Musk urges Tesla workers to cut costs ahead of fundraising round
bloomberg.com
bloomberg.com
The fact that Musk told us stage one was done when he came up with that ridiculous grand plan, designed to drum up yet more investor cash, was laughable. Once the Model 3 sells for a profit, and for $35,000, which it never will do, then you can start looking at further grand plans. The Model X was a ridiculous distraction with gull-wing doors any sensible automotive engineer would have pointed out was a production and maintenance nightmare that would never end well.
They're also swallowing Solar City, basically to save it, not because of any grand plan for 'synergy' as Musk says that makes sense.
The Emperor's clothes are starting to dissolve and the wheels are coming off I'm afraid.
As far as I know, the laws of physics governing car doors hasn't changed in the last decade.
Gull-wing doors surely are designed to do one thing, sell the car on look alone. Surely people know they're impractical; but they have the essence of supercar in that impracticality. I had a Lambo' Countache poster as a kid, the flip up doors were probably terrible in practice but they had an evocative unusualness that showed this was no ordinary car. I imagine it gives the vehicle a lot of free marketing and a strong differentiator.
It's relatively easy to build an expensive luxury car. It's incredibly difficult to mass produce an affordable mass market car. We have yet to see any evidence that Tesla is capable of doing so.
This is not just something that I believe. Lots of people believe it, and put their money where their mouth is. Tesla is one of the most shorted stocks there is.
I don't understand your doubt, there are many examples of boutique car companies who sell on either luxury or performance and sometimes both. They are all low volume adventures. There simply is more room to profit and that is attractive. Plus its very easy to feed off of pretentious people, pretentious geeks are even simpler.
Nothing could be further from the truth. Brands such as Lexus, BMW, and Mercedes are extremely profitable, because they offer cars that cost just a little bit more than a "normal" car and charge up to 30K or more for that privilege. The only constraint on the growth of these car makers is that there are not enough people who want (or afford) to pay that price just for the extras.
[0] https://cleantechnica.com/2016/01/15/1-large-luxury-car-in-u...
Tesla's interior is definitely spartan, with things like center console and extra cupholder set available only after-market, but that seems to fit into the story of "design the most lightweight vehicle possible in order to increase the range".
Are there reports of numerous interior-level problems, like fobs or panels or lights or switches falling off, etc.? Because honestly there's not much of "interior" there to discuss its quality.
I wouldn't even try to wrap my arms around what Elon is doing. Cars, Energy, Rockets, etc. It's not everyday that someone who wants to change the status quo comes along. All I know is he must be very lonely with so many people hoping he fails.
NOTE: I'm not a hater or a fanboy.
Moreover, if he succeeds it is not only for his personal merits. That's one of the things that the media gets completely wrong. It is more for the merits of a large group of people working in engineering, advertisement, financing, and because of the general state of the economy. Similarly, if he fails it will not be solely because of his personal qualities.
Who else is trying? A lot of people who could do this are reading Hackernews right now. How many of them are actually trying to do it?
Huh, I'd have assumed the opposite -- that the masses of people following the progress greatly outweighs the man-will-never-fly crowd.
But.....the grand visions before the boring grunt work of engineering has been accomplished, and trying to build massive $5 billion factories before any kind of profitability is on the horizon is not going to help Tesla stick around beyond a few years at most.
They're also right about hydrogen fuel cells. They're stupid. Maybe if we get into space and can get an abundance of hydrogen things will be great. But, here on Earth you have to manufacture the hydrogen and create a vast infrastructure to transport and store it.
Tesla also have a big lead in the use of telemetry and their ability to do software updates over the air and their approach to security and building this in-house. Other car manufacturers will continue to outsource this and continue to fuck up completely.
However, Tesla had to follow through with all of this, maybe be out of the public eye for a while and iterate over the engineering, keeping costs to a minimum and doing the R and D, before moving on to other capitally expensive projects. They've massively overstretched and I don't see it being recoverable.
For him to say that 'stage one' is complete is laughable. We haven't seen Model 3s on sale for $35,000 yet, we haven't seen whether Tesla can get the required production (which they simply can't) and they haven't achieved profit on any car at all yet.
I love his work, but I question his financial decisions.
Be aware if you are buying a car from tesla, that you are at their mercy in terms of parts. There are no third party parts available, and tesla is using all the parts for new cars.
I wonder if other luxury brands such as BMW, Mercedes, Audi, used these types of airbags. I'm guessing not.
http://www.nydailynews.com/autos/news/takata-airbag-recall-l...
Brands include: BMW, Mercedes, Land Rover, Jaguar, Audi, Lexus,....
These companies sell themselves as luxury brands and their cars are very expensive, but it seems clear that the MBAs and bean counters are running these companies and not engineers and car designers.
This is my HN submission of a NY Times story on the topic of the airbag recall. One can read how the auto manufacturers deliberately put their customers at risk to save a few dollars per automobile. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12367031
The question I have is since it seems clear that engineers don't get to decide the safety of the car design and proper engineering in these luxury brands, how do we trust these luxury car manufacturers to even allow the engineers to design the car that they think is best and not the bean counters?
I'm particularly bothered by throwing hands up and saying "it's not our fault, it's because of a problem at X, it can't be helped", where X is Microsoft, or Oracle, or Fujitsu, or Samsung, or whatever.
It can be helped. Yes, it's more expensive, and yes, consumers probably won't pay for it. Just be honest, it's to control costs, things were not set up to keep working if conditions weren't perfect.
Supply chains are complex systems and it's never as simple as "buying more spares" and "having multiple suplliers".
Someone like Henry Ford, actually used to be a mechanic/engineer that built cars himself. I wonder if Model T owners had problems getting parts!
Visionaries are interesting and get media attention, but I prefer leadership that have personally "gotten their hands dirty." instead of a "business type."
For Musk, I see no engineering degrees nor work experience being mentored in engineering which is absolutely necessary.
Compare Musk with GM CEO Mary Barra who as a BS EE and work experience as an engineer and engineering manager, mentored into those positions.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Barra
I am betting that if Mary Barra were running a startup auto company that it would have spare parts.
In certain fields, such as engineering of products as opposed to general software development, such as designing jet airliners, rockets, nuclear power plants, automobiles, buildings, etc. both a degree in engineering and real work experience in engineering a product that goes into production is really important.
There is much more to engineering than design for items that are in production.
The question I was addressing was ensuring customers have enough parts and I believe Mary Barra would have considered that as very important and that she would have ensured that the spare parts were available. It is not sexy or flashy, it doesn't get you media exposure, but it is good engineering.
I also have extensive experience with computer software so I know what I am talking about regarding the difference of engineering and most software development.
> Being competent and having a degree are often very orthogonal to each other.
Please explain how this is true with engineering degrees (EE, Mechanical, Civil, Aeronautical, Materials Science). Of course, if engineering, one needs to be mentored by engineers as well.
It is my belief that any technical manager such as CEO of technical firms benefit enormously by going to school at a good engineering school and being mentored by engineers. People who have that kind of experience see the world differently than others. I know because I interact with them.
At the age of 19, Musk was accepted into Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, for undergraduate study. In 1992, after spending two years at Queen's University, Musk transferred to the University of Pennsylvania, where, at the age of 24, he received a Bachelor of Science degree in physics from its College of Arts and Sciences, and a Bachelor of Science degree in economics from its Wharton School of Business. Musk extended his studies for one year to finish the second bachelor's degree.[41] While at the University of Pennsylvania, Musk and fellow Penn student Adeo Ressi rented a 10-bedroom fraternity house, using it as an unofficial nightclub.[37]
In 1995, at age 24, Musk moved to California to begin a PhD in applied physics and materials science at Stanford University, but left the program after two days to pursue his entrepreneurial aspirations in the areas of the Internet, renewable energy and outer space.[35][42] In 2002, he became a U.S. citizen.[43][44]
And yes, I read the Wikipedia entry before I commented on Musk's background.
I’m also curious as to how you define being mentored as an engineer? Is it a requirement to serve under more senior engineers for some specific amount of time? And does this require that the mentee be lower than the mentor on the corporate hierarchy? I won’t purport to speak for Musk but I’m fairly sure he’s been mentored extensively by people like Tom Mueller and Gwynne Shotwell, in addition to others, over the years.
You also mentioned in a higher post that you prefer leadership that has “gotten their hands dirty” as opposed to “business types” and this may be the only area I can really offer direct insight into. Whatever your opinion of Musk may be, I think it would be a mistake to describe him as someone who doesn’t get his hands dirty. I’m a technician at SpaceX which makes me fairly low within the corporate structure and even I have had a chance to interact with Musk, as well as a number of other senior execs, on relatively minor issues pertaining to my work. He, along with many other senior engineers within the company, are often very hands on even within the production environment here.
Long story short - it only matters what people have built. It doesn't matter what their pedigree is.
Going to a good engineering school, mentored in engineering is important. It is one thing to build a few electric vehicles and something totally different to build something that is that complicated and mass produced.
There are processes and procedures one learns in order to build something for mass production. I am not speaking of most software for which I have hired people without degrees and know others without degrees, but cars, airliners, jet engines, nuclear power plants, buildings, bridges, VLSI design for mass production, refineries, ....
In my initial area of work, VLSI design, Intel had a $500 million recall in the mid-'90s. I know the circumstances from first hand sources and how the error was found which should have and could have been found before mass production.
One doesn't need a large firm to do some of these engineering activities, but they do need the engineering education and the mentoring of engineering procedures which they can then bring to their startup firm.
I learned a lot from my EE courses at Illinois and from my mentoring faculty of which I can think of several. The materials science, the transmission lines and impedance mismatches, amplifiers, satellite communications, ...
It only takes a single person to come out of nowhere and have a truly novel idea because his/her field of view wasn't constrained by previous experience. You really think there's nobody alive on the planet that fits that description for mechanical/electrical/aerospace/robotics engineering? There was a problem my engineers were struggling with at my company for months. The guy who finally figured it out was a chef, and he concocted his own mechatronic solution which he then machined himself. He has no engineering education, he just had a unique idea that all the engineers overlooked.
The notion that a piece of paper makes you elite is archaic.
An architect can disrupt with a new building design, see Frank Lloyd Wright for example, or the Citibank Tower in Manhattan, and so on. That doesn't mean one doesn't use engineering design methodology. In order to disrupt, one needs the design methodology.
Nuclear power electric plants and nuclear powered naval vessels were disruptions. But still one needed well trained engineers to design and run the systems. Even for disruption. Putting nuclear power in naval vessels was a huge disruption.
Admiral Hyman Rickover, father of the nuclear navy, had a MS EE Columbia University (one of my other schools, BTW). Read what he has to say about engineering education.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyman_G._Rickover#Early_naval_...
In computing, Seymour Cray was a huge disruptor who managed to build a computer far more powerful than IBM (CDC 6600) with "29 people including the janitor" according to then IBM President Thomas Watson, Jr. Cray had a MS EE. He was the Genius supercomputer designer. A huge disruptor, but only able to disrupt by applying engineering education and principles.
A third example, is Joe Sutter, chief engineer of the 747. He has a BS Aeronautical Engineering and died a few days ago: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyman_G._Rickover#Early_naval_...
Was the 747 disruptive. Absolutely. Still, the designers of the aircraft were educated and trained as engineers.
Solid engineering and training is not obstructive to disruption, but absolutely necessary having the background in order to be successful at the disruption.
Hyman Rickover, Seymour Cray, Joe Sutter. All engineers. All huge disruptors that could not have achieved the disruption without their engineering backgrounds.
Sometimes there are no shortcuts.
If you ever become a manager, please don't disregard what people say just because they don't have the same background as you. I've worked with people like that in the past, and they are terrible managers/coworkers. They are needlessly pedantic and often feel the need to do things the way they learned in school (or read about some complicated technique in a paper they have to try), when there is obviously a simpler and better solution. The sad thing is, they think they're better than everyone else and that nobody appreciates their "superior" point of view - if you feel that way, you should reconsider how you approach problem solving.
I haven't met you so I can't comment on you specifically, just speaking as to my general experience. Whatever the case, I wish you luck in your career.
The Wright brothers innovation happened when not many people were trained as engineers or could afford to go to college. It is also in general one thing to create an idea and something else to "productize" it or for a concept to stand up to the forces of nature, etc.
There were lots of construction innovations without civil engineering, but it is inconceivable today to do any form but the smallest projects without it.
There is an enormous amount to engineering products, buildings etc. that non-engineers generally aren't familiar with. That also includes most who go to college in engineering but then go into another field, eg. working for consulting firms such as McKinsey. It may even include engineers that might work on prototypes but never really worry about something that must stand up "in the field."
Solar City 'power walls' are a shaky proposition at best, if that becomes a key element in Tesla succeeding then they have a problem.
SolarCity is an energy company. They collect and sell energy. They do not sell any solar panels. They use the customer's homes for a distributed collection system. But they sell energy. And currently they cannot sell energy at night.
Conveniently, lithium batteries are a proven product growing in popularity. What's sweet is that SolarCity has close ties to a company that has shipped more large scale lithium batteries than any other company in the world. Nissan has shipped a lot of 24 kWhr battery packs since 2011, but Tesla has been shipping 56 kWhr packs since 2008, 85 kWhr packs since 2011, and now ships 100 kWhr packs.
You know what would be great? If Tesla sold more product, and if they did so through a partner company that needs lots of batteries.
Oh boy, then they'd need a bigger factory! If only...
Also energy has a lower price at night. Which means they'd make less money if they stored it during the day and sold it at night.
Certainly that would be true if there was a finite amount of energy available and their customers purchased all of it. But they can install as much capacity as they need - there is more solar energy available to collect than humans can currently imagine requiring. If it is worth it to them, there is nothing preventing them from installing sufficient capacity to meet their customer's needs 24 hours a day.
N.B. distributed solar currently accounts for ~.25% of electrical generation, Solar City accounting for some fraction of that fraction of a percent.
http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2016/05/11/solarcity-i...
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-06-22/analyst-slams-tesla...
Non-professionals shouldn't act in the short-term market anyways, at least not if they can't afford to lose 100% (or even more, like Uli Hoeness, who screwed up with leveraged deals).
Just invest in long term - in my opinion Tesla and SpaceX are decent bets. Both won't go under the bus any time soon, I'd rather be concerned about fossil fuel stocks.
That is over 80,000watts per stall.
The state/feds should stop subsidizing utility solar and incentivize covered parking lot panels. Prettier than lots and putting the energy where the cars are.
If your neighbor was already at the end of their charge cycle, then they will be drawing relatively little, and you'll get the full current.
"The eight bay setup takes a 12kV, 750kVA feed from the utility, steps it down to 480V three phase on site, pushes that into 2000A switchgear which feeds four (one for each pair of bays) SuperCharger units at 480V/200A."
However CC/CV change doesn't normally happen at 50%, but further down the charging cycle. It may be that Tesla throttles the current ahead of time due to thermal constraints of the charging system.
Say 120 watts per m2. 80,000/120 =~ 650m2. That's the ideal. Then for dawn/dusk, 1200m2 and triple that to run it at night ... 3600m2 ... just shy of the 4050m2 in an acre. But even that is 3600m2 perpendicular to the sun not on the flat ground. To get that 3600m2 in the real world (not on the equator) you will have to spread the panels out on a much larger lot (much depends on the location and time of year). If I were buying land, I'd estimate 2-2.5 acres for solar per stall.
In addition people are not constantly charging.
There are so many factors that can diminish the amount of power available at a particular location that the only reasonable thing to do is overbuild. Imagine a line of teslas at an upstate New York charging station. They cannot get to work without power. But it's raining. And it's winter. And it's 6am. And that treeline has grown a foot higher, pushing dawn back an hour. You cannot have too many panels.
The SolarCity acquisition is certainly risky, but there are large business overlaps as other posters have described.
Great leaders know when to cut costs to save great companies.
http://blogs.wsj.com/wsj125/2014/11/29/nov-30-1995-pixars-ip...
http://www.zdnet.com/article/stop-the-lies-the-day-that-micr...