3 ms·
> Tesla offloaded the hardest, least profitable part of the Solar Roof — the physical install and the customer relationship — onto small local companies, let th
by ElProlactin 1mo ago
> Tesla offloaded the hardest, least profitable part of the Solar Roof — the physical install and the customer relationship — onto small local companies, let them absorb the training and tooling costs, and then pulled the product out from under them.
I wonder how many of the companies understood this is what Tesla was doing, and recognized the risk inherent in their position.
- toomuchtodo 1mo agoNah, same with Amazon delivery subcontractors. This is sophisticated capitalists and industrialists preying on the unsophisticated.
- felixgallo 1mo agoDo you suspect Amazon is going to stop delivering packages?
- toomuchtodo 1mo agoI suspect they will continue to use “contractors” until regime change forces them not to. Midterms look good for swinging toward Dems (due to gestures broadly at everything), and this federal admin has an end date (relates to NLRB and employee classification enforcement). These issues change on an arc over years or decades. NYC has started to do this until then: https://www.nyc.gov/mayors-office/news/2026/08/mayor-mamdani-backs--delivery-protection-act--to-rein-in-amazon- https://www.nyc.gov/mayors-office/news/2026/08/mayor-mamdani... Bloomberg investigation: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2026-06-02/amazon-trump-settlement-win-showed-just-how-tough-delivery-drivers-have-it https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2026-06-02/amazon-tr... | https://archive.today/3Nnj9 https://archive.today/3Nnj9
- JLO64 1mo agoI deliver packages for Amazon as an independent contractor (via Amazon Flex). While there are plenty of issues I have with it, I have an overall positive sentiment. For those who don’t want to work full time hours (you can schedule yourself in 1-5 hour blocks), immigrants, or are just in a bad spot it’s not a bad option. I’ve worked for food delivery apps as well and I think it’s a better gig compared to those other ones.
- toomuchtodo 1mo agoI’ve heard a rumor that ICE is using access to gig work platforms to pickup immigrants, so I’m unsure if it’s a positive for those in the US who aren’t citizens. They’ve already consumed IRS data to do so (in violation of the law, but laws don’t matter currently). DoorDash specifically has strong signal it’s relying heavily on undocumented labor, for example. The only folks it really works for are those who need to convert their vehicle equity to cash promptly without any regulation. https://img1.wsimg.com/blobby/go/cc91fda7-4669-4d1b-81ce-a0b8d77f25ab/downloads/b0a1f32a-9b7b-414c-8d1d-3cbed8bae846/Culper_DASH_10-23-2025.pdf https://img1.wsimg.com/blobby/go/cc91fda7-4669-4d1b-81ce-a0b...
- toomuchtodo 26d agoThe IRS Gave ICE Some Information It Really Shouldn't Have - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49686473 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49686473 - September 2026
- throw93947309 1mo agoSo "employees" will drive for uber/amazon in their own cars, and will be unable to put gas and car maintenance into tax write offs as expenses (it is form of commute to work). Lovely!
- a4isms 1mo agoI can't speak for anyone else, but I suspect that Amazon are nearly continuously planning for automated deliveries. Drones? Trucks with lockers that stop in front of your house and you retrieve your delivery? I dunno, but there's no way Bezos doesn't look at his drivers and delivery partners and think, "Your livelihood will soon be my margin."
- toomuchtodo 1mo agoDo you think robotics on the street are going to last long at scale? How’s it going for Flock ALPR cameras? Is Bezos going to be out in the streets defending automated vehicles, drones, and last mile robots on foot? Unlikely.
- walrus01 1mo agoI think the long term plan is for the automated vehicles and last mile robots to defend themselves. We're already living in some form of a post-modern cyberpunk dystopia, it just isn't full distributed yet.
- afavour 1mo agoI don’t think that comparison works. People aren’t attacking Flock cameras because they’re taking work away from hard working video camera watchers. It’s because they’re spying on them. By comparison autonomous delivery vehicles aren’t doing anything the manned vehicles don’t do today.
- toomuchtodo 1mo agohttps://cdn.vanderbilt.edu/vu-URL/wp-content/uploads/sites/412/2024/10/31150554/Drones_Polling_FINAL.pdf https://cdn.vanderbilt.edu/vu-URL/wp-content/uploads/sites/4... > As part of a June 2024 survey, the Vanderbilt Policy Accelerator for Political Economy and Regulation (VPA) polled 1,031 U.S. adults ages 18 or older to identify attitudes toward drone delivery services, which may soon be much more common due to changes in the regulations governing them. Our polling reveals that Americans are deeply concerned about the possibility of neighborhood disturbances, privacy violations, and abuses of power by the large corporations poised to dominate drone delivery, including Amazon, Google, and Walmart. Moreover, we find overwhelming bipartisan support for the regulation of drone delivery services. When Americans learn about policy options to curtail the drawbacks of drone delivery, they respond positively to the government taking action. I think the comparison works.
- ben_w 1mo agoTo add to sibling comment about the "contractor" part being the key word: https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=T3jxhuvPfQ629BOIL4 https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=...
- SpicyLemonZest 1mo agoAltogether, no. But I do think a combination of Amazon Locker, autonomous vehicles and perhaps drones are likely to radically change how last-mile delivery looks, and I don't think it's a coincidence that so much of that network currently offloads the capital onto third-party contractors.
- TitaRusell 1mo agoIn my country they are really pushing parcel lockers. And it makes sense- most people are not at home during the day. If they can put a 24/7 locker in every neighborhood or apartment complex it would be much more efficient.
- Rebelgecko 1mo agoColloquially, no. But do I think there will be W-2 employees of Amazon.com, Inc (dba Amazon) delivering packages? Definitely not. It's not like Amazon owned the Prime Air plane that crashed yesterday, or employed the pilots
- mytailorisrich 1mo agoIt seems to me that this is standard practice in the industry (solar panels/batteries, HVAC, boilers, heat pumps, etc). And, yes it leaves you at risk if the supplier decides to cancel the product(s) or if they just go bust. Electrek has a bias against Tesla/Musk, IMHO and so tend to paint everything in a negative way. You need to take what they write with a grain of salt.
- delusional 1mo ago> Electrek has a bias against Tesla/Musk, IMHO and so tend to paint everything in a negative way. I would say Tesla and Musk are a little bit worse here than Siemens or Honda or whatever. Usually the manufacturers don't lie quite as loudly about the future of the product. I'm sure Tesla has been more opaque then other manufacturers, but I agree that the consequence here is just normal course of business stuff.
- atonse 1mo agoI've never seen a person have such a frothing-at-the-mouth hate for any company as Fred Lambert at Elektrek has for Musk/Tesla. Just filter for his posts, it's kind of crazy. After a few posts I started noticing a while back. Lambert writes like Elon Musk killed his puppies with his bare hands. It causes Lambert to have nearly zero credibility in anything he writes about Tesla. It doesn't come from a place of good faith reporting.
- tempestn 1mo agoI do agree that Lambert's coverage of Tesla appears to be pretty one-sided, and that the company has provided significant benefits to the world, but I also think there's a reasonable case to be made that Musk himself is a uniquely deleterious figure, even if the harm he brings isn't with his bare hands.
- atonse 1mo agoThat may be true, but I feel that is a separate conversation (whether Elon Musk and his companies, taken whole, have had net good or net bad contributions to the world) from Lambert's coverage, which seems to pick any single _event_ and select the most heinous, corrupt, version full of malicious intent when often unwarranted, extremely bad faith and never adds informational value to that larger debate.
- delusional 1mo agoComing from a family of local contractors, some of whom install HVAC and such. Most of them probably understood this. It's part of the business. Pretty much every product, you are going to install, has some sort of training required, to install it properly, such that the manufacturer warranty isn't voided.
- MichaelZuo 1mo agoYeah it would be more surprising if they didn’t have a mandatory expensive program considering how much more complex it is than normal roofing stuff.
- cramer4next 1mo agoI'm from the same background of contractors. This stuff happens all the time and is nothing unqiue to Tesla. The regular anti: Musk, Ellison and Zuckerberg crowd out with their drums and masks again.
- piva00 1mo ago> The regular anti: Musk, Ellison and Zuckerberg crowd out with their drums and masks again. You understand that if you left this sentence out of your comment it'd read as absolutely reasonable, right? With that addition it verges on inflammatory for no added purpose whatsoever to the message.
- iugtmkbdfil834 1mo agoIt is going sound awful ( and I resist it myself, because of what it implies about us in general ), but best predictor of human behavior is what they have done in the past. There is a reason I don't own anything Tesla and last time I looked at solar roof, I explicitly noted that this brand is not an option. Nothing this expensive is allowed to become abandonware this easily. I have to assume he will be sued hard, because that kind of practice needs to be penalized hard by our society.
- chid 1mo agoIf you look at the history it was doomed to fail. I wouldn’t blame it on Tesla.
- vardalab 1mo agoWho would you blame it on? Physics, gravity, destiny?
- walrus01 1mo agoI would blame whatever team of figurative rocket scientists decided that putting something with many dozens of tiny discrete electrical connectors in a flat aesthetically pleasing format on a roof, exposed to rain/snow/ice. There's a reason why the MC4 connector for traditional PV panel wiring and similar is designed the way it is, and why other things like IP67 and IP68 rated outdoor, 600/1000/1500V rated DC power connectors are as robust as they are. This is entirely aside from the installation and mounting and labor issues to have such a weird custom solar roof tile and mount it in a way that doesn't make the roof impossible to maintain, doesn't cause leaks, and doesn't blow away in the wind. And then secondarily blame Tesla's acquisition of solarcity to bail out Elon's brother.
- foolin 1mo agoHuh? Bad innovation ideas is an entire market that creates secondary markets. When the outcome is larger than an article in science direct and can only be described as inevitable then there is a conglomerate with some weak decision makers.
- theflyinghorse 1mo agoIt’s the whole business for the installers. You get margin where you can, and that for them is in the marketing and selling and installing and supporting for the customers.
- shevy-java 1mo agoSome probably did not know, but they learned a hard lesson here. Smaller companies should ideally help trade with one another and cut off those greedy billionaire corporations that will eat them up whenever they can - or betray them, as Tesla showed this here.