Also, this is someone at the battery factory in Nevada, not the auto plant in Fremont. So this is totally unrelated to the auto plant problems.
Tesla will have a hard time showing actual losses from this.
Also, this is someone at the battery factory in Nevada, not the auto plant in Fremont. So this is totally unrelated to the auto plant problems.
Tesla will have a hard time showing actual losses from this.
Martin Tripp email, Sunday 11:57pm: "I was dismayed to learn this weekend about a Tesla employee who had conducted quite extensive and damaging sabotage to our operations..." (scroll down for text) https://www.cnbc.com/2018/06/18/elon-musk-email-employee-con...
The fire email, Monday 9:38am: "Late last night we had another strange incident that was hard to explain. Small fire on the body-in-white production line..." https://www.cnbc.com/2018/06/18/elon-musk-email-tesla-factor...
Someone conducts sabotage that is "extensive and damaging"... and you, someone who is known for being blunt and direct (questions from shareholders are "boring, yawn", etc.)...
and you're "dismayed"...?
Worked at a startup that used the "we had saboteurs in our midst, but they were discovered and now things will improve" story on the eve of needed new financing round. The story was somewhat accurate but had very little to do with the overall arc of growth or progress.
Tesla will need something to say about why they didn't make their targets, and this is going to be one of the things said.
Animats always has the most possible negative thing to say about Tesla, and this comment is typical for him.
That may reflect the problems being upstream of final assembly. Maybe they need more than a week to accumulate enough parts to run final assembly for a week.
I often hear how Hackernews is such a bastion of objectivity and critical thinking.
So why does "Elon says..." hold so much sway? We would laugh if it was "Zuckerberg says..."
Elon has "said" many things for many years which have not come to fruition.
They eventually do get realized, and that in a way that many people feel will benefit society as a whole.
For example: Zuck/FB don't care a flying fuck about their userbase and only about advertisers (e.g. chronological feed, the entire handling of the "fake news"/propaganda episode, Cambridge Analytica, handing the American democracy over to Trump) and Zuck is doing nasty stuff like buying his neighbors' houses only to tear them down.
Elon Musk, on the other hand, isn't in the game for personal richness (or at least, he doesn't shove it in the face of everyone standing less than a shovel length away). He could have lived in the Bahamas and sipping Pina Colada for the rest of his life already after Paypal, but no, dude puts literally all his fortunes into SpaceX and Tesla, and makes them succeed (SpaceX at, well, providing humanity with re-usable, affordable rocketry after the corrupt, expensive, Russian-dependent clusterfuck of ULA and Tesla at proving electric-only vehicles can exist and are viable), and then still has not enough and pours more money into The Boring Company, oh and meanwhile also releasing everything regarding Hyperloop as Public Domain. And not to forget he could still exit from all the companies and spend the rest of his life sipping Pina Coladas, but not doing so.
Yes, there are valid points to flame Elon Musk on (especially the allegations of working standards violations, with massive overtime requirements etc.), but in the end Elon Musk wants to advance humanity, and Zuckerberg wants to advance his cash. Not difficult to say who deserves more support.
I mean ... I laughed. Didn't you laugh?
> I often hear how Hackernews is such a bastion of objectivity and critical thinking.
That gave me another good chuckle.
Because he made an easily-falsifiable statement. Either you believe in a massive conspiracy involving Tesla's bankers, Tesla's auditors, Tesla's employees, and members of the public pretending to be Tesla's customers, or you believe that Tesla actually produced X cars last week.
If you're going the conspiracy route, you're also assuming that Musk is willing to risk jail time for... what exactly? To satisfy his ego? It's not like he's going to run out of money if Telsa goes bankrupt.
Citation?
It's a rough estimate that isn't really accurate on a daily or weekly scale but tends to be accurate at the monthly level.
At any rate, Tesla is purportedly redirecting finished cars to non-US buyers or is holding back finished cars to avoid triggering the phase-out of EV-related tax rebates once they hit the 200k car milestone.
And where in your Bloomberg link does it say anything of the sort?
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/06/18/elon-musk-email-employee-con...
It states there was a fire and that Musk references possible Sabotage. Then Musk says there is a real saboteur.
> Musk said this person had conducted "quite extensive and damaging sabotage" to the company's operations, including by changing code to an internal product and exporting data to outsiders.
Most people (myself included) assumed the sabotage he hinted at was done by the saboteur they caught who was intentionally trying to slow down Model 3 production to benefit "short sellers and oil and gas companies". Instead, Tripp just offloaded some data from a completely unrelated factory.
It feels like Musk was intentionally trying to conflate the two, since another fire is obviously bad news and making people believe it was the result of sabotage (with a real saboteur already caught) rather than just poorly run operations is in his best interest.
Musk states that Tesla is investigating whether this person was receiving any outside impetus, and warning employees to be extra vigilant for signs of sabotage during the next few weeks, but that wasn't what OP claimed.
Any deliberate attempt by Musk at conflating these different events is up to interpretation, but note that this is an internal e-mail and not a press release. It's easiest to just interpret this message at face value.
It certainly could be interpreted that way, but if one did, one would already have made some assumptions oneself. I just don't see how this matches up with Musk's brutally direct tone on other occasions. Misleading your own employees like this seems like it would be counterproductive.
Not to mention, it would be obvious to any insider that this wasn't the reason for the struggles with ramping production - they have been behind the (admittedly heavily accelerated, since the 2015 plan) schedule for months.
Edit: since we've warned you before and you've done it repeatedly since then, I've banned this account. If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future.
Citation on that? Thanks.
But to me it sounds like these guys are making battery powered cars and the sabetour worked in a battery plant..
Doesn’t that mean that if the battery line was sabotaged then they’d be unable to ship cars that need those batteries?
Or was it alleged that there were direct and tangible sabotages committed against the cars directly?
Edit: did I say something wrong? Forgive my ignorance on the topic and please explain to me why? A pipeline is a pipeline and if a component is missing you can’t call the product finished.
Edit2: By the downvotes and lack of reply I'm going to assume that people don't like that this question is raised. Why?
Because some people may be looking for validation on their preconceptions (in this case, "Musk is making excuses") instead of engaging in critical debate.
HN has a lot of great discussions and smart people, but it also has a handful of armchair engineers who are eager to tear down highly successful ones like Musk. Your comment offers a rational explanation for his concern and behavior, so naturally folks pushing ulterior narratives won't like it.
Don't let downvotes get under your skin. It's way harder, more interesting, and more dignified to think and respond critically and put your name on a comment like you did, than to click a little triangle anonymously every time someone challenges your assumptions. When an earnest question like yours turns grey, it says much more about the HN community than it says about you.
Also, time that Elon and other employees spend on this guy take time away from more important things.
It seems pretty obvious to me: this ex-employee stole (which is scummy) data from Tesla and leaked it to journalists (Business Insider). BI asked Tesla to comment on the data, they refused, then released an "email" that described the sabotage and data breach.
Is he a whistle-blower or a saboteur? That's the question.
Right, completely unrelated, because Tesla cars do not require batteries. Or software, which was also tampered with.
Tesla has filed a lawsuit, they are not coming up with excuses. At no point in the internal memo do they say this is the reason why they are missing their targets.
> Tesla will have a hard time showing actual losses from this.
To a judge, or to shareholders? Because this employee is done for. People got criminally charged and slapped with multi-decade jail time for way less.