Comment by Lazare | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Lazare | Hacker News Reader

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> Why do some many people hate Tesla and want them to fail?

My feeling is that the overwhelming majority of Tesla critics do not hate Tesla, and do not want Tesla to fail. Rather, they see Tesla as a small, unimportant, poorly run company that gets far more press (positive and negative) than it deserves, and who respond by needling Tesla super-fans. The super fans, in turn, react by treating this as shocking, but it's not really. Tesla critics are treating Tesla like a normal company, and most companies are not particularly well-liked. Nobody cares if Amalgamated Widgets rises and falls except it's investors and competitors.

> Do they also want SpaceX to fail?

No. But also, Tesla critics, I believe, view SpaceX as a VERY different company. Tesla is just another car company making just another car. SpaceX is something else entirely.

If your mental model is "Tesla is like SpaceX", this probably feels weird to you, and the way Tesla gets covered in the press - as if it was merely a car company! - must be maddening. If your mental model is "Tesla is like Saab", this seems pretty obvious.

> Most tech giants of recent times have done things I would consider to have made the world a much worse place.

I would never dream of calling Tesla a "tech giant". It's a car company, it's not making very good cars, it's not making them very well, it's not making very many of them, and it's not making a lot of money off them. I am incredibly tired of hearing about Tesla. Even if it wins, the Tesla end-game is to be another big successful car company, and I don't care about big successful car companies.

> Rather, they see Tesla as a small, unimportant, poorly run company (...)

> (...)

> Tesla is just another car company making just another car.

Definitely false. Q2 revenue was 25% of Nissan's (which crossed my radar recently due to layoffs). That may be small, for some definition of small, but it's definitely not "small, unimportant". I won't comment on poorly run -- a qualitative assessment that does not lead to a definitive conclusion. I'd challenge with a comparison to a well run startup in the automotive space, but there is none to compare it with.

As for another car company making just another car, I don't understand how can you even write those words together. A Tesla may be a good car, a poor car, depending on who you ask. What it is definitely not is your average Volkswagen.

What you're not following, I think, is how little I care about cars and car companies. :) I don't care about Nissan, and I certainly don't care about a company a quarter their size. I care a little about Toyota because they're huge, but yes, small companies in industries that don't directly impact me are unimportant to me.

If I worked for a car company, I'd probably care, but I work for a tech company, so I don't.

> A Tesla may be a good car, a poor car, depending on who you ask. What it is definitely not is your average Volkswagen.

Okay, sure, it's twice that car a Volkswagen is, I trust you. But it's still a car.

Again, I think there is a significant faction of Tesla fans that don't see Tesla as a car company, and instead see it more like SpaceX. I don't.

> Again, I think there is a significant faction of Tesla fans that don't see Tesla as a car company, and instead see it more like SpaceX. I don't.

I do, and I'd like to explain why. This is not about cars. The single most important challenge our generation faces is dealing with climate change. We absolutely need to curb CO2 emissions. We don't need to limit CO2 emissions, we need to cut them significantly.

There are two avenues for this goal. Either we cut energy consumption, significantly, or we switch energy sources away from fossil fuels.

I believe cutting energy consumption is impossible. It goes against a five thousand year trend of per-capita energy consumption growth, amplified by population growth. If you step back from the ecologist message a bit and look at the overarching trend, the picture is clear: Cutting global energy consumption is a no-go.

The other path is switching energy sources. We're advancing on that front. However, for renewable sources to have the needed impact, they must be applicable to transportation. Here, in this specific point, Tesla was and is key. It has already succeeded. The BMW CEO was fired because of lack of focus on EVs. It's a stark change from pre-Tesla, and it is a market change created by Tesla. Every automaker will go the EV route, and I'm completely convinced that, absent Tesla, they would sit on their hands for at least another decade.

If the saving the world stuff was actually Tesla's mission they wouldn't have their CEO bounce back from LA to the Bay Area on a private jet every other day. Each time he flies he offsets the carbon savings of pretty much every Tesla driven in CA that day.

The switch to EVs has more to do with Obama than Tesla. He pushed through many of the incentives that made Tesla possible.

> If the saving the world stuff was actually Tesla's mission they wouldn't have their CEO bounce back from LA to the Bay Area on a private jet every other day. Each time he flies he offsets the carbon savings of pretty much every Tesla driven in CA that day.

I don't follow the logic. The impact of a jet flying back and forth pales in comparison to the impact of switching vehicles away from fossils. You're comparing the incomparable. Many orders of magnitude of difference separate the two.

I follow your argument and support what you say.

There are always going to be critics who parrot idiotic points which you're having to refute, even among the "tech literate".

Would the car industry be as far along as it is today in EVs without Tesla? hard to say, I would say probably not. Toyota has been actively shunning EVs (hybrids don't count) and now still insisting on most of its energy into hydrogen fuel cells and BMW just kicked out its CEO for, among other things, stalling on EV development for so long.

Do I prefer being in a world where we have a Tesla? hell yes.

Ah, I see. So we should all be lauding Toyota for it's role in launching the Prius when there was literally no existing demand for green cars, leading to the US and EU governments creating incentives for additional green car manufacturing, and creating the market that Tesla is now trying to cater to with poorly-made luxury vehicles.

Fun fact: Planes are efficient for long trips. According to “sustainable energy without the hot air”, you need three people in a gas car to beat the efficiency of flying on a long trip. It seems like driving to LA with one or two people in the car is less carbon efficient than flying. With an EV you’re probably good though.

I think those numbers are for passenger flights carrying large amounts of people, not private jets carrying very few.

Good point, you're totally right! I don't think they covered that in the book. Here's the relevant chapter if calculations on flight: http://withouthotair.com/c5/page_35.shtml

So you fall into the "Tesla is saving the world" superfan category. The problem is that they aren't, and as someone else said, the fans are just really annoying.

I know you don't mean to come off that way, but even your defense of Elon and such in this thread comes off as a combination of "ends justify the means" and sheer sycophantry.

Nobody likes that. It's not as bad as some, mind you. Reading Teslarati makes me feel like these people need a cult deprogrammer, stat.

In no way I believe the ends justify the means. I also did not defend Elon in this thread. You are reading your own bias into my comments.

Criticize Tesla for worker security conditions and hiring practices all you want. It is deserved and should be corrected. The jump from criticism to rooting for failure is the step I don't understand (1). I also do not understand the annoyance caused by praising the fact that Tesla did push the automotive market towards EVs.

(1) I have an explanation, but it's almost insulting to critics: Any kind of venture, more so any kind of _risky_ venture, will attract doomsayers. Once held, personal beliefs are hard to change, so people root for validation of their first evaluation. I'd love to see Tesla criticism justified differently, but that's how I read most hard line critics.

"In no way I believe the ends justify the means. I also did not defend Elon in this thread. You are reading your own bias into my comments. "

If you really really believe this, you need to take a long hard look at yourself and your comments again.

You literally defended him, for example:

"Every CEO is a salesman. Anyone who believes every word of a salesman is a fool. I'd not paint it as Trump-style, bona fide lying. It's just inflating promises, or being overly optimistic. Par for the course."

As for the rest:

Numerous people have tried to help you understand in this thread, and your response has not really been to try to understand their perspective, but instead tell them why they are wrong, and how it must be everyone else.

If you really want to understand, people have tried to help as best they can.

Maybe, rather than immediately react, take a while and process it?

I have a feeling that most critics used to be fans. Five years ago Elon was my favorite entrepreneur.

Today I think the limp wristed response to the $420 fraud is a black stain on the justice system.

I'd still prefer Tesla succeed of course, and there's an undeniable impact it's had. But any warm and fuzzy feeling I once had is very much over.

Climate change climate change climate change.

Such a religion now.

> [Tesla] Q2 revenue was 25% of Nissan's

And a bit less than 10% of Volkswagen or Toyota's.

With about 25% of their individual market caps.

I don't get the message you are trying to convey. It's natural that Tesla is smaller than the largest automakers. It's smaller than medium automakers. That much is expectable.

If you are referring to the disconnect between revenue and market cap, it may point to a valuation error by the market. Or not. The market is clearly incorporating expected growth into the current value. Is the valuation correct? I have no idea. I'd not infer too much from this fact alone, though.

> I'd challenge with a comparison to a well run startup in the automotive space, but there is none to compare it with.

Here are some car startups. Rivian has received the most investment of the three from companies like Amazon and Ford.

Rivian: https://products.rivian.com/

Sono Motors: https://sonomotors.com/

Lightyear: https://lightyear.one/

Tesla has advanced the advent of BEV by something like 10y. There are multiple statements by old car CEOs who admit that Tesla forced their hand to finally take electric cars seriously. So no, Tesla is not unimportant. At all.

Dieselgate did more in forcing companies to take electric cars than Tesl ever did.

It's obviously hard to debate counterfactuals but I disagree. I think having a publicly successful alternative available made the impact of deiselgate much worse (for EV alternatives/better for the planet).

Just like Nuclear can get away with being "better than coal" but in the face of plummeting wind, solar and storage costs its drawbacks get looked at with new eyes.

Or in some parallel dimension where deiselgate led to trillions being wasted on hydrogen fuel celled vehicles which never replaced ICE.

What would these companies invest into if Tesla hadn’t proven long range BEVs to be viable? What could the public and policy makers point to when the old car companies keep stating that there are no current alternatives, that we have to wait another decade or two for their R&D projects to pan out?

Besides, I was replying to a post that said Tesla was unimportant. Well, I personally doubt it, but yeah maybe what VW did -braking the law and harming the health of millions- was even more important.

I think Tesla 'proved' the viability of long range BEVs the same way Newton proved calculus to Liebniz (and I'm only being slightly hyperbolic). Some ideas/discoveries/technologies are more or less inevitable as the newly-existing but disparate building-blocks are there, waiting for a receptive mind to piece everything together and usually with a surprising level or synchrony.

Tesla didn't have any ground-breaking research on battery chemistry, or motor efficiency; they are among the first to packaged everything together after the underlying technology became mature enough, and managed to suck the air away from the other early competitors. If Tesla never existed, the car companies would still invest in electric vehicles.

Edit: I've just discovered that the founding of Tesla itself was inspired by the General Motors EV1 which was in production from 1996[1] and recalled in 2003.

1. https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/873116351316938753

> I think Tesla 'proved' the viability of long range BEVs the same way Newton proved calculus to Liebniz (and I'm only being slightly hyperbolic). Some ideas/discoveries/technologies are more or less inevitable as the newly-existing but disparate building-blocks are there, waiting for a receptive mind to piece everything together and usually with a surprising level or synchrony.

This effect can be observed often in the case of low investment advances like mathematical breakthroughs, inventions that are limited to a bunch of papers, gadgets or Uber for X type, X as a service startups etc. But, it is evidently not true for hard problems, advances that require huge investments, bear enormous risks and uncertain payoff.

The people who go for the relatively low hanging fruits know this very well, evident in their rush to the market, patent or to publish in academic journals.

In contrast, the hard problems, like landing a man on the moon, measuring the higgs boson, retro propulsive landing of orbital rockets or, case in point, the development of long range BEVs would not have happened if someone would have had the ability and courage to go all in at enormous cost and risk. Progress is not automatic! It may appear though but in reality people are sometimes willing to pay enormous prices for lofty goals. Or they don't and progress simply does not happen.

In fact, these tasks are so hard, that none of the achievements mentioned above have been repeated so far, despite arguably ample time for copy cats. No one but NASA went to the moon, no second LHC was built, only SpaceX has landed orbital boosters and the 2012 Model S still has more range than any non Tesla BEV. Another evidence is that there are problems that we know are arguably solvable and desirable, yet we still haven't solved them, e.g. putting a man or women on Mars, switching to 100% renewable energies, fusion, making certain diseases extinct etc.

I agree. BEVs are, I think, inevitable, and one person or company can only do very little to shift the timeline one way or another.

Which impact Tesla has had, if any, is impossible to measure. It's not even entirely clear that the impact was positive.

(Imagine that a large car company or well funded startup was contemplating a massive investment in BEVs to try and get a first mover advantage, but Tesla got there first, so they decided to invest in hybrids or a new range of SUVs instead. In this word, "but for" Tesla, BEVs might be even more widely adopted. Of course, we have no reason to think that's true, but then, we have no reason to think that, "but for" Tesla, nobody would have done anything with EVs for another 10 years either, and that doesn't stop people from wildly speculating...)

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