3 ms·

Tesla got the job done, which was empower Musk, not manufacture EVs at scale. The stock is the product.

by toomuchtodo 10mo ago

totetsu 10mo ago
Has it all really been just one giant grift to steal every Americans social security number.
- WalterBright 10mo ago
  And what would he do with them?
  - lazide 10mo ago
    The same systems had labor board whistleblower info. Why would musk love to identify (or at a minimum, but a huge chilling effect on) labor board whistleblowers? The world may never know.
    - deleted 10mo ago
      [deleted]
  - toomuchtodo 10mo ago
    Try to impair democracy through election denial groups? Absolute power and all that jazz. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46734078 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46734078 The Trump administration admits even more ways DOGE accessed sensitive personal data - https://www.npr.org/2026/01/23/nx-s1-5684185/doge-data-social-security-privacy https://www.npr.org/2026/01/23/nx-s1-5684185/doge-data-socia... - January 23rd, 2026 Case No. 1:25-cv-00596-ELH - https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.mdd.577321/gov.uscourts.mdd.577321.197.0.pdf https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.mdd.577... > The unnamed employees secretly conferred with a political advocacy group about a request to match Social Security data with state voter rolls to "find evidence of voter fraud and to overturn election results in certain States," the filing said. It remains unclear whether any data actually went to this group. “Maybe you do not care much about the future of the Republican Party. You should. Conservatives will always be with us. If conservatives become convinced that they can not win democratically, they will not abandon conservatism. The will reject democracy.” —- David Frum
    - junofan 10mo ago
      So why the car company? Also I was told there is no voter fraud. Is that just because nobody’s looking?
      - toomuchtodo 10mo ago
        > So why the car company? How else was he going to become wealthy? Wealth is unelected power. Show me evidence he’s after anything but power. > Also I was told there is no voter fraud. Is that just because nobody’s looking? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electoral_fraud_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electoral_fraud_in_the_United_... https://www.npr.org/2024/10/11/nx-s1-5147732/voter-fraud-explainer https://www.npr.org/2024/10/11/nx-s1-5147732/voter-fraud-exp... https://www.brennancenter.org/topics/voting-elections/vote-suppression/myth-voter-fraud https://www.brennancenter.org/topics/voting-elections/vote-s... https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/debunking-voter-fraud-myth https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/debu... There is no material voter fraud. It is a red herring to disenfranchise voters.
        toomuchtodo 9mo ago
        Additional citation: The Georgia voter data is clean - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46856850 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46856850 - February 2026
      - Braxton1980 10mo ago
        >Also I was told there is no voter fraud. Is that just because nobody’s looking? I was told you haven't raped anyone, is that because we haven't looked into it? Unless there's evidence that something happened when decisions need to be made we assume it didn't. It's so sad an engineer like you believe there was widespread fraud in the 2020 election even after all the investigations. It speaks volumes to your abilities in all aspects of life.
      - croon 10mo ago
        I'm not following your logic. What you responded to was a quote of a request that claimed that was what they were looking for. Whether it was a good-faith request or they used the data for only that, etc is the real question. And if they did find something, it would obviously have been in court a long time ago.
jopsen 10mo ago
> The stock is the product. Musk reeks of scam. But for a stock pump and dumb scheme there sure are a lot of teslas on the road.
- tw04 10mo ago
  Tesla sold 1.7M cars in 2024. Toyota sold 11.1M cars in 2024. Tesla’s current market cap is $1.43T. Toyota’s current market cap is $354B. There really aren’t that many teslas on the road, and their sales are declining.
  - wasfgwp 10mo ago
    This kind of maybe made sense for a while their revenue was growing at a very fast pace but now that its stagnant/falling they are no different to any other car company.
    - burningChrome 10mo ago
      I wonder if this coincides with Musk getting into politics? Never a good choice to alienate half your customer base. Michael Jordan famously said he never got into politics because "Republicans buy sneakers, too."
  - tonyhart7 10mo ago
    Tesla stock isn't valued as a car company
    - ben_w 10mo ago
      Which is exactly the problem. The stock is priced on expectations of how many humanoid robots they might sell over the next decade. Those expectations in turn treat humanoid robotics as if Tesla is the only game in town, when Tesla's Optimus is not yet available for purchase and other companies already ship. Then someone brings up the value of Tesla's AI to those robots, and here's my response to that to save re-writing it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46799603 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46799603
misiek08 10mo ago
Maybe I’m just naive enough, because I love cars and progress, but I think you agree that he really showed our whole small world that EV can exist and work. Everyone laughed, no one believed it will work and here he still is rich and we have Teslas everywhere. Driving, not killing more people than other brands.
- longitudinal93 10mo ago
  Except that the Model Y accounts for more fatalities than any other car out there.
  - codebolt 10mo ago
    Going to need a citation on this one.
    - ted_dunning 10mo ago
      I don't even think it is correct. Teslas as a whole have twice the fatality rate [1] per billion miles as the industry overall and the model Y has a rate 4x the industry average, but that can't overwhelm the fact that there are too few Teslas on the road to make that 2x or 4x turn into more total fatalities. [1] https://www.roadandtrack.com/news/a62919131/tesla-has-highest-fatal-accident-rate-of-all-auto-brands-study/ https://www.roadandtrack.com/news/a62919131/tesla-has-highes...
      - darkwater 10mo ago
        A quote from the original study [1], in which Porsche 911 is the 4th on the list “The models on this list likely reflect a combination of driver behavior and driving conditions, leading to increased crashes and fatalities.” I would like to remind you that Tesla's least powered vehicle has around 300HP and needs ~7s to go from 0 to 100km/h. Musk is a moron but Teslas are still good and safe vehicles. [1] https://www.iseecars.com/most-dangerous-cars-study https://www.iseecars.com/most-dangerous-cars-study
Cthulhu_ 10mo ago
While you're correct on the one hand, Tesla made EVs feasible and mainstream, did the investments and caused a rolling effect of worldwide investments in e.g. batteries and EVs, and government subsidies that also made investing in EVs more attractive to competitors. Besides EVs, Tesla's long term revenue could very well be in the supercharger network, too. It's not as exciting as self driving cars, but the oil companies have been the most valuable companies / stocks worldwide without being exciting like that. I mean I don't think EV charging will be anywhere near as big as oil because it doesn't involve nearly as much infrastructure or international trade, but it's still big, especially if governments refocus on replacing ICEs with EVs. (the focus has been let go because the subsidies were too popular and expensive)
- DennisP 10mo ago
  I agreed on the supercharger network, which made it pretty surprising when Musk fired the entire supercharger team.

Tesla got the job done, which was empower Musk, not manufacture EVs at scale. The stock is the product.

totetsu 10mo ago

Has it all really been just one giant grift to steal every Americans social security number.

WalterBright 10mo ago
And what would he do with them?
- lazide 10mo ago
  The same systems had labor board whistleblower info. Why would musk love to identify (or at a minimum, but a huge chilling effect on) labor board whistleblowers? The world may never know.
  - deleted 10mo ago
    [deleted]
- toomuchtodo 10mo ago
  Try to impair democracy through election denial groups? Absolute power and all that jazz. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46734078 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46734078 The Trump administration admits even more ways DOGE accessed sensitive personal data - https://www.npr.org/2026/01/23/nx-s1-5684185/doge-data-social-security-privacy https://www.npr.org/2026/01/23/nx-s1-5684185/doge-data-socia... - January 23rd, 2026 Case No. 1:25-cv-00596-ELH - https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.mdd.577321/gov.uscourts.mdd.577321.197.0.pdf https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.mdd.577... > The unnamed employees secretly conferred with a political advocacy group about a request to match Social Security data with state voter rolls to "find evidence of voter fraud and to overturn election results in certain States," the filing said. It remains unclear whether any data actually went to this group. “Maybe you do not care much about the future of the Republican Party. You should. Conservatives will always be with us. If conservatives become convinced that they can not win democratically, they will not abandon conservatism. The will reject democracy.” —- David Frum
  - junofan 10mo ago
    So why the car company? Also I was told there is no voter fraud. Is that just because nobody’s looking?
    - toomuchtodo 10mo ago
      > So why the car company? How else was he going to become wealthy? Wealth is unelected power. Show me evidence he’s after anything but power. > Also I was told there is no voter fraud. Is that just because nobody’s looking? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electoral_fraud_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electoral_fraud_in_the_United_... https://www.npr.org/2024/10/11/nx-s1-5147732/voter-fraud-explainer https://www.npr.org/2024/10/11/nx-s1-5147732/voter-fraud-exp... https://www.brennancenter.org/topics/voting-elections/vote-suppression/myth-voter-fraud https://www.brennancenter.org/topics/voting-elections/vote-s... https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/debunking-voter-fraud-myth https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/debu... There is no material voter fraud. It is a red herring to disenfranchise voters.
      - toomuchtodo 9mo ago
        Additional citation: The Georgia voter data is clean - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46856850 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46856850 - February 2026
    - Braxton1980 10mo ago
      >Also I was told there is no voter fraud. Is that just because nobody’s looking? I was told you haven't raped anyone, is that because we haven't looked into it? Unless there's evidence that something happened when decisions need to be made we assume it didn't. It's so sad an engineer like you believe there was widespread fraud in the 2020 election even after all the investigations. It speaks volumes to your abilities in all aspects of life.
    - croon 10mo ago
      I'm not following your logic. What you responded to was a quote of a request that claimed that was what they were looking for. Whether it was a good-faith request or they used the data for only that, etc is the real question. And if they did find something, it would obviously have been in court a long time ago.

jopsen 10mo ago

> The stock is the product. Musk reeks of scam. But for a stock pump and dumb scheme there sure are a lot of teslas on the road.

tw04 10mo ago
Tesla sold 1.7M cars in 2024. Toyota sold 11.1M cars in 2024. Tesla’s current market cap is $1.43T. Toyota’s current market cap is $354B. There really aren’t that many teslas on the road, and their sales are declining.
- wasfgwp 10mo ago
  This kind of maybe made sense for a while their revenue was growing at a very fast pace but now that its stagnant/falling they are no different to any other car company.
  - burningChrome 10mo ago
    I wonder if this coincides with Musk getting into politics? Never a good choice to alienate half your customer base. Michael Jordan famously said he never got into politics because "Republicans buy sneakers, too."
- tonyhart7 10mo ago
  Tesla stock isn't valued as a car company
  - ben_w 10mo ago
    Which is exactly the problem. The stock is priced on expectations of how many humanoid robots they might sell over the next decade. Those expectations in turn treat humanoid robotics as if Tesla is the only game in town, when Tesla's Optimus is not yet available for purchase and other companies already ship. Then someone brings up the value of Tesla's AI to those robots, and here's my response to that to save re-writing it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46799603 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46799603

misiek08 10mo ago

Maybe I’m just naive enough, because I love cars and progress, but I think you agree that he really showed our whole small world that EV can exist and work. Everyone laughed, no one believed it will work and here he still is rich and we have Teslas everywhere. Driving, not killing more people than other brands.

longitudinal93 10mo ago
Except that the Model Y accounts for more fatalities than any other car out there.
- codebolt 10mo ago
  Going to need a citation on this one.
  - ted_dunning 10mo ago
    I don't even think it is correct. Teslas as a whole have twice the fatality rate [1] per billion miles as the industry overall and the model Y has a rate 4x the industry average, but that can't overwhelm the fact that there are too few Teslas on the road to make that 2x or 4x turn into more total fatalities. [1] https://www.roadandtrack.com/news/a62919131/tesla-has-highest-fatal-accident-rate-of-all-auto-brands-study/ https://www.roadandtrack.com/news/a62919131/tesla-has-highes...
    - darkwater 10mo ago
      A quote from the original study [1], in which Porsche 911 is the 4th on the list “The models on this list likely reflect a combination of driver behavior and driving conditions, leading to increased crashes and fatalities.” I would like to remind you that Tesla's least powered vehicle has around 300HP and needs ~7s to go from 0 to 100km/h. Musk is a moron but Teslas are still good and safe vehicles. [1] https://www.iseecars.com/most-dangerous-cars-study https://www.iseecars.com/most-dangerous-cars-study

Cthulhu_ 10mo ago

While you're correct on the one hand, Tesla made EVs feasible and mainstream, did the investments and caused a rolling effect of worldwide investments in e.g. batteries and EVs, and government subsidies that also made investing in EVs more attractive to competitors. Besides EVs, Tesla's long term revenue could very well be in the supercharger network, too. It's not as exciting as self driving cars, but the oil companies have been the most valuable companies / stocks worldwide without being exciting like that. I mean I don't think EV charging will be anywhere near as big as oil because it doesn't involve nearly as much infrastructure or international trade, but it's still big, especially if governments refocus on replacing ICEs with EVs. (the focus has been let go because the subsidies were too popular and expensive)

DennisP 10mo ago
I agreed on the supercharger network, which made it pretty surprising when Musk fired the entire supercharger team.