Hacker News Reader

Comment by mirceal | Hacker News Reader

Hmm. So Tesla/Musk have really ambitious goals that they often miss. Is that a bad thing? The way I look at it no. Whenever Tesla announces something you have to take it with a big grain of salt but that’s about it. Also remember that they’re attempting something hard / never done before.

If there is something that bothers me about Tesla it’s their attitude when a crash happens.

View on HN

> Also remember that they’re attempting something hard / never done before.

Well, building car is hardly something that hasn't been done before. They seem to be suffering from extreme NIH caused by the illusion that 100% of the stuff they do has never been done before/need disruption.

That is based on the reports suggesting that Tesla is not failing with its electric powertrain, rather it is failing in traditional part of the car assembly which is sad because the experience in those area are massive, locally and abroad.

So basically, "Is that a bad thing?" Yes, if what I say is true, because it eats the lead that Tesla has to provide no specific benefit. No, if either indeed, there is a hard, never done before, and currently unknown ingredient to Tesla that is going to increase their lead once they get it right.

Or No, because, well competitors are starting to get on the market and Tesla slowing down a bit give them time to catch meaning a more competitive landscape, which is good for everyone on the consumer side.

Regarding their NIH, that stems less from the need to disrupt the implicated microindustries and more from third party suppliers repeatedly dropping the ball, charging exorbitant prices, having poor QA, etc. It’s an issue Musk ran into at SpaceX too, with a bad supplier even being responsible for the explosion of a Falcon 9 (a third party strut was only capable of sustaining a third of the forces it was advertised to handle).

I look at it this way: before Tesla the electric car was a joke. Now the car industry is slowly rolling out electric cars. If today, Tesla crashes and burns we are still, overall, better than we were if they never existed.

I would also argue that building a car is hard, and starting from scratch is insanely hard and was done before maybe a couple of times, 100 years ago. I may be wrong.

So to sum up: I am not surprised by Tesla’s behavior and think that the way they are framing their story may contribute to the success they had / will have.

It’s not like traditional car companies never suffer delays. For one example I wanted to buy but couldn’t, the Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV had a delay of five years for its US release.

I hear this bit with "traditional car assembly" often. But is it really true? The powertrain isnt really the only difference - EVs are built fundamentally differently (and especially the Tesla models) from the ground up as compared to ICE based cars. If you look at the base series of most large car companies (on which most variants are eventually based) - they've been around for decades in some cases - making it easier to tweak and adjust over time, so production in and off itself hasnt changed that drastically.

> But is it really true?

I don't know. We all know that, as anything, a modern car is very complex by itself and even the simplest modern production line requires far too much expertise to understand if you are not working directly in the field. So, you have to trust reports, which with an overhyped company like Tesla are more likely than not be laughingly biased in one direction or another.

It is a bit annoying that Tesla has such a track record of failing to reach their own objectives. It is bad IMO, because Tesla is not really under any kind of market pressure (no competition, and client queueing for years), their objective are only investors milestones. As an investor, I would really start thinking Musk is either delusional, hired the wrong people or is humouring me because in reality I'm the one lucky enough to be allowed to invest in Tesla and I should be grateful rather than wasting his time with silly metrics.

It only really matters if you are an investor though.

Consumer win both ways: either Tesla is giving the rest of the market a chance, or they are ready to revolutionised car production the same way the Japanese did in the 90's.

I guess I’d consider myself a Musk fanboy, but I do think missing deadlines is a bad thing. Even if subconsciously, you’re eroding trust.

I don’t think there’s any trust left in Musk’s stated deadlines. “Elon time” is a meme and everybody now seems to know that any date he states is a “theoretically possible if everything goes perfectly on a frictionless plane” date, not when things will actually happen.

The flip side is that he also has a good track record of delivering on outlandish promises, even if they’re late. When he says he’s going to build a rocket that makes the Saturn V look like a toy and use it to put humans on Mars by 2024, the specific year is not something to count on but the rest has a pretty good chance of happening.

I think it would be better if he’d stop doing this, but I’d rather have wrong deadlines for amazing stuff that eventually happens than correct deadlines for mundane oversold crap as seems to be the standard procedure for so many.

I would not consider myself a fanboy, but what is a deadline?

The game being played here is: set super ambitious, unrealistic expectations to get people thinking/dreaming/talking about it. Eventually deliver on it.

Again, normally the public/market would punish hard a company that does this. In Tesla’s case I belive the tolerance for delays is greater due to the perceived value of what they’re doing.

> The game being played here is: set super ambitious, unrealistic expectations to get people thinking/dreaming/talking about it. Eventually deliver on it.

For investors, overpromising for hype and underdelivering is a strategy which is likely to wear thin very fast. Especially on things like profitably and independence of new capital needs — production numbers themselves aren't independently inportant.

It also can be a good thing for employees to have moonshot goals but also specific goals. When this 5,000/week goal wasn’t being acheived, it led to a lot of accountability and ultimately a reckoning. That can give a company a lot of clarity and focus if it’s done correctly.

The problem is either he's lying (that he knows they won't meet the targets; unlikely given his personality) or his ego is preventing him from actually understanding the problem space and prior work so they can avoid what seems, from the outside at least, like common issues other manufacturers have dealt with before.

Elon being so over confident that he ignores reality is the fear/problem. They made 5000 Model 3's a week after going basically -all out-. So yea, there are still issues and we will see how long it'll take to fix and if he'll need to raise again even though he strongly claims he won't need to.

I would give Musk more credit than this. He obviously knows when the deadlines/targets are unrealistic. I don’t think that’s the point.

The point is that he’s pushing really hard to make them realistic. And even if he gets 50% of the way there it’s still a massive win compared to being realistic/conservative.

Also, people’s imagination does not respond really well to boring/conservative.

It’s also an advantage. The intern makes mistakes more often than anyone else but also sees what the veterans cannot.

Anyway, I think at this point Elon is fully aware of how hard this is.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com