6 ms·

What I wouldn't give for someone to do a scraping project on HN comments on past submissions for Tesla, to create a timeline of "predictions Tesla will fail to

What I wouldn't give for someone to do a scraping project on HN comments on past submissions for Tesla, to create a timeline of "predictions Tesla will fail to meet a certain goal" vs "date of Tesla successfully meeting that goal." I would find that really interesting.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
api 8y ago
It's quite obvious to me that sometime last year a huge astroturf effort against Tesla was launched. My guess would be hedge funds shorting Tesla and then attempting to depress the stock. There's precedent for this. I thought it was illegal but maybe I'm wrong or maybe the SEC is just asleep.
- mcot2 8y ago
  Yes I think that is quite clear now. What has surprised me is the extent to which the tech community has followed along. If anything, we should be the people that know Musk overpromises on timelines, but has an insane track record for delivering (eventually).
  - api 8y ago
    People remain naive about online propaganda and the extent which "shill mills" influence social media. This industry has done a remarkable job keeping itself out of the limelight. There are legitimate reasons to be skeptical of Tesla, but that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about a tidal wave of sudden strong anti-Tesla (and anti-Musk in general) stuff that started hitting social media. For me the "tell" is that a lot of it repeats the same talking points or variations of them or even the same phrases and slogans. You also had obvious astroturf sites like "stop Elon Musk from failing again" popping up around the same time. Shortly after I saw that appear I heard people online (and off!) using that exact phrase and other exact talking points. That is a propaganda campaign. You don't get that organically. There are companies that will do this for any cause you'd like as long as the payment clears. For a few million you could probably increase belief in the flat Earth by a factor of 10-100. It's a fairly large industry. The human mind is for sale.
- bildung 8y ago
  Or maybe people just disagree with your optimistic view of Tesla?
  - Gargoyle 8y ago
    I'm sure there's legit pessimism out there. But there's also very likely an organized effort to keep negative Tesla stories flowing on a non-stop basis. Both can be true.
- furyg3 8y ago
  Tesla has a market cap of 58 billion dollars. That's higher than, GMC (55), who I remember selling 10+ million cars last year (or was it 2016?). Tesla produced ~100k cars last year. I'm a gigantic Tesla fan. I hope they dominate the auto market. Unfortunately, with that kind of market cap, they quite literally have to. So yeah, there are a lot of people out in the world who are betting against Tesla, which is not a totally crazy thing to do. I don't know if there's some organized attempt to depress the stock, but I can imagine that there are a lot of traders who are pulling their hair out as to why the stock is valued the way it is. To me this explains why there is a decent amount of anti-telsa sentiment online, looking to point out anything bad they perceive out of the company.
  - api 8y ago
    Industrial scaling is hard but it's also exponential. The gap between 5000 cars and 10000 cars is exponentially smaller than the gap between 1000 cars and 5000 cars. The gap between 10000 cars and 100000 cars is smaller still.
  - mcot2 8y ago
    The Bull thesis is that Tesla has a lot more going for it than just being a car company like GM or Ford. A couple of things most people point to: 1.) Software Skills - Autonomous driving, over the air updates, giant screen + app, future possibility of ride sharing network. Most people see the legacy automakers as very deficient in software. 2.) Semi-Truck Project - This can go a lot of places. 3.) Supercharger network. It’s sort of like also owning the gas stations. They already have a huge lead in DC fast charging. 4.) Expertise in batteries/packs/Gigafactory. This is pretty much the entire game going forward. 5.) Ancillary battery products, Powerwall and Powerpack. Battery storage is expected to be a gigantic industry by itself. 6.) Solar Roof - Also expected to be a gigantic industry by itself.
    - compcoffee 8y ago
      Software Skills I'll grant you they could have an edge here, but would listen to arguments the other way. Plenty of talented software people out there, and Tesla has no monopoly Semi-Truck Project They were not the first, and are behind other companies right now. No capital to manufacture it. Supercharger network You're right, it's like owning the gas stations. And gas station owners will do the same. Installing chargers isn't hard. Very shallow moat. Expertise in batteries/packs/Gigafactory Most of which is Panasonic, but they do have some high tech pack management systems. Probably an advantage at this point. Ancillary battery products, Powerwall and Powerpack. Low margin, competitive space. Solar Roof Solar City bail out is complete and the company is being written off internally. Does the Solar Roof even exist? Last I heard it was still "in testing". At the end of the day Tesla makes cars. Good, innovative, expensive cars. It's also a low margin, competitive space where companies operate at sometimes single-digit multiples of earnings.
- compcoffee 8y ago
  >My guess would be hedge funds shorting Tesla and then attempting to depress the stock. Why are the people who are short the evil ones, but the people who are long the stock are never pumping it for selfish reasons?
  - shafyy 8y ago
    Because when you're shorting a company you want that people lose their jobs and innovation doesn't happen and the company goes down. Just so that you can make money out of thin air. People that go long still make money out of thin air, but at least their incentives are aligned with innovation and economic growth.
    - shafyy 8y ago
      Why the downvote?
mirceal 8y ago
Hmm. So Tesla/Musk have really ambitious goals that they often miss. Is that a bad thing? The way I look at it no. Whenever Tesla announces something you have to take it with a big grain of salt but that’s about it. Also remember that they’re attempting something hard / never done before. If there is something that bothers me about Tesla it’s their attitude when a crash happens.
- gallerdude 8y ago
  I guess I’d consider myself a Musk fanboy, but I do think missing deadlines is a bad thing. Even if subconsciously, you’re eroding trust.
  - mirceal 8y ago
    I would not consider myself a fanboy, but what is a deadline? The game being played here is: set super ambitious, unrealistic expectations to get people thinking/dreaming/talking about it. Eventually deliver on it. Again, normally the public/market would punish hard a company that does this. In Tesla’s case I belive the tolerance for delays is greater due to the perceived value of what they’re doing.
    - dragonwriter 8y ago
      > The game being played here is: set super ambitious, unrealistic expectations to get people thinking/dreaming/talking about it. Eventually deliver on it. For investors, overpromising for hype and underdelivering is a strategy which is likely to wear thin very fast. Especially on things like profitably and independence of new capital needs — production numbers themselves aren't independently inportant.
  - mikeash 8y ago
    I don’t think there’s any trust left in Musk’s stated deadlines. “Elon time” is a meme and everybody now seems to know that any date he states is a “theoretically possible if everything goes perfectly on a frictionless plane” date, not when things will actually happen. The flip side is that he also has a good track record of delivering on outlandish promises, even if they’re late. When he says he’s going to build a rocket that makes the Saturn V look like a toy and use it to put humans on Mars by 2024, the specific year is not something to count on but the rest has a pretty good chance of happening. I think it would be better if he’d stop doing this, but I’d rather have wrong deadlines for amazing stuff that eventually happens than correct deadlines for mundane oversold crap as seems to be the standard procedure for so many.
thisisit 8y ago
Wasn't it Tesla which set itself to fail? They set a self-promoting deadline of 5000 per week back in Q3 2017 and missing it twice. And for that you don't need a scraper, just read past quarterly reports from Tesla. One can certainly hope that Tesla keeps up this volume.
Nokinside 8y ago
I think you would find two groups of people. First group would predict failure to meet the manufacturing milestones constantly and others would predict success constantly. Constant failure predictors would win 3 to 1. Of course, meeting the goal with tent assembly line may dilute the achievement if Tesla manufacturing numbers drop 20-40% in next weeks.
- Robotbeat 8y ago
  Except that many of the constant failure predictors were over confident and predicted bankruptcy repeatedly.
  - Nokinside 8y ago
    In a what timeline? I don't think many have predicted bankruptcy this year. Tesla has 1-2 years but it has very tight timeline to deliver. It probably has to dilute stock and take very high interest loans (and break yet one promise) to survive. Change of ownership for cheap price is also technically survival but not what investors have in mind. It does not help that next regression might be come within next two years.
    - Robotbeat 8y ago
      Yeah, usually people don't put a timeline on such predictions because that'd mean a possibility of being proven wrong... And often the goal posts they use are subjective.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

api 8y ago

It's quite obvious to me that sometime last year a huge astroturf effort against Tesla was launched. My guess would be hedge funds shorting Tesla and then attempting to depress the stock. There's precedent for this. I thought it was illegal but maybe I'm wrong or maybe the SEC is just asleep.

mcot2 8y ago
Yes I think that is quite clear now. What has surprised me is the extent to which the tech community has followed along. If anything, we should be the people that know Musk overpromises on timelines, but has an insane track record for delivering (eventually).
- api 8y ago
  People remain naive about online propaganda and the extent which "shill mills" influence social media. This industry has done a remarkable job keeping itself out of the limelight. There are legitimate reasons to be skeptical of Tesla, but that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about a tidal wave of sudden strong anti-Tesla (and anti-Musk in general) stuff that started hitting social media. For me the "tell" is that a lot of it repeats the same talking points or variations of them or even the same phrases and slogans. You also had obvious astroturf sites like "stop Elon Musk from failing again" popping up around the same time. Shortly after I saw that appear I heard people online (and off!) using that exact phrase and other exact talking points. That is a propaganda campaign. You don't get that organically. There are companies that will do this for any cause you'd like as long as the payment clears. For a few million you could probably increase belief in the flat Earth by a factor of 10-100. It's a fairly large industry. The human mind is for sale.
bildung 8y ago
Or maybe people just disagree with your optimistic view of Tesla?
- Gargoyle 8y ago
  I'm sure there's legit pessimism out there. But there's also very likely an organized effort to keep negative Tesla stories flowing on a non-stop basis. Both can be true.
furyg3 8y ago
Tesla has a market cap of 58 billion dollars. That's higher than, GMC (55), who I remember selling 10+ million cars last year (or was it 2016?). Tesla produced ~100k cars last year. I'm a gigantic Tesla fan. I hope they dominate the auto market. Unfortunately, with that kind of market cap, they quite literally have to. So yeah, there are a lot of people out in the world who are betting against Tesla, which is not a totally crazy thing to do. I don't know if there's some organized attempt to depress the stock, but I can imagine that there are a lot of traders who are pulling their hair out as to why the stock is valued the way it is. To me this explains why there is a decent amount of anti-telsa sentiment online, looking to point out anything bad they perceive out of the company.
- api 8y ago
  Industrial scaling is hard but it's also exponential. The gap between 5000 cars and 10000 cars is exponentially smaller than the gap between 1000 cars and 5000 cars. The gap between 10000 cars and 100000 cars is smaller still.
- mcot2 8y ago
  The Bull thesis is that Tesla has a lot more going for it than just being a car company like GM or Ford. A couple of things most people point to: 1.) Software Skills - Autonomous driving, over the air updates, giant screen + app, future possibility of ride sharing network. Most people see the legacy automakers as very deficient in software. 2.) Semi-Truck Project - This can go a lot of places. 3.) Supercharger network. It’s sort of like also owning the gas stations. They already have a huge lead in DC fast charging. 4.) Expertise in batteries/packs/Gigafactory. This is pretty much the entire game going forward. 5.) Ancillary battery products, Powerwall and Powerpack. Battery storage is expected to be a gigantic industry by itself. 6.) Solar Roof - Also expected to be a gigantic industry by itself.
  - compcoffee 8y ago
    Software Skills I'll grant you they could have an edge here, but would listen to arguments the other way. Plenty of talented software people out there, and Tesla has no monopoly Semi-Truck Project They were not the first, and are behind other companies right now. No capital to manufacture it. Supercharger network You're right, it's like owning the gas stations. And gas station owners will do the same. Installing chargers isn't hard. Very shallow moat. Expertise in batteries/packs/Gigafactory Most of which is Panasonic, but they do have some high tech pack management systems. Probably an advantage at this point. Ancillary battery products, Powerwall and Powerpack. Low margin, competitive space. Solar Roof Solar City bail out is complete and the company is being written off internally. Does the Solar Roof even exist? Last I heard it was still "in testing". At the end of the day Tesla makes cars. Good, innovative, expensive cars. It's also a low margin, competitive space where companies operate at sometimes single-digit multiples of earnings.
compcoffee 8y ago
>My guess would be hedge funds shorting Tesla and then attempting to depress the stock. Why are the people who are short the evil ones, but the people who are long the stock are never pumping it for selfish reasons?
- shafyy 8y ago
  Because when you're shorting a company you want that people lose their jobs and innovation doesn't happen and the company goes down. Just so that you can make money out of thin air. People that go long still make money out of thin air, but at least their incentives are aligned with innovation and economic growth.
  - shafyy 8y ago
    Why the downvote?

mirceal 8y ago

Hmm. So Tesla/Musk have really ambitious goals that they often miss. Is that a bad thing? The way I look at it no. Whenever Tesla announces something you have to take it with a big grain of salt but that’s about it. Also remember that they’re attempting something hard / never done before. If there is something that bothers me about Tesla it’s their attitude when a crash happens.

gallerdude 8y ago
I guess I’d consider myself a Musk fanboy, but I do think missing deadlines is a bad thing. Even if subconsciously, you’re eroding trust.
- mirceal 8y ago
  I would not consider myself a fanboy, but what is a deadline? The game being played here is: set super ambitious, unrealistic expectations to get people thinking/dreaming/talking about it. Eventually deliver on it. Again, normally the public/market would punish hard a company that does this. In Tesla’s case I belive the tolerance for delays is greater due to the perceived value of what they’re doing.
  - dragonwriter 8y ago
    > The game being played here is: set super ambitious, unrealistic expectations to get people thinking/dreaming/talking about it. Eventually deliver on it. For investors, overpromising for hype and underdelivering is a strategy which is likely to wear thin very fast. Especially on things like profitably and independence of new capital needs — production numbers themselves aren't independently inportant.
- mikeash 8y ago
  I don’t think there’s any trust left in Musk’s stated deadlines. “Elon time” is a meme and everybody now seems to know that any date he states is a “theoretically possible if everything goes perfectly on a frictionless plane” date, not when things will actually happen. The flip side is that he also has a good track record of delivering on outlandish promises, even if they’re late. When he says he’s going to build a rocket that makes the Saturn V look like a toy and use it to put humans on Mars by 2024, the specific year is not something to count on but the rest has a pretty good chance of happening. I think it would be better if he’d stop doing this, but I’d rather have wrong deadlines for amazing stuff that eventually happens than correct deadlines for mundane oversold crap as seems to be the standard procedure for so many.

thisisit 8y ago

Wasn't it Tesla which set itself to fail? They set a self-promoting deadline of 5000 per week back in Q3 2017 and missing it twice. And for that you don't need a scraper, just read past quarterly reports from Tesla. One can certainly hope that Tesla keeps up this volume.

Nokinside 8y ago

I think you would find two groups of people. First group would predict failure to meet the manufacturing milestones constantly and others would predict success constantly. Constant failure predictors would win 3 to 1. Of course, meeting the goal with tent assembly line may dilute the achievement if Tesla manufacturing numbers drop 20-40% in next weeks.

Robotbeat 8y ago
Except that many of the constant failure predictors were over confident and predicted bankruptcy repeatedly.
- Nokinside 8y ago
  In a what timeline? I don't think many have predicted bankruptcy this year. Tesla has 1-2 years but it has very tight timeline to deliver. It probably has to dilute stock and take very high interest loans (and break yet one promise) to survive. Change of ownership for cheap price is also technically survival but not what investors have in mind. It does not help that next regression might be come within next two years.
  - Robotbeat 8y ago
    Yeah, usually people don't put a timeline on such predictions because that'd mean a possibility of being proven wrong... And often the goal posts they use are subjective.