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2020 has completely changed my perception of Tesla and Musk. I had this image of a benevolent genius who is sometimes misunderstood ("funding secured", "pedo gu
by Pyramus 6y ago
2020 has completely changed my perception of Tesla and Musk. I had this image of a benevolent genius who is sometimes misunderstood ("funding secured", "pedo guy", "Autopilot").
Came across Teslacharts' podcast [1] (now the Chartcast) and oh boy was I wrong.
This is only the latest in a long series of red flags around Tesla/Musk and however it ends, it will not end well.
[1] https://thechartcast.com/ https://thechartcast.com/
- ihsw 6y ago> however it ends, it will not end well Can you be more specific?
- kgwgk 6y agoBeing Elon Musk is securities fraud.
- Clewza313 6y agoTo be fair, as Matt "Money Stuff" Levine likes to say, everything is securities fraud. https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-06-26/everything-everywhere-is-securities-fraud https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-06-26/everyt...
- simonebrunozzi 6y agoCare to elaborate more? You mention the podcast, but not why it has made you think of it as a set of red flags.
- Pyramus 6y agoYes sure, I should have elaborated more. From the top of my head: * Tesla's net profit doesn't come from selling cars to consumers but from selling tax credits to other companies [1]. * Tesla is quite aggressive and creative in its non-GAAP accounting, famously 20% of quarterly profits are accounts receivable. * Elon is not a founder of Tesla, but sued the founders to be able to call himself one. * No competitor working on autonomous driving thinks that Tesla will get there, yet Elon promises that robotaxis are just around the corner for several years now. * Elon was one of the first prominent Covid deniers, then had to turn around and promised to deliver ventilators, none of which were delivered. * When customers came in for warranty repairs, Tesla had them sign an NDA that the repair was goodwill, therefore not having to report numbers on warranty repairs to NHTSA and being able to use different accounting methods. * During factory visits with journalists, no worker is allowed to speak with visitors or vice versa. * Quality assurance in the Fremont factory is sub-par, assembly is done in a tent outside of the factory, even Elon himself says don't buy cars during end of quarter production ramps. * Tesla is facing several hundred litigation lawsuits each year. * Tesla is the company with the most OSHA violations in the US, and, according to whistleblowers, in emergency situations workers are sent back to work or taxis are called instead of ambulances so that no accidents have to be reported. * As the CEO of a billion dollar company, Elon personally likes to "take revenge" on whistle-blowers, journalists and critics. This is just from the top of my head, there are a lot more red flags here (each one being a massive rabbit hole). For the record, I think EVs are a net win, Tesla/Musk have done a great job promoting EVs, Tesla cars do offer a great experience, I have no stock position on TSLA etc. [1] https://edition.cnn.com/2021/01/31/investing/tesla-profitability/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/2021/01/31/investing/tesla-profitabi... /Edit plainsite has a good report here: https://www.plainsite.org/realitycheck/tsla.pdf https://www.plainsite.org/realitycheck/tsla.pdf
- Hamuko 6y ago>who is sometimes misunderstood ("funding secured", "pedo guy", "Autopilot"). Did I misunderstand when I thought he was a liar in two out of three of those cases?
- legolas2412 6y agoAnd I am curious which one of these is flexible enough to be construed as a truth.
- Hamuko 6y agoIt doesn't have to strictly be the truth.
- austenallred 6y agoTeslaCharts has been flatly and inarguably wrong about 100 times by now, especially around things they declare “impossible according to the laws of physics.” To me it sounds like a person with an obsession trying to scour the internet for anything potentially bad, and it’s just sad. Elon’s flaws are pretty transparent. You don’t have to dig for them that hard.
- sugarpile 6y agoPlease do not leave comments like this without _some_ elaboration. Linking to a one hour long podcast is not sufficient, especially without so much as a timestamp.
- Frost1x 6y agoIndeed. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandolini%27s_law https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandolini%27s_law https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sagan_standard https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sagan_standard I've been beginning to wonder for a few years now if there's a fatal flaw in the scientific method in that, at some point, giving proper validation to a piece of information or claimed knowledge becomes so resource intensive that it becomes cost prohibitive in time, energy, capital, etc. to validate or invalidate. In fact, I've been wondering if science itself can get to a point where the body of human knowledge becomes so large that even the typical process of conducting a literature review becomes so costly in some form, you're better off just to do the experiment, study, or whatever. There may be some benefit in this allowing independent consensus of knowledge but you ultimately need some sort if more refined knowledge management system. The society we live in of self-interest perpetuating disinformation and misinformation for personal interest sort of brings this issue on extreme. If you've ever seen absurd claims and wanted to earnestly validate or show how a claim is off, you've experienced this. You can not only make absurd claims now, you can often provide massive bodies of supposed evidence that are difficult if not impossible to tell what is accurate or inaccurate. It's not only enough to provide extraordinary evidence for extraordinary claims, you need to provide focused evidence or evidence that can be reasonably independently validated.
- Pyramus 6y agoApologies, I elaborated further in another comment [1]. Here is a good overview in written form [1] but as long as you don't verify the credibility of the writer, it won't say much. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26065075 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26065075 [2] https://www.plainsite.org/realitycheck/tsla.pdf https://www.plainsite.org/realitycheck/tsla.pdf
- sugarpile 6y ago
- mordymoop 6y agoCould you describe a couple of red flags?
- neximo64 6y agoTweeting for the single purpose of bringing the price up of cryptocurrency
- mrkstu 6y agoYep, he's already the richest guy on the planet and it apparently isn't enough, he has to plunder the crypto market. He is too big and influential to tweet and talk about crypto while also trading in it- he automatically will move the market with every utterance. He should be busy enough that he can stick to his knitting on executing with SpaceX and Tesla that he doesn't have time for this kind of stuff that will get him into real trouble with the government at some point.
- RasputinsBro 6y ago"pedo guy" was the thing that broke the camel's back for me. When you have millions of followers and billions of airtime on you, it's absolutely inexcusable to call a random guy a pedo. When he did that my view of him went from a "fake it till you make it" type, to a dishonest and malicious person.
- tchalla 6y ago> When you have millions of followers and billions of airtime on you, it's absolutely inexcusable to call a random guy a pedo. The comment from Musk was inexcusable but it didn't come out of nowhere. Elon Musk offered help and Mr Unsworth decided not to use it. In a TV interview, he further labelled it a "PR stunt" and suggested that Musk could "stick his submarine where it hurts". That led Musk to respond with the "Pedo guy" comment. Yes, that comment was totally inexcusable and uncalled for but it didn't come out vaccum.
- randomsearch 6y agoFurther, it seemed that Musk was actually talking to other members of the team out there who were more positive about the submarine idea. So it seemed valid to pursue it. And then as you say an argument started and Musk was an asshat. So, he has flaws, he can be an asshat to people.
- ceejayoz 6y ago"I didn't like what he said" isn't a legal defense to defamation.
- randomsearch 6y agoSo when he insulted someone he was having a dispute with, you decided to discount his life’s work?
- RasputinsBro 6y agoWhat do you mean by discounting?
- api 6y agoIf he succeeds with SpaceX, I don't care if he's a lunatic. We must have a frontier. Also: The last round of space innovation was funded by two nuclear armed superpowers competing to show off while simultaneously threatening each other with a war of planetary annihilation. Before that the first rocket capable of reaching space was funded by Hitler. Going from blood soaked warlords to nutty manic billionaires is moral progress.
- TeMPOraL 6y agoAlso the devil is in the details, and at least in some of these cases, Musk doesn't come off that bad if you actually care for the context. That said, what surprised me here is how dangerous this is: Musk's Twitter is probably world's number 1 place for peddling Bitcoin scams. Anyone reasonable would of course immediately recognize the scams because there's no way Musk would have anything to do with cryptocurrency. But now, I predict a lot of folks will get scammed.
- chishaku 6y ago> We must have a frontier? Why? Who is “we”?
- Traubenfuchs 6y agoProbably redditors subscribed to /r/futurism.
- api 6y agoWithout a frontier it's impossible to try anything new, and the only way to resolve a cultural difference is to somehow fight (literally or politically). There are other reasons too, like exposure to novelty and something to focus on other than each others' differences. There's a reason that sci-fi with space flight is almost always more optimistic than sci-fi without space flight.
- chishaku 6y ago> the only way to resolve a cultural difference Can you explain your theory in the context of the American West “frontier”?
- bhouston 6y agoThe issue with Tesla & Elon Musk is that he has a powerful reality distortion ability just like Steve Jobs did. He wills things to happen by force of personality and by believing it so, he convinces others to join him in making these things reality, which then becomes reality. He makes things become true by claiming them to be real before they are. This is not normal and rare to be so talented in that aspect. Hard to predict success/failure or bet against when you have someone like this.
- Inu 6y ago>In March 2020, Musk predicted that there would be "close to zero new cases in US too by end of April." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elon_Musk#COVID-19 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elon_Musk#COVID-19
- bhouston 6y agoI am not saying Elon Musk is perfect. Also I am not saying he can control things he definitely doesn't have control over. I am also not an investor in Tesla or BTC. But he does have an ability to make things happen, things that seem impossible, when he is in a position of influence.
- WA 6y agoThe issue with Elon Musk is that he has a lot of money and applies it to all kinds of bullshit. He doesn't have a reality distortion field. His fans have one. They think this guy is smart. Read his Twitter and name three smart things he wrote. I can't find a single one.
- dkjaudyeqooe 6y agoIs calling someone "the pedo guy" count?
- Pxtl 6y agoFor me the thing that soured me on him was his fixation on Tesla being the solution to all urban transportation problems and his loathing of public transportation. He lived and worked in the Bay Area and L.A. - he's intimately aware of how pathologically bad car-oriented low-density city planning is, which is why the most economically successful place in the world is so hilariously bad to travel in. But his hatred for transit demonstrates an almost absurdly opaque blind-spot for somebody who wants to get his businesses involved in urban transportation planning. edit: corrected his experience with California commutes after reply informed me he was no longer involved in SF bay.
- kenneth 6y agoHe lives and works mostly in Texas now, and used to live in LA, with some time in SF
- gonzo41 6y agoTesla really should take over the electric bicycle market. I'd be a musk convert then. But seeing the Cyber Truck, I just can't see that as a real future for our cities.
- Pxtl 6y agoI'm not sure what value Tesla could add to ebikes (or full-speed motorbikes) besides the cachet they'd bring as a name-brand business - like autopilot wouldn't be a thing. There are zillions of commodity manufacturers building eBikes, what can Tesla add to that? The only big advantage I could see is their charging infrastructure.
- gonzo41 6y agoThey could include the in the EV narative. Right now, they are creating and EV future that's got bad quality expensive cars. If they worked hard on the Bikes, they may be able to ameliorate some of the issues around modern day commuting.
- fasteddie31003 6y agoHe is not perfect. Can you give me examples of people who have changed the world as much as Musk who do not have flaws? Who are your heros?
- pratik_kanthi 6y agoOn the scale of time and things, his endeavours are significant. It is of extreme importance that we colonise mars. That is the single maxim by which I will judge Elon. He might me manipulative but he's not on the wrong side of humanity.
- gegtik 6y agoI think keeping the earth livable outranks living on a distant, hostile, desert planet. Mars is a close second, I'll give you that
- sofixa 6y ago> It is of extreme importance that we colonise mars Is it? Such a moonshot ( Marsshot if you will) requires enormous resources, resources which can be better spent to improve the planet we have, and stop the damage we're doing to it. I don't believe all of humanity can move to and sustain on Mars within a reasonable timeframe and budget ( 100 years, tens trillions of dollars). What exactly is the point of doing so? To run away from the mess on Earth? That's a very shit "solution" and a huge waste IMO.