> It just requires a few years of optimization and the cars are going to be en par with established brands.
The world is littered with visionary companies that paved the way for new technology but ultimately failed themselves. "A few years of optimization" gravely undervalues the complexity of modern auto manufacturing. I will concede that it's astonishing that Tesla has come so far, so fast. But perhaps this is time for an inflection point.
> people do not care about such things nearly as much.
You're right that Tesla's customers aren't influenced much by this news in particular. But Tesla's long-term success will be impacted by their capability to attract talent. If Musk drives away all the talented R&D, marketing, finance leaders, he'll be stuck with second-rate talent. It's clear that he has shown that there's a luxury EV market. True, the big players move slowly but won't hesitate to pivot into this space.
Look at Bill Gates. He could certainly build rockets, but he'd rather help people solve other, arguably more important, problems.
Or Larry Ellison. He'd rather go race boats and play with swords.
(And Musk did not really found Tesla.)
But by the same token, Musk's "fitting into the current political and cultural trajectory" (whatever that means) is also of no value to Tesla.
The actual concerns people have are much more concrete.
Tesla has already had "a few years of optimization". They have been making cars for ten years now. They are still burning bales of cash. They have consistently failed, by large margins, to deliver on production targets. Major competitors who DO have a consistent history of large-scale production are coming out with comparable products that will actually be possible to buy without waiting in line for two years.
Their accounting chief quitting after a month only adds to the pile. Anyone who has been in management at a failing concern knows the numbers people are the canaries in the coal mine. No, it's not a guarantee they will fail, but only an inexperienced person would ignore it.
I mean that he is a rare kind of public figure who is really down-to-earth, yet proponent of the free market & innovation. Like Trump he breaks with the norms, but he's a lot more sincere. He also does not seem to outsource overseas very much, which kind of fits into the MAGA narrative.
By the way if you like sincere down to earth people who break with norms and are in favor of tariffs, check out the chapo trap house podcast
It is also worth pointing out that Elon Musk's "other" public company, Paypal, today is valued over 2x Tesla's market capitalization ($105.7b vs $44.6b.) While what Paypal is now is far disconnected from Elon Musk today, that is a big win for creating an enterprise able of delivering incredible value over the long term for investors.
I don't have a problem with critical reporting on Tesla and Elon Musk from any media entity, backed by hedged funds otherwise. I do have a very, very big problem when they compare Elon Musk to someone like Elizabeth Holmes. (e.g. "The Age of Tech Superheroes Must End" WSJ https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-age-of-tech-superheroes-mus... )
My big concern is what happens if consumers do not want Tesla vehicles. The current problems are solvable. If Tesla vehicles become as desirable as a chunk of lead, then no amount of cash, engineering, or R&D will fix it.
Do you realize that Tesla sold more cars in the US that Mercedes and BMW this summer? How many media reported that?
Do you know that the most trusted car analysts who tear-down the car said it's expected to be the most profitable car produced in high volume?
Do you know that all data analyses about turnover in top positions at Tesla indicated that they are average? How many reports about such moves (at legacy automakers) make headlines?
They've only increased their coverage of the company and try their best to make every thing more clickbait. It's worked great so far, for sure.
You haven't been reading the same news I have. While there were plenty of red flags prior, Musk began digging Tesla's grave in earnest in fall 2016. He Started with the Alien Dreadnought, which was bonkers. He sold shareholders on buying Solar City using fake solar shingles which don't exist, that was $5b+ flushed down the toilet. Also he implemented HW2, which is thousands of dollars of hardware going into every new car regardless of whether customers pay for it. When Solar experts, finance people, Vehicle manufacturing experts and Autonomous vehicle experts get together and compare notes there's only one conclusion to arrive at: Tesla is fucked.
Alien Dreadnought, Solar City, HW2. I call it the ASH doctrine: Musk's 3 point plan to reduce Tesla to ashes. Post chapter 11 Tesla may have a life ahead of it, but it's been a slow motion trainwreck for years. The Shorts, the Media, the Koch brothers, they didn't destroy Tesla. Musk did. He's incompetent, and nuts. It's pretty obvious now, but if you were paying attention, it was obvious before too.
Seriously? Do you know the take rate of the option? It's been widely considered to increase margin, but if you have other sources, I'm interested.
>He sold shareholders on buying Solar City using fake solar shingles which don't exist, that was $5b+ flushed down the toilet.
That's false. The solar roof thing was accessory to the acquisition. More than a hundred have been installed and are being used as beta tests to improve it further. Since the beginning, Musk said the v1 should be considered like the Roadster 1, i.e not intended to be mass produced until v3 (remember "BlueStar"?)
As for Alien Dreadnought, he did say that wouldn't be possible with Model 3. So OK, that was one failed promise, but the Model 3 production and assembly lines remains one of the most automated one in the industry.
So for this one little think (which is more a name than a project), you conclude that Tesla is fucked. Okay.
Please, that was one month of backlog deliveries (July, 16,000 deliveries) and only in the US. 16, Nobody expects that Tesla manufactures 16,000 Model 3's per month.
Meanwhile Mercedes sells 30,000 C-Class Saloon and Estate models per month globally. In the US Mercedes and BMW each keep delivering 12,000 or so vehicles per month in the same category as Tesla models are.
It was well publicized that the President doesn't want people buying Mercedes.
What are you talking about? They are sustainably producing 5000/week now, and have backlog for the next 1.5 years at least.
Then why didn't he start Tesla as a nonprofit? Your characterization would be much more credible if he didn't personally own a very valuable chunk of a multi-billion dollar company.
By definition, it's not something you can do to yourself, so what you wrote is like saying someone stole their own car. Unless there are some strange mental gymnastics going on, it's not possible to steal your own property from yourself.
Nor is it possible to maliciously conspire against your own healthy sanity in secret. You can try and argue about cute ideas where that might be curiously plausible, but the definition of the verb doesn't play into that idea.
Did I say it's not possible to do something like that? No. No, I didn't. I did not say that anything is prevented by anything.
I'm saying you used a word incorrectly. What you just said you're trying to talk about? That word doesn't mean what you just said.
A person is simply delusional, if they are deceiving themselves.
May as well start gangstalking myself. Hold on, let me stand outside my window with all my other selves. brb
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.
People in hypomania maintain mental clarity and don't suffer from functional impairment. They have energy, confidence and increased creativity.
But it's usually just a phase between depression and mania.