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It seems very much to me as if Musk doesn't know what he is doing. If this is feliberate it looks like he is trying to reduce costs to make Tesla's stock price

It seems very much to me as if Musk doesn't know what he is doing. If this is feliberate it looks like he is trying to reduce costs to make Tesla's stock price go up again.

MBCook 4y ago
Wouldn’t the negativity of the reports of damaged/poorly repaired cars be a bigger drain than any reduction in costs may be a plus?
- toast0 4y ago
  As someone with no horse in the race, the negativity of reports of damaged/nonfunctional/poorly assembled cars straight from manufacturing didn't seem to be a very big drain, so I don't see why moving to shody work later would be a red flag.
  - rodgerd 4y ago
    Exactly. Shoddy assembly, inadequate paint coverage, bumpers that fall off while driving, "whompy wheels" that were due to badly put together suspension, chassis damage from the factory and so on haven't really dented Tesla's reputation - although that's in an atmosphere where most buyers feel the need to write multi-paragraph attestations to how much they love Tesla before discussing those things.
    - judge2020 4y ago
      The majority of people (probably at least 7 nines) who buy a Tesla will never experience anything like this and will reap the rewards of a car with low average maintenance costs (the majority of that being lower-than-average tire lifetimes). Tons of cars from other manufacturers often have similar issues from the factory, eg The Stellantis (Chrysler Dodge Jeep Ram) family supposedly has one lemon every 100k cars produced[0] and that's only if the issue isn't fixed within 3 visits to the dealership's auto repair shop. 0: https://lemonlawexperts.com/list-of-lemon-cars/ https://lemonlawexperts.com/list-of-lemon-cars/
      - ahahahahah 4y ago
        > probably at least 7 nines Wtf are you on? At most 1 in ten million people who buy Tesla will experience this? So, considering that Tesla has sold significantly less that that, do you think all those reports have secretly just been from one person?
- mikkergp 4y ago
  He might be hedging on "eventually"
- rurp 4y ago
  Sure, if customer satisfaction is what you want to optimize for. But in this case: > the main concern is reducing the metric of “next available appointment,” Later on the article talks about how short sellers have been using that metric to gauge service levels, which Tesla wants to undermine. So it looks like the company is explicitly targeting a vanity metric as a knee jerk response to short sellers. Not the best long term strategy...
- ineedasername 4y ago
  You would think so but cars with lots of defects on delivery to the customer have been an issue for years yet Tesla is still able to sell as many cars as it can make. At some point it may catch up to them & they'll have to do something about it, but by then it may be too late to avoid major damage to the company. The fact that it hasn't hurt them yet might make it even worse: it may mean leadership stays in denial over the problem even longer past the point of keeping it manageable.
paulcole 4y ago
Elon Musk knows more about manufacturing than anyone alive on planet Earth. How do I know? He said so himself!
- CamperBob2 4y ago
  Basically he's Trump with twice the IQ. Whether that's a good thing or a bad thing is in the eye of the beholder, I guess.
  - rchaud 4y ago
    For years I thought of him as "Steve Jobs without the charisma" but increasingly the wild Monorail style promises about Mars and Hyperloop are also leading me to think Trump.
    - api 4y ago
      I will always have a spot for him in my respect list for SpaceX. No we don’t have a Mars settlement but what they have accomplished is truly huge. If Starship actually works it will be a new space age. I do suspect we will have a base on the Moon and maybe a little space tourism long before we do anything more than a small not-to-stay trip to Mars. The rocket is only a small part of the tech tree to settle a planet 6mos journey away. The moon is only about three days and there is a daily launch window. That being said I’m also well aware that Gwynne Shotwell and numerous others are at least as responsible. He gets some but by no means all credit. I also give Tesla immense credit for helping tip EVs, though I am less bullish on them by far than SpaceX. They seem to be very different companies.
    - CamperBob2 4y ago
      If he could just stay focused, I have no doubt that he'd make it to Mars. But he evidently can't.
      - paulcole 4y ago
        When you realize his #1 goal is fame and attention, it’s clear that he’s very focused.
LoveGracePeace 4y ago
"It seems very much to me as if Musk doesn't know what he is doing." Didn't he put like, a whole car, into orbit around the Sun?
- kumarvvr 4y ago
  Its easy to think of this stunt as some sort of playboyy thing, but I felt it was a brilliant PR move. They needed a known weight to test the rocket and orbital flight mechanics. Instead of putting any random thing, he put his car and the world went gaga over the stunt. It brought Tesla and SpaceX tremendous amount of press. As a founder, he made full use of an opportunity.
- magic_hamster 4y ago
  Actually, all cars orbit the sun. But seriously, that stunt has nothing to do with production Teslas. Tesla is still a very new player we are now seeing more and more growing pains, especially on the customer side, which is too bad but honestly should have been expected. We are the first adopters to discover what kind of shelf life a Tesla car has, what it works like after 5, 10 and 15 years. Personally, I'm not optimistic about it. It seems to break down quite easily for a lot of people - add a decade of wear and tear on top of that, and it's not a great picture.
  - panick21_ 4y ago
    The idea that we are only now seeing growing pains is wrong. Service has always been a major issue. As far back as Model S it has been a consistent topic. The base electronic, motors and batteries seem to be pretty reliable for most people. They had very few major issues with those things compared to most companies much smaller EV efforts.
oxplot 4y ago
> It seems very much to me as if Musk doesn't know what he is doing. Teslas are ever more in demand, with wait times extending to a year. They are the highest selling EVs in the world by a large margin and they make the highest margin on EVs they sell, while others are losing money and stopping production (latest of which is Ford Mache E). He knows what he's doing.
- misiti3780 4y ago
  I generally do not understand how people can accuse Musk of being incompetent in 2022.
panick21_ 4y ago
Given the year over year growth from Tesla for 13+ years in a row it seems a bit silly to suggest he doesnt know what he is doing. He took direct control of a company when it was going straight to shit and now its by far the largest EV company on the planned and they are still growing like a startup. The public perception that everything Musk does it to optimize short term stock price seems to me totally and completly wrong. I think far more accurate assesment would be that he focus on long term planning off the core limitation his companies are facing. And that will be positive for long term. And so far this has proven out very successful. I can give many exapmles. And in that he pays sometimes for not doing as well on the sideshows. Aguable that is the only way you can even consider running multible comapanies like that.
93po 4y ago

It seems very much to me as if Musk doesn't know what he is doing. If this is feliberate it looks like he is trying to reduce costs to make Tesla's stock price go up again.

MBCook 4y ago

Wouldn’t the negativity of the reports of damaged/poorly repaired cars be a bigger drain than any reduction in costs may be a plus?

toast0 4y ago
As someone with no horse in the race, the negativity of reports of damaged/nonfunctional/poorly assembled cars straight from manufacturing didn't seem to be a very big drain, so I don't see why moving to shody work later would be a red flag.
- rodgerd 4y ago
  Exactly. Shoddy assembly, inadequate paint coverage, bumpers that fall off while driving, "whompy wheels" that were due to badly put together suspension, chassis damage from the factory and so on haven't really dented Tesla's reputation - although that's in an atmosphere where most buyers feel the need to write multi-paragraph attestations to how much they love Tesla before discussing those things.
  - judge2020 4y ago
    The majority of people (probably at least 7 nines) who buy a Tesla will never experience anything like this and will reap the rewards of a car with low average maintenance costs (the majority of that being lower-than-average tire lifetimes). Tons of cars from other manufacturers often have similar issues from the factory, eg The Stellantis (Chrysler Dodge Jeep Ram) family supposedly has one lemon every 100k cars produced[0] and that's only if the issue isn't fixed within 3 visits to the dealership's auto repair shop. 0: https://lemonlawexperts.com/list-of-lemon-cars/ https://lemonlawexperts.com/list-of-lemon-cars/
    - ahahahahah 4y ago
      > probably at least 7 nines Wtf are you on? At most 1 in ten million people who buy Tesla will experience this? So, considering that Tesla has sold significantly less that that, do you think all those reports have secretly just been from one person?
mikkergp 4y ago
He might be hedging on "eventually"
rurp 4y ago
Sure, if customer satisfaction is what you want to optimize for. But in this case: > the main concern is reducing the metric of “next available appointment,” Later on the article talks about how short sellers have been using that metric to gauge service levels, which Tesla wants to undermine. So it looks like the company is explicitly targeting a vanity metric as a knee jerk response to short sellers. Not the best long term strategy...
ineedasername 4y ago
You would think so but cars with lots of defects on delivery to the customer have been an issue for years yet Tesla is still able to sell as many cars as it can make. At some point it may catch up to them & they'll have to do something about it, but by then it may be too late to avoid major damage to the company. The fact that it hasn't hurt them yet might make it even worse: it may mean leadership stays in denial over the problem even longer past the point of keeping it manageable.

paulcole 4y ago

Elon Musk knows more about manufacturing than anyone alive on planet Earth. How do I know? He said so himself!

CamperBob2 4y ago
Basically he's Trump with twice the IQ. Whether that's a good thing or a bad thing is in the eye of the beholder, I guess.
- rchaud 4y ago
  For years I thought of him as "Steve Jobs without the charisma" but increasingly the wild Monorail style promises about Mars and Hyperloop are also leading me to think Trump.
  - api 4y ago
    I will always have a spot for him in my respect list for SpaceX. No we don’t have a Mars settlement but what they have accomplished is truly huge. If Starship actually works it will be a new space age. I do suspect we will have a base on the Moon and maybe a little space tourism long before we do anything more than a small not-to-stay trip to Mars. The rocket is only a small part of the tech tree to settle a planet 6mos journey away. The moon is only about three days and there is a daily launch window. That being said I’m also well aware that Gwynne Shotwell and numerous others are at least as responsible. He gets some but by no means all credit. I also give Tesla immense credit for helping tip EVs, though I am less bullish on them by far than SpaceX. They seem to be very different companies.
  - CamperBob2 4y ago
    If he could just stay focused, I have no doubt that he'd make it to Mars. But he evidently can't.
    - paulcole 4y ago
      When you realize his #1 goal is fame and attention, it’s clear that he’s very focused.

LoveGracePeace 4y ago

"It seems very much to me as if Musk doesn't know what he is doing." Didn't he put like, a whole car, into orbit around the Sun?

kumarvvr 4y ago
Its easy to think of this stunt as some sort of playboyy thing, but I felt it was a brilliant PR move. They needed a known weight to test the rocket and orbital flight mechanics. Instead of putting any random thing, he put his car and the world went gaga over the stunt. It brought Tesla and SpaceX tremendous amount of press. As a founder, he made full use of an opportunity.
magic_hamster 4y ago
Actually, all cars orbit the sun. But seriously, that stunt has nothing to do with production Teslas. Tesla is still a very new player we are now seeing more and more growing pains, especially on the customer side, which is too bad but honestly should have been expected. We are the first adopters to discover what kind of shelf life a Tesla car has, what it works like after 5, 10 and 15 years. Personally, I'm not optimistic about it. It seems to break down quite easily for a lot of people - add a decade of wear and tear on top of that, and it's not a great picture.
- panick21_ 4y ago
  The idea that we are only now seeing growing pains is wrong. Service has always been a major issue. As far back as Model S it has been a consistent topic. The base electronic, motors and batteries seem to be pretty reliable for most people. They had very few major issues with those things compared to most companies much smaller EV efforts.

oxplot 4y ago

> It seems very much to me as if Musk doesn't know what he is doing. Teslas are ever more in demand, with wait times extending to a year. They are the highest selling EVs in the world by a large margin and they make the highest margin on EVs they sell, while others are losing money and stopping production (latest of which is Ford Mache E). He knows what he's doing.

misiti3780 4y ago
I generally do not understand how people can accuse Musk of being incompetent in 2022.

panick21_ 4y ago

Given the year over year growth from Tesla for 13+ years in a row it seems a bit silly to suggest he doesnt know what he is doing. He took direct control of a company when it was going straight to shit and now its by far the largest EV company on the planned and they are still growing like a startup. The public perception that everything Musk does it to optimize short term stock price seems to me totally and completly wrong. I think far more accurate assesment would be that he focus on long term planning off the core limitation his companies are facing. And that will be positive for long term. And so far this has proven out very successful. I can give many exapmles. And in that he pays sometimes for not doing as well on the sideshows. Aguable that is the only way you can even consider running multible comapanies like that.

93po 4y ago