4 ms·

There's two Musks for me, Tesla (and everyday) Musk and SpaceX Musk. The latter has greatly exceeded my expectations!

kibwen 4y ago
The success of SpaceX appears to be in minimizing the amount of damage that Elon is capable of doing with his relentless and short-sighted micromanaging.
- panick21_ 4y ago
  SpaceX and Tesla are some of the must successful firms in two of the most difficult industries on the plant. Musk is the longest running CEO in these industries. There is lots of evidence that his micro-managing as you call, is actually really, really successful. And there is also a huge amount of evidence that Musk is actually not short-sighted, but in fact thinks far ahead of the competitors. In 2014, the Gigafactory was considered crazy and a car company investing so much of its own capital in something that suppliers were supposed to do, was seen as idiotic. Now this model is literally copied by everybody. In the meantime, Tesla was a tiny car company in 2017, still seen as somewhat of a joke. But even then they were already starting to transition into a battery company and now Tesla makes it own batteries, based on its own chemistries in its own battery factory that is run with its in-house designed and manufacturing machines. So while GM and its partner is still trying to get its first own Gigafactory online (and suffering serious delays), Tesla has moved past that and is literally building its own factories with its own chemistry. We could go threw countless other examples. People love to pick out cases where things didn't work and ignore all the other cases where it did work.
  - kibwen 4y ago
    > now Tesla makes it own batteries, based on its own chemistries in its own battery factory that is run with its in-house designed and manufacturing machines It's entirely unclear to me whether or not Tesla's battery manufacturing is bearing any fruit in practice. Here's the most recent article I found, from September: https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/inside-teslas-drive-keep-musks-battery-promise-2022-09-06/ https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/inside... The sources predict that Tesla will find it difficult to fully implement the new dry-coating manufacturing process before the end of this year, and perhaps not until 2023. Stan Whittingham, a co-inventor of lithium-ion batteries and a 2019 Nobel laureate, believes Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk has been overly optimistic on the time frame for commercializing the new technique. [...] Tesla acquired the know-how in 2019 when it paid over $200 million for Maxwell Technologies, a company in San Diego making ultracapacitors, which store energy for devices that need quick bursts of electricity, such as camera flashes. [...] "They can produce in small volume, but when they started big volume production, Tesla ended up with many rejects, too many," one of the sources with ties to Tesla told Reuters. Production yields were so low that all the anticipated cost savings from the new process were lost, the source said. This sounds exactly like Elon Musk's usual MO: 1) acquire a company and then take credit for their inventions in order to paint himself as a visionary, 2) overpromise and underdeliver, counting on his legions of blind faithful to keep stock prices irrationally high in the process, and 3) base all profitability on the availability of government handouts, in this case the tax incentives for US-sourced batteries.
    - panick21_ 4y ago
      > It's entirely unclear to me whether or not Tesla's battery manufacturing is bearing any fruit in practice. Tesla has issues manufacturing its own cells with its own chemistries and its own production equipment. At the same time its competitors all have issues with manufacturing even while depending on battery partners that take most of the profits (look at GM if you want an up to date example). And the article even suggest that they will solve this and that there are very real serious saving that Tesla can achieve. Even the most negative talking point only suggest that the potential savings are lost, well ok, so in the worst case they are still as well of as their competitors. Quite basically every other car company would kill to be in Tesla position. Its as simple as that. > This sounds exactly like Elon Musk's usual MO: 1) acquire a company and then take credit for their inventions in order to paint himself as a visionary, First of all, Musk or Tesla never took credit for inventing dry-coating manufacturing, this is just something you made up because it seems you have some personal issues with Musk. Dry coating is a good idea has been known for a while, making it practical for real large scale production has always been the issue. Musk even talked about Maxwell in some of the presentation on the topic. And if you actually start to look into this whole topic, its quite clear that for Maxwell they initially developed some small prove of concept, then engaged partners to work with them to get this technology to a scale where its viability could be assets, Tesla was their major partner in this. At that point the promise of the technology was so large that Tesla decided to simply acquire the company rather then to continue as a partnership. When Tesla bought Maxwell the technology was nowhere near ready for prime time. Tesla had to still do a huge amount of work, with many, many more iterations on the technology and major effort at scaling. Tesla is building its own coating huge scale machine to achieve this. Its a complete misunderstanding of how large scale battery manufacturing works to claim that they simple bought a company and that's why they don't actually didn't do anything or don't deserve any credit. Dry coating is just one of many things Tesla had to do to become a battery manufacturer. There are many, many other things that I don't have time for in this comment. Tesla bought a number of companies other then Maxwell as well, Hiber is another example. There are more. There are very few new companies that turn into battery manufacturing companies. And most of them are just that, manufacturing companies. They license most of their technology and buy standard construction equipment. Tesla of course does some of these things to, but they also did a huge amount of the technology on both the cell and the manufacturing equipment. But Tesla turning itself into a battery company is clearly a major achievement and was incredibly forward looking when they started and is still way ahead of everybody. Tesla was literally doing advanced research in battery manufacturing while the Ford CEO was still walking around talking about how 'batteries are not an issue and can easily be bought on the open market'. Of course that CEO was fired and now Ford is doing what Tesla did in 2014. > 2) overpromise and underdeliver, counting on his legions of blind faithful to keep stock prices irrationally high in the process, and Ok, this is another one of these Anti-Musk truism that sound smart but are actually stupid. If you underdeliver on making your company into a the a large battery manufacturer, that is still a huge success that literally every other car company would kill to have. He under-delivered vis-a-vis his own predictions. His own predictions aren't relevant. Many of the actual stock analysts actually assumed there would be delay. And the major institutions who actually buy most Tesla stock knew that. The idea that Tesla stock is only owned by some legion of brain-dead individual investors is just false. And as you can see from their delivery numbers, issues with their own production has not crashed the company, because guess what, Tesla planned ahead because they knew that scaling a totally new battery manufacturing was incredibly difficult. And anyway, Tesla hasn't even raised any cash during most of that time. You seem to be stuck in pre-2018 way of thinking with regards to Tesla. They have not raised money for years and the last couple times they did raise money they didn't actually spend it. The have retired some debt but mostly their cash balance has been growing. So any claim that Tesla has been doing stuff to manipulate the stock price only so they could raise more money to fuel their sinking company is just blatantly false. Its not actually a defensible position, Tesla is public, go look at the financials. The anti-musk conspiracy theory logic that literally anything he does is some 6D galaxy brain move to convince people in the short term to boost stock value is just not real, it doesn't even make sense as a strategy. Tesla has been working on cell chemistry and cell manufacturing for well over 10 years and has been serious about become a sell manufacture for at least 7 years. They have early on made strategic choice that battery manufacturing is a major core competency and have pursued it. During that time stock has gone up and down and up and down, legislation regarding to EV and batteries have been changing all over the world in many way. But the strategy from Tesla has been consistent. So the idea that this is about short term stock manipulation is just so bad that I can't even wrap my had around how somebody could believe it. The only reason I can think of that somebody would actually believe such an insane argument is if they just have deep personal hate for Musk that overwrites any logical thinking skills and any anti-Musk argument has to be true. Musk is easy to hate, but really it shouldn't overwrite basic logical reasoning. 3) base all profitability on the availability of government handouts, in this case the tax incentives for US-sourced batteries. First of all, please give an actual links to the exact intensives you are talking about. As far as I know before the Biden IRA no such thing existed and I have not heard of details of what was introduced. Second, this claim is mostly nonsense in general. Tesla profited from general mechanism, mainly EV credits and ZEV credits, both system were available to all car companies. So why are other car companies not as successful profitable. Clearly you suggest this is easy, just take handouts make profits, and yet, seem to only work for Tesla. During the time frame you 'analyze' Tesla has gone from making little money to more money then Ford and GM combined. Yet Ford and GM combined had 2x as much access to those same intensives. And anyway, Tesla was already building batteries in the US in Nevada since 2015 and that what matters for any intensives in regards to battery manufacturing. They located in the US long before battery manufacturing was considered strategic. And the actual resources for these cells, will not come from the US whether Tesla or Panasonic builds the cells. So really non of your points hold up.
- marcusverus 4y ago
  I know we don't like management, you guys. But if a guy can found three billion-dollar companies and still fall short of your definition of "good manager"... it's possible that you've lost the plot.
  - kibwen 4y ago
    Elon Musk didn't found Tesla, he bought it with the proviso that they pretend that he was a founder. He also didn't found PayPal; Confinity developed PayPal, which merged with Musk's company before rebranding the enterprise to PayPal, after which Musk was then fired for incompetence. But he sure is great at taking credit for the work of others, including the work of Gwynne Shotwell at SpaceX, who is, by all accounts, the real person in charge.
    - panick21_ 4y ago
      Musk didn't found Tesla, but Musk financed Tesla and made it successful. Before he was CEO Tesla was a disaster company that was driven straight into a trash pile by its original CEO. > after which Musk was then fired for incompetence The other founders wanted to sell the company, Musk wanted to turn it into an internet bank. Looking back Musk strategy was actually what Paypal should have gone with, rather then shackling itself to ebay. > But he sure is great at taking credit for the work of others Yeah because what really mattered for Tesla is what happened before 2008, every after that doesn't matter. Like seriously dude, I understand you dislike Musk on a personal level. But how can you be so blinded by hate as to suggest being CEO of a car company for literally 15 years (longest in the car industry) and that car company going from basically bankrupt to having the highest profit in the industry (outside of maybe Toyota) is not 'good management'? > including the work of Gwynne Shotwell at SpaceX, who is, by all accounts, the real person in charge. 'By all accounts' and by that you mean by all accounts that Anti-Musk Twitter has made up to fuel their rage boner? Because its not the case based on Shotwells own account. Its not the case based on the account by literally anybody who actually worked there. Its not the case by the account by journalists and other observes who know the company very well. So really its not the case by any serious account. Shotwell was head of business development until well into the Falcon 9 development, did she do everything then too?

The success of SpaceX appears to be in minimizing the amount of damage that Elon is capable of doing with his relentless and short-sighted micromanaging.

panick21_ 4y ago
SpaceX and Tesla are some of the must successful firms in two of the most difficult industries on the plant. Musk is the longest running CEO in these industries. There is lots of evidence that his micro-managing as you call, is actually really, really successful. And there is also a huge amount of evidence that Musk is actually not short-sighted, but in fact thinks far ahead of the competitors. In 2014, the Gigafactory was considered crazy and a car company investing so much of its own capital in something that suppliers were supposed to do, was seen as idiotic. Now this model is literally copied by everybody. In the meantime, Tesla was a tiny car company in 2017, still seen as somewhat of a joke. But even then they were already starting to transition into a battery company and now Tesla makes it own batteries, based on its own chemistries in its own battery factory that is run with its in-house designed and manufacturing machines. So while GM and its partner is still trying to get its first own Gigafactory online (and suffering serious delays), Tesla has moved past that and is literally building its own factories with its own chemistry. We could go threw countless other examples. People love to pick out cases where things didn't work and ignore all the other cases where it did work.
- kibwen 4y ago
  > now Tesla makes it own batteries, based on its own chemistries in its own battery factory that is run with its in-house designed and manufacturing machines It's entirely unclear to me whether or not Tesla's battery manufacturing is bearing any fruit in practice. Here's the most recent article I found, from September: https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/inside-teslas-drive-keep-musks-battery-promise-2022-09-06/ https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/inside... The sources predict that Tesla will find it difficult to fully implement the new dry-coating manufacturing process before the end of this year, and perhaps not until 2023. Stan Whittingham, a co-inventor of lithium-ion batteries and a 2019 Nobel laureate, believes Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk has been overly optimistic on the time frame for commercializing the new technique. [...] Tesla acquired the know-how in 2019 when it paid over $200 million for Maxwell Technologies, a company in San Diego making ultracapacitors, which store energy for devices that need quick bursts of electricity, such as camera flashes. [...] "They can produce in small volume, but when they started big volume production, Tesla ended up with many rejects, too many," one of the sources with ties to Tesla told Reuters. Production yields were so low that all the anticipated cost savings from the new process were lost, the source said. This sounds exactly like Elon Musk's usual MO: 1) acquire a company and then take credit for their inventions in order to paint himself as a visionary, 2) overpromise and underdeliver, counting on his legions of blind faithful to keep stock prices irrationally high in the process, and 3) base all profitability on the availability of government handouts, in this case the tax incentives for US-sourced batteries.
  - panick21_ 4y ago
    > It's entirely unclear to me whether or not Tesla's battery manufacturing is bearing any fruit in practice. Tesla has issues manufacturing its own cells with its own chemistries and its own production equipment. At the same time its competitors all have issues with manufacturing even while depending on battery partners that take most of the profits (look at GM if you want an up to date example). And the article even suggest that they will solve this and that there are very real serious saving that Tesla can achieve. Even the most negative talking point only suggest that the potential savings are lost, well ok, so in the worst case they are still as well of as their competitors. Quite basically every other car company would kill to be in Tesla position. Its as simple as that. > This sounds exactly like Elon Musk's usual MO: 1) acquire a company and then take credit for their inventions in order to paint himself as a visionary, First of all, Musk or Tesla never took credit for inventing dry-coating manufacturing, this is just something you made up because it seems you have some personal issues with Musk. Dry coating is a good idea has been known for a while, making it practical for real large scale production has always been the issue. Musk even talked about Maxwell in some of the presentation on the topic. And if you actually start to look into this whole topic, its quite clear that for Maxwell they initially developed some small prove of concept, then engaged partners to work with them to get this technology to a scale where its viability could be assets, Tesla was their major partner in this. At that point the promise of the technology was so large that Tesla decided to simply acquire the company rather then to continue as a partnership. When Tesla bought Maxwell the technology was nowhere near ready for prime time. Tesla had to still do a huge amount of work, with many, many more iterations on the technology and major effort at scaling. Tesla is building its own coating huge scale machine to achieve this. Its a complete misunderstanding of how large scale battery manufacturing works to claim that they simple bought a company and that's why they don't actually didn't do anything or don't deserve any credit. Dry coating is just one of many things Tesla had to do to become a battery manufacturer. There are many, many other things that I don't have time for in this comment. Tesla bought a number of companies other then Maxwell as well, Hiber is another example. There are more. There are very few new companies that turn into battery manufacturing companies. And most of them are just that, manufacturing companies. They license most of their technology and buy standard construction equipment. Tesla of course does some of these things to, but they also did a huge amount of the technology on both the cell and the manufacturing equipment. But Tesla turning itself into a battery company is clearly a major achievement and was incredibly forward looking when they started and is still way ahead of everybody. Tesla was literally doing advanced research in battery manufacturing while the Ford CEO was still walking around talking about how 'batteries are not an issue and can easily be bought on the open market'. Of course that CEO was fired and now Ford is doing what Tesla did in 2014. > 2) overpromise and underdeliver, counting on his legions of blind faithful to keep stock prices irrationally high in the process, and Ok, this is another one of these Anti-Musk truism that sound smart but are actually stupid. If you underdeliver on making your company into a the a large battery manufacturer, that is still a huge success that literally every other car company would kill to have. He under-delivered vis-a-vis his own predictions. His own predictions aren't relevant. Many of the actual stock analysts actually assumed there would be delay. And the major institutions who actually buy most Tesla stock knew that. The idea that Tesla stock is only owned by some legion of brain-dead individual investors is just false. And as you can see from their delivery numbers, issues with their own production has not crashed the company, because guess what, Tesla planned ahead because they knew that scaling a totally new battery manufacturing was incredibly difficult. And anyway, Tesla hasn't even raised any cash during most of that time. You seem to be stuck in pre-2018 way of thinking with regards to Tesla. They have not raised money for years and the last couple times they did raise money they didn't actually spend it. The have retired some debt but mostly their cash balance has been growing. So any claim that Tesla has been doing stuff to manipulate the stock price only so they could raise more money to fuel their sinking company is just blatantly false. Its not actually a defensible position, Tesla is public, go look at the financials. The anti-musk conspiracy theory logic that literally anything he does is some 6D galaxy brain move to convince people in the short term to boost stock value is just not real, it doesn't even make sense as a strategy. Tesla has been working on cell chemistry and cell manufacturing for well over 10 years and has been serious about become a sell manufacture for at least 7 years. They have early on made strategic choice that battery manufacturing is a major core competency and have pursued it. During that time stock has gone up and down and up and down, legislation regarding to EV and batteries have been changing all over the world in many way. But the strategy from Tesla has been consistent. So the idea that this is about short term stock manipulation is just so bad that I can't even wrap my had around how somebody could believe it. The only reason I can think of that somebody would actually believe such an insane argument is if they just have deep personal hate for Musk that overwrites any logical thinking skills and any anti-Musk argument has to be true. Musk is easy to hate, but really it shouldn't overwrite basic logical reasoning. 3) base all profitability on the availability of government handouts, in this case the tax incentives for US-sourced batteries. First of all, please give an actual links to the exact intensives you are talking about. As far as I know before the Biden IRA no such thing existed and I have not heard of details of what was introduced. Second, this claim is mostly nonsense in general. Tesla profited from general mechanism, mainly EV credits and ZEV credits, both system were available to all car companies. So why are other car companies not as successful profitable. Clearly you suggest this is easy, just take handouts make profits, and yet, seem to only work for Tesla. During the time frame you 'analyze' Tesla has gone from making little money to more money then Ford and GM combined. Yet Ford and GM combined had 2x as much access to those same intensives. And anyway, Tesla was already building batteries in the US in Nevada since 2015 and that what matters for any intensives in regards to battery manufacturing. They located in the US long before battery manufacturing was considered strategic. And the actual resources for these cells, will not come from the US whether Tesla or Panasonic builds the cells. So really non of your points hold up.
marcusverus 4y ago
I know we don't like management, you guys. But if a guy can found three billion-dollar companies and still fall short of your definition of "good manager"... it's possible that you've lost the plot.
- kibwen 4y ago
  Elon Musk didn't found Tesla, he bought it with the proviso that they pretend that he was a founder. He also didn't found PayPal; Confinity developed PayPal, which merged with Musk's company before rebranding the enterprise to PayPal, after which Musk was then fired for incompetence. But he sure is great at taking credit for the work of others, including the work of Gwynne Shotwell at SpaceX, who is, by all accounts, the real person in charge.
  - panick21_ 4y ago
    Musk didn't found Tesla, but Musk financed Tesla and made it successful. Before he was CEO Tesla was a disaster company that was driven straight into a trash pile by its original CEO. > after which Musk was then fired for incompetence The other founders wanted to sell the company, Musk wanted to turn it into an internet bank. Looking back Musk strategy was actually what Paypal should have gone with, rather then shackling itself to ebay. > But he sure is great at taking credit for the work of others Yeah because what really mattered for Tesla is what happened before 2008, every after that doesn't matter. Like seriously dude, I understand you dislike Musk on a personal level. But how can you be so blinded by hate as to suggest being CEO of a car company for literally 15 years (longest in the car industry) and that car company going from basically bankrupt to having the highest profit in the industry (outside of maybe Toyota) is not 'good management'? > including the work of Gwynne Shotwell at SpaceX, who is, by all accounts, the real person in charge. 'By all accounts' and by that you mean by all accounts that Anti-Musk Twitter has made up to fuel their rage boner? Because its not the case based on Shotwells own account. Its not the case based on the account by literally anybody who actually worked there. Its not the case by the account by journalists and other observes who know the company very well. So really its not the case by any serious account. Shotwell was head of business development until well into the Falcon 9 development, did she do everything then too?