether it’s sensible to choose a car based a once a year trip of 350 miles is sensible is another discussion) is charging and they have that sewn up.
He’s not going anywhere for a long time, and Space X is going to see huge growth.
Have you taken a look at YouTube at some of the videos posted recently? Zero intervention drives across San Francisco at rush hour suggest that decent progress is being made.
"Decent progress" isn't what Musk is selling. A YouTube video of a single successful drive doesn't mean it's reliable enough to do it on a day to day basis in shitty weather sharing the road with pedestrians, cyclists, etc.
The Summon feature can be a bit flaky,
In other words, self driving isn't reliable.
Fortunately the brains behind full self driving at Tesla belong to a guy called Andrej Karpathy, not Musk.
Take a look at the synopsis of his recent "AI day" presentation (you don't need to watch it, there are some good write-ups but be warned it is technical). They're quite up-front about where they are and the work he's doing is genuinely innovative.
The only problem I see is that the enormously challenging and time-consuming training task may have to be repeated from scratch for countries outside of North America, due to different street furniture/ laws / and crucially, driving style.
It's unlikely it'll be true "self driving" for a decade yet, in my opinion, but getting to the point where it'll do most of the driving and occasionally interrupt your movie to ask you to make an either/or decision is probably not far off.
In other words, self driving isn’t reliable.
Has anyone said it is? Its still in beta FFS.
In other words, self driving isn’t reliable.
Has anyone said it is? Its still in beta FFS.
Tesla market it as "full self driving" capability and it's available for purchase by the public.
Tesla market it as “full self driving” capability and it’s available for purchase by the public.
From the Tesla website
Autopilot, Enhanced Autopilot and Full Self-Driving Capability are intended for use with a fully attentive driver, who has their hands on the wheel and is prepared to take over at any moment. While these features are designed to become more capable over time, the currently enabled features do not make the vehicle autonomous.