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A little more context from the WSJ article (https://www.wsj.com/articles/teslas-elon-musk-turns-conference-call-into-sparring-session-1525339803 https://www.wsj

A little more context from the WSJ article (https://www.wsj.com/articles/teslas-elon-musk-turns-conference-call-into-sparring-session-1525339803 https://www.wsj.com/articles/teslas-elon-musk-turns-conferen...) >“We’re going to go to YouTube, sorry. These questions are so dry. They’re killing me.” He directed the operator to take questions from Tesla investor Galileo Russell, whose HyperChange TV YouTube channel features a video titled, “Why I Bought Tesla Today at $255/Share.” >Mr. Russell, who had campaigned to get on the call usually reserved for analysts, got more than 20 minutes from Mr. Musk. The first of his dozen or so questions: When will Tesla launch its own network of driverless cars? >“Thank you for an interesting question,” Mr. Musk replied. It's especially cringey because if Musk was honest about that interesting question he would say he has no idea and should really be focusing on ramping up production. Instead it's a softball question that lets Musk proselytize on the radical world changing work that Tesla is doing...

gfody 8y ago
In the grand scheme of things figuring out how to make model3's faster than they can sell them is a boring problem for Musk and I could imagine how frustrating it must be to have all the banks freaking out as if they're going to miss a fleeting opportunity to sell a bunch of cars. It's like when Nikola Tesla was trying to build worldwide wireless telegraphy but J.P. Morgan just wanted him to make fluorescent lights. Hopefully things go better for Elon than they did for Nikola.
- TAForObvReasons 8y ago
  It may be a "boring" problem, but people aren't just paying for a reservation for nothing, ultimately they are expecting a car. And if there's no indication that they can meet the promises, that's a problem and he shouldn't be promising or giving wild production estimates in the first place. Unless you believe that Musk is selling the ability for people to say they have a reservation. In which case there's no point to even bother building the cars in the first place.
  - gfody 8y ago
    but thousands of model3's are being produced and delivered every week. at this point it's just a matter of time for reservations to be filled and velocity will ramp up naturally as they improve their process. the investors panicking because velocity isn't doubled yesterday doesn't seem like long term thinking.
    - mwfunk 8y ago
      ...that’s not what investors are panicking over? You know that right?
      - manicdee 8y ago
        The investors are panicking because Elon didn’t answer two pointless questions. Perhaps they need to ask better questions next time?
    - arkis22 8y ago
      You can't focus on the long term at the expense of the short term if in between you're bankrupt.
      - throwaway2048 8y ago
        This is a lot like the fallicious thinking surrounding poor people and why they so often remain in such shitty circumstances. If they could afford long term planning and investment, by definition they wouldnt be poor.
- Avshalom 8y ago
  For all that Musk is credited with versus what he actually invented he is not Tesla, he's Edison with worse business sense.
  - jek3939 8y ago
    He’s building things other places won’t touch because of the economics Everyone wants to sit and cross t’s and dot i’s because they are trained those matter more than net new If those are the only conversations you have, only doing things you’re sure will be comfortable the economy and society stagnate Economics are not the law of the land or reality. They’re a control mechanism for our output as a thinking, feeling, creative species Let’s just make more banal phone apps I guess. The ones where the economics are well known to keep us safe See stories about kids not playing outside or being allowed a quasi dangerous chemistry set No one wants to be wrong so we take the safe route, which protects the status quo we all bitch about
    - Avshalom 8y ago
      Literally every industry he's involved in has competitors several of which pre-date his entrance in each.
      - jek3939 8y ago
        And yet none of them are landing autonomous reusable rocket modules Of all the 100% electric cars on road, he has two in the top 5 Who else has been pushing battery storage and solar systems that aren’t ugly af and simply made of old parts glued together in parallel? All these other experts with experience can’t seem to hang with Johnny come lately. Humans don’t have a history of being petty over others not being the same as them, or worse, outperforming them. We’d never cherry pick facts, and ignore the whole story. Why that would make us no better than animals
        Avshalom 8y ago
        >>And yet none of them are landing autonomous reusable rocket modules I watched Armadillo do that in 2005 >Of all the 100% electric cars on road, he has two in the top 5 And neither invented the category nor managed to turn a profit on it >Who else has been pushing battery storage and solar systems that aren’t ugly af and simply made of old parts glued together in parallel? For batteries: Panasonic, LG but also literally every battery company and chemistry department in the world. For solar panels: also every chemistry department and dozens of companies, "China" as a vague term. And these other experts: they're making money instead of losing it. But even then this whole post buys into the idea that I some how have to disprove that Elon Musk does these things. He doesn't. Companies that Elon Musk is CEO of do those things.
- dragonwriter 8y ago
  > In the grand scheme of things figuring out how to make model3's faster than they can sell them is a boring problem for Musk It's the gateway problem to any of the ones he might find more interesting, and if he isn't willing to engage with that problem enough to satisfy investors, he should be “Chief Ivory Tower Visionary” and let someone else be CEO. Or, at least, get a COO and gracefully hand off boring operational questions to them.
  - nostrademons 8y ago
    The CEO role is Chief Ivory Tower Visionary. As CEO, your #1 job is to set the vision and strategy for the company, and your #2 is to get the right people on the bus and the wrong people off, which is dramatically easier with a strong vision. He does desperately need a good COO though to make sure Tesla can actually deliver on its promises.
    - dragonwriter 8y ago
      > The CEO role is Chief Ivory Tower Visionary. No, the CEO role is turning abstract vision into concrete strategy and communicating that strategy especially to investoes, because money people always want to hear things from the horse's mouth. It's a good thing for the CEO to be the visionary rather than channel someone else's vision, if they can do the rest of the job, but they can't be stuck in an ivory tower and think that addressing the path from present reality to distant vision is beneath their dignity.
    - petra 8y ago
      Is it really ideal doing things this way ? Or is it just part of an ego trip, and deciding on such complex things as vision an strategy for a company are better done in a collaborative fashion, maybe with the CEO as the final arbitrer ? And how much of that image of a all knowing visionary CEO is just a manufactured image ?
      - nostrademons 8y ago
        It's pretty difficult to generate a coherent vision by committee - you usually end up with something that nobody finds compelling, not even the people who collaborated on it. And of course the image of an all-knowing visionary CEO is a manufactured image! It's not like people can actually predict the future. Rather, it's selection bias at work. Those CEOs whose vision doesn't resonate end up getting replaced, or their company goes bankrupt, and then they get written out of the history books. The thing is, you need to have a vision to get people excited and actually rowing in the same direction (nevermind the right direction), so without that you're dead in the water anyway.
- kentm 8y ago
  Whether a problem is interesting is orthogonal to whether its important. This is an earnings call and scaling up production is actually an important issue to address for the company's long-term viability.
  - manicdee 8y ago
    The question wasn’t about scaling up production. It was a very specific question about trees when Tesla doesn’t really know what the forest looks like yet.
    - kentm 8y ago
      If you're in the lumber business and giving estimates on how much wood you're going to deliver per month, then not knowing what the forest looks like might be considered something of an existential problem. I get that Musk really enjoys thinking big and changing the world, and to such a person questions about capital expenditures might be dry and boring, but they're still important and need to be answered. If he doesn't want to do it then he should delegate.

gfody 8y ago

In the grand scheme of things figuring out how to make model3's faster than they can sell them is a boring problem for Musk and I could imagine how frustrating it must be to have all the banks freaking out as if they're going to miss a fleeting opportunity to sell a bunch of cars. It's like when Nikola Tesla was trying to build worldwide wireless telegraphy but J.P. Morgan just wanted him to make fluorescent lights. Hopefully things go better for Elon than they did for Nikola.

TAForObvReasons 8y ago
It may be a "boring" problem, but people aren't just paying for a reservation for nothing, ultimately they are expecting a car. And if there's no indication that they can meet the promises, that's a problem and he shouldn't be promising or giving wild production estimates in the first place. Unless you believe that Musk is selling the ability for people to say they have a reservation. In which case there's no point to even bother building the cars in the first place.
- gfody 8y ago
  but thousands of model3's are being produced and delivered every week. at this point it's just a matter of time for reservations to be filled and velocity will ramp up naturally as they improve their process. the investors panicking because velocity isn't doubled yesterday doesn't seem like long term thinking.
  - mwfunk 8y ago
    ...that’s not what investors are panicking over? You know that right?
    - manicdee 8y ago
      The investors are panicking because Elon didn’t answer two pointless questions. Perhaps they need to ask better questions next time?
  - arkis22 8y ago
    You can't focus on the long term at the expense of the short term if in between you're bankrupt.
    - throwaway2048 8y ago
      This is a lot like the fallicious thinking surrounding poor people and why they so often remain in such shitty circumstances. If they could afford long term planning and investment, by definition they wouldnt be poor.
Avshalom 8y ago
For all that Musk is credited with versus what he actually invented he is not Tesla, he's Edison with worse business sense.
- jek3939 8y ago
  He’s building things other places won’t touch because of the economics Everyone wants to sit and cross t’s and dot i’s because they are trained those matter more than net new If those are the only conversations you have, only doing things you’re sure will be comfortable the economy and society stagnate Economics are not the law of the land or reality. They’re a control mechanism for our output as a thinking, feeling, creative species Let’s just make more banal phone apps I guess. The ones where the economics are well known to keep us safe See stories about kids not playing outside or being allowed a quasi dangerous chemistry set No one wants to be wrong so we take the safe route, which protects the status quo we all bitch about
  - Avshalom 8y ago
    Literally every industry he's involved in has competitors several of which pre-date his entrance in each.
    - jek3939 8y ago
      And yet none of them are landing autonomous reusable rocket modules Of all the 100% electric cars on road, he has two in the top 5 Who else has been pushing battery storage and solar systems that aren’t ugly af and simply made of old parts glued together in parallel? All these other experts with experience can’t seem to hang with Johnny come lately. Humans don’t have a history of being petty over others not being the same as them, or worse, outperforming them. We’d never cherry pick facts, and ignore the whole story. Why that would make us no better than animals
      - Avshalom 8y ago
        >>And yet none of them are landing autonomous reusable rocket modules I watched Armadillo do that in 2005 >Of all the 100% electric cars on road, he has two in the top 5 And neither invented the category nor managed to turn a profit on it >Who else has been pushing battery storage and solar systems that aren’t ugly af and simply made of old parts glued together in parallel? For batteries: Panasonic, LG but also literally every battery company and chemistry department in the world. For solar panels: also every chemistry department and dozens of companies, "China" as a vague term. And these other experts: they're making money instead of losing it. But even then this whole post buys into the idea that I some how have to disprove that Elon Musk does these things. He doesn't. Companies that Elon Musk is CEO of do those things.
dragonwriter 8y ago
> In the grand scheme of things figuring out how to make model3's faster than they can sell them is a boring problem for Musk It's the gateway problem to any of the ones he might find more interesting, and if he isn't willing to engage with that problem enough to satisfy investors, he should be “Chief Ivory Tower Visionary” and let someone else be CEO. Or, at least, get a COO and gracefully hand off boring operational questions to them.
- nostrademons 8y ago
  The CEO role is Chief Ivory Tower Visionary. As CEO, your #1 job is to set the vision and strategy for the company, and your #2 is to get the right people on the bus and the wrong people off, which is dramatically easier with a strong vision. He does desperately need a good COO though to make sure Tesla can actually deliver on its promises.
  - dragonwriter 8y ago
    > The CEO role is Chief Ivory Tower Visionary. No, the CEO role is turning abstract vision into concrete strategy and communicating that strategy especially to investoes, because money people always want to hear things from the horse's mouth. It's a good thing for the CEO to be the visionary rather than channel someone else's vision, if they can do the rest of the job, but they can't be stuck in an ivory tower and think that addressing the path from present reality to distant vision is beneath their dignity.
  - petra 8y ago
    Is it really ideal doing things this way ? Or is it just part of an ego trip, and deciding on such complex things as vision an strategy for a company are better done in a collaborative fashion, maybe with the CEO as the final arbitrer ? And how much of that image of a all knowing visionary CEO is just a manufactured image ?
    - nostrademons 8y ago
      It's pretty difficult to generate a coherent vision by committee - you usually end up with something that nobody finds compelling, not even the people who collaborated on it. And of course the image of an all-knowing visionary CEO is a manufactured image! It's not like people can actually predict the future. Rather, it's selection bias at work. Those CEOs whose vision doesn't resonate end up getting replaced, or their company goes bankrupt, and then they get written out of the history books. The thing is, you need to have a vision to get people excited and actually rowing in the same direction (nevermind the right direction), so without that you're dead in the water anyway.
kentm 8y ago
Whether a problem is interesting is orthogonal to whether its important. This is an earnings call and scaling up production is actually an important issue to address for the company's long-term viability.
- manicdee 8y ago
  The question wasn’t about scaling up production. It was a very specific question about trees when Tesla doesn’t really know what the forest looks like yet.
  - kentm 8y ago
    If you're in the lumber business and giving estimates on how much wood you're going to deliver per month, then not knowing what the forest looks like might be considered something of an existential problem. I get that Musk really enjoys thinking big and changing the world, and to such a person questions about capital expenditures might be dry and boring, but they're still important and need to be answered. If he doesn't want to do it then he should delegate.