6 ms·

Well, Tesla is one long stream of gambles. You dont get to school an established, global, trillion dollar industry without taking risks. The only notable thing

Well, Tesla is one long stream of gambles. You dont get to school an established, global, trillion dollar industry without taking risks. The only notable thing here is that hating on Musk is really popular these days. So the failed gambles (this, falcon doors, the initial overautomation of the Model 3 production, etc) will be highlighted and mocked, while the successful gambles will go unmentioned or incorporated as a matter-of-fact developments. Running Tesla stories through a selection bias filter is really useful, as it'll discard most stories that pop up.

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danso 7y ago
You read this story and think it boils down to "hating on Musk"? Which of the story's numbers or claims about SolarCity finances and production do you believe are distorted or misleading?
- hi5eyes 7y ago
  its difficult to critique tesla/elons decisions without running into the cult of teslemmings making it their personality of defending musk of any wrongdoing
- jsharf 7y ago
  Perfectly true facts can still create bias, by selectively focusing attention. None of this needs to be wrong or distorted.
  - mannykannot 7y ago
    > None of this needs to be wrong or distorted. The perfect defense against truth in any form.
- martythemaniak 7y ago
  It's more of a meta comment on which stories surface up on Hacker News and other media. The selection of content you get exposed to can matter more than the exact content you consume. I went for dinner to my in-laws a few months ago and my mother-in-law asked if I had heard about the Tesla that caught fire in Shanghai. I said, yeah but did you hear about all the combustion cars that had combusted that day. She had not of course. Didn't even know "normal" cars catch fire. Nothing against her in particular (she had seen it on a mainstream TV news program), I've had similar conversations with coworkers, aquiantances, on social media, etc.
  - danso 7y ago
    Genuinely curious: how did you identify this story as being low value? The Shanghai anecdote to me seems self-evidently low value (since the incidence of car fires is still rare, and individual incidents have low impact). But this story's headline (on the article page) alleges serious misconduct, as well as financial problems/shortfalls that unavoidably impact Tesla.
    - olau 7y ago
      Red flags for me were language and sources. The writer didn't try to test her assumptions, as far as I can tell. I think it's true that Musk went in and tried to save SolarCity by assuming control and changing the course. That was news at the time where it happened. He did the same to Tesla, actually. It's also true that he's always talking about visions.
      - danso 7y ago
        What do you have in mind in terms of the writer needing to test her assumptions? I don't know what that means, both in terms of the assumptions that she's obligated to test, or what that "test" would look like in the article.
        kjksf 7y ago
        Here's an example of an assumption she could have tested (as opposed to re-printing as a quote). The headline of this article starts with: "He (Musk) is full of shit". Why? Because that's a quote from a single person she interviewed, who is a disgruntled ex-employee of Tesla with a history of ranging against Tesla and Musk (to quote the article "Since then, he had taken to sending Elon Musk emails and point-blank tweets, describing the pain the layoffs were causing."). (as a total aside, if you've heard about a laid off low-level employee angrily tweeting and e-mailing a CEO of Fortune 500 company (116 to be exact) you would probably think "an unstable person" not "a good subject expert to interview"). Instead of treating "Musk is full of shit" as a fact, she should could ask herself "is Musk really full of shit"? Should could do it by asking more people what they think about Musk, more Tesla employees, including those that are still happily employed. This article is clearly sourced from the most vocal, the most virulent Tesla haters (the self-proclaimed members of $TSLAQ on Twitter). You can easily find even more people very happy with Tesla's products and I'm sure there are plenty of employees who think highly of Musk. But it's clearly a hit piece, not interested in presenting a balanced account. The part about Walmart lawsuit doesn't mention Tesla's response (which paints Walmart in a very bad light) or subsequent joint statement from Walmart and Tesla where they make nice.
whatok 7y ago
Please describe how this selection bias filter works.
- Retric 7y ago
  Failure is more interesting. The Model 3’s novel UI was extremely risky, but seems to have been acceptable so it’s rarely mentioned. In the end he takes a lot of risks, but it’s only by looking at both successes and failures that you can judge his approach is reasonable.
  - whatok 7y ago
    The number and magnitude of the failures are larger now than there were in the past. Similarly, look at the old SolarCity acquisition thread linked below. The sentiment is completely different. No one cares about a great UI if people's roofs are catching fire. With all the positives and negatives weighed and accounted for, there is simply more negative things going on with the company right now than positive.
    - Retric 7y ago
      I was more saying the Model 3’s terrible UI did not seem to be an issue. As to success, quietly selling 1/3 as many Model 3’s as Toyota Camry’s is what success looks like. Nobody cheers for the 292,371 car to roll off the assembly plant. It’s simply boring and not really worth talking about outside of boardrooms and climate change projections.
aerovistae 7y ago
Indeed. I think this article is on the money in the sense that SolarCity and the Buffalo plant failed, but without any greater context it's misleading. While this failed, SpaceX succeeded, the Model S succeeded, the Model 3 succeeded (even if it's been a rocky road). I don't think Musk was trying to harm anyone-- I think he doesn't realize he's human and he can't actually juggle 44 million balls at once. And I think even if he drops some balls, we're all better off for the ones he juggles successfully. If the collateral cost of a revitalized space industry and a growing electric car industry is $750million wasted in NY State, that seems like a small price to pay.
- threeseed 7y ago
  The "nice guy" or "busy guy" argument doesn't hold up in court. You have an obligation as CEO (and Chairman at the time) to be ethical and legal in your actions.
  - aerovistae 7y ago
    I think the long arc of history is a little more important than what holds up in court.
    - threeseed 7y ago
      If Musk ends up in jail I don't think history will remember him well.
      - aerovistae 7y ago
        You're crazy if you think there's even a sliver of a chance Musk is going to serve prison time.
jshowa3 7y ago
Nobodies perfect. Not even Musk. So I suggest accepting both the faults and successes of the man as a complete package. Tesla is one of the many cases of Silicon Valley syndrome where you run a company at negative profit forever while claiming to make all these substantial advances (some laudable, others stupid) in an attempt to disrupt something that's been working for decades for specific reasons. There's a reason car assembly lines aren't fully automated. There's a reason car companies don't allow customers to pre-order a vehicle. There's a reason dealership networks exist. Musk isn't some fantastical genius with a solution to everything. Everyone before Musk was as smart and as talented, so his active refusal to really learn from anyone before him is what causes him so much headache. In fact, I'd argue that his contract with NASA probably saved SpaceX because that's one avenue where he didn't ignore a previously, well established business.
- jstummbillig 7y ago
  There's also a reason electric driving has been put off as long as it has. Everything is done a certain way until it isn't but that historically is past the point of "about damn time" and "why'd take so long". Doing what is right and what is smart are often very different things — and I am not claiming Musk is doing either, but this certainly didn't convince me of the opposite.
- Reedx 7y ago
  It's not really one of those cases though. Electric cars were all but dead. They were considered a joke ("golf carts") until Telsa challenged the status quo and changed the industry. Many seem to have already forgotten this.
  - jshowa3 7y ago
    Electric cars were not all but dead. They've actually been quite prevalent, it was just done largely pre-WWW so you didn't see a lot of the hype. It also wasn't that feasible because of the lack of technology. And since companies were actually trying to make money, and cars were becoming more fuel efficient, there wasn't the demand. In fact, there still isn't that high of a demand for electric cars these days. I'm not discounting that Tesla made some innovations. But people make it out like Tesla radically changed the functionality of the electric car when it's still largely the same technology, just more advanced. To give an example, the Nissan Leaf was out well before people even heard of Tesla, and that was one of the most popular and widely sold electric vehicles. At the time, Tesla only had the 100k Roadster.
moltensodium 7y ago
"Hating on Musk is really popular these days" is exactly the sort of meaningless nonsense people used to post about Elizabeth Holmes. Stop worrying about what is hip and trendy and trying to dismiss things that sounds like other things. You don't even try to parse and respond to any facts or details from this story at all, you're just being lazy.
navigatesol 7y ago
Yeah, Bethany McLean is running Tesla hating content. Or, hear me out, there's something to what these "haters" have been saying for years. Which is more likely?
jdsully 7y ago
Funny there were people just like you saying the exact same thing about Enron when Bethany ran her famous article back then (yes this is the same author that took down Enron). As with Tesla Enron was big on "innovation". Innovations fail, and the stress of dealing with them tends to lead CEOs into unethical behavior. There's nothing wrong with taking risks and failing. There is something wrong with taking investor money and using it to bail out an unrelated company.
- CamperBob2 7y ago
  The difference is, Enron didn't build any cars, manufacture any solar panels, or launch any rockets. Anyone buying into Musk's vision understands that they're buying into all of it, for better or worse. Either that, or they're too dumb to be entrusted with large amounts of money, and markets have a way of handling that situation quickly and efficiently.
  - jdsully 7y ago
    Your right, they built Power Plants [1] and fibre optic networks instead [2]. Enron was at its core an infrastructure company. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dabhol_Power_Station https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dabhol_Power_Station [2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/business/2002/01/01/broadband-strategy-got-enron-in-trouble/86ce87f6-33e6-4efe-90c5-067c795e9e8c/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/business/2002/01/01/b... They are only remembered for their financial "innovations" which was ultimately their downfall. But to suggest they didn't make anything tangible is false. They even had a "Netflix" style streaming service setup with Block Buster at one point.
    - CamperBob2 7y ago
      They financed them. They moved money around, they didn't build anything. I've never seen an "Enron" logo on any actual products. Enron accomplished nothing that wouldn't have happened without them, in one form or another. Agree with him or not, Musk tackles things that either wouldn't happen at all without him, or that would happen too slowly to matter. The reality is, we need both kinds of companies, but we also need them to behave ethically.
moosey 7y ago
Currently, Tesla and SolarCity and others like it are dealing with current political turmoil. It's obvious to anyone with secular attitudes that we need to build up battery and renewable energy technologies. When we appeared to be moving in the direction of supporting the technologies with subsidation, it appeared that this was the path that we'd be taking long term, that the US political system was coming to term with its issues, and that early adopters would be able to survive. This isn't always the case, often times early adopters don't quite get it right, and later adopters come along and correct the few issues that exist, and then they prosper. For better or worse, secular understandings and political understandings don't always jive. Now that political attitudes have changed, it seems obvious that early adopters will struggle, as their affordability is often based on those same subsidies. This is the only frame of reference in my mind that is terribly important when it comes to the success or failure of many of the properties that Musk runs. The fact that he's kept them going in the current political and social environments is really a credit, I think. He's not building fossil fuel based vehicles. He's not building coal plants. He's keeping the space race alive. The general dislike of this guy seems personal. There are far larger financial crimes to go after, but Musk made himself a target. Damn, I wouldn't doubt that he does some of it on purpose.
- threeseed 7y ago
  > There are far larger financial crimes to go after That isn't a reason to not go after Musk. Executives at all levels need to be made an example of when they commit a crime. Otherwise it encourages others to do the same.
Traster 7y ago
There are gambles like "I want to heavily invest in this technology" and there are gambles like "I want to commit fraud to bail out my other company". The thing people are criticising isn't the gamble, and it's disingenuous to present that as the main issue.
srumino 7y ago
Hating on Musk is popular these days in large part because it is becoming more and more obvious that he is in many ways a con artist. Look at his recent self-driving car promises, for example. I don't believe that he is so misinformed as to actually believe his own self-driving car promises, so I view his over-promising as deliberate deception.
- jayd16 7y ago
  This is the guy that thought he could build a leading electric car and space company and then did that. You don't think Musk believes he can do anything? He always over-promises but that's not exactly the same as a con artist.
  - srumino 7y ago
    Do I think that Musk actually believes Tesla will have a fully self-driving car by the end of 2020? No.
    - mlyle 7y ago
      He might believe that (which is rather questionable), but extending that to robotaxis at scale... no, I don't believe he believes that. I hope he doesn't believe that.
- smallgovt 7y ago
  Classifying him as a con artist based on his tendency to overpromise and underdeliver is a stretch when taking the colloquial definition of "con artist". Is he telling a lie? Yes. Does his audience, in general, feel "conned" when they realize he overpromised? No.
seem_2211 7y ago
Pretty unsurprising really - sure, hating on Musk is popular, but it's mostly a reaction to the fawning uncritical gaze most people give him, and the way he's portrayed as this genius who is amazing at executing. Elon Musk is great at promising stuff, and then terrible at executing. For every promise he fulfills there are 20 that he doesn't. But sure, the guy who flies private everywhere and shitposts more than I do is "working 100 hour weeks" and "cares for the environment."
- martythemaniak 7y ago
  I have a buddy - amicable, smart, did great in a tough school, did even better career wise, responsible for dozens of people, etc - who nevertheless explodes with anger and hatred and goes on 15-minutes tirades if someones brings up Musk in any positive light whatsoever. It is quite a shocking sight. "Reaction" is the key word here. The opposite of a fanboy is not a hater, it is the person who doesn't care. The fanboy and the hater are two sides of the same coin - they both develop an obsession with a person and define their personalities as a function of this person. Whether that function is love or hate is secondary. The way out of his is to ignore him, or judge him by his work. He sells cars - really good cars. For example, they have the best range and are incredibly safe. Your emotional reaction won't make you car's range go down, or make you any less safe in a crash.
  - toast0 7y ago
    > The way out of his is to ignore him And any thread that involves him; I'm not good at this, but I'm trying. The reason Elon Musk inspires such hate is because he is constantly PRing (generously) unverifiable claims, but rarely gets any consequences from it. If he would let his work speak for itself, there would be less haters; his companies are clearly doing some things well. It's kind of a Steve Jobs thing, but Jobs rarely made forward looking claims -- sure his claims of invention were irritating to some, but they were about a product that existed at the time of the claim.
- threeseed 7y ago
  Actually a lot of hate on Musk is coming from him being completely unethical. From transactions like SolarCity to calling divers pedophiles to allowing Autopilot to even be deployed en masse.
mcv 7y ago
> "The only notable thing here is that hating on Musk is really popular these days." I don't hate Musk at all. I love what he does and what he has done. But he plays a ridiculously high-risk game, and that could risk destroying all the great things he built.

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danso 7y ago

You read this story and think it boils down to "hating on Musk"? Which of the story's numbers or claims about SolarCity finances and production do you believe are distorted or misleading?

hi5eyes 7y ago
its difficult to critique tesla/elons decisions without running into the cult of teslemmings making it their personality of defending musk of any wrongdoing
jsharf 7y ago
Perfectly true facts can still create bias, by selectively focusing attention. None of this needs to be wrong or distorted.
- mannykannot 7y ago
  > None of this needs to be wrong or distorted. The perfect defense against truth in any form.
martythemaniak 7y ago
It's more of a meta comment on which stories surface up on Hacker News and other media. The selection of content you get exposed to can matter more than the exact content you consume. I went for dinner to my in-laws a few months ago and my mother-in-law asked if I had heard about the Tesla that caught fire in Shanghai. I said, yeah but did you hear about all the combustion cars that had combusted that day. She had not of course. Didn't even know "normal" cars catch fire. Nothing against her in particular (she had seen it on a mainstream TV news program), I've had similar conversations with coworkers, aquiantances, on social media, etc.
- danso 7y ago
  Genuinely curious: how did you identify this story as being low value? The Shanghai anecdote to me seems self-evidently low value (since the incidence of car fires is still rare, and individual incidents have low impact). But this story's headline (on the article page) alleges serious misconduct, as well as financial problems/shortfalls that unavoidably impact Tesla.
  - olau 7y ago
    Red flags for me were language and sources. The writer didn't try to test her assumptions, as far as I can tell. I think it's true that Musk went in and tried to save SolarCity by assuming control and changing the course. That was news at the time where it happened. He did the same to Tesla, actually. It's also true that he's always talking about visions.
    - danso 7y ago
      What do you have in mind in terms of the writer needing to test her assumptions? I don't know what that means, both in terms of the assumptions that she's obligated to test, or what that "test" would look like in the article.
      - kjksf 7y ago
        Here's an example of an assumption she could have tested (as opposed to re-printing as a quote). The headline of this article starts with: "He (Musk) is full of shit". Why? Because that's a quote from a single person she interviewed, who is a disgruntled ex-employee of Tesla with a history of ranging against Tesla and Musk (to quote the article "Since then, he had taken to sending Elon Musk emails and point-blank tweets, describing the pain the layoffs were causing."). (as a total aside, if you've heard about a laid off low-level employee angrily tweeting and e-mailing a CEO of Fortune 500 company (116 to be exact) you would probably think "an unstable person" not "a good subject expert to interview"). Instead of treating "Musk is full of shit" as a fact, she should could ask herself "is Musk really full of shit"? Should could do it by asking more people what they think about Musk, more Tesla employees, including those that are still happily employed. This article is clearly sourced from the most vocal, the most virulent Tesla haters (the self-proclaimed members of $TSLAQ on Twitter). You can easily find even more people very happy with Tesla's products and I'm sure there are plenty of employees who think highly of Musk. But it's clearly a hit piece, not interested in presenting a balanced account. The part about Walmart lawsuit doesn't mention Tesla's response (which paints Walmart in a very bad light) or subsequent joint statement from Walmart and Tesla where they make nice.

whatok 7y ago

Please describe how this selection bias filter works.

Retric 7y ago
Failure is more interesting. The Model 3’s novel UI was extremely risky, but seems to have been acceptable so it’s rarely mentioned. In the end he takes a lot of risks, but it’s only by looking at both successes and failures that you can judge his approach is reasonable.
- whatok 7y ago
  The number and magnitude of the failures are larger now than there were in the past. Similarly, look at the old SolarCity acquisition thread linked below. The sentiment is completely different. No one cares about a great UI if people's roofs are catching fire. With all the positives and negatives weighed and accounted for, there is simply more negative things going on with the company right now than positive.
  - Retric 7y ago
    I was more saying the Model 3’s terrible UI did not seem to be an issue. As to success, quietly selling 1/3 as many Model 3’s as Toyota Camry’s is what success looks like. Nobody cheers for the 292,371 car to roll off the assembly plant. It’s simply boring and not really worth talking about outside of boardrooms and climate change projections.

aerovistae 7y ago

Indeed. I think this article is on the money in the sense that SolarCity and the Buffalo plant failed, but without any greater context it's misleading. While this failed, SpaceX succeeded, the Model S succeeded, the Model 3 succeeded (even if it's been a rocky road). I don't think Musk was trying to harm anyone-- I think he doesn't realize he's human and he can't actually juggle 44 million balls at once. And I think even if he drops some balls, we're all better off for the ones he juggles successfully. If the collateral cost of a revitalized space industry and a growing electric car industry is $750million wasted in NY State, that seems like a small price to pay.

threeseed 7y ago
The "nice guy" or "busy guy" argument doesn't hold up in court. You have an obligation as CEO (and Chairman at the time) to be ethical and legal in your actions.
- aerovistae 7y ago
  I think the long arc of history is a little more important than what holds up in court.
  - threeseed 7y ago
    If Musk ends up in jail I don't think history will remember him well.
    - aerovistae 7y ago
      You're crazy if you think there's even a sliver of a chance Musk is going to serve prison time.

jshowa3 7y ago

Nobodies perfect. Not even Musk. So I suggest accepting both the faults and successes of the man as a complete package. Tesla is one of the many cases of Silicon Valley syndrome where you run a company at negative profit forever while claiming to make all these substantial advances (some laudable, others stupid) in an attempt to disrupt something that's been working for decades for specific reasons. There's a reason car assembly lines aren't fully automated. There's a reason car companies don't allow customers to pre-order a vehicle. There's a reason dealership networks exist. Musk isn't some fantastical genius with a solution to everything. Everyone before Musk was as smart and as talented, so his active refusal to really learn from anyone before him is what causes him so much headache. In fact, I'd argue that his contract with NASA probably saved SpaceX because that's one avenue where he didn't ignore a previously, well established business.

jstummbillig 7y ago
There's also a reason electric driving has been put off as long as it has. Everything is done a certain way until it isn't but that historically is past the point of "about damn time" and "why'd take so long". Doing what is right and what is smart are often very different things — and I am not claiming Musk is doing either, but this certainly didn't convince me of the opposite.
Reedx 7y ago
It's not really one of those cases though. Electric cars were all but dead. They were considered a joke ("golf carts") until Telsa challenged the status quo and changed the industry. Many seem to have already forgotten this.
- jshowa3 7y ago
  Electric cars were not all but dead. They've actually been quite prevalent, it was just done largely pre-WWW so you didn't see a lot of the hype. It also wasn't that feasible because of the lack of technology. And since companies were actually trying to make money, and cars were becoming more fuel efficient, there wasn't the demand. In fact, there still isn't that high of a demand for electric cars these days. I'm not discounting that Tesla made some innovations. But people make it out like Tesla radically changed the functionality of the electric car when it's still largely the same technology, just more advanced. To give an example, the Nissan Leaf was out well before people even heard of Tesla, and that was one of the most popular and widely sold electric vehicles. At the time, Tesla only had the 100k Roadster.

moltensodium 7y ago

"Hating on Musk is really popular these days" is exactly the sort of meaningless nonsense people used to post about Elizabeth Holmes. Stop worrying about what is hip and trendy and trying to dismiss things that sounds like other things. You don't even try to parse and respond to any facts or details from this story at all, you're just being lazy.

navigatesol 7y ago

Yeah, Bethany McLean is running Tesla hating content. Or, hear me out, there's something to what these "haters" have been saying for years. Which is more likely?

jdsully 7y ago

Funny there were people just like you saying the exact same thing about Enron when Bethany ran her famous article back then (yes this is the same author that took down Enron). As with Tesla Enron was big on "innovation". Innovations fail, and the stress of dealing with them tends to lead CEOs into unethical behavior. There's nothing wrong with taking risks and failing. There is something wrong with taking investor money and using it to bail out an unrelated company.

CamperBob2 7y ago
The difference is, Enron didn't build any cars, manufacture any solar panels, or launch any rockets. Anyone buying into Musk's vision understands that they're buying into all of it, for better or worse. Either that, or they're too dumb to be entrusted with large amounts of money, and markets have a way of handling that situation quickly and efficiently.
- jdsully 7y ago
  Your right, they built Power Plants [1] and fibre optic networks instead [2]. Enron was at its core an infrastructure company. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dabhol_Power_Station https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dabhol_Power_Station [2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/business/2002/01/01/broadband-strategy-got-enron-in-trouble/86ce87f6-33e6-4efe-90c5-067c795e9e8c/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/business/2002/01/01/b... They are only remembered for their financial "innovations" which was ultimately their downfall. But to suggest they didn't make anything tangible is false. They even had a "Netflix" style streaming service setup with Block Buster at one point.
  - CamperBob2 7y ago
    They financed them. They moved money around, they didn't build anything. I've never seen an "Enron" logo on any actual products. Enron accomplished nothing that wouldn't have happened without them, in one form or another. Agree with him or not, Musk tackles things that either wouldn't happen at all without him, or that would happen too slowly to matter. The reality is, we need both kinds of companies, but we also need them to behave ethically.

moosey 7y ago

Currently, Tesla and SolarCity and others like it are dealing with current political turmoil. It's obvious to anyone with secular attitudes that we need to build up battery and renewable energy technologies. When we appeared to be moving in the direction of supporting the technologies with subsidation, it appeared that this was the path that we'd be taking long term, that the US political system was coming to term with its issues, and that early adopters would be able to survive. This isn't always the case, often times early adopters don't quite get it right, and later adopters come along and correct the few issues that exist, and then they prosper. For better or worse, secular understandings and political understandings don't always jive. Now that political attitudes have changed, it seems obvious that early adopters will struggle, as their affordability is often based on those same subsidies. This is the only frame of reference in my mind that is terribly important when it comes to the success or failure of many of the properties that Musk runs. The fact that he's kept them going in the current political and social environments is really a credit, I think. He's not building fossil fuel based vehicles. He's not building coal plants. He's keeping the space race alive. The general dislike of this guy seems personal. There are far larger financial crimes to go after, but Musk made himself a target. Damn, I wouldn't doubt that he does some of it on purpose.

threeseed 7y ago
> There are far larger financial crimes to go after That isn't a reason to not go after Musk. Executives at all levels need to be made an example of when they commit a crime. Otherwise it encourages others to do the same.

Traster 7y ago

There are gambles like "I want to heavily invest in this technology" and there are gambles like "I want to commit fraud to bail out my other company". The thing people are criticising isn't the gamble, and it's disingenuous to present that as the main issue.

srumino 7y ago

Hating on Musk is popular these days in large part because it is becoming more and more obvious that he is in many ways a con artist. Look at his recent self-driving car promises, for example. I don't believe that he is so misinformed as to actually believe his own self-driving car promises, so I view his over-promising as deliberate deception.

jayd16 7y ago
This is the guy that thought he could build a leading electric car and space company and then did that. You don't think Musk believes he can do anything? He always over-promises but that's not exactly the same as a con artist.
- srumino 7y ago
  Do I think that Musk actually believes Tesla will have a fully self-driving car by the end of 2020? No.
  - mlyle 7y ago
    He might believe that (which is rather questionable), but extending that to robotaxis at scale... no, I don't believe he believes that. I hope he doesn't believe that.
smallgovt 7y ago
Classifying him as a con artist based on his tendency to overpromise and underdeliver is a stretch when taking the colloquial definition of "con artist". Is he telling a lie? Yes. Does his audience, in general, feel "conned" when they realize he overpromised? No.

seem_2211 7y ago

Pretty unsurprising really - sure, hating on Musk is popular, but it's mostly a reaction to the fawning uncritical gaze most people give him, and the way he's portrayed as this genius who is amazing at executing. Elon Musk is great at promising stuff, and then terrible at executing. For every promise he fulfills there are 20 that he doesn't. But sure, the guy who flies private everywhere and shitposts more than I do is "working 100 hour weeks" and "cares for the environment."

martythemaniak 7y ago
I have a buddy - amicable, smart, did great in a tough school, did even better career wise, responsible for dozens of people, etc - who nevertheless explodes with anger and hatred and goes on 15-minutes tirades if someones brings up Musk in any positive light whatsoever. It is quite a shocking sight. "Reaction" is the key word here. The opposite of a fanboy is not a hater, it is the person who doesn't care. The fanboy and the hater are two sides of the same coin - they both develop an obsession with a person and define their personalities as a function of this person. Whether that function is love or hate is secondary. The way out of his is to ignore him, or judge him by his work. He sells cars - really good cars. For example, they have the best range and are incredibly safe. Your emotional reaction won't make you car's range go down, or make you any less safe in a crash.
- toast0 7y ago
  > The way out of his is to ignore him And any thread that involves him; I'm not good at this, but I'm trying. The reason Elon Musk inspires such hate is because he is constantly PRing (generously) unverifiable claims, but rarely gets any consequences from it. If he would let his work speak for itself, there would be less haters; his companies are clearly doing some things well. It's kind of a Steve Jobs thing, but Jobs rarely made forward looking claims -- sure his claims of invention were irritating to some, but they were about a product that existed at the time of the claim.
threeseed 7y ago
Actually a lot of hate on Musk is coming from him being completely unethical. From transactions like SolarCity to calling divers pedophiles to allowing Autopilot to even be deployed en masse.

mcv 7y ago

> "The only notable thing here is that hating on Musk is really popular these days." I don't hate Musk at all. I love what he does and what he has done. But he plays a ridiculously high-risk game, and that could risk destroying all the great things he built.