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Comment by anw | Hacker News Reader

I love the idea of Tesla, and what it's helped promote. But I do worry about its cult of personality, and what effect that could have on the stock should something happen to Elon.

I got in around late 2012 because Elon spoke about really good ideas, and I really wanted to promote what he was talking about. It's been quite a ride, with the acquisitions of Solar City and Maxwell Technologies. Those additions made me have hope we'd see a real mover that could help get a lot of the world onto solar energy.

However, I look at the stock prices right now, and I can't help but see they've been greatly overvalued since ~January 2020 with the major driving force (in my opinion) only being the cult of Elon.

I admire what he's done, and his ambition, but I also worry if he gets removed or hit by a CyberTruck, if the company will still continue as it is now, or if it would spell disaster.

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Looking into what happened with SolarCity is quite an eye opener. Self dealing, billions of dollars spent on a bankrupt entity, public subsidies demanded, spent, with no return...

Two weeks ago, Musk said they need a east coast gigafactory while Buffalo sits idle.

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2019/08/how-elon-musk-gamble...

If the stock was driven by a 'cult' then it would have gone up differently.

It has gone up because auto players all lost like 30% because of COVID and Tesla lost like 5% while still being profitable and still show very good margin and demand.

Plus they products in their future that are gone sell incredibly well in addition to the massive scaling that is still ongoing for Model Y. Semi, Cybertruck are gigantic market that Tesla will have a huge market share in for the next 5 to 10 years at least.

I worry about Bus factor with Elon too, but to assign the stock price to him is a waste over estimation.

Completely agree, Tesla's stock has a bus factor of 1. I do believe it's made a big enough push already to spark the change to clean energy, and that's what really matters here.

> I do believe it's made a big enough push already to spark the change to clean energy

Are there studies that show this? I don't see or know how any push in cars, electric or not, is necessarily moving us toward cleaner transportation much less clean energy.

It's about advancing battery tech not (just) cars. You have to have a demand first.

Here's a couple links, one a paper from McGill tying green energy and political power, and an article from National Geographic saying "Two-thirds of young adults (aged 18 to 34) say they’re inclined to vote for a political candidate who supports cutting greenhouse gas emissions and increasing financial incentives for renewable energy".

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S221462961...

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/great-energy-...

Thank you the links. I will read them in more detail, but at first glance, they don't address what I am asking.

If you look at an EV versus ICE car in isolation, the EV is definitely greener. However, if we look at the whole system and process of electric energy production, gas production, battery production and disposal, etc., I have not seen analyses that compare which is actually greener. I would love to be pointed to this, as I have tried to find it! As far as I can tell from my searching, they are essentially overall the same, except that the effects are spread around in time and place.

Now, I can assume that there is a tacit argument that putting more electric vehicles on the road increases the demand for clean energy because electric vehicles tax electricity production heavier, which is not that green now. However, are electric cars really the primary driving factor for clean electricity production? Actual clean energy production is obviously extremely important.

Also, I don't understand how continually building more and more cars gets us to a cleaner future. I imagine whenever self-driving cars arrive, we'll all just be sitting in packed streets. That doesn't feel necessarily cleaner or futuristic.

? I have not seen analyses that compare which is actually greener. I would love to be pointed to this,

https://www.ucsusa.org/resources/cleaner-cars-cradle-grave

In summary, it takes about 18 months of driving before an the reduced gasoline emissions compensates for the increased manufacturing emissions.

> I imagine whenever self-driving cars arrive, we'll all just be sitting in packed streets.

Agreed. So many people think that self-driving cars are going to reduce congestion, an argument I don't buy. They'll make congestion much worse IMO.

Thanks for the link! That's the first time I've seen an analysis like that in terms of the time it takes for a crossover event. It'll take longer to read through their full report. Although, it does exclude the environmental impact of the battery disposal problem, at least in the summary article.

And yea, I'm not looking forward to the self-driving "utopia". I feel it's solving the wrong problems and will create wholly new problems.

I've previously heard Elon answer this question. The biggest blocker with reducing Carbon emissions was the whataboutism of consumer car use (i.e. decentralized carbon emissions). Migrating all consumer cars to electric gets rid of that whataboutism. Now we can focus on the real Carbon emitters:

1. There are few car manufacturers, there are many car users. Its easy to scrutinize and regulate car manufacturers through Carbon credits, or some future system so they offset /eliminate the Carbon emission. Similar efforts, like a Carbon tax on gasoline, were shot down previously (in general; there were some passed) for "penalizing consumers" (i.e. no longer an insurmountable issue because mass migration to electric cars are now seen as inevitable).

2. Electricity production is relatively consolidated (solar's decentralization is already a move toward "green energy" so I'll skip its impact). Given the consolidation of energy production, its again easy to use regulation or consumer bargaining power to sift production to "green energy".

In conclusion, while there is valid debate about "Are car factories and electricity production really carbon beneficial compared with ICE cars?", there is no debate that "having solved the decentralized carbon emissions problem (i.e. previously a technology limitation), the next step to improve centralized, large scale factories and electricity production is simple (i.e. an ROI calculation for those companies - e.g. given a factory is already in Texas and active during daylight hours, is it cheaper to produce cars using solar?)".

My mistake, I misunderstood your question, I was showing that there is more of a movement in general towards shifting to green energy. I'm not aware of any studies that show a comparison of emissions.

Don't forget, the cars are really great.

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