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It's hard to feel optimistic about Tesla these days. Musk is gutting the company while dangling bizarre and wildly unrealistic promises in front of shareholders

by paxys 3y ago

It's hard to feel optimistic about Tesla these days. Musk is gutting the company while dangling bizarre and wildly unrealistic promises in front of shareholders (releasing Optimus robot, self driving taxis, licensing self driving tech, training AI models on all Tesla cars, launching unnamed cheaper product lines – all by the end of the year). This will get a short term stock price boost and probably get his $56 billion pay package approved, but when then? Who saves Tesla from reality after Musk gets his money and checks out?

Maxious 3y ago
> Musk made clear in a call with analysts earlier this month that he is focused on opportunities in artificial intelligence, robotics and autonomous robotaxis. https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/musk-disbands-tesla-ev-charging-team-leaving-customers-dark-2024-04-30/ https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/musk-d... Presumably that was before Tesla needed to recall all the cybertrucks for stuck acceleration. AI says blame the floormats
throw310822 3y ago
> Optimus robot, self driving taxis, licensing self driving tech, training AI models I think it might be worth saying that: 1) Tesla has already accomplished its stated mission of making EV cars mainstream. This was Musk's goal from the beginning, and (insofar it is true that he's interested in working on "world changing problems" and not in making money per se) the mission of Tesla as a driver of transformation is accomplished. 2) Musk might have decided since a while that Tesla has a desperate need to pivot, because being a mass producer of a mature technology in the West is not sustainable in the long run.
- ToucanLoucan 3y ago
  > Musk might have decided since a while that Tesla has a desperate need to pivot, because being a mass producer of a mature technology in the West is not sustainable in the long run. I'm sorry just... what? Being in a position to sell products to a robust and demanding market is a bad thing? What in the Business Major brain are we saying here? And frankly calling their products "mature technology" feels like a stretch given Tesla is regularly stubbing it's toe on pretty benign design problems that numerous other automakers have had nailed down for decades.
  - Breza 3y ago
    Well said. Tesla seems to struggle with things that other manufacturers find easy. The Model T had three floor pedals. The Cybertruck only has two.
  - dawnerd 3y ago
    Yeah nothing about my Tesla is mature technology. Every update is a couple steps back. Every design revision is cost cutting and feature removal (in the name of simplicity of course). We still don’t have auto wipers that work.new still don’t have rear cross traffic alerts when backing up. The cars are laughably bad at parking themselves still. Tesla made a slightly polished MVP and stopped there.
    - ToucanLoucan 3y ago
      My former boss who owns one once had to have their service person come up to Green Bay from Chicago (about 3 hours) because his stupid door handles wouldn't extend and he was stuck at a grocery store.
    - grecy 3y ago
      > Yeah nothing about my Tesla is mature technology Do you honestly believe the battery, charging, inverter, motors and drive train are not mature tech?
  - Timshel 3y ago
    The usual point is that to "justify" Tesla total valuation they can't just be an automaker.
    - ToucanLoucan 3y ago
      Almost seems like the valuation is the problem then, not being in the business of selling cars.
  - throw310822 3y ago
    I mean, both of Musk's endeavours after Paypal, that is, Tesla and SpaceX- were incredibly high-risk bets with the goal of opening entirely new markets where there was none (ev cars and private space launches). At the time Musk was justifying his choice of investments with the idea of doing something new and important for humanity (transitioning out of fossil fuels and colonise other planets)- but in any case it's clear that he wanted to work on something cool and that his choices were not driven primarily by a rational money-making strategy. Fast-forward to 2024, while SpaceX is still delivering science fiction, Tesla is now an EV automaker among many- you can buy EV cars from any automaker and there is a deluge of cheap brands coming from China. Is Musk interested in owning and running a regular car company? I don't think so. I think he's desperate to find something else that is cool enough and incredibly high risk and high returns. Maybe using the capital and infrastructure from Tesla itself- and humanoid robotics seems a good candidate.
- mingus88 3y ago
  EVs are mainstream now? Try planning a trip from Seattle to Madison, WI and let me know how normal that feels for you. Try driving from Mt Shasta to Sacramento in 115 degree heat and see how many fast chargers are working on I-5 I don’t think I would call EVs mainstream until your average renter has access to a home charger. It simply will never be mainstream if people have to worry about when they’ll be able to get their next charge.
  - imglorp 3y ago
    Getting there? EV and hybrid were 16% of US 2023 sales. All new apartment construction and shopping centers near us includes some EV chargers, so renters are slowly catching up. We're getting there. Until then it will be driven by homeowners and fleets.
    - Breza 3y ago
      This is an accurate take. I own my house, so GM paid to install my charger. If I were s renter, they would have given me a bunch of charging credits instead. Every year, I'm seeing more chargers. It's rare for me to worry about charging the car.
    - Jcampuzano2 3y ago
      As an apartment renter, unless they mandate or even completely subsidize existing apartment complexes of a certain size or larger (i.e 100+ residents or something along those lines) install EV charging it will remain an issue here. The vast majority of apartments still have no EV chargers and simply aren't moving to get them installed at all. I myself was in the market for an EV but would have trouble charging at my apartment. I messaged my apartment complex about installing EV support and whether they considered it and they basically sent a 1 sentence email which can be summarized as "lol no".
      - robertlagrant 3y ago
        They're definitely a luxury good in areas where housing is expensive.
- hwillis 3y ago
  If either of those were true Musk would sell Tesla and/or step down so he could have cash and time to do something else. Something tells me there isn't a chance in hell of that happening.
- cqqxo4zV46cp 3y ago
  This is unbelievable. Insanely wealthy person is not interested in “making money per se”? Nobody amasses this wealth without being financially obsessed. No amount of ‘effective altruism’-esque “I need more money so I can do more amazing things” justifies it, especially when you put so much on the line to…buy a social network and as a vanity project. Elon Musk is not a God.
  - kolinko 3y ago
    How many high net worth individuals do you know / have you met? Most of the ones I know consider money as a tool that can be used towards something, not as a goal by itself.
    - John23832 3y ago
      > Most of the ones I know consider money as a tool that can be used towards something, not as a goal by itself. And if you need a massive amount of money to achieve a goal, you obsess about money. Elon (ostensibly) isn't building soup kitchens and community gardens. > How many high net worth individuals do you know / have you met? If you don't think wealthy people obsess over money, I'd honestly wonder how many YOU have met. Not fretting over small amounts of money, or not being ridiculously frugal does not mean that wealthy people do not stress over money.
    - badpun 3y ago
      If they really used money towards that goal, wouldn't they cease to be HNWIs? The fact that they still holding large wealth kind of contradicts what they're saying.
  - xNeil 3y ago
    It actually does seem to be correct, in that Musk doesn't exactly spend his money on homes or cars or yachts or other material possessions - it seems all his money goes to philanthropy and his businesses (hence the 'per se').
    - greedo 3y ago
boringg 3y ago
Tesla going forward with next level fSD and competition (Ford) is recalling 130k vehicles for hands free tech. Optimistic about your equity you invested or the problems they are working on? I mean equity been overstated for awhile - but that's the Musk effect. However Tesla is still far ahead of the competition - I see more Teslas coming on the roads around here then any other EV (not as many cybertrucks though).
- itsoktocry 3y ago
  >I see more Teslas coming on the roads around here then any other EV (not as many cybertrucks though). Because we can't buy vehicles from the Chinese competition. >However Tesla is still far ahead of the competition Are they? Did anyone catch the recent All In Podcast? They were talking about Tesla's robotaxi lead, so Calacanis showed them a video of Waymo operating robotaxis today and Chamath and Sacks had literally never seen it before; "This is amazing!". Pretty easy to believe Tesla is the leader when you don't know what's out there.
  - boringg 3y ago
    No I don't listen to All-in I can't stand listening to any of that self-indulgent nonsense. FYI - because Chamath and Sacks haven't heard of Waymo operating robo taxis before (which is mind-blowing that they didn't know that considering a good portion of their job is an alternative take on the news) does not mean the rest of the world doesn't. Tesla is indeed way ahead on self-driving. In terms of Chinese EVs - that will certainly bring in a lot more competition but they aren't the same class of vehicles. It's like comparing fiat 500 and an audi a6.
    - thebigman433 3y ago
      In what metrics is Tesla ahead on self driving? Waymo has been operating (actual self driving) in SF for years without major incidents, and has been doing revenue service for nearly a year now. Tesla has shown nothing even remotely close to the level of self driving as Waymo, even in a controlled environment. For actual self driving, Tesla is going to need a fully revamped sensor package on the car, as well as major updates to their core software. Id be shocked if they are operating revenue service within even a few years
m_fayer 3y ago
Also their entire lineup of actual cars is now outdated. The ark is almost Shakespearean. Pioneering renegade builds an empire, lets it go to his head, and leads two thirds of it to ruin. I just hope spacex escapes the same fate.
- eagerpace 3y ago
  They have the best selling car on earth, how are they outdated?
  - surgical_fire 3y ago
    Is this true? Care to share some numbers?
    - HappySweeney 3y ago
      I thought it was total bs, but [0] shows it to be true. [0] https://www.statista.com/statistics/239229/most-sold-car-models-worldwide/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/239229/most-sold-car-mod...
      - shakesbeard 3y ago
        Yeah, but that's not a fair comparison. Toyota alone has 40 hybrid models. Tesla has like 4 ... Here's some stats from 2022 and Tesla was 15. in total car sales. [0] [0] https://www.carlogos.org/reviews/worlds-top-selling-automakers.html https://www.carlogos.org/reviews/worlds-top-selling-automake...
    - deelowe 3y ago
      Made the headlines last month. Tesla Y was the best selling car worldwide last year. That said, sales have dropped off a cliff going into this year.
      - surgical_fire 3y ago
        Caveats aside - other manufacturers are a lot more segmented in terms of brands/models trying to cover more price points while Tesla has like 5 models - it is still pretty impressive. I wonder if it would perform as well without Chinese EVs being banned on the US (my guess is yes), but that's another story. The fact that sales dropped off a cliff this year is also interesting. What meaningful happened in this period? More competition from other manufacturers in the EV space? Market saturation (the addressable market of people that would buy EVs was already covered)?
foobarian 3y ago
You know, I have to hand it to Elon. We often hear about how successful companies turn "corporate" and stop being able to innovate because they need to preserve their successful product lines; e.g. Google's ad business. And the leadership in those companies often talk about how they want to "be a big company that acts like a startup" but it's usually just lip service. Well, this is what it actually looks like and it's not pretty; even the customers hate it let alone the employees.
- atonse 3y ago
  I will always remember what one of my previous bosses told me. I had built this whole E-Commerce platform for him and his company (I single-handedly did all the coding, infrastructure, etc. Not taking any credit for their incredible sales team.) that was running in multiple countries, bringing in millions in sales. But I started getting pretty bored once it was stable enough and just running and started seeking greener pastures. And he said (I'm paraphrasing) most people are either builders or maintainers, and rarely both. And he said I was a builder at heart. So I hate maintaining things. Which is why, when I helped hire my replacement, he was VERY much a maintainer, and he flourished in that second phase since it had reached maturity. Using that framework, I think that the ratio of builders to maintainers at Tesla is not healthy right now. It seems VERY healthy at SpaceX, for example. They're innovating on new technology AND on efficiencies of the existing tech and logistics. The builders got them to where they are (I'm still a generally happy Model 3 owner), but the maintainers are the ones who make the maintenance and service experience great, incrementally improve manufacturing, parts availability, all those unsexy things that have more to do with logistics, building superchargers etc. Because they are too lopsided with builders, they keep inventing new stuff instead of continuing to innovate with EVs. For a while there were enough builder type challenges with manufacturing but even those challenges seem to be exhausted. I'm surprised to see that they've gutted the supercharger team because it seems like the ultimate "services" sector where they're in better shape than anyone else to make basically free "services" type money from ALL EVs in coming years with NACS.
  - cqqxo4zV46cp 3y ago
    One person’s maintaining is another person’s building. There are definitely many many very competent people with a “builder” mindset that would get a kick out of building a good maintenance / service experience. It’s simply that these things aren’t respected by…someone…or someones, and don’t get the attention they deserve from the people that could provide it.
UncleOxidant 3y ago
> and probably get his $56 billion pay package approved Maybe I'm not understanding something here, but how does him getting the $56B not crash TSLA stock and the ultimately the company? AFAIKT TSLA has only made about $32B in profit during it's entire existence as a company (and that could be an overestimate - I don't think it accounts for earlier losses which would take it closer to $27B). So why should Musk get almost 2X that? Why would any shareholder (other than Musk) vote for this kind of payout?
- s1artibartfast 3y ago
  You are freely conflating profits and stock valuation, which aren't comparable. The vote is basically on if the shareholders want to honor musks 2018-2022 comp package, which was recently thrown out. The deal was that if Elon got the stock to 600 billion for shareholders, he got to keep 50 billion.
  - boringg 3y ago
    I mean the fact that the comp package got thrown out well after it being approved and him making the metrics is mind blowing. It is not honoring a deal but hey - someone has to pay the lawyers.
    - s1artibartfast 3y ago
      Yeah, I'm split on the issue. The court was right on the technicalities around disclosure, but it was also plain as day the board was musks buddies and the stockholders still approved it the first time. Could the board have negotiated a better deal if they weren't buddies? Probably, but that's why board composition matters. The judge said they thought Musk would have made the milestones without the comp because he already had skin in the game. Ex-post facto recontacting is just icky overall.
    - everforward 3y ago
      This is just kind of an artifact of how our legal system works. Judges don't generally answer hypotheticals, you have to do it and then see how it pans out. All that being said, I would be pretty surprised if this outcome wasn't mentioned as a risk to the board or Musk. They're talking about paying him ~10% of the company's _market cap_ as a bonus, and almost double the revenue the company has made in its entire existence. I'm not terribly surprised that a judge looked at that and immediately thought "breach of fiduciary responsibility to the shareholders". That brings up an awful lot of questions. Does it really take $50B to motivate him, given that his wealth is largely denominated in TSLA stock anyways (meaning he suffers if the stock price drops)? Is there really no one who would do it for cheaper? Firing Elon and hiring a $200M/year CEO would save the company like $50B; why is the board so confident that Elon is going to provide more value to the company than saving $50B on labor costs? Perhaps paying Elon is the right move to make. I'm dubious, but I'm also not a shareholder, so my opinion does and should mean basically nothing. I do hope that if the shareholders vote to approve the bonus, they're allowed to pay it out. They're adults, they should be allowed to do what they believe is in their best interest.
ranger_danger 3y ago
Not to mention he took $17M from federal charging grants right before firing everyone. FTC should be investigating.
buildbot 3y ago
Lol, if he is planning on training on his cars Mercedes/Daimler had that idea back in 2018. I built the demo for the idea using nomad and a bunch of Jetson/Drive boards, and gave a quick presentation to the new CEO (of Daimler!). It’s also patented, for what that is worth.
- creativeSlumber 3y ago
  > It’s also patented, for what that is worth. You picked my curiosity here. What exactly is there to patent here? AI training is being done a computer and that computer happen to be physically located inside a car. How do you patent the location of a computer?
  - buildbot 3y ago
    Patents are odd, is probably all I can say - https://patents.google.com/patent/US20230281046A1/en https://patents.google.com/patent/US20230281046A1/en
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
api_or_ipa 3y ago
On the contrary, it’s hard not to be impressed with Tesla. They moved more Model Y cars than any other car the world over. They unseated Toyota Corolla as the best selling car. That’s just incredible.
hehdhdjehehegwv 3y ago
I was seriously considering getting a Tesla despite my visceral hatred of what Musk has done to Twitter, primarily because the price incentives are really amazing compared to other alternatives, but most of all the charging network. So this is beyond bonkers for me - literally about to hand cash over while holding my nose, but then they kill one of the major reasons I was willing to overlook Musks behavior? Seriously, WTF is this guy on, and more importantly, how much? Nobody sober and sane would do this.
- Geee 3y ago
  Elon alreay explained it on Twitter. Better to follow him there rather than rely on second hand information on news or HN, which tend to mispresent what he actually says. He said that they'll focus on maintaining and expanding current Supercharger stations, and won't build new ones for now.
  - hehdhdjehehegwv 3y ago
    [flagged]
  - vsl 3y ago
    You don't do strategic shifts in direction on the spot, with the team finding out they were fired from news articles, a few days after investors call where you say nothing about this plan and babble about robotaxis instead. Yo do throw bossy tantrums that way. I mean, he flat out wrote he made an example of the sacked team: > “Hopefully these actions are making it clear that we need to be absolutely hard-core about headcount and cost reduction,” he wrote in the email seen by The Information, which also announced the end of the public policy team led by departed executive Rohan Patel. “While some on exec staff are taking this seriously, most are not yet doing so.” But sure, it was a planned move by a genius CEO.
  - aredox 3y ago
    Yeah, better listen to the serial liar and bullshitter.
FireBeyond 3y ago
Meanwhile -actual- end stage FSD is nowhere in sight (this means northeastern winter nights with poor road conditions, not "it handles roundabouts so much better than the previous version!")... The cheaper CT and whatever else he's promising will never see the light of day... And he's delivered 36 of 100 Semis promised for 2017, and has basically implied there's little chance of that situation changing (blaming battery availability).
akira2501 3y ago
> and wildly unrealistic promises in front of shareholders His signature move.
godelski 3y ago
Elon is exceptional at one thing: driving hype. Except Elon seems to have confused this with "driving innovation." The two __can__ correlate, but do not need to. Like I think it is fair to say that Tesla did push the other manufacturers to start pushing electric cars, but it is hard for me to argue that Tesla led the way through innovation. Not that they didn't do innovative stuff, but that the contribution here wasn't all that large.

by paxys 3y ago

Maxious 3y ago

> Musk made clear in a call with analysts earlier this month that he is focused on opportunities in artificial intelligence, robotics and autonomous robotaxis. https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/musk-disbands-tesla-ev-charging-team-leaving-customers-dark-2024-04-30/ https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/musk-d... Presumably that was before Tesla needed to recall all the cybertrucks for stuck acceleration. AI says blame the floormats

throw310822 3y ago

> Optimus robot, self driving taxis, licensing self driving tech, training AI models I think it might be worth saying that: 1) Tesla has already accomplished its stated mission of making EV cars mainstream. This was Musk's goal from the beginning, and (insofar it is true that he's interested in working on "world changing problems" and not in making money per se) the mission of Tesla as a driver of transformation is accomplished. 2) Musk might have decided since a while that Tesla has a desperate need to pivot, because being a mass producer of a mature technology in the West is not sustainable in the long run.

ToucanLoucan 3y ago
> Musk might have decided since a while that Tesla has a desperate need to pivot, because being a mass producer of a mature technology in the West is not sustainable in the long run. I'm sorry just... what? Being in a position to sell products to a robust and demanding market is a bad thing? What in the Business Major brain are we saying here? And frankly calling their products "mature technology" feels like a stretch given Tesla is regularly stubbing it's toe on pretty benign design problems that numerous other automakers have had nailed down for decades.
- Breza 3y ago
  Well said. Tesla seems to struggle with things that other manufacturers find easy. The Model T had three floor pedals. The Cybertruck only has two.
- dawnerd 3y ago
  Yeah nothing about my Tesla is mature technology. Every update is a couple steps back. Every design revision is cost cutting and feature removal (in the name of simplicity of course). We still don’t have auto wipers that work.new still don’t have rear cross traffic alerts when backing up. The cars are laughably bad at parking themselves still. Tesla made a slightly polished MVP and stopped there.
  - ToucanLoucan 3y ago
    My former boss who owns one once had to have their service person come up to Green Bay from Chicago (about 3 hours) because his stupid door handles wouldn't extend and he was stuck at a grocery store.
  - grecy 3y ago
    > Yeah nothing about my Tesla is mature technology Do you honestly believe the battery, charging, inverter, motors and drive train are not mature tech?
- Timshel 3y ago
  The usual point is that to "justify" Tesla total valuation they can't just be an automaker.
  - ToucanLoucan 3y ago
    Almost seems like the valuation is the problem then, not being in the business of selling cars.
- throw310822 3y ago
  I mean, both of Musk's endeavours after Paypal, that is, Tesla and SpaceX- were incredibly high-risk bets with the goal of opening entirely new markets where there was none (ev cars and private space launches). At the time Musk was justifying his choice of investments with the idea of doing something new and important for humanity (transitioning out of fossil fuels and colonise other planets)- but in any case it's clear that he wanted to work on something cool and that his choices were not driven primarily by a rational money-making strategy. Fast-forward to 2024, while SpaceX is still delivering science fiction, Tesla is now an EV automaker among many- you can buy EV cars from any automaker and there is a deluge of cheap brands coming from China. Is Musk interested in owning and running a regular car company? I don't think so. I think he's desperate to find something else that is cool enough and incredibly high risk and high returns. Maybe using the capital and infrastructure from Tesla itself- and humanoid robotics seems a good candidate.
mingus88 3y ago
EVs are mainstream now? Try planning a trip from Seattle to Madison, WI and let me know how normal that feels for you. Try driving from Mt Shasta to Sacramento in 115 degree heat and see how many fast chargers are working on I-5 I don’t think I would call EVs mainstream until your average renter has access to a home charger. It simply will never be mainstream if people have to worry about when they’ll be able to get their next charge.
- imglorp 3y ago
  Getting there? EV and hybrid were 16% of US 2023 sales. All new apartment construction and shopping centers near us includes some EV chargers, so renters are slowly catching up. We're getting there. Until then it will be driven by homeowners and fleets.
  - Breza 3y ago
    This is an accurate take. I own my house, so GM paid to install my charger. If I were s renter, they would have given me a bunch of charging credits instead. Every year, I'm seeing more chargers. It's rare for me to worry about charging the car.
  - Jcampuzano2 3y ago
    As an apartment renter, unless they mandate or even completely subsidize existing apartment complexes of a certain size or larger (i.e 100+ residents or something along those lines) install EV charging it will remain an issue here. The vast majority of apartments still have no EV chargers and simply aren't moving to get them installed at all. I myself was in the market for an EV but would have trouble charging at my apartment. I messaged my apartment complex about installing EV support and whether they considered it and they basically sent a 1 sentence email which can be summarized as "lol no".
    - robertlagrant 3y ago
      They're definitely a luxury good in areas where housing is expensive.
hwillis 3y ago
If either of those were true Musk would sell Tesla and/or step down so he could have cash and time to do something else. Something tells me there isn't a chance in hell of that happening.
cqqxo4zV46cp 3y ago
This is unbelievable. Insanely wealthy person is not interested in “making money per se”? Nobody amasses this wealth without being financially obsessed. No amount of ‘effective altruism’-esque “I need more money so I can do more amazing things” justifies it, especially when you put so much on the line to…buy a social network and as a vanity project. Elon Musk is not a God.
- kolinko 3y ago
  How many high net worth individuals do you know / have you met? Most of the ones I know consider money as a tool that can be used towards something, not as a goal by itself.
  - John23832 3y ago
    > Most of the ones I know consider money as a tool that can be used towards something, not as a goal by itself. And if you need a massive amount of money to achieve a goal, you obsess about money. Elon (ostensibly) isn't building soup kitchens and community gardens. > How many high net worth individuals do you know / have you met? If you don't think wealthy people obsess over money, I'd honestly wonder how many YOU have met. Not fretting over small amounts of money, or not being ridiculously frugal does not mean that wealthy people do not stress over money.
  - badpun 3y ago
    If they really used money towards that goal, wouldn't they cease to be HNWIs? The fact that they still holding large wealth kind of contradicts what they're saying.
- xNeil 3y ago
  It actually does seem to be correct, in that Musk doesn't exactly spend his money on homes or cars or yachts or other material possessions - it seems all his money goes to philanthropy and his businesses (hence the 'per se').
  - greedo 3y ago

boringg 3y ago

Tesla going forward with next level fSD and competition (Ford) is recalling 130k vehicles for hands free tech. Optimistic about your equity you invested or the problems they are working on? I mean equity been overstated for awhile - but that's the Musk effect. However Tesla is still far ahead of the competition - I see more Teslas coming on the roads around here then any other EV (not as many cybertrucks though).

itsoktocry 3y ago
>I see more Teslas coming on the roads around here then any other EV (not as many cybertrucks though). Because we can't buy vehicles from the Chinese competition. >However Tesla is still far ahead of the competition Are they? Did anyone catch the recent All In Podcast? They were talking about Tesla's robotaxi lead, so Calacanis showed them a video of Waymo operating robotaxis today and Chamath and Sacks had literally never seen it before; "This is amazing!". Pretty easy to believe Tesla is the leader when you don't know what's out there.
- boringg 3y ago
  No I don't listen to All-in I can't stand listening to any of that self-indulgent nonsense. FYI - because Chamath and Sacks haven't heard of Waymo operating robo taxis before (which is mind-blowing that they didn't know that considering a good portion of their job is an alternative take on the news) does not mean the rest of the world doesn't. Tesla is indeed way ahead on self-driving. In terms of Chinese EVs - that will certainly bring in a lot more competition but they aren't the same class of vehicles. It's like comparing fiat 500 and an audi a6.
  - thebigman433 3y ago
    In what metrics is Tesla ahead on self driving? Waymo has been operating (actual self driving) in SF for years without major incidents, and has been doing revenue service for nearly a year now. Tesla has shown nothing even remotely close to the level of self driving as Waymo, even in a controlled environment. For actual self driving, Tesla is going to need a fully revamped sensor package on the car, as well as major updates to their core software. Id be shocked if they are operating revenue service within even a few years

m_fayer 3y ago

Also their entire lineup of actual cars is now outdated. The ark is almost Shakespearean. Pioneering renegade builds an empire, lets it go to his head, and leads two thirds of it to ruin. I just hope spacex escapes the same fate.

eagerpace 3y ago
They have the best selling car on earth, how are they outdated?
- surgical_fire 3y ago
  Is this true? Care to share some numbers?
  - HappySweeney 3y ago
    I thought it was total bs, but [0] shows it to be true. [0] https://www.statista.com/statistics/239229/most-sold-car-models-worldwide/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/239229/most-sold-car-mod...
    - shakesbeard 3y ago
      Yeah, but that's not a fair comparison. Toyota alone has 40 hybrid models. Tesla has like 4 ... Here's some stats from 2022 and Tesla was 15. in total car sales. [0] [0] https://www.carlogos.org/reviews/worlds-top-selling-automakers.html https://www.carlogos.org/reviews/worlds-top-selling-automake...
  - deelowe 3y ago
    Made the headlines last month. Tesla Y was the best selling car worldwide last year. That said, sales have dropped off a cliff going into this year.
    - surgical_fire 3y ago
      Caveats aside - other manufacturers are a lot more segmented in terms of brands/models trying to cover more price points while Tesla has like 5 models - it is still pretty impressive. I wonder if it would perform as well without Chinese EVs being banned on the US (my guess is yes), but that's another story. The fact that sales dropped off a cliff this year is also interesting. What meaningful happened in this period? More competition from other manufacturers in the EV space? Market saturation (the addressable market of people that would buy EVs was already covered)?

foobarian 3y ago

You know, I have to hand it to Elon. We often hear about how successful companies turn "corporate" and stop being able to innovate because they need to preserve their successful product lines; e.g. Google's ad business. And the leadership in those companies often talk about how they want to "be a big company that acts like a startup" but it's usually just lip service. Well, this is what it actually looks like and it's not pretty; even the customers hate it let alone the employees.

atonse 3y ago
I will always remember what one of my previous bosses told me. I had built this whole E-Commerce platform for him and his company (I single-handedly did all the coding, infrastructure, etc. Not taking any credit for their incredible sales team.) that was running in multiple countries, bringing in millions in sales. But I started getting pretty bored once it was stable enough and just running and started seeking greener pastures. And he said (I'm paraphrasing) most people are either builders or maintainers, and rarely both. And he said I was a builder at heart. So I hate maintaining things. Which is why, when I helped hire my replacement, he was VERY much a maintainer, and he flourished in that second phase since it had reached maturity. Using that framework, I think that the ratio of builders to maintainers at Tesla is not healthy right now. It seems VERY healthy at SpaceX, for example. They're innovating on new technology AND on efficiencies of the existing tech and logistics. The builders got them to where they are (I'm still a generally happy Model 3 owner), but the maintainers are the ones who make the maintenance and service experience great, incrementally improve manufacturing, parts availability, all those unsexy things that have more to do with logistics, building superchargers etc. Because they are too lopsided with builders, they keep inventing new stuff instead of continuing to innovate with EVs. For a while there were enough builder type challenges with manufacturing but even those challenges seem to be exhausted. I'm surprised to see that they've gutted the supercharger team because it seems like the ultimate "services" sector where they're in better shape than anyone else to make basically free "services" type money from ALL EVs in coming years with NACS.
- cqqxo4zV46cp 3y ago
  One person’s maintaining is another person’s building. There are definitely many many very competent people with a “builder” mindset that would get a kick out of building a good maintenance / service experience. It’s simply that these things aren’t respected by…someone…or someones, and don’t get the attention they deserve from the people that could provide it.

UncleOxidant 3y ago

> and probably get his $56 billion pay package approved Maybe I'm not understanding something here, but how does him getting the $56B not crash TSLA stock and the ultimately the company? AFAIKT TSLA has only made about $32B in profit during it's entire existence as a company (and that could be an overestimate - I don't think it accounts for earlier losses which would take it closer to $27B). So why should Musk get almost 2X that? Why would any shareholder (other than Musk) vote for this kind of payout?

s1artibartfast 3y ago
You are freely conflating profits and stock valuation, which aren't comparable. The vote is basically on if the shareholders want to honor musks 2018-2022 comp package, which was recently thrown out. The deal was that if Elon got the stock to 600 billion for shareholders, he got to keep 50 billion.
- boringg 3y ago
  I mean the fact that the comp package got thrown out well after it being approved and him making the metrics is mind blowing. It is not honoring a deal but hey - someone has to pay the lawyers.
  - s1artibartfast 3y ago
    Yeah, I'm split on the issue. The court was right on the technicalities around disclosure, but it was also plain as day the board was musks buddies and the stockholders still approved it the first time. Could the board have negotiated a better deal if they weren't buddies? Probably, but that's why board composition matters. The judge said they thought Musk would have made the milestones without the comp because he already had skin in the game. Ex-post facto recontacting is just icky overall.
  - everforward 3y ago
    This is just kind of an artifact of how our legal system works. Judges don't generally answer hypotheticals, you have to do it and then see how it pans out. All that being said, I would be pretty surprised if this outcome wasn't mentioned as a risk to the board or Musk. They're talking about paying him ~10% of the company's _market cap_ as a bonus, and almost double the revenue the company has made in its entire existence. I'm not terribly surprised that a judge looked at that and immediately thought "breach of fiduciary responsibility to the shareholders". That brings up an awful lot of questions. Does it really take $50B to motivate him, given that his wealth is largely denominated in TSLA stock anyways (meaning he suffers if the stock price drops)? Is there really no one who would do it for cheaper? Firing Elon and hiring a $200M/year CEO would save the company like $50B; why is the board so confident that Elon is going to provide more value to the company than saving $50B on labor costs? Perhaps paying Elon is the right move to make. I'm dubious, but I'm also not a shareholder, so my opinion does and should mean basically nothing. I do hope that if the shareholders vote to approve the bonus, they're allowed to pay it out. They're adults, they should be allowed to do what they believe is in their best interest.

ranger_danger 3y ago

Not to mention he took $17M from federal charging grants right before firing everyone. FTC should be investigating.

buildbot 3y ago

Lol, if he is planning on training on his cars Mercedes/Daimler had that idea back in 2018. I built the demo for the idea using nomad and a bunch of Jetson/Drive boards, and gave a quick presentation to the new CEO (of Daimler!). It’s also patented, for what that is worth.

creativeSlumber 3y ago
> It’s also patented, for what that is worth. You picked my curiosity here. What exactly is there to patent here? AI training is being done a computer and that computer happen to be physically located inside a car. How do you patent the location of a computer?
- buildbot 3y ago
  Patents are odd, is probably all I can say - https://patents.google.com/patent/US20230281046A1/en https://patents.google.com/patent/US20230281046A1/en
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]

api_or_ipa 3y ago

On the contrary, it’s hard not to be impressed with Tesla. They moved more Model Y cars than any other car the world over. They unseated Toyota Corolla as the best selling car. That’s just incredible.

hehdhdjehehegwv 3y ago

I was seriously considering getting a Tesla despite my visceral hatred of what Musk has done to Twitter, primarily because the price incentives are really amazing compared to other alternatives, but most of all the charging network. So this is beyond bonkers for me - literally about to hand cash over while holding my nose, but then they kill one of the major reasons I was willing to overlook Musks behavior? Seriously, WTF is this guy on, and more importantly, how much? Nobody sober and sane would do this.

Geee 3y ago
Elon alreay explained it on Twitter. Better to follow him there rather than rely on second hand information on news or HN, which tend to mispresent what he actually says. He said that they'll focus on maintaining and expanding current Supercharger stations, and won't build new ones for now.
- hehdhdjehehegwv 3y ago
  [flagged]
- vsl 3y ago
  You don't do strategic shifts in direction on the spot, with the team finding out they were fired from news articles, a few days after investors call where you say nothing about this plan and babble about robotaxis instead. Yo do throw bossy tantrums that way. I mean, he flat out wrote he made an example of the sacked team: > “Hopefully these actions are making it clear that we need to be absolutely hard-core about headcount and cost reduction,” he wrote in the email seen by The Information, which also announced the end of the public policy team led by departed executive Rohan Patel. “While some on exec staff are taking this seriously, most are not yet doing so.” But sure, it was a planned move by a genius CEO.
- aredox 3y ago
  Yeah, better listen to the serial liar and bullshitter.

FireBeyond 3y ago

Meanwhile -actual- end stage FSD is nowhere in sight (this means northeastern winter nights with poor road conditions, not "it handles roundabouts so much better than the previous version!")... The cheaper CT and whatever else he's promising will never see the light of day... And he's delivered 36 of 100 Semis promised for 2017, and has basically implied there's little chance of that situation changing (blaming battery availability).

akira2501 3y ago

> and wildly unrealistic promises in front of shareholders His signature move.

godelski 3y ago

Elon is exceptional at one thing: driving hype. Except Elon seems to have confused this with "driving innovation." The two __can__ correlate, but do not need to. Like I think it is fair to say that Tesla did push the other manufacturers to start pushing electric cars, but it is hard for me to argue that Tesla led the way through innovation. Not that they didn't do innovative stuff, but that the contribution here wasn't all that large.