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Is Elon Musk really an asset that Tesla needs to hold onto? I'll admit that he's a great salesman; but he's also a spoiled child who throws tantrums when he do

Is Elon Musk really an asset that Tesla needs to hold onto? I'll admit that he's a great salesman; but he's also a spoiled child who throws tantrums when he doesn't get his way. If Tesla wants to be taken seriously as a car company -- rather than as a maker of toys for people who have too much money on their hands -- they might well be better off calling his bluff.

GW150914 8y ago
Tesla is facing the prospect of needing to sell a honking load of stock at a discount to deal with their debt, and to do that they need a high stock price. While Musk appears to be a liability in many areas, he is the focus for a cult of personality that has made Tesla what it is, and has shown incredible talent for inflating the price of Tesla’s stock on that basis. So while Tesla as a healthy company without crushing impending debt would almost certainly be better off without him, Tesla as it is only really exits because of his presence. Long term they have to actually make a lot of money and stop hemorrhaging money, and get out of their death spiral. Short term the only way to do that is sell expensive stock, and that stock is expensive because of the cult of Musk.
- notaki 8y ago
  Uh, yeah, ok.
  - memer 8y ago
    notaki? more like notaklue...
    - dang 8y ago
      We've banned this account for repeatedly breaking the site guidelines. If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. They're at https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
  - dang 8y ago
    Would you please stop posting unsubstantive comments to Hacker News?
- geezerjay 8y ago
  > he is the focus for a cult of personality that has made Tesla what it is I disagree. What made Tesla what it is was the ability to design and bring to the market an electric car that people wanted to buy and actually prefered over equivalent ICE offerings, and pulling this off while competing against one of the most competitive and entrenched global industries. They promised and they delivered. That's what made Tesla what it is. Everything else is just self-promotion and actually erodes Tesla's accomplishments and goodwill.
  - slivym 8y ago
    A key part of that though, is that Tesla took 5 years before it even produced it's first car, 9 years before it's actually successful model S. Over that time they burned an enormous amount of money and they're 'disrupting' an industry that has 5-6% margins not the silicon valley style 30-40% with 0 marginal cost on inventory. Arguably the differentiating factor for Tesla was the ability to get financing in the region of Billions of dollars for close to a decade in order to break into this incredibly competitive market. You talk about 'they promised and they delivered' yet Tesla has been a lesson in how a company can continually over promise, under-deliver without incurring any consequences. Just because Tesla eventually became successful doesn't paper over the cracks in it's early days. Even now, if you're looking at valuing Tesla on what they delivered, well that's fine- but it's not reality. Tesla's current valuation makes them more valuable today than Ford. Which is pretty surprising when the idea of Tesla having the market share and profitability of Ford would be a very optimistic scenario.
  - BoorishBears 8y ago
    I don't believe that personally. I am a huge Apple fan so this is not meant to be an insult, but to me Tesla is the Apple of EVs. They made a product that people view above the sum of it's parts. The fact is the Model S, and the Model 3, are cars that make people stretch beyond their means because they're held in a higher regard simply for coming from the brands they come from, the way the iPhone is, or a MacBook does. It's what annoys some detractors of both "Why get a Model S, it's insulting to call it a luxury car next to an S Class that costs as much (which is true in my opinion)" "Why get an iPhone when an Android phone has 4x the RAM and a trick display and more apps! (which might be true)". If another incumbent only did as much as either, they'd fail. GM couldn't make a Model 3 even if they made a Model 3. Reviewers wouldn't be charitable and say the tablet is "Forward facing". They'd call it what is honestly is, cost cutting. They wouldn't argue Autopilot is improving, they'd be appalled an incumbent made a driving assistant willing to merge into lane shoulders and released it with nothing more than a "keep your hands on that wheel!" Tesla has charisma, and that charisma imbues anything they make with a halo. That's why they can ask for 1k for a car coming out in 2+ years (or in even more years for the 35k version). That's why they can release AP without more safety guards than Super Cruise for example and not get skewered. Just like Apple can release a phone with a poor antenna and tell you you're holding it wrong, or a keyboard that gets clogged with normal use and tell you to pull out the compressed air. And that charisma affects investors too. You can tell a TSLA investor from miles away just by how they speak. It's always about "the ride". It's almost always "Elon is saving humanity". It's why the CEO can call people pedos and not be removed, it's why shorting TSLA is probably the worst idea ever, but I digress...
r00fus 8y ago
Musk sure sounds a lot like a younger Steve Jobs. Maybe he needs to leave then come back?
- scarlac 8y ago
  Jobs was ousted by his own team. He didn't leave and just walk back in. Apple was in deep trouble. I'm not convinced it was somehow better for Apple that it happened. If anything it only lamented that Jobs was required to make it work, which could only possibly leave Jobs with a bigger ego.
- cperciva 8y ago
  Elon Musk might be far better at running multi-billion dollar companies after he grows up, yes. Steve Jobs was certainly far more "grown up" when he returned to Apple.
- Someone 8y ago
  When Jobs left Apple, he was 30; when he returned, he was 42. Musk is 47. If he needs time away from Tesla to ’grow up’, he better do it fast.
  - DeonPenny 8y ago
    Your acting as if job change and apple accepted him back. No apple crashed and burn without him as his became more of what he was. He never "grew up" he just proved that his current attitude was correct and the people saying he need to "grow up" were wrong.
- tajen 8y ago
  Let me imagine the same story as Apple: Musk is fired by his own board, sells his stock, goes to create a 3D music company, Tesla falls in dismay, BMW takes ownership of the electric car market and is under monopoly action, to the point that BMW has to invest $150m in Tesla to prevent competition from falling, Tesla board implores Musk to come back, Musk buys all his stock back for A SINGLE DOLLAR (good job Steve), and entirely transforms the electric car market by conflating 3 products in one: a music device, an electric car device, and a planet, named the tPod, and in the end Musk is king of the world and makes billions. Wait, he’s already king of the world.
mr_toad 8y ago
> toys for people who have too much money on their hands Sounds like the future of privately owned motor vehicles. In maybe 20 years or so I expect most people will be getting around in self driving cars that they hire.

GW150914 8y ago

Tesla is facing the prospect of needing to sell a honking load of stock at a discount to deal with their debt, and to do that they need a high stock price. While Musk appears to be a liability in many areas, he is the focus for a cult of personality that has made Tesla what it is, and has shown incredible talent for inflating the price of Tesla’s stock on that basis. So while Tesla as a healthy company without crushing impending debt would almost certainly be better off without him, Tesla as it is only really exits because of his presence. Long term they have to actually make a lot of money and stop hemorrhaging money, and get out of their death spiral. Short term the only way to do that is sell expensive stock, and that stock is expensive because of the cult of Musk.

notaki 8y ago
Uh, yeah, ok.
- memer 8y ago
  notaki? more like notaklue...
  - dang 8y ago
    We've banned this account for repeatedly breaking the site guidelines. If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. They're at https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
- dang 8y ago
  Would you please stop posting unsubstantive comments to Hacker News?
geezerjay 8y ago
> he is the focus for a cult of personality that has made Tesla what it is I disagree. What made Tesla what it is was the ability to design and bring to the market an electric car that people wanted to buy and actually prefered over equivalent ICE offerings, and pulling this off while competing against one of the most competitive and entrenched global industries. They promised and they delivered. That's what made Tesla what it is. Everything else is just self-promotion and actually erodes Tesla's accomplishments and goodwill.
- slivym 8y ago
  A key part of that though, is that Tesla took 5 years before it even produced it's first car, 9 years before it's actually successful model S. Over that time they burned an enormous amount of money and they're 'disrupting' an industry that has 5-6% margins not the silicon valley style 30-40% with 0 marginal cost on inventory. Arguably the differentiating factor for Tesla was the ability to get financing in the region of Billions of dollars for close to a decade in order to break into this incredibly competitive market. You talk about 'they promised and they delivered' yet Tesla has been a lesson in how a company can continually over promise, under-deliver without incurring any consequences. Just because Tesla eventually became successful doesn't paper over the cracks in it's early days. Even now, if you're looking at valuing Tesla on what they delivered, well that's fine- but it's not reality. Tesla's current valuation makes them more valuable today than Ford. Which is pretty surprising when the idea of Tesla having the market share and profitability of Ford would be a very optimistic scenario.
- BoorishBears 8y ago
  I don't believe that personally. I am a huge Apple fan so this is not meant to be an insult, but to me Tesla is the Apple of EVs. They made a product that people view above the sum of it's parts. The fact is the Model S, and the Model 3, are cars that make people stretch beyond their means because they're held in a higher regard simply for coming from the brands they come from, the way the iPhone is, or a MacBook does. It's what annoys some detractors of both "Why get a Model S, it's insulting to call it a luxury car next to an S Class that costs as much (which is true in my opinion)" "Why get an iPhone when an Android phone has 4x the RAM and a trick display and more apps! (which might be true)". If another incumbent only did as much as either, they'd fail. GM couldn't make a Model 3 even if they made a Model 3. Reviewers wouldn't be charitable and say the tablet is "Forward facing". They'd call it what is honestly is, cost cutting. They wouldn't argue Autopilot is improving, they'd be appalled an incumbent made a driving assistant willing to merge into lane shoulders and released it with nothing more than a "keep your hands on that wheel!" Tesla has charisma, and that charisma imbues anything they make with a halo. That's why they can ask for 1k for a car coming out in 2+ years (or in even more years for the 35k version). That's why they can release AP without more safety guards than Super Cruise for example and not get skewered. Just like Apple can release a phone with a poor antenna and tell you you're holding it wrong, or a keyboard that gets clogged with normal use and tell you to pull out the compressed air. And that charisma affects investors too. You can tell a TSLA investor from miles away just by how they speak. It's always about "the ride". It's almost always "Elon is saving humanity". It's why the CEO can call people pedos and not be removed, it's why shorting TSLA is probably the worst idea ever, but I digress...

r00fus 8y ago

Musk sure sounds a lot like a younger Steve Jobs. Maybe he needs to leave then come back?

scarlac 8y ago
Jobs was ousted by his own team. He didn't leave and just walk back in. Apple was in deep trouble. I'm not convinced it was somehow better for Apple that it happened. If anything it only lamented that Jobs was required to make it work, which could only possibly leave Jobs with a bigger ego.
cperciva 8y ago
Elon Musk might be far better at running multi-billion dollar companies after he grows up, yes. Steve Jobs was certainly far more "grown up" when he returned to Apple.
Someone 8y ago
When Jobs left Apple, he was 30; when he returned, he was 42. Musk is 47. If he needs time away from Tesla to ’grow up’, he better do it fast.
- DeonPenny 8y ago
  Your acting as if job change and apple accepted him back. No apple crashed and burn without him as his became more of what he was. He never "grew up" he just proved that his current attitude was correct and the people saying he need to "grow up" were wrong.
tajen 8y ago
Let me imagine the same story as Apple: Musk is fired by his own board, sells his stock, goes to create a 3D music company, Tesla falls in dismay, BMW takes ownership of the electric car market and is under monopoly action, to the point that BMW has to invest $150m in Tesla to prevent competition from falling, Tesla board implores Musk to come back, Musk buys all his stock back for A SINGLE DOLLAR (good job Steve), and entirely transforms the electric car market by conflating 3 products in one: a music device, an electric car device, and a planet, named the tPod, and in the end Musk is king of the world and makes billions. Wait, he’s already king of the world.

mr_toad 8y ago

> toys for people who have too much money on their hands Sounds like the future of privately owned motor vehicles. In maybe 20 years or so I expect most people will be getting around in self driving cars that they hire.