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Comment by ivraatiems | Hacker News Reader

A short while ago (per my comment history), I asked whether Elon Musk should remain as CEO of Tesla.

I think, for my part, the answer is clearly no. He might be brilliant, he has undeniably had a hand in creating something awesome with Tesla and SpaceX's technology, but he's now a danger to the very thing he helped build. This is just one of the lawsuits filed against him or Tesla in recent weeks that have him as the primary cause. I want Tesla's mission to be achieved, I want them to succeed, and to me, Elon Musk is one of the biggest stumbling blocks in their way now.

Where does the buck stop? In my opinion, with Tesla's board, and Elon's ouster as CEO.

Edit: Worth noting that Elon's removal as CEO is one of the remedies the SEC seeks as well, and could thus be part of any settlement. (I'm not knowledgeable enough to handicap how likely that is.)

Another edit: Tesla has no D&O insurance, and therefore might be liable for whatever misconduct Elon is found to have done. That's a pretty big deal, and also a bad move on Tesla's part in not insuring against their (known quantity loose cannon) CEO. See https://www.dandodiary.com/2018/08/articles/securities-litig...

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He may deserve that, but I believe that public perception is that Elon Musk is Tesla. In the same way that Bill Gates was Microsoft and Steve Jobs was Apple, Musk commands a huge moral force (in a Clausewitz sense... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_von_Clausewitz). Fire Musk and you need to hire a press team, rebrand, and basically become seen as a stuffy company instead of the hip trendy up-and-comer. How much perceived valuation does Musk create? 20%, 50% of the company? Hard to say, but I bet it's a big number.

It's big, but is it irrecoverable? Because the current situation might be.

Fire Musk and the board could also risk a situation similar to Apple's board firing Steve Jobs.

Musk is taking too many chances with too many things, often unnecessarily, but without him Tesla could be trampled by the big carmakers in the coming years in the EV market.

Who at Tesla will still want to add rocket alloy to their cars to make them the safest ever cars? Chances are whatever new CEO they hire will see that as a huge cost-cutting opportunity to be "more in line with the rest of the industry."

The big car makers will be flooding the EV market, irrelevant of Musk presence.

Also, the big car manufacturers have a huge head start in terms of actually producing a very large volume of cars across the globe.

If toyota decides they can make a yaris or aygo as a purely electric vehicle, tesla will be nearly unable to catch that large, low end market segment.

Also, you need low-end, mass volume cars to be able to push eletric infrastructure and replace the current gas infrastructure. (although i think using hydrogen and reusing the gas infrastructure might even be a better solution personally).

And yet Gates is gone, and Microsoft is still here. And Jobs is gone, but Apple is still here.

As the saying goes, the graveyards are full of indispensable men.

Is Apple still there? Let's be realistic, it's a fraction of what it used to be. From a creative standpoint, it's catatonic.

If Jobs hadn't of gone back to Apple in '97 after being fired in '85, they wouldn't be here today. Jobs was their last hope after Sculley made them mediocre. Apple was down to relying on a 150m investment from Microsoft in the late 90s (Aug 1997), that they probably only got because of Jobs [1]. I'd also argue everything that Jobs had created at NeXTSTEP became Apple and saved them [2]. The technology made it all the way into iPhone, you can see it in their libs still in Objective-C with the NS prefix [2]. Interestingly Jobs built successes in NeXTSTEP and Pixar while he was away from Apple for a decade, just like Musk has other companies.

It could be argued Ballmer almost killed Microsoft, but Bill Gates has had influence in the company all along on the board up until February 4, 2014 as the chairman of Microsoft. Microsoft returned to developer/engineering focused with Satya Nadella was made CEO in February 2014 after the marketing/bizdev focused Ballmer era that nearly made them irrelevant, and Nadella has turned it around entirely back to developer roots.

Tesla is an engineer first, I see that as way more beneficial than some operations or lifetime MBA / C-level executive running it, it will take the life right out of Tesla just like Baller at Microsoft or Sculley at Apple.

[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2017/08/29/steve-jobs-and-bill-gates-wh...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NeXTSTEP

> Tesla is an engineer first

Nah, Tesla is a Twitter-first. Engineers seem to hate working there and are constantly leaving because of the PR obsessions.

Tesla is a marketing-driven company.

Tesla is a product company, they do little, if any, marketing.

Find me a Tesla owner that doesn't love their car.

Tesla is an engineering led product company first, both for the good of the environment and for making products that people love.

Not many could have built what Elon Musk built, if any others today at the time and survive the Great Recession or get people excited about the product.

Tesla has that excitement that nostalgic leaders like Disney, Ford, Jobs, 'World's Fair' type of innovative excitement had in the past.

Yes, but is it in the national interests of China for the United States to be the leader in the electrification of transport?

He is very likely to persist in claiming both that Elon Musk is not at all an capable of engineering and that Tesla is a marketing company. There is a technique called firehosing where you just keep spewing lies as an influence strategy.

You can look at his other post in this thread to see the degree to which he is willing to have faithful discourse.

I would argue that it is in the interest of China. Everyone is going to have flooding coast lines. The short term solution to curbing that issue and others is fast electrification. China will find a market for its own vehicles, because every electric vehicle is going to find a market. So the United States pulling its own weight in this matter is just helping to get the task done more quickly. Meanwhile, in the long-term, present day technology is going to be eclipsed. It will be easy enough to figure out how the better batteries are made and produce them. Economies of scale can then allow winning on price. Meanwhile, the digital record will preserve the manipulation attempts, making them more obvious in retrospect. This isn't good for diplomatic relations with the many nations who will be damaged by floods. So taking actions which could slow electrification could lead to unanticipated consequences. Meanwhile, advocating for more rapid acceleration won't even harm diplomatic relations with the oil producing countries: many of them are leading the charge in adopting green technology, they understand the dangers. There is good will to be gained in helping the world to electrify its transportation.

The only difference is, Gates and Jobs both left when their respective companies were already in a good place and very financially successful.

Definitely not Jobs’ first departure

Yes, but Jobs' return brought with him everything from NeXT and he blew life back into a company that surely would have disappeared without that.

True, and his first departure almost killed Apple.

The difference with Gates and Jobs is Tesla has not delivered, i.e. it has not become profitable enough to guarantee success in the future. At this point he's indispensable. (There is also the thought that without him Tesla does not have an advantage vs cheaper competitors from all around the world)

I understand I think why you say Tesla has not delivered. But I feel like Tesla kicked off the entire electric car market finally. Not to mention the space stuff. Amazing work even if he is ousted I think. Plenty of awesome stuff.

This is key, I think. Microsoft had enough runway to figure it out. Apple has a multiple of that. What does Tesla have to keep it alive while they figure out the next step?

Your comment made me think of Tim Cook. He could run Tesla the rest of the way.

That's a weird definition of "delivered". The car industry requires scale, and Tesla needs to be much bigger before it could possibly meet that definition of "delivered". That's why the last US mass-market car startup was Tucker.

do you believe the early adopters who are buying Teslas today are buying Tesla or Musk?

"At this point he's indispensable. "

If that's the case then there is a real management failure. It would be irresponsible to rely on one person.

Also look at MS and Apple. So far they have been doing fine without Gates and Jobs.

Windows has lost on Mobile OS space totally to Apple and Google. And Apple is already showing signs of not being able to think beyond the iPhone and Macbook.

That's not called doing fine.

Once the product inertia is gone, the effects of absence will show.

> Tesla has not delivered, i.e. it has not become profitable enough to guarantee success in the future

And based on that track record, in addition to violating security laws, you conclude that Musk is essential to the business? Strange.

I think his point is that when you strip away the personality cult, Tesla is just an unprofitable car maker with crushing debts and trouble meeting goals.

Yeah, this whole “Tesla will fail if they fire Musk” strikes me as kind of pointless, because Tesla will likely fail either way. Best case scenario is M&A, which Musk is essentially too proud to do, which means not firing him means committing to the company utterly failing.

There's an argument that that makes him more essential, because (so the argument goes) one thing he has been demonstrably good at is fundraising.

Not sure if I buy it or not - I've not looked into it in enough detail really - but for a Company in that kind of position it's an important attribute for the senior executive team to have.

2029: Elon Musk is hired back to lead Tesla after the board decides the brand, having been diluted over the past 10 years and the stock down to pennies, is in serious danger. Musk meanwhile had been focusing on SpaceX and laying the foundation for the first Mars colonization.

2031: Shortly after his return to Tesla, Musk introduces the first hovercar.

2035: SpaceX and Tesla merge

2042: TeslaX solarshuttles frequently take multi-year tourist visits to Mars and Europa

2047: TeslaX undergoes a hostile takeover by Amazon for 8.7T in stock (hey, who doesn't love a twist ending?)

>Musk meanwhile had been focusing on SpaceX and laying the foundation for the first Mars colonization.

I'll bet SpaceX management is dreading the idea of Musk showing up there every day to work.

If Elon Musk is removed as CEO at Tesla, Tesla is over.

I find it curious that an innovative American company pushing to help our carbon problem by going electric is so lambasted, shorted, constantly under attack. It cannot be argued that Tesla pushed forward both electric cars and self-driving vehicles as a major force (original self-driving push was a DoD X-Prize)

Personally I like when American companies succeed and push innovation forward. I would have zero hope of that happening if they bring in some generic C level executive like back in the day at Apple when they ousted Steve Jobs and brought in John Sculley.

It's not shorted because of its mission, its shorted because of the negative cash flow. Musks' public persona doesn't exactly give off the aura of a man who has his companies operating expenses and profitability under control.

So, I get it. This is how capitalism is supposed to work. But I don't think anyone is going to care about the wealth of these short sellers when the climate is irreversibly changed.

China is smart. They don't fuck around with tax incentives and other silly market manipulators. They use central policy planning to drive forward renewables and battery electric vehicles at nation state scale, and it's a damn shame the United States and other first world countries don't have the same fortitude; yet, our markets will rail against someone who has bet his personal fortune to accomplish these goals.

In my opinion:

We (as a society and a country) need Tesla to succeed.

Tesla can't succeed with Elon Musk as CEO at this point.

So Elon should be removed.

Owning about 12k shares of TSLA, having followed the company closely since inception (when it was ran by Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning), I can't see Tesla succeeding without Musk. It'll end up acquired, or as a boutique manufacturer like Ferrari.

Tesla's value is Musk's determination. Still, he needs to choose his actions more wisely, clearly.

> It'll end up acquired,

Maybe. The main question is whether it will happen before or after bankruptcy (chapter 11 reorganization).

> Owning about 12k shares of TSLA

If only all of the TSLA fanboys posted how much money they have on the line. After reading this, all the rest of your comments suddenly make sense.

Pro Tip: Don't get emotional over your investments or you are gonna lose the ability to think rationally and get burned.

I'm financially independent without my Tesla holdings. If it all goes to zero, I'm prepared for that.

If being a fanboy of a company working towards positive change in the world (which is so very often rare, unfortunately) is wrong, I don't want to be right. Everyone finds meaning in different ways. This is my small contribution.

Without short sellers or another market mechanism to call bullshit on over-inflated and over-hyped investments, capital will be badly allocated.

You're imagining some future where because of shorts we don't put enough money into TSLA and never have electric cars. That's not how this works.

With shorts (if the short sellers are right) TSLA is full of it, and capital is much better allocated at BMW, Toyota, or some other car startup, and the sooner everyone finds that out and moves their money over or stops inflating TSLA the better.

> Without short sellers or another market mechanism to call bullshit on over-inflated and over-hyped investments, capital will be badly allocated.

Capital allocates to what is best for the markets, not what is best for the world. I can't breath shareholder returns. We can't wait for BMW and Toyota to cannibalize their internal combustion product lines with EVs because it's not financially convenient for them (runaway climate change, all that jazz [1]). Traditional manufacturers have no incentive to disrupt the status quo and instead, continue to churn out internal combustion vehicles.

“Yes, the planet got destroyed. But for a beautiful moment in time we created a lot of value for shareholders.” [2]

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/sep/26/global-w... ("World 'nowhere near on track' to avoid warming beyond 1.5C target")

[2] https://www.newyorker.com/cartoon/a16995

Short-sellers didn't cause Elon Musk to tweet fraudulently, putting himself and his company into legal jeopardy with the SEC.

Frankly, Q3 2018 was shaping up to be a big moment where M3 cars were mass produced and selling well. If Mr. Musk just shut up for the past 6 months and never tweeted anything, then Tesla would be in a far stronger position.

Today: Musk has to deal with the pedophile slander lawsuit, the SEC investigation, and now the DoJ investigation. The shorts did NONE of this, it was all Mr. Musk's mistake. If Mr. Musk sat tight, released the (what seem to be) good Q3 2018 numbers, then the shorts would have been busted naturally.

That's how you "beat the shorts". Have a strong quarter, have a strong year, and push the stock price up. Short sellers lose money every time the stock rises.

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And I'm sure people out there will complain about the 2-billion convertible loan due 2019, and how short-sellers are destroying the $360 price point.

Guess what? The CEO's job is to secure funding. It was Mr. Musk who signed Tesla to that deal. If you think the loan was idiotic, then it was Mr. Musk's fault for signing the loan back in 2014.

That's Musk's decision however. He's had 5 years to make a profit on a 5-year loan with 0.25% coupon (!!!) and that's his own darn fault for not keeping track of it and turning a profit in time.

(Frankly: 0.25% loan for 5-years are stupendous terms. I do think it was good way to raise money)

Details on the loan due March 2019: http://finra-markets.morningstar.com/BondCenter/BondDetail.j...

The terms of this loan are: $360 call option or cash back on March 2019. Which means bondholders can buy the stock at $360 (no matter what price TSLA is at), OR can demand cash back instead. Given the current price of TSLA, it seems like the bondholders will ask for Cash.

But Musk clearly though, way back in 2014 when he signed this deal, that he would raise the stock price to $360 to avoid paying back the loan. OR he was fine with a 0.25% coupon (!!) on a 5-year rate. Anyone who follows finances knows that this bond was an incredible deal to the advantage of Tesla, and no one should be touting this loan as a disadvantage.

Elon has wasted capital, both political and economic; this I can't argue with. I agree with the mission, not the man's behaviors, but have also lived long enough to recognize what a necessary evil is.

Let's be real here. In the grand scheme of things Tesla's selling luxury toys and is bound to be something similar to cars as what Apple is to general computing. Overly expensive status symbols.

Both in number of vehicles sold[1] and in distance driven[2] Tesla vehicles are handily beat by the likes of the Chevy Volt and Nissan Leaf. Those are the sorts of vehicles that are going to change the game and make a dent in climate change, not luxury cars.

1. https://insideevs.com/plug-in-electric-car-sales-ranked-by-o...

2. https://insideevs.com/us-crosses-10-billion-e-miles-driven-f...

Let’s be real then. Tesla is actually attempting to ramp energy storage and EVs as fast as possible. No one else is even trying. Nissan has sold 300k Leafs in 7 years. Tesla sells that many EVs in a year at their current run rate. Ford isn’t even going to sell sedans in the US anymore, only low gas mileage trucks. The president of Fiat Chrysler asked people not to buy their EVs, as they lost money on each one. The Volt isn’t a vehicle worth arguing about (Chevrolet has only sold 100k of them, ever). The Model 3 is even outselling all BMW sedan sales. Just the Model 3, not including the S and X.

> Let’s be real then. Tesla is actually attempting to ramp energy storage and EVs as fast as possible.

I know we've talked about this before. But +100MW-hrs here and there is nothing. Yeah, 300MW in Australia is impressive for Lithium Ion. But...

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/07/24/business/ener...

This singular $3 Billion project will give 2GW of power. If the lake holds 8-hours of water, that'd be 16-GW-hrs of energy in a single project.

---------

If energy storage is to be figured out in the USA, we need to be calculating GW-hr scale projects, not MW-hr scale projects like Mr. Musk.

Lithium Ion's main benefit was to Tesla, as Tesla would have a 2nd place to sell their Lithium Ion batteries. Its great for Tesla, but its way too small of a scale for me to consider it as a major solution to the USA's energy problem.

Yeah, we argue this all the time :) you can’t stick hydro storage just anywhere, yet you can ship cargo containers full of powerpacks to anywhere in the world in a week or two. The Hornsdale Power Reserve was built in 90 days. Tesla is building a 700MW-1.1GW facility with PG&E to replace 3 natural gas generators (in the Southwest US, solar and batteries are cheaper than natural gas).

Utility scale battery storage will lead the day. Raw materials go into your factory, out come battteries good for at least a decade, that can perform energy arbitrage and frequency response for grid services. And every year it keeps getting cheaper to build. Hydro storage construction is always going to be geoconstrained, time consuming to construct, and expensive.

Just my two cents.

I'm ok with shorts in general, but I do wish that the SEC put at least as much energy into prosecuting some of the bad behavior by some negative parties (who may or may not have been shorts, tbh) as it is the company.

I follow the company closely, and have definitely seen some questionable behavior that seemed to be aimed at trying to create the negative news cycle for the business. Things like promoted reddit articles and a horde of bogus NHTSA complaints can be very damaging to the business' fundamentals.

But maybe there is more investigation into these things than I realize, and certainly the need to investigate this material doesn't negate the need to investigate Musk's own questionable conduct as well.

Why should the SEC be prosecuting short sellers writing slander about TSLA any more than they should be prosecuting the people who are long on TSLA writing literal or figurative press releases praising the company?

Both parties have an interest in the stock going one way or the other. Regulators need to get involved when something like insider manipulation of the stock happens, say when the CEO uses Twitter the way Elon Musk does.

When those statements are blatantly false with a clear intent to do reputational and market damage to the business they become more than simply "short sellers writing slander". When they pay to have them promoted it looks more like fraud.

The SEC doesn't regulate people talking shit in public, even when those people are talking shit because they have a financial interest in a public company, or even if they're paying to make their message heard.

They regulate things like people talking shit in public on Twitter while having access to insider information. There's no evidence that any of these people talking shit about TSLA because they hold shorts have access to information not available through the usual market disclosure mechanisms.

Obviously car companies are hard to run.

Though internet companies aren't the best at cash flow management either, it is more about getting the market / customers then the profit. I think innovation is excusable for revenue/profits for some time.

Starting an electric car ONLY car company is even harder than having it as part of an existing car company like Mercedes is doing well with.

The shorts are mainly trying to kill Tesla and coming from the oil, gas, other auto companies most of all. Lots of games are played with car companies (see VW short squeeze a historically big one) because they can't react as fast as it is hard work. I think the shorts have been not just focused on profitability but to drive out the competitive threat, the shorts have also been attacking Elon Musk non-stop.

Do you have any evidence for the claims you are making? Elon Musk has done plenty on his own to be attacked.

>The shorts are mainly trying to kill Tesla and coming from the oil, gas, other auto companies most of all.

What about when Elon was spreading rumours that the Saudi's wanted to take Tesla private?

I imagine they are hard to run. But they don't require "genius" to run, they require people skilled in process management, supply chain operations, assembly automation and the rest. The stuff all the other big car manufacturers have been doing for decades. All stuff that Musk doesn't have a background in.

What makes Tesla unique in this respect, and Musk so essential to the operations?

I'd argue nothing at all, other than his image. Hire some experts from the other companies, people with a few decades of experience, and let them turn it around. Maybe start with why you're hand-assembling and gluing things together in tents, rather than using the high efficiency production lines everyone else is using.

Elon Musk survived the Great Recession when other car companies needed bailouts, that is pretty good line item. Ford probably would have needed one as well if Ford's didn't still run it.

Elon is also an engineer first, that is needed at innovative companies, not some metric focused MBA C-level executive just looking to cash out. Musk actually cares about what he is building and has done a smashing job considering the pressure in my opinion. Tesla is made with love, a car/product people want, not just for the short term numbers.

> Elon Musk survived the Great Recession when other car companies needed bailouts, that is pretty good line item. Ford probably would have needed one as well if Ford's didn't still run it.

This has little to do with producing cars, and more to do with (financial) management. (Also, most major european car makers survived the great recession just fine).

> most major european car makers survived the great recession just fine

Most of the European (Mercedes/BMW) engineering and product people have power. Even Honda for a long time engineers/product people drove most of the decisions and power structures. American car companies not so much, most MBA / bizdev lead over engineering and product people. Germany is unique in that engineering and the product quality is highly respected over short term gains only.

Additionally, BMW/Mercedes/etc cars also target the upper classes that weren't as affected by the Great Recession so they didn't have the pressures as much as the US car companies that needed bailouts. American industries targeting consumers in upper class and wealth didn't suffer as much.

When your company is a tiny player, needing bailouts is largely irrelevant. Tesla didn't have anything like the risk and exposure which required the bailouts. Most of the major manufacturers didn't require bailouts either…

Your comments regarding being "made with love" doesn't square with all the other articles I've read recently regarding the poor fit and finish of new Teslas. They are having problems scaling up, and it looks like quality took a hit as a result.

Running a large scale industrial manufacturing operation means extensive delegation. Those "metric-focussed" executives actually have an important role to play at this scale. Product design and engineering happen well before scaling up for production. The production side is all about supply chains, efficient assembly and QA. No one should be changing the design at that point; however talented Musk might be as an engineer, I can't see him specifically having much to bring to the table for sorting out manufacturing issues. (I have worked doing QA in an industrial setting. ISO 9001, six-sigma and all the rest do start to have a point when you are working at scale and want to guarantee quality, throughput, efficiency, customer deadlines etc.) Tesla is bringing nothing new to the table on these fronts that I have seen.

Musk can easily bring in process people and metric focused people to help. Removing the product/engineering focused CEO that is part of the product innovation and success is a very bad idea.

You do need a focused innovative leader to run innovative companies that are competing with big players, if you get a metrics guy as the CEO or one calling the shots they will fade away.

Taking away the founder/creator is like how Python is without Guido and Linux kernel without Linus, they will eventually run out of momentum and get convoluted with many directions trying to take the lead for short term needs, similar to how node went for a long time or Microsoft under Ballmer or Apple under John Sculley (they thought an exec guy from Pepsi could run a technology company).

The typical process only focused metric MBA guys should come in when the innovating is done and it is time to focus on short term revenues over product, which eventually runs out everytime as it is milked and research and development is killed.

There is a reason Amazon is so successful still, Bezos is an engineer/product guy first that is laser focused on taking profits and putting them back into R&D, hard to beat that as you can see.

> I imagine they are hard to run. But they don't require "genius" to run, they require people skilled in process management, supply chain operations, assembly automation and the rest.

That's pretty much any company (with certain variations for different industries).

That's exactly the point I wanted to make. Tesla is in no way special compared with other companies. But there are plenty of people who think that it is, somehow, groundbreakingly different.

"I find it curious that an innovative American company pushing to help our carbon problem by going electric is so lambasted, shorted, constantly under attack"

I'm not sure if you're being tongue in cheek, but that is precisely why he's being attacked.

Musk brought this on himself. All he had to do was not make false financial statements on Twitter.

For that matter, he'd be better served if he didn't libelously call people pedophiles, try to start a war with the media, subject his factory workers to unsafe working conditions, and engage in union busting. Ultimately, these are all going to bite him in the ass, and he will have brought it all on himself.

Why? Honestly, what does Musk bring right now? If Tesla's product is good, if it's technology is good why shouldn't they succeed without Musk providing an inconvenient distraction.

The thing is, the product is not good, yet. They've yet to ship a $35,000 car, they've yet to hit their production goals, they've yet to justify their sky-high valuation, and their current build quality is below what one would expect for a $50,000 car.

This doesn't mean that failing to fix those problems will kill Tesla. It may, however, cause a large drop in stock price, massive losses for shareholders at large, and E.M. in particular, restructuring of their debt, and possibly acquisition for pennies on the dollar by another auto manufacturer.

That sounds like what they need is someone like Tim Cook: someone with a background in operations management.

Like, when I step back and look at Tesla's current challenges, they have two big ones: delivered products to meet demand and improving their driver assistance/autonomous driving offerings.

Which is why Jerome Guillen was promoted to President of Automotive [+] weeks ago.

"Jerome Guillen has been promoted to President, Automotive, reporting directly to me. In his new role, Jerome will oversee all automotive operations and program management, as well as coordinate our extensive automotive supply chain. Jerome has made major contributions and acquired deep knowledge of Tesla’s operations over the past eight years at our company, from being the first Model S Program Manager to managing all vehicle programs, then all vehicle engineering and worldwide sales & service. Recently, Jerome played a critical role in ramping Model 3 production, leading what almost all thought was impossible: creation of an entire high-volume General Assembly line for Model 3 in a matter of weeks. Before coming to Tesla, Jerome was responsible for creating and running the most successful semi truck program in history at Daimler’s Freightliner division."

[+] https://www.tesla.com/blog/company-update

I would argue that a lot of those things are true for current BMWs as well. They've fallen below the quality targets that I expect for their price and their base prices are too high.

I'm not sure that the summation of that would be that the "product is not good", though. It just means that some aspects of it are disappointing.

I've owned two Model 3s, and while this is anecdotal at best, I've found the build quality to be excellent in both of them. I have coworkers that drive BMWs and Audis that have ridden in my Model 3 and commented that the car feels very solid.

What’s wrong with someone else stepping in to run things? Why is E.M. the one person out of 7 billion on Earth who can possibly run the company? People said the same thing about Jobs, but here Apple is, still printing money.

I think the primary fear is that he’d be replaced with a visionless drone and the company would cease to push any kind of bar, sliding into the same sort of profitable stagnancy found at every other American carmaker.

The impact would be reduced now that the big guys are finally starting to take full electric seriously, but the impact would still be there. Without Tesla’s constant pressure I could see full BEV adoption being delayed by 5 years or more.

There's already a solution for what you're describing.

She's running SpaceX. They're already doing it there.

You make Musk the product lead or equivalent, chief visionary. The CEO is a specialist focused on operations, manufacturing. You don't need the CEO to be the chief visionary so long as you have Musk in the company. There's no good reason he needs to be overseeing every detail of manufacturing, there are people far better at that than he is.

I get that argument, but I'm pretty sure that a stagnant Tesla still ships the Semi, Model Y, the new Pickup Truck, that little something else that keeps getting whispered about, and maybe even the Roadster. Maybe the timeframes for each elongate by a few years, but there is still a pretty clear pathway to success.

And the cool thing? Elon Musk could join a competitor, grow them over 6 years, and leverage their sales to regain control of the business. That last bit is mostly joking, but good on you if you get history that it references.

Apple is a bad example, since it literally almost failed after they ousted Jobs... And yeah, Musk is one of very few who created major changes in several industries, and 7 billion people didn't. Removing Musk now, when Tesla is on a brink of becoming profitable can create an avalanche of bad things that will destroy it. I agree though, that tweet was very unfortunate, really doesn't seem like clever thing to do if you can't back it up.

Apple coasted on for a long time under Sculley as well, but in the long run, they stagnated and almost went out of business. After Jobs came back and restructured everything, they went on to become the most valuable public company in the world. It's premature to say that Apple is fine without Jobs, companies have a lot of inertia, for better or for worse.

I don't agree. I don't believe in the "key man" clause. Apple wasn't over when Jobs passed. Microsoft wasn't over when Gates left.

But supposing I did agree -

> I find it curious that an innovative American company pushing to help our carbon problem by going electric is so lambasted, shorted, constantly under attack. It cannot be argued that Tesla pushed forward both electric cars and self-driving vehicles as a major force (original self-driving push was a DoD X-Prize)

It can't be argued. But their CEO is a self-aggrandizing buffoon who is hurting himself and the company, and now, because the board couldn't or wouldn't stop him, the SEC will. I don't like it, either. I really honestly want Tesla to succeed.

Elon is preventing them from doing that now. If there's any hope for them to survive, in my opinion, it is without him. Even if that's riskier.

Edit: Accidentally killed Bill Gates :(. Sorry Bill!

For the record, Gates isn't dead. He just isn't the CEO of Microsoft any longer.

Whoops! Fixed that. My apologies to Bill. I knew that, I swear.

> I don't agree. I don't believe in the "key man" clause. Apple wasn't over when Jobs passed. Microsoft wasn't over when Gates died.

I think most people believe Ballmer did a terrible job as CEO – Microsoft's stock was basically flat for the 12 years after Gates left, and only really started to climb again after Nadella took over. That seems to be some evidence for key men.

>Microsoft wasn't over when Gates died? When did Gates die?

On a more serious note, they left after significant pass over and forsight that they were stepping down. They were both profitable, and they were not forced to step down. When Steve Jobs left the first time he was forced to, Apple almost went out of business.

> I find it curious that an innovative American company pushing to help our carbon problem by going electric is so lambasted, shorted, constantly under attack.

You're not the only one who smells something funny.

> If Elon Musk is removed as CEO at Tesla, Tesla is over.

What if Tesla's progress wasn't because of Musk, but in spite of Musk? He's chased away dozens of key people and his intolerance for criticism is well known. Apart from attracting cash, do you really think his contribution to the operation was that significant?

> I find it curious that an innovative American company pushing to help our carbon problem by going electric is so lambasted, shorted, constantly under attack.

Working towards a worthwhile cause does not mean nobody can call you out on bullshit. And he bullshits a lot.

> What if Tesla's progress want because of Musk, but in spite of Musk

No way that's true. No way. If you believe that then you must also believe SpaceX and him leading the company to create re-usable rockets was also just a fluke.

So Musk somehow just stumbled upon a highly successful, innovative, and cost-effective private rocket company, while also stumbling upon the first new American company to survive (for now, and as long as it has) in the car market in 100 years and also one that happens to build EVs from scratch.

Musk must have one hell of a luck to keep stumbling upon these sort of companies that "could have succeeded even without him."

SpaceX is a genuine astounding success, no doubt about it.

My opinion is that this success has clouded his judgment.

"Everybody told me SpaceX can't work, and I made it work. Everybody is telling me $THING at Tesla can't work, therefore I know I'll make it work, and everybody else must be wrong".

SpaceX was a novel endeavor. Building a car production plant is not.

Elon Musk doesn't run the day-to-day at SpaceX. That's been someone else, Gwynne Shotwell, for several years, and everyone credits her with getting SpaceX on track and meeting its contractual deadlines--which was something it wasn't managing when Musk was in charge.

I think that might have been true before July.

As of now, it looks very likely that Tesla can produce the Model 3 at scale. The current drought in production appears to be due to a shortage:

https://moneymaven.io/mishtalk/economics/force-manure-tesla-...

That's bad news for Tesla's fiscal situation, but a shortage of semiconductor wafers isn't indicative of some major flaw in the actual manufacturing process. Also, Tesla currently dominates the market for these wafers:

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-infineon-technol-results-... https://semiengineering.com/sic-chip-demand-surges/

which suggests that any potential competitors will face the same limitations, because SiC inverters dramatically improve the performance of electric motors:

https://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1330491

The global supply chain has to adapt to high demand for high-powered electric motors.

Anyway, once Tesla has successfully produced and sold a mass-market car, the need for a mythical figure at the top fades away. Since it looks like they're close to doing that, they're also close to doing away with Elon.

> It cannot be argued that Tesla pushed forward both electric cars and self-driving vehicles as a major force (original self-driving push was a DoD X-Prize

Sure it can. Tesla has done basically nothing for self-driving cars, it's technology is glorified lane-keeping. As to electric cars, the Model S is the third best-selling electric car ever, after the Nissan Leaf and the Chevy Volt. Both of those cars were introduced before the Model S. Electric cars are not yet mainstream, but when the become mainstream, they're going to look a lot more like a Chevy Volt than a Model S or Model 3. (The sport-sedan market Tesla is targeting is a niche, even if a very lucrative one. What people really want is a $25,000-35,000 small cross-over SUV or pickup truck.)

An electric 4WD minivan would be nice too.

You are missing a few facts that completely oppose the point of your comment: the model S is not Tesla's first electric - that would be the Roadster, which was release a couple years before the other cars you mention. Chevy Volt is not full electric and can't get very far on pure electric. And the Nissan Leaf is a glorified golf cart that doesn't surpass 100 miles on a charge.

The frank truth is that both the better design and range of Tesla vehicles set the stage for electric cars to be adopted by everyone rather than just special interest groups.

You can be assured that every manufacturer in the world, such as BMW, is building up electric manufacturing capability due to the success of Tesla, and not Nissan.

The Volt was also not GM’s first EV. Both the Roadster and GM’s EV 1 were niche products. You can call the Leaf a golf cart, but it’s sold more vehicles than the Model S. Yes the Model S has more performance, but it’s also a vastly more expensive car.

As to other manufacturers, they were “building up electric manufacturing capability” before Tesla. Toyota was selling thr first RAV 4 EV before Tesla was even founded. Tesla didn’t have the first EV. It may have the best EV now, but that hardly says anything—it’s much easier to make a $50-100,000 EV than on at a mainstream price point. The remaining question is who is on track to create products in the form factors people care about (not sports sedans) at prices they can afford? At this rate, that’s not Tesla either.

Are you aware that the RAV 4 EV used Tesla batteries?

Regarding the Roadster being "niche", it still looked like a normal car at least, unlike the EV 1, and any other electric car at the time. Furthermore, they had a roadmap to more affordable cars that still fit the moniker "normal". Other car companies were just running their EV projects as experiments, or as a way to appease California legislators to meet quotas, or simply retrofitting a non electric frame with batteries in a way that left much to be desired.

No one was trying to make a non-toy full electric car until Tesla.

The first RAV 4 EV came out in 1997. Tesla was founded in 2003.

> No one was trying to make a non-toy full electric car until Tesla.

The Roadster was a toy, costing over $100,000 and selling approximately 2,500 vehicles, in the same ballpark as the EV1. The idea that it spurred GM and Nissan to build completely different EVs for the opposite end of the market is delusional. The timing also doesn’t work. It took Tesla several years to bring the Roadster to the prototype stage. Counting back a similar length of time from when the Volt was unveiled as a concept car, that means GM would’ve been working on it since 2004 or so, years before the Roadster came out.

>Electric cars are not yet mainstream, but when the become mainstream, they're going to look a lot more like a Chevy Volt than a Model S or Model 3.

Is your argument based on the form factor? Tesla's EV value proposition is based on the range of the battery pack, which blows the Leaf out of the water (the Volt is a hybrid). Switching to a smaller form factor (hatchback) would increase Tesla's range advantage.

How is putting an electric motor in a slightly different shape of car a more important accomplishment than making it run for 300 miles on a charge? The end-game car might look like a Chevy Volt on the outside, but under the hood it'll look more like a Tesla. Also, the cross-over SUV only replaced the station wagon as a way to exploit emissions regulations, which will no longer be relevant for EVs; see:

https://www.greencarreports.com/news/1107161_are-you-driving...

Also, as 'colordrops noted, the Roadster predates the Leaf and the Volt, and may have inspired automakers to compete with Tesla.

> How is putting an electric motor in a slightly different shape of car a more important accomplishment than making it run for 300 miles on a charge? The end-game car might look like a Chevy Volt on the outside, but under the hood it'll look more like a Tesla.

The Model 3 has more range because it has a much bigger and more expensive battery pack, and accordingly a much higher price tag (starting at $30,000 versus starting at $50,000). There is nothing to suggest that Tesla is going to be able to scale down to a mainstream price faster than Nissan, Chevy, etc., improve the performance of their offerings which sre already much closer to a mainstream price point. Tesla’s persistent inability to sell the promised base Model 3 suggests the opposite.

If Elon Musk is the reason Tesla goes bankrupt, does it matter?

Agreed this would be a tradgedy, if Tesla and it’s truly ground breaking innovation, is killed off, by a boring SEC parasitic bureaucrats, anally following rules, for rules sake. Yes the SEC has some purpose, to protect investors from outright fraud, they don’t need protection from taking late night impetuous tweets from notoriously emotional Musk too seriously. Tesla is not a fly by night sham, it is a serious long term business, and with inherent risks involved. Musk is obviously a genius and of course eccentric, he is still indespensible to Tesla. Reminds me of when the UK government destroyed their own genius of the 20th century - Alan Turing - please don’t repat the same tragic mistake.

There are few leaders in the business world as capable as Musk. Would we even be having this conversation without Twitter? Social media considered harmful.

Most business leaders in the world are far more capable than Musk at actually running successful companies. You just don't hear about them because they spend their time running their companies or with their families instead of bragging about what a great job they're doing on twitter. (Here's a hint: if you have to publicly brag about doing a great job, you really aren't.)

No, they're not. If they did, they'd be making headlines. A lot of execs are good at extracting value from pre-established business models, but few would have the intuition, intelligence, and risk-taking capacity to create the kind of innovative companies that Musk has.

It's generally not news for a businessperson to be doing a good job, because that's expected of them, especially in an up-economy.

intuition, intelligence, and risk-taking capacity to create the kind of innovative companies that Musk has.

Citations needed. Paypal's success was based on Thiel's technology and IP, not Musk's. SpaceX was a non-contender until Shotwell took over running things. Hyperloop hyper-hasn't gone anywhere in 5 years. Tesla has missed every deadline and milestone its ever set for itself, and has never made a profit--it's only cash-flow positive quarter was from a one-time flash sale of emissions credits.

Citations are not needed, my friend. This is not a college report or a Wikipedia article. This is a discussion. But since you made a bunch of loose cannon statements without citations yourself...

Peter Thiel himself would tell you, that "he would never compete with Musk" [1]. He went on to say, in an interview with Rubin, "...after Paypal, Elon set off to start both the rocket company and the electric car company, Space X and Tesla, and I think the conventional wisdom about Elon was that if one of them succeeded, you'd have to question it, but when both of them succeeded, it suggests, you know, he knows something that other people don't."

I'm not going to comment on SpaceX. As CEO since 2002, Musk is instrumental in the operations of SpaceX, and ultimately the buck stops with him. [2]

As for Hyperloop, that was an idea that Musk put forward. I imagine that he would create a Hyperloop company, if he wasn't already CEO of two companies (SpaceX, Tesla) and core founder of a third (The Boring Company).

Tesla could die tomorrow and you would still have to call the company a huge success. 10 years ago, nobody thought that big oil's hold on the transportation industry would ever end. The establishment auto companies piddle paddled for decades with fuel cells [3]. Even by missing whatever bold milestones Tesla has ever set for itself, it has surpassed any other company's progress in producing oil-free autos. Now, it's within reach, and that's in no small part due to Tesla.

Sure, I suppose you can look at quarterly profit, if that's your sole metric for success. And I suppose a lot of bean counter types would look at that metric, but what I'm telling you is, if you only looked at metrics like that and raw odds of financial success...those same bean counter types would never, ever take the same risks that Musk took.

By the way, Amazon was criticized for years for never showing a profit, they kept re-investing their profits in their business [4]. And what they've transformed themselves into is a nearly unstoppable behemoth. That's because Bezos is a visionary, like Musk. And people like that, are not a dime a dozen. They're exceedingly rare.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h10kXgTdhNU [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elon_Musk [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_cell_vehicle [4] https://www.ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2014/9/4/why-amazon-...

Agree. I want Elon's companies to succeed. I don't care if Elon himself is part of the equation, and it's starting to look like they might be better off if he is not.

Either way, he committed something between gross negligence and fraud. He should be held accountable and isn't above the law just because some of us like the work his companies are doing.

I tend to agree, but it’s a double-edged sword. Without Musk’s cult of personality it’s unclear whether sufficient capital can be secured to bridge Tesla to a sustainable future. Of course given his recent behavior it may not matter either way.

Spare a thought for all the other perfectly reasonable, and achievable goals which companies did not achieve, because the funding they needed went to Elon Musk companies instead.

It would be interesting if China offered Musk their resources if he really gets banned from holding an executive position at Tesla.

Note that Tesla requires a super-majority vote for major changes, and with Elon's ownership (as well as insiders who may toe the line) it would take an almost 90% vote.

https://www.thestreet.com/investing/stocks/how-elon-musk-con...

(Obviously the SEC can take action that supersedes those rules)

Even if Musk is removed, his votes give him an extraordinary amount of control over Tesla's day to day operations, until they change the supermajority rule (which in itself would require a vote subject to the rule)

Shareholders don't have control over day-to-day operations. They get to pick the board, which picks the management team that actually runs day-to-day stuff. If (after this all goes down) Elon were to effectuate day-to-day control, he would be treated as an officer of Tesla in violation of the SEC order and they would likely seek jail time the second time around.

Ousting Elon Musk will only make Tesla's eventual takeover of the auto industry take longer. Tesla will have a "John Scully" character who ruins/devalues the whole company to the point where Elon can buy it back, then he will take the company so far that it makes every other auto manufacturer obsolete.

What? Elon Musk is Tesla. I would sell everything if he gets ousted...

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