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Is Elon Musk trying to commit ‘suicide by SEC’ by taunting the agency?

113 points by petethomas 8y ago

ddtaylor 8y ago
Tesla is gaining a lot of free publicity from this.
- sokoloff 8y ago
  To what end though? Is there anyone plausibly in the market for a Tesla car that doesn’t know about the company and cars at this point? I’d guess their unaided awareness within target market must be over 50% and aided over 95%.
  - jjoonathan 8y ago
    How many people haven't heard of Coca Cola? How much do they spend on advertising regardless? Brand awareness requires upkeep.
    - LiquidSky 8y ago
      The old saw that any publicity is good publicity isn't true. Tesla being in the news because their leader is committing securities fraud and acting increasingly erratic isn't helping the brand anymore than Coca Cola being in the news for giving people food poisoning.
      - jjoonathan 8y ago
        I tend to agree. I limit my claims to "advertising can still make sense even if 100% of the target market is already aware of the product."
      - ordu 8y ago
        I wouldn't be so sure about it. We cannot speak in meaningful way whether Musk's kind of publicity is good or it is bad without considering his target audience first. Do we know some group of people who might cheer Musk's behaviour? I can think about just one possibility linked with age, but found it unlikely: if average age of owners of S, 3 and X models was between 43 and 53 years[1], it would be unlikely to drop significally. Didn't Musk promised for next models to be cheaper (and more affordable for younger generations) than previous? Though idea of Musk running campain targeting younger and rebellous generations seems implausible for me regardless of price. [1] https://www.teslarati.com/survey-model-x-owners-income-double-model-s/ https://www.teslarati.com/survey-model-x-owners-income-doubl...
    - gowld 8y ago
      When I'm in the market for a $50-$100K car with a depreciation lifespan of 7+ years which requires ongoing factory-provided service for its netire lifespan, I'm not excited to become aware of a car company whose founder/CEO behaving erratically in ways that make the government threaten to trigger a collapse of the company.
  - ddtaylor 8y ago
    Do the majority of car buyers care about what the SEC thinks compared to how the car performs or how popular the vehicle is perceived to be overall?
- mxcrossb 8y ago
  Probably not, but... Electric cars are associated with environmentalists. This makes your brand hard to market to conservatives, despite the fact that they are big part of the luxury car market. I wonder if sticking it to the SEC could be used to rebrand Tesla...
thaumasiotes 8y ago
I liked Matt Levine's analysis: > probably what will happen is that Musk will go to court and the judge will yell at him and he will say he’s sorry and then six minutes later he’ll tweet “my fingers were crossed and I am NOT sorry” and he’ll go on TV that night and be like “you know what I have contempt for? Court,” and everyone will just be like “ehhhhhhhhhh good enough.” ( https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-02-26/elon-musk-keeps-tweeting https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-02-26/elon-m... )
- LiquidSky 8y ago
  No, this doesn't seem right. Musk is clearly burning through the good will he'd built up. There's going to be a limit to how much his aura can shield him, and it seems like he's really pushing to find that limit.
  - gowld 8y ago
    Why do you think he's being intentionally descructive asnd not just not caring what anyone (including the government) thinks?
    - _red 8y ago
      Because Tesla, as a company, is actually majority owned by the shareholders that make up 80+% of the company. A very small move of the SEC can destroy those investors chances of ever being paid back.
    - unityByFreedom 8y ago
      So that during an economic downturn he can get a government bailout, blaming any failures on externalities like the "unfair" SEC. It's the same reason for making the company take on too much debt. When you're big the government won't let you fail. That's the belief anyway.
- iamcreasy 8y ago
  I've been following Elon for a very long time, and one of the reason I like him is that he sticks to what he says. So if today Elon says that he respects the justice dept, its very like that he really means it, and he will stick to it. I would not trust Matt Levine on this.
Gibbon1 8y ago
Knowing nothing but chatter on the internet I'd say Musk goes through manic episodes.
- thanatropism 8y ago
  Plausible. (Source: I go through manic episodes.)
  - Gibbon1 8y ago
    Yeah I have three friends that suffered from episodes of mania. I just remember talking to a friend when Mel Gibson was in the news for going off the rails, she said it was like our other friend going off. Very disquieting since that friend had recently thrown himself in front of a train. Take care of yourself.
- api 8y ago
  Would also explain his energy level. Manics can sometimes "use" their episodes to achieve hyperfocus, but as with synthetically induced mania (amphetamine) there are side effects.
  - Gibbon1 8y ago
    A old DJ/Raver friend mentioned a friend of his went through episode where he moved to Detroit (or some such) put together a Rap Band as their manager and got it signed to a well known label. He knew absolutely no one in Detroit, nothing about rap music, and had no contacts with anyone at a label. He did that in three months.
    - contingencies 8y ago
      Oldschool ravers - powered by another Alphabet.
    - api 8y ago
      LOL. I was huge raver from ~18-22 and saw lots of that type of stuff from both natural and un-natural mania. I had a friend once who had a (natural) manic episode and wanted to get rid of a non-running car in his garage. He cut the car into small chunks with a large Dremel-type tool and threw it away in the dumpster. I mean the entire car. This took about 48 hours. The dumpster was so heavy they had to bring a special truck, and someone had to ask who threw away a car. I think the apartment complex forwarded him a bill for special industrial trash removal. HN-worthy nerd tangent: Remember all the discussion a while back about the threat posed to humanity by runaway self-improving AI super-intelligences? I've always thought that you don't need a super-intelligence in the IQ sense. You just need something with the intelligence of a moderately smart human with super-focus and super-motivation. Imagine something that ran by default in the state you describe above but with no cognitive impairment side effects. That would be super-human. A "race" of these would find conquering humanity trivial even if their IQ-type intelligence were merely comparable to ours. Most humans exist in a state of low-grade depression most of the time. I have for years thought that the dopamine pathway is the rate limiter for human achievement, not IQ or memory or anything else. It's one of the many reasons I'm a moderate IQ skeptic. Our reward/motivation system is calibrated for a very slow hunter-gatherer lifestyle. The problem is that we have not found a good way to artificially boost this without side effects that impair cognition in ways that result in things like dumb comments on Twitter that get you in trouble with the SEC. Amphetamine|coke|mania is a helluvadrug.
xvf22 8y ago
I'm honestly unsure what he has to gain by doing this. I can't imagine that the departure of the counsel isn't related. Maybe the GC announced he was leaving and that rattled Musk somehow? Very strange.
- JustSomeNobody 8y ago
  He wants attention. Good, bad or otherwise.
  - fwip 8y ago
    Yep. Musk is a manchild with too much money and an ego to match.
- elihu 8y ago
  Sometimes people do things that neither they nor anyone else gains from.
- pbreit 8y ago
  The tweet was obviously meant to highlight how the company has gone from 0 cars to x00,000 in just 8 years. Not a new, formal estimate.
- elliekelly 8y ago
  I suspect you have the cause/effect of the GC leaving backwards.
  - PhantomGremlin 8y ago
    Exactly. On Feb 19 Elon Musk tweets 500K cars. On Feb 20 Tesla General Counsel, after 2 months on the job, says "fuck this, I'm too old to put up with this shit, I'm outta here". Actually the GC was a little more diplomatic. As CNBC put it: A person familiar with the matter said he was not a good cultural fit with Tesla and wanted to return to his family and law practice in Washington, D.C.
Despegar 8y ago
>Of more concern to Tesla investors: What if he knows something they don’t know about the company’s financial future — and is hoping to hang any failure on the nasty, overreaching regulators rather than his own dubious management skills? That seems very possible. I think the reality of scaling up Tesla to live up to its valuation might be too daunting for Elon to handle. It might even be impossible. EV sales as a % of total vehicle sales is surprisingly low. If EV's do take off, it's likely to be the established car manufacturers who are good at making cars at scale who eventually capitalize on the opportunity. And the most likely to drive the S-curve adoption. Being taken out by the SEC would be a way to keep confidence in Elon Musk Inc going which would obviously be beneficial to his other companies. He could even team up with Mark Cuban to rail against them on Twitter.
- appsonify 8y ago
  I agree, that Musk is hiding something, one that would seriously hamper his reputation. I think it might have to do something with the Solar City acquisition. He doesn't want to admit he fucked up and failed because it would cast doubt on all his other half-baked ideas. Tesla will definitely feel the pressure from other car manufacturers, but so far it has nothing much to worry about as the only really viable game changer as of now is the Hyundai Kona Electric. The new Audi e-tron was promising but ruined it with using electric mirrors which require your eyes to focus on far objects and near objects unlike a normal mirror, and heavy steel frame, which pretty much negates any excellent regen (due to heavy weight). The Jaguar i-Pace is also a good alternative, but I feel like Hyundai's Kona E is an unbeatable value. Forget Chevy Bolt & Nissan Leaf....garbage. The model 3 is seriously bad....did you see the interior? it's empty....its completely void apart from the giant tablet thing....the price is it's killing point.....now that there are are viable alternatives.
  - sk5t 8y ago
    Let's see how it goes with the Porsche Taycan. Porsche minds the engineering details that Audi, for some strange reason, often misses.
    - 8y ago
baby 8y ago
This sounds like a targeted campaign to discredit Musk. Careful about what you read.
- fwip 8y ago
  Elon does a good enough job of discrediting himself.
  - rockxloose 8y ago
    Elon's top of range priority table and list of accomplishments make sense.
- colordrops 8y ago
  Your comment is (currently) downvoted, but it's a perfectly reasonable suggestion considering plenty of evidence of entrenched interests doing everything they can to take down Musk, obviously including the massive short position against Tesla, and the oil industry writer for the NY Times intentionally driving in circles in a parking lot to cause the car to run out of battery: https://www.tesla.com/blog/most-peculiar-test-drive https://www.tesla.com/blog/most-peculiar-test-drive He's got the military industrial complex against him with SpaceX, and the oil and car industries against him with Tesla. It doesn't get more imposing than that.
  - ceejayoz 8y ago
    "There are powerful people who'd like to see Musk fail" and "Musk doesn't do himself any favors calling people pedos and whatnot" can both be true.
    - colordrops 8y ago
      Enough with the strawman argument. I never suggested that both couldn't be true. That doesn't counter anything I said.
- LiquidSky 8y ago
  Why this bizarre cultish paranoia? He's in this mess because he committed securities fraud. He got a slap-on-the wrist sweetheart deal and he can't even stick to that. He's done all of this to himself, and he can't seem to stop.
Tomminn 8y ago
This is a partial transcript of the Q4 2018 earnings call. There is a strong case to be made that the information was not market moving. Operator Thank you. Our next question is from Colin Rusch with Oppenheimer. Colin Rusch Thanks so much. Can you talk a little bit about the geographic dispersion for the guidance for 2019, where you're expecting the Model 3s to sell through as well as the other models? Elon Musk Well, I think we did, actually. Yes, it's clear in our letter. Deepak Ahuja We indicated in Q1, we will start delivering Model 3s in Europe and China. And we also shared a chart showing the potential market size for midsized premium sedans in North America, Europe and Asia, suggesting those markets could be even bigger. So I think that gives a good sense of where we'll be. And we'll launch the right-hand drive version at some point to go to the other markets. Elon Musk Yes. Maybe in the order of 350,000 to 500,000 Model 3s, something like that this year.
- LiquidSky 8y ago
  It doesn't matter if it's market moving. Or rather, the terms of his settlement are that all of his communications need to be pre-approved by counsel to determine what is market moving. He didn't get the pre-approval so he's broken the agreement.
  - pbreit 8y ago
    The actual settlement notice says "put in place additional controls and procedures to oversee Musk’s communications" which appeared to happen in this case. [1] Also, since the 500,000 number was already public and referring only to Model 3s, it's entirely plausible that 500,000 total cars for the year is not material. The SEC conveniently leaves out this exculpatory evidence. 1: https://www.sec.gov/news/press-release/2018-226 https://www.sec.gov/news/press-release/2018-226
    - ceejayoz 8y ago
      The press release isn't the full detailed set of conditions. I don't know that the contract is publicly released, but https://www.theverge.com/2018/10/16/17983032/elon-musk-sec-securities-fraud-settlement https://www.theverge.com/2018/10/16/17983032/elon-musk-sec-s... says: > The company also has to employ a lawyer who will oversee all of Musk’s communications, including his tweets. This person will have to pre-approve any message coming from Musk that could have a material impact on the company’s stock price.
vgchh 8y ago
Musk is clearly not making it any easier and I wish he would be more careful (and continue to be on Twitter). It's not fun for investors. Please don't create these fires. I also hope that SEC would maintains an objective view of the issue and not get offended at the lack of respect from Musk. Finally, I would love for Tesla to continue to thrive under Musk's leadership, unless he continues to shoot himself in his foot.
- mikestew 8y ago
  It's not fun for investors. It was fun for this investor when I sold calls not too long ago after Musk's last meltdown. Probably not fun for the buyer of that contract who exercised and is now $30/share in the hole.
aboutruby 8y ago
What does he really risk if found guilty of contempt? I don't think the SEC is going to settle again
- ceejayoz 8y ago
  They could ban him from running Tesla and any other publicly listed company. That threat got him to sign this settlement in the first place. https://www.economist.com/business/2018/09/28/the-sec-threatens-to-ban-elon-musk-from-running-any-public-company https://www.economist.com/business/2018/09/28/the-sec-threat...
paulsutter 8y ago
Personally I’d rather see him focus on SpaceX and the Boring Company. The legacy manufacturers have all caught the bug, batteries are achieving mass scale in China, and electric vehicles have irreversible momentum. Mission accomplished.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- aeternus 8y ago
  But which one of those legacy manufacturers would dare put rocket thrusters on their next model? https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1005577738332172289 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1005577738332172289
- anth_anm 8y ago
  Personally I'd rather see the people in charge of transit tell him to fuck off with his stupid tunnels, unless he comes up with a proposal actually worth listening to.
brian000 8y ago
search "Elon Musk" at crazydaysandnights.net for a different perspective on this guy
- macinjosh 8y ago
  From that site's footer: > Crazy Days And Nights Is A Gossip Site. The Site Publishes Rumors, Conjecture, And Fiction. Not what I would use for gathering real information.
api 8y ago
What if he's burning out and doing this somewhat subconsciously in an attempt to shed responsibilities?
motohagiography 8y ago
Musk paid the SEC $20m in his last settlement, what do they want, gratitude? There is definitely a cabal gunning for him, what I don't understand is why. There are funds short TSLA who are talking their books as well, but he seems to have provoked a deeper coalition of interests that is hard to pinpoint. All I can tell is much of the criticism seems contrived. Maybe he's truly checked out because this is all just a simulation, and he wants to test what is symbolic and artificial, and what is real because philosophically and existentially it's the only meaningful problem to address, but from an investor and mental health perspective, that's dissociation and if that's really the case, I hope he likes painting in watercolors.
- ceejayoz 8y ago
  > Musk paid the SEC $20m in his last settlement, what do they want, gratitude? They want him to follow the other terms of the settlement, presumably. The fine's only a part of the punishment.
  - elliekelly 8y ago
    But it (aside from the $20 million fine) it isn’t even a punishment. Every publicly-traded company has their tweets reviewed. Every. Single. One. It’s normal. It’s reasonably prudent for both the CEO and the shareholders. No shareholder wants to wake up and find 5%+ of market cap has been wiped out with a tweet.
    - ceejayoz 8y ago
      Don't forget that he was forced to step down as Tesla's Chairman. That the SEC settlement required Musk to hire a lawyer and institute a review process indicates that at least one publicly-trated company wasn't having tweets reviewed, and the SEC complaint this time around alleges this tweet wasn't reviewed either.
    - anth_anm 8y ago
      Uh, he also got removed as a chairman. Having the sense to review tweets is different than having an SEC settlement enforcing such action.
Animats 8y ago
His behavior is not unusual for someone who is burned out and/or a pothead. Ignoring consequences is typical stoner behavior. We'll have to see how this plays out.
- unityByFreedom 8y ago
  I think this is more than pot talking. This is repeated bashing of any checks to his power. Whistleblowers, negative media, and government agencies giving critical oversight all get the same shunning from Musk. Except NHTSA of course as they appear to be captured.
- computerex 8y ago
  Ignoring consequences is closer to being drunk behavior than stoner behavior. Also weed is used medicinally as well, and it's no good demonizing all those medical users and labeling them as bums that ignore consequences. In general, I'd advise against senselessly judging and stereotyping people.
krick 8y ago
Maybe I'm naïve, but I'm actually buying the obliviousness of his behavior. I don't really believe in Tesla and would gladly buy the whole "suicide by SEC" thing, but reading what actually happened, this doesn't really sound like a big deal. Musk has been having emotional moments for a long time now, at this point it's really easy for me to just shrug off this as "he's always been like this". The last ten years of Musk carrier are just non-stop publicity-stunt drama, it's really easy to believe for me now that he honestly doesn't see the boundary that seems obvious to all lawyery SEC folks and other properly corporate people.
- JauntTrooper 8y ago
  He's not oblivious. He's being obstinate and bristling at their authority. He's been CEO of a public Tesla for 9 years now. Respecting the SEC and securities laws is just part of the CEO job. He's got great lawyers that remind him of this daily. And you'd think the $20 million fine and loss of the Chairman role would be enough of a wake up call. It's so frustrating to see, because I really want Tesla to succeed and I think he's one of the great executives of our time, and he wastes his time and attention on short-term inanities like short sellers and daily stock price movements. If he just buckled down and built cars, he'd blow all of those short sellers out of the water.
  - mhermher 8y ago
    He can't. Those short sellers know that he's a fraud and he's scared to death of being exposed.
    - mandeepj 8y ago
      fraud? exposed? You don't start two or rather three industries with those qualities
      - serf 8y ago
        I agree that 'fraud' and 'exposed' are complete hyperbolic falsities , but what industries did Musk start, exactly? The closest I can think of is his early e-banking-ish stuff.
smallgovt 8y ago
I don't see how he can reasonably defend himself in this situation. His tweet was both material and inaccurate. Tweeting material information without clearance is obviously against his settlement. What confuses me is that TSLA's price hasn't suffered. I have a hunch this isn't as serious of a matter as is being reported, but I'm not sure why.
- macinjosh 8y ago
  I think it is not serious because on Tesla's earning call they already announced the same 500k number.
  - unityByFreedom 8y ago
    To be held in contempt may not mean much to Musk. The SEC apparently takes violations of agreements seriously, as it should. We don't need companies building up their valuations with fake news so that we can end up with another 2008. It's in taxpayers' interest to keep misleading CEO's like Musk in check. And, this is a very small "check" to his power. In fact, it is something he already agreed to do. If he didn't want to follow the agreement, he didn't need to settle with the SEC, which is what he did for about a day before turning back and settling with them. It seems he is changing his mind again about that settlement. Apparently nothing is settled with Musk. He changes his mind daily. How can someone run a company like this? Employees must be afraid to do anything without his say-so, and even then it may not hold true for long.
- sonnyblarney 8y ago
  It's easy of you consider he's just promoting facts as any normal CEO would. He's not yet used to the idea he has to be hyper specific with some data. He's a showman, a salesperson, he's always going to err on the positive. Constantly pitching, selling. It's the SEC etc. that care about very specific details that could affect the company. So while you're right - as a CEO has has 'no excuse' - the fact he would do it makes perfect sense. I don't think he's trolling anyone, he's the same as he ever was, probably under a lot of stress, a little manic, and avoiding what he probably thinks is the narrow confines of corporate culture and language.
11thEarlOfMar 8y ago
It's pretty simple. Musk was hounded by short sellers who bet billions against Tesla and then spread patently false information about the company's activities and prospects[1]. Musk has one of those asymmetric senses of fairness (like the one that drove Gates to tears during Microsoft's anti-trust trials) that lost all faith in the SEC as it stood by and did nothing about what he felt was clearly illegal behavior. In his mind, he was treated 'super unfairly' by bullies while the guardians stood by and did nothing. He really dislikes them for that. Is his open disrespect a mature response? No. It's idealistic if not naive and he could be about to find out that the SEC does have teeth. [0] https://www.theregister.co.uk/2000/10/25/inside_the_ms_trial_part_2/ https://www.theregister.co.uk/2000/10/25/inside_the_ms_trial... (sorry, couldn't find a better source) [1] ? "The SEC similarly should be leading the charge against purveyors of short-and-distort schemes. Unfortunately, the commission inexplicably has been reluctant to do so.Just like a pump-and-dump, a short-and-distort scheme violates the Securities Exchange Act antifraud provisions, as well as SEC Rule 10b-5. In fact, it has brought hardly any enforcement actions targeting this conduct."
- mikejb 8y ago
  Just as a heads-up: Your 2nd link doesn't work for anybody but you (references a file on your local machine), and leaks your user name on that machine. Maybe this is the link you wanted to post (contains the quote you posted): https://www.dlapiper.com/~/media/files/people/weiner-perrie/weinerweberhsu.pdf https://www.dlapiper.com/~/media/files/people/weiner-perrie/...
  - dgellow 8y ago
    Maybe dang or another admin could fix his comment? Or at least remove the personal information (first name, last name).
    - eitland 8y ago
      Flagged (for moderator attention, not for deletion)
  - 8y ago
tranchms 8y ago
Tesla will not have a $35k EV anytime soon. The battery pack alone costs more than $20k. Tesla can’t produce that car for $15k and make a profit. Gigafactory Battery production is expected to continue ramping up, with higher throughput lines, but operating costs are still exorbitant, and battery production is barely breaking even at current production. In fact, from what I know they’re in the red. I don’t see a $35k Model 3 until battery production costs cut in half, which I won’t expect for another 3-5 years. I know Tesla is beginning to manufacture it’s own batteries, but to be honest, I don’t see them succeeding.
uptownfunk 8y ago
Musk is another tortured CEO prodigy, as was Jobs. You can get rid of him, he can inadvertently get rid of himself, but at the end of the day he is Tesla. Take him out of Tesla, and you get for electric vehicles what happened to the iPhone / Apple after Jobs died. Yeah they may pump out a few more Model X's, S's, 3's with some minor mods, keep milking the cow (if it even is a cow, maybe a potential cow, and also if they can even get to a point where they can scale) and eventually... who knows? The scale problem hasn't even been solved yet. You're not going to find another leader with that much raw energy, intellect, drive, and passion who's going to have a chance at bringing us to that reality even close to as quick as Musk can. My only concern with the whole show is, can anyone (particularly seasoned auto veterans) stand to work with him long enough for the scale and production problems be addressed. As well as iron out all the wrinkles with the designs (some notoriously faulty parts which take quite a long time to fix sometimes..)
- unityByFreedom 8y ago
  The Musk/Jobs companions is a bit of a stretch. Jobs had a profitable product and company from the start. Musk never founded such a company, and was booted as PayPal CEO after a short stint.
  - apexalpha 8y ago
    SpaceX.
    - bjl 8y ago
      We have absolutely no idea whether or not SpaceX is profitable.
    - notfromhere 8y ago
      He doesn't run day-to-day, which is probably the reason its not a shitshow
Calashle0202 8y ago
He's gonna get a shareholder lawsuit if he isn't careful
sudoaza 8y ago
> The SEC says Musk has manifestly violated an agreement reached in September, when he settled an SEC lawsuit by consenting to have his tweets preapproved by Tesla attorneys before sending them out on Twitter. > That didn’t stop Musk from issuing an unapproved tweet at 7:15 p.m. EST on Feb. 19, Who the fuck this people are?!?! Besides, no one got the 420 stock price joke???!?!!
porpoisely 8y ago
I can't tell if this actual news or a conspiracy theory? It's amazing how an industry that whines about conspiracy theories loves to peddle them. This article/opinion had nothing substantive. Just conjecture, guessing and conspiracy.
anth_anm 8y ago
He's a narcissist. He believes his own hype and he thinks he's untouchable. That and they have about a billion dollars in debt coming due in a few days. Gotta keep that distraction going.

113 points by petethomas 8y ago

ddtaylor 8y ago

Tesla is gaining a lot of free publicity from this.

sokoloff 8y ago
To what end though? Is there anyone plausibly in the market for a Tesla car that doesn’t know about the company and cars at this point? I’d guess their unaided awareness within target market must be over 50% and aided over 95%.
- jjoonathan 8y ago
  How many people haven't heard of Coca Cola? How much do they spend on advertising regardless? Brand awareness requires upkeep.
  - LiquidSky 8y ago
    The old saw that any publicity is good publicity isn't true. Tesla being in the news because their leader is committing securities fraud and acting increasingly erratic isn't helping the brand anymore than Coca Cola being in the news for giving people food poisoning.
    - jjoonathan 8y ago
      I tend to agree. I limit my claims to "advertising can still make sense even if 100% of the target market is already aware of the product."
    - ordu 8y ago
      I wouldn't be so sure about it. We cannot speak in meaningful way whether Musk's kind of publicity is good or it is bad without considering his target audience first. Do we know some group of people who might cheer Musk's behaviour? I can think about just one possibility linked with age, but found it unlikely: if average age of owners of S, 3 and X models was between 43 and 53 years[1], it would be unlikely to drop significally. Didn't Musk promised for next models to be cheaper (and more affordable for younger generations) than previous? Though idea of Musk running campain targeting younger and rebellous generations seems implausible for me regardless of price. [1] https://www.teslarati.com/survey-model-x-owners-income-double-model-s/ https://www.teslarati.com/survey-model-x-owners-income-doubl...
  - gowld 8y ago
    When I'm in the market for a $50-$100K car with a depreciation lifespan of 7+ years which requires ongoing factory-provided service for its netire lifespan, I'm not excited to become aware of a car company whose founder/CEO behaving erratically in ways that make the government threaten to trigger a collapse of the company.
- ddtaylor 8y ago
  Do the majority of car buyers care about what the SEC thinks compared to how the car performs or how popular the vehicle is perceived to be overall?
mxcrossb 8y ago
Probably not, but... Electric cars are associated with environmentalists. This makes your brand hard to market to conservatives, despite the fact that they are big part of the luxury car market. I wonder if sticking it to the SEC could be used to rebrand Tesla...

thaumasiotes 8y ago

I liked Matt Levine's analysis: > probably what will happen is that Musk will go to court and the judge will yell at him and he will say he’s sorry and then six minutes later he’ll tweet “my fingers were crossed and I am NOT sorry” and he’ll go on TV that night and be like “you know what I have contempt for? Court,” and everyone will just be like “ehhhhhhhhhh good enough.” ( https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-02-26/elon-musk-keeps-tweeting https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-02-26/elon-m... )

LiquidSky 8y ago
No, this doesn't seem right. Musk is clearly burning through the good will he'd built up. There's going to be a limit to how much his aura can shield him, and it seems like he's really pushing to find that limit.
- gowld 8y ago
  Why do you think he's being intentionally descructive asnd not just not caring what anyone (including the government) thinks?
  - _red 8y ago
    Because Tesla, as a company, is actually majority owned by the shareholders that make up 80+% of the company. A very small move of the SEC can destroy those investors chances of ever being paid back.
  - unityByFreedom 8y ago
    So that during an economic downturn he can get a government bailout, blaming any failures on externalities like the "unfair" SEC. It's the same reason for making the company take on too much debt. When you're big the government won't let you fail. That's the belief anyway.
iamcreasy 8y ago
I've been following Elon for a very long time, and one of the reason I like him is that he sticks to what he says. So if today Elon says that he respects the justice dept, its very like that he really means it, and he will stick to it. I would not trust Matt Levine on this.

Gibbon1 8y ago

Knowing nothing but chatter on the internet I'd say Musk goes through manic episodes.

thanatropism 8y ago
Plausible. (Source: I go through manic episodes.)
- Gibbon1 8y ago
  Yeah I have three friends that suffered from episodes of mania. I just remember talking to a friend when Mel Gibson was in the news for going off the rails, she said it was like our other friend going off. Very disquieting since that friend had recently thrown himself in front of a train. Take care of yourself.
api 8y ago
Would also explain his energy level. Manics can sometimes "use" their episodes to achieve hyperfocus, but as with synthetically induced mania (amphetamine) there are side effects.
- Gibbon1 8y ago
  A old DJ/Raver friend mentioned a friend of his went through episode where he moved to Detroit (or some such) put together a Rap Band as their manager and got it signed to a well known label. He knew absolutely no one in Detroit, nothing about rap music, and had no contacts with anyone at a label. He did that in three months.
  - contingencies 8y ago
    Oldschool ravers - powered by another Alphabet.
  - api 8y ago
    LOL. I was huge raver from ~18-22 and saw lots of that type of stuff from both natural and un-natural mania. I had a friend once who had a (natural) manic episode and wanted to get rid of a non-running car in his garage. He cut the car into small chunks with a large Dremel-type tool and threw it away in the dumpster. I mean the entire car. This took about 48 hours. The dumpster was so heavy they had to bring a special truck, and someone had to ask who threw away a car. I think the apartment complex forwarded him a bill for special industrial trash removal. HN-worthy nerd tangent: Remember all the discussion a while back about the threat posed to humanity by runaway self-improving AI super-intelligences? I've always thought that you don't need a super-intelligence in the IQ sense. You just need something with the intelligence of a moderately smart human with super-focus and super-motivation. Imagine something that ran by default in the state you describe above but with no cognitive impairment side effects. That would be super-human. A "race" of these would find conquering humanity trivial even if their IQ-type intelligence were merely comparable to ours. Most humans exist in a state of low-grade depression most of the time. I have for years thought that the dopamine pathway is the rate limiter for human achievement, not IQ or memory or anything else. It's one of the many reasons I'm a moderate IQ skeptic. Our reward/motivation system is calibrated for a very slow hunter-gatherer lifestyle. The problem is that we have not found a good way to artificially boost this without side effects that impair cognition in ways that result in things like dumb comments on Twitter that get you in trouble with the SEC. Amphetamine|coke|mania is a helluvadrug.

xvf22 8y ago

I'm honestly unsure what he has to gain by doing this. I can't imagine that the departure of the counsel isn't related. Maybe the GC announced he was leaving and that rattled Musk somehow? Very strange.

JustSomeNobody 8y ago
He wants attention. Good, bad or otherwise.
- fwip 8y ago
  Yep. Musk is a manchild with too much money and an ego to match.
elihu 8y ago
Sometimes people do things that neither they nor anyone else gains from.
pbreit 8y ago
The tweet was obviously meant to highlight how the company has gone from 0 cars to x00,000 in just 8 years. Not a new, formal estimate.
elliekelly 8y ago
I suspect you have the cause/effect of the GC leaving backwards.
- PhantomGremlin 8y ago
  Exactly. On Feb 19 Elon Musk tweets 500K cars. On Feb 20 Tesla General Counsel, after 2 months on the job, says "fuck this, I'm too old to put up with this shit, I'm outta here". Actually the GC was a little more diplomatic. As CNBC put it: A person familiar with the matter said he was not a good cultural fit with Tesla and wanted to return to his family and law practice in Washington, D.C.

Despegar 8y ago

>Of more concern to Tesla investors: What if he knows something they don’t know about the company’s financial future — and is hoping to hang any failure on the nasty, overreaching regulators rather than his own dubious management skills? That seems very possible. I think the reality of scaling up Tesla to live up to its valuation might be too daunting for Elon to handle. It might even be impossible. EV sales as a % of total vehicle sales is surprisingly low. If EV's do take off, it's likely to be the established car manufacturers who are good at making cars at scale who eventually capitalize on the opportunity. And the most likely to drive the S-curve adoption. Being taken out by the SEC would be a way to keep confidence in Elon Musk Inc going which would obviously be beneficial to his other companies. He could even team up with Mark Cuban to rail against them on Twitter.

appsonify 8y ago
I agree, that Musk is hiding something, one that would seriously hamper his reputation. I think it might have to do something with the Solar City acquisition. He doesn't want to admit he fucked up and failed because it would cast doubt on all his other half-baked ideas. Tesla will definitely feel the pressure from other car manufacturers, but so far it has nothing much to worry about as the only really viable game changer as of now is the Hyundai Kona Electric. The new Audi e-tron was promising but ruined it with using electric mirrors which require your eyes to focus on far objects and near objects unlike a normal mirror, and heavy steel frame, which pretty much negates any excellent regen (due to heavy weight). The Jaguar i-Pace is also a good alternative, but I feel like Hyundai's Kona E is an unbeatable value. Forget Chevy Bolt & Nissan Leaf....garbage. The model 3 is seriously bad....did you see the interior? it's empty....its completely void apart from the giant tablet thing....the price is it's killing point.....now that there are are viable alternatives.
- sk5t 8y ago
  Let's see how it goes with the Porsche Taycan. Porsche minds the engineering details that Audi, for some strange reason, often misses.
  - 8y ago

baby 8y ago

This sounds like a targeted campaign to discredit Musk. Careful about what you read.

fwip 8y ago
Elon does a good enough job of discrediting himself.
- rockxloose 8y ago
  Elon's top of range priority table and list of accomplishments make sense.
colordrops 8y ago
Your comment is (currently) downvoted, but it's a perfectly reasonable suggestion considering plenty of evidence of entrenched interests doing everything they can to take down Musk, obviously including the massive short position against Tesla, and the oil industry writer for the NY Times intentionally driving in circles in a parking lot to cause the car to run out of battery: https://www.tesla.com/blog/most-peculiar-test-drive https://www.tesla.com/blog/most-peculiar-test-drive He's got the military industrial complex against him with SpaceX, and the oil and car industries against him with Tesla. It doesn't get more imposing than that.
- ceejayoz 8y ago
  "There are powerful people who'd like to see Musk fail" and "Musk doesn't do himself any favors calling people pedos and whatnot" can both be true.
  - colordrops 8y ago
    Enough with the strawman argument. I never suggested that both couldn't be true. That doesn't counter anything I said.
LiquidSky 8y ago
Why this bizarre cultish paranoia? He's in this mess because he committed securities fraud. He got a slap-on-the wrist sweetheart deal and he can't even stick to that. He's done all of this to himself, and he can't seem to stop.

Tomminn 8y ago

This is a partial transcript of the Q4 2018 earnings call. There is a strong case to be made that the information was not market moving. Operator Thank you. Our next question is from Colin Rusch with Oppenheimer. Colin Rusch Thanks so much. Can you talk a little bit about the geographic dispersion for the guidance for 2019, where you're expecting the Model 3s to sell through as well as the other models? Elon Musk Well, I think we did, actually. Yes, it's clear in our letter. Deepak Ahuja We indicated in Q1, we will start delivering Model 3s in Europe and China. And we also shared a chart showing the potential market size for midsized premium sedans in North America, Europe and Asia, suggesting those markets could be even bigger. So I think that gives a good sense of where we'll be. And we'll launch the right-hand drive version at some point to go to the other markets. Elon Musk Yes. Maybe in the order of 350,000 to 500,000 Model 3s, something like that this year.

LiquidSky 8y ago
It doesn't matter if it's market moving. Or rather, the terms of his settlement are that all of his communications need to be pre-approved by counsel to determine what is market moving. He didn't get the pre-approval so he's broken the agreement.
- pbreit 8y ago
  The actual settlement notice says "put in place additional controls and procedures to oversee Musk’s communications" which appeared to happen in this case. [1] Also, since the 500,000 number was already public and referring only to Model 3s, it's entirely plausible that 500,000 total cars for the year is not material. The SEC conveniently leaves out this exculpatory evidence. 1: https://www.sec.gov/news/press-release/2018-226 https://www.sec.gov/news/press-release/2018-226
  - ceejayoz 8y ago
    The press release isn't the full detailed set of conditions. I don't know that the contract is publicly released, but https://www.theverge.com/2018/10/16/17983032/elon-musk-sec-securities-fraud-settlement https://www.theverge.com/2018/10/16/17983032/elon-musk-sec-s... says: > The company also has to employ a lawyer who will oversee all of Musk’s communications, including his tweets. This person will have to pre-approve any message coming from Musk that could have a material impact on the company’s stock price.

vgchh 8y ago

Musk is clearly not making it any easier and I wish he would be more careful (and continue to be on Twitter). It's not fun for investors. Please don't create these fires. I also hope that SEC would maintains an objective view of the issue and not get offended at the lack of respect from Musk. Finally, I would love for Tesla to continue to thrive under Musk's leadership, unless he continues to shoot himself in his foot.

mikestew 8y ago
It's not fun for investors. It was fun for this investor when I sold calls not too long ago after Musk's last meltdown. Probably not fun for the buyer of that contract who exercised and is now $30/share in the hole.

aboutruby 8y ago

What does he really risk if found guilty of contempt? I don't think the SEC is going to settle again

ceejayoz 8y ago
They could ban him from running Tesla and any other publicly listed company. That threat got him to sign this settlement in the first place. https://www.economist.com/business/2018/09/28/the-sec-threatens-to-ban-elon-musk-from-running-any-public-company https://www.economist.com/business/2018/09/28/the-sec-threat...

paulsutter 8y ago

Personally I’d rather see him focus on SpaceX and the Boring Company. The legacy manufacturers have all caught the bug, batteries are achieving mass scale in China, and electric vehicles have irreversible momentum. Mission accomplished.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
aeternus 8y ago
But which one of those legacy manufacturers would dare put rocket thrusters on their next model? https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1005577738332172289 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1005577738332172289
anth_anm 8y ago
Personally I'd rather see the people in charge of transit tell him to fuck off with his stupid tunnels, unless he comes up with a proposal actually worth listening to.

brian000 8y ago

search "Elon Musk" at crazydaysandnights.net for a different perspective on this guy

macinjosh 8y ago
From that site's footer: > Crazy Days And Nights Is A Gossip Site. The Site Publishes Rumors, Conjecture, And Fiction. Not what I would use for gathering real information.

api 8y ago

What if he's burning out and doing this somewhat subconsciously in an attempt to shed responsibilities?

motohagiography 8y ago

Musk paid the SEC $20m in his last settlement, what do they want, gratitude? There is definitely a cabal gunning for him, what I don't understand is why. There are funds short TSLA who are talking their books as well, but he seems to have provoked a deeper coalition of interests that is hard to pinpoint. All I can tell is much of the criticism seems contrived. Maybe he's truly checked out because this is all just a simulation, and he wants to test what is symbolic and artificial, and what is real because philosophically and existentially it's the only meaningful problem to address, but from an investor and mental health perspective, that's dissociation and if that's really the case, I hope he likes painting in watercolors.

ceejayoz 8y ago
> Musk paid the SEC $20m in his last settlement, what do they want, gratitude? They want him to follow the other terms of the settlement, presumably. The fine's only a part of the punishment.
- elliekelly 8y ago
  But it (aside from the $20 million fine) it isn’t even a punishment. Every publicly-traded company has their tweets reviewed. Every. Single. One. It’s normal. It’s reasonably prudent for both the CEO and the shareholders. No shareholder wants to wake up and find 5%+ of market cap has been wiped out with a tweet.
  - ceejayoz 8y ago
    Don't forget that he was forced to step down as Tesla's Chairman. That the SEC settlement required Musk to hire a lawyer and institute a review process indicates that at least one publicly-trated company wasn't having tweets reviewed, and the SEC complaint this time around alleges this tweet wasn't reviewed either.
  - anth_anm 8y ago
    Uh, he also got removed as a chairman. Having the sense to review tweets is different than having an SEC settlement enforcing such action.

Animats 8y ago

His behavior is not unusual for someone who is burned out and/or a pothead. Ignoring consequences is typical stoner behavior. We'll have to see how this plays out.

unityByFreedom 8y ago
I think this is more than pot talking. This is repeated bashing of any checks to his power. Whistleblowers, negative media, and government agencies giving critical oversight all get the same shunning from Musk. Except NHTSA of course as they appear to be captured.
computerex 8y ago
Ignoring consequences is closer to being drunk behavior than stoner behavior. Also weed is used medicinally as well, and it's no good demonizing all those medical users and labeling them as bums that ignore consequences. In general, I'd advise against senselessly judging and stereotyping people.

krick 8y ago

Maybe I'm naïve, but I'm actually buying the obliviousness of his behavior. I don't really believe in Tesla and would gladly buy the whole "suicide by SEC" thing, but reading what actually happened, this doesn't really sound like a big deal. Musk has been having emotional moments for a long time now, at this point it's really easy for me to just shrug off this as "he's always been like this". The last ten years of Musk carrier are just non-stop publicity-stunt drama, it's really easy to believe for me now that he honestly doesn't see the boundary that seems obvious to all lawyery SEC folks and other properly corporate people.

JauntTrooper 8y ago
He's not oblivious. He's being obstinate and bristling at their authority. He's been CEO of a public Tesla for 9 years now. Respecting the SEC and securities laws is just part of the CEO job. He's got great lawyers that remind him of this daily. And you'd think the $20 million fine and loss of the Chairman role would be enough of a wake up call. It's so frustrating to see, because I really want Tesla to succeed and I think he's one of the great executives of our time, and he wastes his time and attention on short-term inanities like short sellers and daily stock price movements. If he just buckled down and built cars, he'd blow all of those short sellers out of the water.
- mhermher 8y ago
  He can't. Those short sellers know that he's a fraud and he's scared to death of being exposed.
  - mandeepj 8y ago
    fraud? exposed? You don't start two or rather three industries with those qualities
    - serf 8y ago
      I agree that 'fraud' and 'exposed' are complete hyperbolic falsities , but what industries did Musk start, exactly? The closest I can think of is his early e-banking-ish stuff.

smallgovt 8y ago

I don't see how he can reasonably defend himself in this situation. His tweet was both material and inaccurate. Tweeting material information without clearance is obviously against his settlement. What confuses me is that TSLA's price hasn't suffered. I have a hunch this isn't as serious of a matter as is being reported, but I'm not sure why.

macinjosh 8y ago
I think it is not serious because on Tesla's earning call they already announced the same 500k number.
- unityByFreedom 8y ago
  To be held in contempt may not mean much to Musk. The SEC apparently takes violations of agreements seriously, as it should. We don't need companies building up their valuations with fake news so that we can end up with another 2008. It's in taxpayers' interest to keep misleading CEO's like Musk in check. And, this is a very small "check" to his power. In fact, it is something he already agreed to do. If he didn't want to follow the agreement, he didn't need to settle with the SEC, which is what he did for about a day before turning back and settling with them. It seems he is changing his mind again about that settlement. Apparently nothing is settled with Musk. He changes his mind daily. How can someone run a company like this? Employees must be afraid to do anything without his say-so, and even then it may not hold true for long.
sonnyblarney 8y ago
It's easy of you consider he's just promoting facts as any normal CEO would. He's not yet used to the idea he has to be hyper specific with some data. He's a showman, a salesperson, he's always going to err on the positive. Constantly pitching, selling. It's the SEC etc. that care about very specific details that could affect the company. So while you're right - as a CEO has has 'no excuse' - the fact he would do it makes perfect sense. I don't think he's trolling anyone, he's the same as he ever was, probably under a lot of stress, a little manic, and avoiding what he probably thinks is the narrow confines of corporate culture and language.

11thEarlOfMar 8y ago

It's pretty simple. Musk was hounded by short sellers who bet billions against Tesla and then spread patently false information about the company's activities and prospects[1]. Musk has one of those asymmetric senses of fairness (like the one that drove Gates to tears during Microsoft's anti-trust trials) that lost all faith in the SEC as it stood by and did nothing about what he felt was clearly illegal behavior. In his mind, he was treated 'super unfairly' by bullies while the guardians stood by and did nothing. He really dislikes them for that. Is his open disrespect a mature response? No. It's idealistic if not naive and he could be about to find out that the SEC does have teeth. [0] https://www.theregister.co.uk/2000/10/25/inside_the_ms_trial_part_2/ https://www.theregister.co.uk/2000/10/25/inside_the_ms_trial... (sorry, couldn't find a better source) [1] ? "The SEC similarly should be leading the charge against purveyors of short-and-distort schemes. Unfortunately, the commission inexplicably has been reluctant to do so.Just like a pump-and-dump, a short-and-distort scheme violates the Securities Exchange Act antifraud provisions, as well as SEC Rule 10b-5. In fact, it has brought hardly any enforcement actions targeting this conduct."

mikejb 8y ago
Just as a heads-up: Your 2nd link doesn't work for anybody but you (references a file on your local machine), and leaks your user name on that machine. Maybe this is the link you wanted to post (contains the quote you posted): https://www.dlapiper.com/~/media/files/people/weiner-perrie/weinerweberhsu.pdf https://www.dlapiper.com/~/media/files/people/weiner-perrie/...
- dgellow 8y ago
  Maybe dang or another admin could fix his comment? Or at least remove the personal information (first name, last name).
  - eitland 8y ago
    Flagged (for moderator attention, not for deletion)
- 8y ago

tranchms 8y ago

Tesla will not have a $35k EV anytime soon. The battery pack alone costs more than $20k. Tesla can’t produce that car for $15k and make a profit. Gigafactory Battery production is expected to continue ramping up, with higher throughput lines, but operating costs are still exorbitant, and battery production is barely breaking even at current production. In fact, from what I know they’re in the red. I don’t see a $35k Model 3 until battery production costs cut in half, which I won’t expect for another 3-5 years. I know Tesla is beginning to manufacture it’s own batteries, but to be honest, I don’t see them succeeding.

uptownfunk 8y ago

Musk is another tortured CEO prodigy, as was Jobs. You can get rid of him, he can inadvertently get rid of himself, but at the end of the day he is Tesla. Take him out of Tesla, and you get for electric vehicles what happened to the iPhone / Apple after Jobs died. Yeah they may pump out a few more Model X's, S's, 3's with some minor mods, keep milking the cow (if it even is a cow, maybe a potential cow, and also if they can even get to a point where they can scale) and eventually... who knows? The scale problem hasn't even been solved yet. You're not going to find another leader with that much raw energy, intellect, drive, and passion who's going to have a chance at bringing us to that reality even close to as quick as Musk can. My only concern with the whole show is, can anyone (particularly seasoned auto veterans) stand to work with him long enough for the scale and production problems be addressed. As well as iron out all the wrinkles with the designs (some notoriously faulty parts which take quite a long time to fix sometimes..)

unityByFreedom 8y ago
The Musk/Jobs companions is a bit of a stretch. Jobs had a profitable product and company from the start. Musk never founded such a company, and was booted as PayPal CEO after a short stint.
- apexalpha 8y ago
  SpaceX.
  - bjl 8y ago
    We have absolutely no idea whether or not SpaceX is profitable.
  - notfromhere 8y ago
    He doesn't run day-to-day, which is probably the reason its not a shitshow

Calashle0202 8y ago

He's gonna get a shareholder lawsuit if he isn't careful

sudoaza 8y ago

> The SEC says Musk has manifestly violated an agreement reached in September, when he settled an SEC lawsuit by consenting to have his tweets preapproved by Tesla attorneys before sending them out on Twitter. > That didn’t stop Musk from issuing an unapproved tweet at 7:15 p.m. EST on Feb. 19, Who the fuck this people are?!?! Besides, no one got the 420 stock price joke???!?!!

porpoisely 8y ago

I can't tell if this actual news or a conspiracy theory? It's amazing how an industry that whines about conspiracy theories loves to peddle them. This article/opinion had nothing substantive. Just conjecture, guessing and conspiracy.

anth_anm 8y ago

He's a narcissist. He believes his own hype and he thinks he's untouchable. That and they have about a billion dollars in debt coming due in a few days. Gotta keep that distraction going.