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Is it possible Mr. Musk's companies are actually in deep trouble financially, and this political stuff is actually a means to an end?

Workaccount2 2y ago
Tesla is abundantly wealthy mostly on the back of it's delusional investors creating a self-fulfilling prophecy.
- dgfitz 2y ago
  Sounds like crypto…
- ty6853 2y ago
  As was Enron...
  - labster 2y ago
    Enron is making a comeback now: https://www.cnn.com/2024/12/02/business/enron-resurrected-joke-nightcap/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2024/12/02/business/enron-resurrected-jo...
    - evan_ 2y ago
      as a crypto play apparently, so > mostly on the back of [its] delusional investors creating a self-fulfilling prophecy continues to hold true.
- im3w1l 2y ago
  I'm not saying you are wrong, but GME is an interesting contrast. Despite delusional investors they didn't manage to make anything of it.
  - adastra22 2y ago
    They're still around. Remember they were shorted because they seemed on the verge of bankruptcy..
    - im3w1l 2y ago
      More zombie than thriving though.
      - adastra22 2y ago
        Fair enough. They were able to exploit it with a massive share offering at a high price, which not only got them in the black but set them up with considerable holdings sufficient to survive the next downturn. So they're not going anywhere. But yeah, I don't think they have any ideas for future growth. They should have used that money to buy GOG and go into digital distribution competing with Valve & Epic, or something like that. But then again, so many stable companies get pushed by their investors to make big ambitious bets, then go belly-up. I kinda got respect for them just focusing on a good brick-and-mortor game buying experience.
Spooky23 2y ago
Tesla is a fraud just short of Enron. (Enron was a complete fabrication. Tesla is a real company with fabricated valuation.) The valuation is based on hand wavey gibberish. The company has repeatedly sold consumers products that don’t exist. The concepts of duty of care, loyalty, and obedience are foreign concepts to the owner of the company. JP Morgan’s analyst position on the company really says it all: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/jpmorgan-deeply-skeptical-wall-streets-192157499.html https://finance.yahoo.com/news/jpmorgan-deeply-skeptical-wal... The scary thing is that the lie is so big, everyone is exposed to it — TSLA is 2% of VTI’s holdings.
- buu700 2y ago
  I don't know offhand what TSLA's stock price is, but I think it's fair to say that the speculative value is at least very high if you believe that Tesla Optimus is at all a viable competitor to Boston Dynamics Atlas. I see much more long-term potential value in that than the car business. Robotaxi is also a pretty interesting bet. I'm skeptical that it'll pan out, or at least that it will ever reach the same level of safety as Waymo without lidar, but on the other hand AI has obviously significantly advanced and been significantly democratized compared to when Tesla first launched Autopilot over a decade ago. More significantly, I see the decentralized rollout strategy as a potentially viable path to beat Waymo to the punch of a full-scale deployment. Waymo might still get there first based on its headstart and massive warchest, but Tesla's strategy is essentially crowdfunding it while using the market to optimize geographic distribution. The downside is that allowing the Robotaxi to be used in arbitrary/novel locations might be significantly less safe and/or more computationally expensive than Waymo's approach, so it's a more uncertain bet than Waymo.
  - andriesm 2y ago
    I'm also thinking that we'll have "cool" humanoid robots before we'll have fully autonomous cars. It just seems that self driving is staying a "hard problem" (harder than expected!) Both would be insanely economically valuable. I do fear humanoid robots will face intense competition from Chinese mass manufacturing, undercutting them with cost while mostly matching features.
  - 2y ago
adastra22 2y ago
Both Tesla and SpaceX are insanely profitable.
- rstuart4133 2y ago
  Tesla was very profitable. Gross Margin is 14% now of revenue now. 1/4 of their their $8B profit is emissions credits. That's not shabby and they have lowish debt ($20B). But it isn't what I'd call insane. Google's gross margin is 58%, profit is $349B.
  - adastra22 2y ago
    I'm not sure why you're comparing the gross margin of a car company to an internet company. General Motors has a gross margin of 10%. Ford's is 7%. Historically Tesla's was ~25%, but yeah it's fallen a bit since I last looked.
    - rstuart4133 2y ago
      > I'm not sure why you're comparing the gross margin of a car company to an internet company. Because the benchmark set was "insane". I agree no car company gets insane profitability levels. Tesla was never insanely profitable by most metrics.
- verzali 2y ago
  SpaceX is not insanely profitable. Starlink might become so, but it isn't yet.
  - adastra22 2y ago
    Only because they're funneling every dollar they earn into Starship. But as Starship contributes absolutely nothing to current revenue, excluding those costs is the only fair apples-to-apples comparison. We don't know their exact costs because SpaceX is still a private company, but estimates are on the order of 60% profit margin across their business lines.

Workaccount2 2y ago

Tesla is abundantly wealthy mostly on the back of it's delusional investors creating a self-fulfilling prophecy.

dgfitz 2y ago
Sounds like crypto…
ty6853 2y ago
As was Enron...
- labster 2y ago
  Enron is making a comeback now: https://www.cnn.com/2024/12/02/business/enron-resurrected-joke-nightcap/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2024/12/02/business/enron-resurrected-jo...
  - evan_ 2y ago
    as a crypto play apparently, so > mostly on the back of [its] delusional investors creating a self-fulfilling prophecy continues to hold true.
im3w1l 2y ago
I'm not saying you are wrong, but GME is an interesting contrast. Despite delusional investors they didn't manage to make anything of it.
- adastra22 2y ago
  They're still around. Remember they were shorted because they seemed on the verge of bankruptcy..
  - im3w1l 2y ago
    More zombie than thriving though.
    - adastra22 2y ago
      Fair enough. They were able to exploit it with a massive share offering at a high price, which not only got them in the black but set them up with considerable holdings sufficient to survive the next downturn. So they're not going anywhere. But yeah, I don't think they have any ideas for future growth. They should have used that money to buy GOG and go into digital distribution competing with Valve & Epic, or something like that. But then again, so many stable companies get pushed by their investors to make big ambitious bets, then go belly-up. I kinda got respect for them just focusing on a good brick-and-mortor game buying experience.

Spooky23 2y ago

Tesla is a fraud just short of Enron. (Enron was a complete fabrication. Tesla is a real company with fabricated valuation.) The valuation is based on hand wavey gibberish. The company has repeatedly sold consumers products that don’t exist. The concepts of duty of care, loyalty, and obedience are foreign concepts to the owner of the company. JP Morgan’s analyst position on the company really says it all: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/jpmorgan-deeply-skeptical-wall-streets-192157499.html https://finance.yahoo.com/news/jpmorgan-deeply-skeptical-wal... The scary thing is that the lie is so big, everyone is exposed to it — TSLA is 2% of VTI’s holdings.

buu700 2y ago
I don't know offhand what TSLA's stock price is, but I think it's fair to say that the speculative value is at least very high if you believe that Tesla Optimus is at all a viable competitor to Boston Dynamics Atlas. I see much more long-term potential value in that than the car business. Robotaxi is also a pretty interesting bet. I'm skeptical that it'll pan out, or at least that it will ever reach the same level of safety as Waymo without lidar, but on the other hand AI has obviously significantly advanced and been significantly democratized compared to when Tesla first launched Autopilot over a decade ago. More significantly, I see the decentralized rollout strategy as a potentially viable path to beat Waymo to the punch of a full-scale deployment. Waymo might still get there first based on its headstart and massive warchest, but Tesla's strategy is essentially crowdfunding it while using the market to optimize geographic distribution. The downside is that allowing the Robotaxi to be used in arbitrary/novel locations might be significantly less safe and/or more computationally expensive than Waymo's approach, so it's a more uncertain bet than Waymo.
- andriesm 2y ago
  I'm also thinking that we'll have "cool" humanoid robots before we'll have fully autonomous cars. It just seems that self driving is staying a "hard problem" (harder than expected!) Both would be insanely economically valuable. I do fear humanoid robots will face intense competition from Chinese mass manufacturing, undercutting them with cost while mostly matching features.
- 2y ago

adastra22 2y ago

Both Tesla and SpaceX are insanely profitable.

rstuart4133 2y ago
Tesla was very profitable. Gross Margin is 14% now of revenue now. 1/4 of their their $8B profit is emissions credits. That's not shabby and they have lowish debt ($20B). But it isn't what I'd call insane. Google's gross margin is 58%, profit is $349B.
- adastra22 2y ago
  I'm not sure why you're comparing the gross margin of a car company to an internet company. General Motors has a gross margin of 10%. Ford's is 7%. Historically Tesla's was ~25%, but yeah it's fallen a bit since I last looked.
  - rstuart4133 2y ago
    > I'm not sure why you're comparing the gross margin of a car company to an internet company. Because the benchmark set was "insane". I agree no car company gets insane profitability levels. Tesla was never insanely profitable by most metrics.
verzali 2y ago
SpaceX is not insanely profitable. Starlink might become so, but it isn't yet.
- adastra22 2y ago
  Only because they're funneling every dollar they earn into Starship. But as Starship contributes absolutely nothing to current revenue, excluding those costs is the only fair apples-to-apples comparison. We don't know their exact costs because SpaceX is still a private company, but estimates are on the order of 60% profit margin across their business lines.