Really curious as to what the motivations might be here for all these people to leave (apart from the monetary benefits of joining another "Tesla" even earlier).
This is a known strategy on HN, recommended by none other than Paul Graham. Reasonable expectation of utility for a talented group or individual.
There is a good argument to be made that the cap should have been US wide and not per-company, because now it’s incentivizing late-movers who didn’t have to carry the initial higher R&D burden.
There’s even a small chance this might actually be amended by Congress.
But on the flip side, a per company cap diversifies the knowledge and experience and drives increased competition, even if it is late to the game.
But all of this goes to the consumer in the form of a demand side tax non-refundable tax credit. It will not help if they fail to get into production due to liquidity problems. Many businesses have failed trying to get to that point.
Lucid probably makes that choice super easy, since you'll be working with familiar faces.
The early employees are likely the best to create a new electric car company, since they were the foundation of the current industry leader.
But when you look at it, they're building another Model S.
Having the option to build something you liked is better than being forced to use what is already used 'because it exists'.
Not always the best decision, but usually the kind of thought process one goes though.
For sure, there are many struggles that continue for Tesla, but I'm not sure that a new startup building cars from scratch is a way out of that. It looks like jumping out of the pot and into an inferno to me.
But the sorts of people doing this seem to be the ones that might enjoy the challenge involved.
After all, they're going to need a visionary...
Not necessarily. Sometimes you have a well defined problem and your advantage is in better execution.
Ex-Tesla employees have flocked to a variety of EV startups (Faraday Future, Elio, Lucid, Rivian, etc.) with varying levels of success for a while now. It's kind of like an incubator for EV engineers.
Great point that Tesla is an EV innovation incubator. High praise.
Once Model Y and Model 3 are globally available at scale, those lines cover the budget market. Tesla will be free to jack up the S and X prices into the mid $100s and spend that money on interiors. People will use ride sharing revenues to help cover the higher monthly payment.
Even if the autonomy part is delayed, this next generation of interiors, led by Lucid, is supporting Lyft and Uber drivers to make those higher payments, with premium vehicle ride share rates.
(1) Semi won’t need consumer design resources. And 3 and Y can be in design freeze for a while. Those teams will be 100% about production efficiency for a decade or so. So after Pickup, what else can Franz work on besides Roadster and S & X interior luxury? Franz had a fun to his head when designing the first Model S. With the freedom to start over and the needs of of autonomous taxi services at front of mind, I think Franz could do a lot. And depending on how Pickup goes we might see a more radical styling on the Model S. The 3/Y can be the conservative models, S/X inevitably have to be about passion.
How many million people lived in London, Paris, Moscow or Tokyo when they started building their respective subways?
The answer is 2.5 million, 3.3 million, 3.8 million, and 8 million, respectively. And all of those were started before 1930, so it was actually possible with the technology 100 years ago.
Yeah it does. Renewables take up tons of acreage and nuclear has issues with waste management, sourcing of raw materials (for developing countries), and being able to adjust to scale with variable power consumption.
The US has over 250 million privately owned vehicles that use an internal combustion engine for locomotion. We have 4 million miles of roads and the average commute is 25 minutes. How exactly would you structure a mass public transit system to accommodate this demand?
What has being "American" got to do with anything? Are electric vehicles not useful elsewhere? I'm not American and I think what hes doing is a great idea.
>A better future doesn’t involve better cars. Cheaper or more efficient use of energy is simply going to increase energy consumption.
Why do you assume your vision is what everyone wants or should want? Musk is doing something he believes in rather than simply talk about it. Why the needless hate?