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Not close to the same thing. Musk has a history of building and shipping successful products company after company in spite of a constant amount of people sayi
by fossuser 6y ago
Not close to the same thing.
Musk has a history of building and shipping successful products company after company in spite of a constant amount of people saying he would fail. (X.com, Paypal, Tesla, SpaceX, Neuralink, Boring).
Nikola is a complete fraud that collected money from know-nothing investors riding on EVs and Tesla's name. They haven't shipped anything and probably never will. Bizarrely positively portrayed in the press alongside negative Tesla stories - I imagine because it's good for clicks?
I find it hard to believe the SPAC that brought them public wasn't solely for the purpose of allowing them to steal as much as they could from the public before they shut down. No idea how well they played it - I guess we'll see if anyone ends up in prison.
At least he got to con his way into a fancy ranch in the mean time: https://www.latimes.com/business/real-estate/story/2019-11-14/nikola-motor-head-trevor-milton-2000-acre-utah-ranch https://www.latimes.com/business/real-estate/story/2019-11-1...
People like this make the world worse for the rest of us (and make it harder for honest startups to raise money).
- neolog 6y agoDo neuralink or boring have successful products? or just demos of already existing tech?
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- kortilla 6y agoDemos of existing tech are even better than what Nikola has.
- pas 6y agoIn general yes, but the Solar Roof Tile thing is still vaporware despite the demo.
- adventured 6y ago> Do neuralink or boring have successful products? or just demos of already existing tech? Are complex, difficult, expensive products or services usually built and launched quickly? Do they occasionally require long cycles of iteration? Maybe the iPhone should have been thrown away at version one. It's 2005, does the Falcon 9 exist yet? Geez, we're waiting. It's obviously all vaporware, a fraud, they could hardly launch the Falcon 1 without it exploding every time. It's 2009, does the Model S exist yet? Geez, we're waiting. It's obviously all vaporware, a fraud, they'll never mass-manufacture electric vehicles.
- addicted 6y agoThe Boring company was also a fraud the way it was originally presented. Musk sold it as this unique new technology they were making, when in reality they had bought some 3rd party machines and flown them in from China.
- imwillofficial 6y agoMore of a joke than deception. They sold flamethrowers for heaven’s sake.
- mayama 6y agoAren't neuralink and boring private corporations? Aren't billionaires allowed to throw money at whatever they fancy, and these kind questions specific to only public corporations?
- pas 6y agoThey are undoubtedly allowed, but the question is important because OP mentioned Neuralink and Boring as things Musk "shipped".
- flunhat 6y agoHow are you judging SpaceX, Neuralink, & Boring to be successes? They’re fine companies with good products, but none of them have fulfilled Musk’s original stated goals: going to Mars, transhumanism, and networks of tunnels for mass transit, respectively. When people say those companies will fail, I imagine the argument is that they won’t achieve these goals. Which, for the time being, is still true. Although it’s true that at least Musk actually builds things. (Some bold takes? Level 5 self driving cars the way we commonly envision it won’t ever come to fruition, SpaceX will never go to Mars, transhumanism will never come to pass, and hyperloops won’t either. You can come back in 5 years and gloat if I’m wrong.)
- eanzenberg 6y agoThat’s a fairly high bar. Musk’s vision is a 100 year vision, I don’t think anyone expects transhumanism in 2021.
- Robotbeat 6y agoMusk has been really bullish on AI. In 2015, he seemed pretty sure we’d have super intelligent AI in 5 years (ie now), and he worried about it which is why he started Neuralink. So he probably was hoping for transhumanism by 2021. That’s why I discount those who think Musk was scamming about self-driving being available soon. He was naive and he tricked himself. Don’t believe his time projections about anything like AI. Doesn’t mean those goals won’t be achieved, even if they are late, tho.
- renewiltord 6y agoOh I will take the Mars bet. What are your terms? Want to longbets.org it?
- bryanlarsen 6y agoI'd also totally take that Mars bet. But I wouldn't touch the other three bets, I think OP is on the right side of those.
- 6y ago
- justapassenger 6y agoMusk has history of building and shipping products, yes. But he's also no stranger to fraud, lies and defrauding investors. Solar roof is best example of that ([1] and [2] talk about it, but there's more stories about it). Solar roof was 100% fake product, that was shown only to justify fraudulently bailing out his other insolvent business. Years later, Tesla still doesn't have solar roof product (they do some solar roof installation, of roof made by Changzhou Almaden, Chinese company [3]). [1] https://ftalphaville.ft.com/2019/08/28/1566985766000/The-great-Tesla-solar-roof-distraction/ https://ftalphaville.ft.com/2019/08/28/1566985766000/The-gre... [2] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/09/solarcity-was-insolvent-when-tesla-paid-2-6-billion-to-buy-it-lawsuit-says/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/09/solarcity-was-in... [3] https://www.pv-tech.org/news/changzhou-almaden-supplying-tesla-glass-solar-roof-tiles https://www.pv-tech.org/news/changzhou-almaden-supplying-tes...
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- fossuser 6y agoTesla buying Solar City was put to a shareholder vote (I voted yes along with the majority). Those shareholders should be happy now with the outcome of letting Musk do what he wants. I'm not convinced any of this rises to fraud and none of it is close to what Nikola is doing here. The solar roof also does exist and they install it, I'm not sure how that's fraud? https://www.tesla.com/solarroof https://www.tesla.com/solarroof because they buy parts from China?
- justapassenger 6y ago> Tesla buying Solar City was put to a shareholder vote (I voted yes along with the majority). Elon staged fake product presentation a month before the vote to gain support for the acquisition [1]. > Those shareholders should be happy now with the outcome of letting Musk do what he wants. > I'm not convinced any of this rises to fraud and none of it is close to what Nikola is doing here. It's not a fraud because it worked? Same as Nikola - if they end up delivering some products in the end and their stock will keep on going up, then they it doesn't matter that they lie now? > The solar roof also does exist and they install it, I'm not sure how that's fraud? https://www.tesla.com/solarroof https://www.tesla.com/solarroof because they buy parts from China? Tesla still doesn't produce any type of solar roof, that was suppose to be their huge technological advantage. It's same as if Nikola instead of producing their vehicles will become dealership for Nissan Leaf. Main difference between Nikola and Tesla now is that Tesla did deliver some products so far, but both companies are using hype and lies to gather funds and generate more hype. Given how much founding Nikola gathered so far, unless the whole EV bubble explodes, they'll also likely deliver some products. [1] https://www.cnbc.com/2019/10/28/musk-deposition-stockholders-v-tesla-solarcity.html https://www.cnbc.com/2019/10/28/musk-deposition-stockholders...
- asdff 6y agoHonestly it's testament to the people in Musk's inner circle and his engineering departments more than the man himself. I'd say he is really good at associating with clever people and organizing collaborations. At the end of the day, he is a billionaire who makes headlines because of the irony of the fact that he probably has ADHD and trolls on twitter and seemingly doesn't care about his reputation, while also heading all these companies. He's a loudmouth cowboy, which is like the archetype American hero. Some people are attracted to rich arrogance more than anything. It's why people pay money to read fluff piece autobiographies ghostwritten for billionaires. It's why people like martin shkreli still have strong fanbases on the internet. Tesla may be a good company, but good companies are not built by one person, and fanboys are usually blind to that fact.
- sokoloff 6y agoDoesn't the job of a CEO basically come down to: 1. Don't (permanently) run out of money 2. Get a bunch of capable people together and organized 3. Point them in a good direction By those measures, he's killed it repeatedly.
- nordsieck 6y ago> Doesn't the job of a CEO basically come down to: > 1. Don't (permanently) run out of money > 2. Get a bunch of capable people together and organized > By those measures, he's killed it repeatedly. The problem with fraud and lies is not that they don't work. They work great. That's the entire reason people do them. The problem is that they stop working after a while. The dream scenario for fraudulent fundraising is that you make so much money with your pitch that you can make your lies a reality before too many people catch on. As anyone who is familiar with kickstarter knows, it rarely works out that way.
- ghgdynb1 6y agoI agree. Real artists ship. Musk ships.
- pauljurczak 6y agoPlacing Neuralink and Boring on the list of successful companies is a bit premature.
- smoyer 6y agoIf you change some people's names, company names and technology names, you could make this an article that's talking about Theranos.