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I feel like the author missed the dip caused by the April Fools joke, and tries to create another one. I think what's Elon is trying with the automation is ver

by takeda 9y ago

I feel like the author missed the dip caused by the April Fools joke, and tries to create another one. I think what's Elon is trying with the automation is very similar to difficulties that SpaceX had initially with reusable rockets. At first people doubted SpaceX can replace NASA, then that it was possible to do have rockets to return back, later when it started looking reasonable but SpaceX rockets were still crashing, company like Blue Origin were making fun of them by posting video that they can already land (omitting that just getting 100km up and back was far less challenging than what SpaceX was trying to do). Eventually SpaceX succeeded and this resulted with much cheaper cost to send satellites to space. To me it looks like Tesla is going through same thing, they try to automate all manufacturing instead of doing what everyone else is doing, this might make things bad at first, but once they succeed it will be very easy to scale the production and the only limitation will be the supply. I believe in Tesla primarily because of Elon, he is kind of a guy who doesn't have word "failure" in his dictionary, if Tesla doesn't succeed then most likely what they were trying to accomplish was impossible.

carlivar 9y ago
Another company that tried to do a lot of cool automation, perhaps ahead of their time, was Webvan.
craftyguy 9y ago
> At first people doubted SpaceX can replace NASA SpaceX cannot replace NASA, at least not yet. SpaceX is a component supplier to NASA like Boeing, United Launch Alliance, etc. There's a whole lot of other stuff that NASA does that SpaceX is not even trying to do.
- aaachilless 9y ago
  Isn't this exactly how it goes though? e.g. "They're selling books, Bob. Books. Not widgets. We're fine, Bob".
  - mulmen 9y ago
    NASA is not a corporation. It has entirely different motives than SpaceX.
  - adrianN 9y ago
    Unless SpaceX plans to do science missions without expecting anything in return, they're not competing with NASA.
deelowe 9y ago
> At first people doubted SpaceX can replace NASA I think SpaceX will provide services to NASA, but replace it? Not a freaking chance.
- woodandsteel 9y ago
  It sure can replace the Space Launch System and the manned space program.
ChuckMcM 9y ago
SpaceX can't replace NASA but it can replace ULA :-)
unityByFreedom 9y ago
> I feel like the author missed the dip caused by the April Fools joke The slide from $310 to $250 happened in the 10 days prior to April 1, after it became clear autopilot was turned on in the recent California Model X accident, which is exactly what the author says. Presumably banks have propped the stock back up to the current $298 and are running PR cover in an attempt to make back some of what are inevitable losses. I can't imagine anyone on r/teslamotors buying more right now. The general consensus is AP is not up to snuff. Only people investing other people's money would try to save TSLA right now. I think Tesla would've been fine with robotic manufacturing and electric vehicles. With autopilot, they've entered risky territory in order to earn investment dollars. It's not clear whether or not that risk will pay off. It seems clear now that full self-driving isn't happening any time soon without lidar. EDIT: Please explain your downvotes, thanks!
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
danso 9y ago
I’m really interested in how you see NASA being replaced by SpaceX, though my initial feeling is that you have might have a very limited idea of what NASA does.
sunstone 9y ago
Elon is a fundamentals kind of guy and that drives his strategy. The fundamentals with respect to electric cars from the time he started were: a)electric is a much better technology than ICE for automobiles. Electric is way simpler, lower center of gravity means better handling, smaller and lighter motors mean more interior space and better performance. Battery tech is a pain point but no CO2 is essential for everyone. b)Large automakers know this but simpler for them translates into less maintenance which means lower profits. Automakers therefore will pay lip service to electrics, drag their feet and kill off any real electric competition if they can. The world's environment is not a shareholder in the large automakers. So his "master plan", (the Truth but not the whole truth) he published in 2006. What he left out was that he knew as he moved to a high volume model that's when the large automakers would try to cut Tesla off at the knees and then go back to resting on their laurels. If his high volume model was mediocre and expensive to build Tesla would be dead in the water. He needed an excellent car but even more than that he needed Tesla's cost to be much lower than the majors could match so they couldn't low ball the market long enough to cut off Tesla's oxygen. When Tesla got 400k Model3 pre-orders that's when he decided to double down on the 'low unit cost/large production investment' strategy for the model3. Making this work is critical to Tesla's strategy. You can be sure Musk and his team put a lot of effort into the production tech knowing it was make or break for Tesla. The Economist is under estimating Musk and they should give him a little more credit given his track record. Telsa is not a slam dunk but it's also nowhere near as fragile as they make out. Musk also has a bit of equity in SpaceX he could lean on if the markets demur at the end of 2019.
- dragontamer 9y ago
  > The Economist is under estimating Musk and they should give him a little more credit given his track record. Telsa is not a slam dunk but it's also nowhere near as fragile as they make out. Musk also has a bit of equity in SpaceX he could lean on if the markets demur at the end of 2019. https://static.seekingalpha.com/uploads/2018/3/1/37229846-1519910035030181_origin.png https://static.seekingalpha.com/uploads/2018/3/1/37229846-15... Tesla is going to run into issues in 2019 if they are unable to ramp up the Model 3. Tesla lost $1.6 Billion last year, and they only have $3 millionish in cash. Furthermore, Tesla has debt that is due in 2018 (~$300 million or so) and early 2019 (~$900 million). Over the next year, Tesla needs to pay off $1.2 Billion in debt, AND needs to increase revenue by ~$1.6 Billion or so to stay even. They're not exactly in a good situation. I'm relatively confident that Mr. Musk can raise another $3 billion in capital through stock offerings or rolling over their debt in the short term, but those options have some risks involved. Furthermore, people will not want to lend money to Tesla if they think that the company is sinking. ----------- All the while, Tesla has bought SolarCity and also inherited all of its debt and issues. Tesla was having enough issues ramping up Model 3, but now they ALSO have to make the solar company profitable too. It was a bad time to buy SolarCity.
s2g 9y ago
> they try to automate all manufacturing instead of doing what everyone else is doing I like how this whole argument hinges on the idea that companies like Toyota don't know how to Automate. Not like they are the world standard in manufacturing efficiency or anything.
- jacobush 9y ago
  Ehm, they are the world standard in manufacturing, and that standard rather famously includes letting humans do a lot of the general assembly. No one is raining on Toyota, they are excellent at almost everything. Musk is trying to beat the standard.
  - talltimtom 9y ago
    Yea, but sadly he’s going about “beating” the standard using the mantra robots are better than humans, which is just not true. When you have a process that’s not a bottleneck, with enough throughput that’s cheaper to do manual, the only thing you do by using robots is throw away money, increase your potential for breakdowns and remove flexibility. Musk is acting exactly like the classical Lean “dufus” who forgets to analyze his process and considers robots a goal in the self instead of minimizing waste and optimizing throughput. Tesla isn’t pushing the standards, they’re not even playing in the same league as Toyota and other established manufacturers. But they sure are good at hyping their flawed methodology.
    - Animats 9y ago
      Tesla is so secretive that nobody outside really has a clue what the problems are. Even the automotive trade press doesn't know. There are so many possibilities. As I wrote last time this came up, Tesla would probably be better off letting some competent automotive reporters tour the plant. Right now, investors are assuming the worst. What's surprising is that Tesla is also having trouble with battery pack manufacturing. That's far simpler than building a car. It's a good job for robots, building identical units made of a large number of the same components.
    - 9y ago
kashyapc 9y ago
Hmm, frankly, "SpaceX will 'replace' NASA" sounds quite naïve. That makes no sense whatsoever. I think you meant assist / boost / "lend a hand to" NASA, by delivering some payloads to ISS and collaborating on other missions.
pbreit 9y ago
Can anyone here even imagine trying to pull off a Tesla? Burning through billions, haters at every turn, safer products that alas lead to deaths, huge pieces of hardware that must be recalled to fix, and on.
codeulike 9y ago
So capitalism is supposed to be about taking risks and (potentially) getting rewarded (so we are told, although in reality it seems to be about establishing a monopoly or extracting corporate welfare from the government). So here's a company (or two if you count spacex) that is taking huge financial and organisational risks and running at the edge of their capacity to expand all the time and all the industry observers just shit their pants in fear about it and try to shoot it all down.
- watwut 9y ago
  > So capitalism is supposed to be about taking risks and getting rewarded (so we are told, although in reality it seems to be about establishing a monopoly or extracting corporate welfare from the government). I like how "taking risk" is talked about as if it meant "statically you will gain out of it". That is not what risking means. Risking means that you can either loose or win and that plenty of people really loose. Risk does not entitle you to reward.
  - codeulike 9y ago
    I like how "taking risk" is talked about as if it meant "statically you will gain out of it" That's not what I said or meant. I have added a (potentially) to what I wrote. My point still stands imho.
    - watwut 9y ago
      The emphasis is always on "getting reward" each time "taking risk" is said where "getting punishment" is never said. That is not what capitalism is supposed to be about. That is just a glib used by people invested into treating risk taking as some kind of virtue (will, virtue if you get rewarded, if you the bad part of risk happen you are lazy looser who deserves no sympathy). The capitalism is supposed to be about rational decisions in competition and environment of reasonable transparency. Which may mean taking risk or not taking risk depending on how likely the reward part is to happen and how much punishment there would be.
- dragonwriter 9y ago
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

by takeda 9y ago

carlivar 9y ago

Another company that tried to do a lot of cool automation, perhaps ahead of their time, was Webvan.

craftyguy 9y ago

> At first people doubted SpaceX can replace NASA SpaceX cannot replace NASA, at least not yet. SpaceX is a component supplier to NASA like Boeing, United Launch Alliance, etc. There's a whole lot of other stuff that NASA does that SpaceX is not even trying to do.

aaachilless 9y ago
Isn't this exactly how it goes though? e.g. "They're selling books, Bob. Books. Not widgets. We're fine, Bob".
- mulmen 9y ago
  NASA is not a corporation. It has entirely different motives than SpaceX.
- adrianN 9y ago
  Unless SpaceX plans to do science missions without expecting anything in return, they're not competing with NASA.

deelowe 9y ago

> At first people doubted SpaceX can replace NASA I think SpaceX will provide services to NASA, but replace it? Not a freaking chance.

woodandsteel 9y ago
It sure can replace the Space Launch System and the manned space program.

ChuckMcM 9y ago

SpaceX can't replace NASA but it can replace ULA :-)

unityByFreedom 9y ago

> I feel like the author missed the dip caused by the April Fools joke The slide from $310 to $250 happened in the 10 days prior to April 1, after it became clear autopilot was turned on in the recent California Model X accident, which is exactly what the author says. Presumably banks have propped the stock back up to the current $298 and are running PR cover in an attempt to make back some of what are inevitable losses. I can't imagine anyone on r/teslamotors buying more right now. The general consensus is AP is not up to snuff. Only people investing other people's money would try to save TSLA right now. I think Tesla would've been fine with robotic manufacturing and electric vehicles. With autopilot, they've entered risky territory in order to earn investment dollars. It's not clear whether or not that risk will pay off. It seems clear now that full self-driving isn't happening any time soon without lidar. EDIT: Please explain your downvotes, thanks!

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

danso 9y ago

I’m really interested in how you see NASA being replaced by SpaceX, though my initial feeling is that you have might have a very limited idea of what NASA does.

sunstone 9y ago

Elon is a fundamentals kind of guy and that drives his strategy. The fundamentals with respect to electric cars from the time he started were: a)electric is a much better technology than ICE for automobiles. Electric is way simpler, lower center of gravity means better handling, smaller and lighter motors mean more interior space and better performance. Battery tech is a pain point but no CO2 is essential for everyone. b)Large automakers know this but simpler for them translates into less maintenance which means lower profits. Automakers therefore will pay lip service to electrics, drag their feet and kill off any real electric competition if they can. The world's environment is not a shareholder in the large automakers. So his "master plan", (the Truth but not the whole truth) he published in 2006. What he left out was that he knew as he moved to a high volume model that's when the large automakers would try to cut Tesla off at the knees and then go back to resting on their laurels. If his high volume model was mediocre and expensive to build Tesla would be dead in the water. He needed an excellent car but even more than that he needed Tesla's cost to be much lower than the majors could match so they couldn't low ball the market long enough to cut off Tesla's oxygen. When Tesla got 400k Model3 pre-orders that's when he decided to double down on the 'low unit cost/large production investment' strategy for the model3. Making this work is critical to Tesla's strategy. You can be sure Musk and his team put a lot of effort into the production tech knowing it was make or break for Tesla. The Economist is under estimating Musk and they should give him a little more credit given his track record. Telsa is not a slam dunk but it's also nowhere near as fragile as they make out. Musk also has a bit of equity in SpaceX he could lean on if the markets demur at the end of 2019.

dragontamer 9y ago
> The Economist is under estimating Musk and they should give him a little more credit given his track record. Telsa is not a slam dunk but it's also nowhere near as fragile as they make out. Musk also has a bit of equity in SpaceX he could lean on if the markets demur at the end of 2019. https://static.seekingalpha.com/uploads/2018/3/1/37229846-1519910035030181_origin.png https://static.seekingalpha.com/uploads/2018/3/1/37229846-15... Tesla is going to run into issues in 2019 if they are unable to ramp up the Model 3. Tesla lost $1.6 Billion last year, and they only have $3 millionish in cash. Furthermore, Tesla has debt that is due in 2018 (~$300 million or so) and early 2019 (~$900 million). Over the next year, Tesla needs to pay off $1.2 Billion in debt, AND needs to increase revenue by ~$1.6 Billion or so to stay even. They're not exactly in a good situation. I'm relatively confident that Mr. Musk can raise another $3 billion in capital through stock offerings or rolling over their debt in the short term, but those options have some risks involved. Furthermore, people will not want to lend money to Tesla if they think that the company is sinking. ----------- All the while, Tesla has bought SolarCity and also inherited all of its debt and issues. Tesla was having enough issues ramping up Model 3, but now they ALSO have to make the solar company profitable too. It was a bad time to buy SolarCity.

s2g 9y ago

> they try to automate all manufacturing instead of doing what everyone else is doing I like how this whole argument hinges on the idea that companies like Toyota don't know how to Automate. Not like they are the world standard in manufacturing efficiency or anything.

jacobush 9y ago
Ehm, they are the world standard in manufacturing, and that standard rather famously includes letting humans do a lot of the general assembly. No one is raining on Toyota, they are excellent at almost everything. Musk is trying to beat the standard.
- talltimtom 9y ago
  Yea, but sadly he’s going about “beating” the standard using the mantra robots are better than humans, which is just not true. When you have a process that’s not a bottleneck, with enough throughput that’s cheaper to do manual, the only thing you do by using robots is throw away money, increase your potential for breakdowns and remove flexibility. Musk is acting exactly like the classical Lean “dufus” who forgets to analyze his process and considers robots a goal in the self instead of minimizing waste and optimizing throughput. Tesla isn’t pushing the standards, they’re not even playing in the same league as Toyota and other established manufacturers. But they sure are good at hyping their flawed methodology.
  - Animats 9y ago
    Tesla is so secretive that nobody outside really has a clue what the problems are. Even the automotive trade press doesn't know. There are so many possibilities. As I wrote last time this came up, Tesla would probably be better off letting some competent automotive reporters tour the plant. Right now, investors are assuming the worst. What's surprising is that Tesla is also having trouble with battery pack manufacturing. That's far simpler than building a car. It's a good job for robots, building identical units made of a large number of the same components.
  - 9y ago

kashyapc 9y ago

Hmm, frankly, "SpaceX will 'replace' NASA" sounds quite naïve. That makes no sense whatsoever. I think you meant assist / boost / "lend a hand to" NASA, by delivering some payloads to ISS and collaborating on other missions.

pbreit 9y ago

Can anyone here even imagine trying to pull off a Tesla? Burning through billions, haters at every turn, safer products that alas lead to deaths, huge pieces of hardware that must be recalled to fix, and on.

codeulike 9y ago

So capitalism is supposed to be about taking risks and (potentially) getting rewarded (so we are told, although in reality it seems to be about establishing a monopoly or extracting corporate welfare from the government). So here's a company (or two if you count spacex) that is taking huge financial and organisational risks and running at the edge of their capacity to expand all the time and all the industry observers just shit their pants in fear about it and try to shoot it all down.

watwut 9y ago
> So capitalism is supposed to be about taking risks and getting rewarded (so we are told, although in reality it seems to be about establishing a monopoly or extracting corporate welfare from the government). I like how "taking risk" is talked about as if it meant "statically you will gain out of it". That is not what risking means. Risking means that you can either loose or win and that plenty of people really loose. Risk does not entitle you to reward.
- codeulike 9y ago
  I like how "taking risk" is talked about as if it meant "statically you will gain out of it" That's not what I said or meant. I have added a (potentially) to what I wrote. My point still stands imho.
  - watwut 9y ago
    The emphasis is always on "getting reward" each time "taking risk" is said where "getting punishment" is never said. That is not what capitalism is supposed to be about. That is just a glib used by people invested into treating risk taking as some kind of virtue (will, virtue if you get rewarded, if you the bad part of risk happen you are lazy looser who deserves no sympathy). The capitalism is supposed to be about rational decisions in competition and environment of reasonable transparency. Which may mean taking risk or not taking risk depending on how likely the reward part is to happen and how much punishment there would be.
dragonwriter 9y ago

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]