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Comment by rchaud | Hacker News Reader

Musk is a figurehead at both Tesla and SpaceX. He is too far out of the salt mines (or too impatient) to reconcile his wildly optimistic release estimates with actual engineeering reality.

Where is the Hyperloop? Where is the Cybertruck? Where's full self driving? Every single one of these is years behind the CEO's own formally stated launch dates. So who's really in charge?

It's not at all surprising that he'd install himself as interim CEO at Twitter, as it's easier to make it look like he's getting things done. Especially as he gets to play to his base of fans about 'free speech'. No word on how this is impacted by Prince Alwaleeed Bin Talal's share of the takeover, or that of the emirate of Qatar.

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There has been this kind of rhetoric around Elon things a lot. "Wheres the reusuable booster?" "Where is the model 3?" "Haha the model 3 is in a tent".

Meanwhile the model 3 and Y dominate world EV sales, and the reusable boosters have become a boring part of weekly life.

I'm not sure I would interpret Elons aspirational predictions as lack of involvement. It isn't unusual to publicly push for the impossible in the hopes you get close to it. Coaches and managers all do this.

Coaches and managers probably do not have the Mythical Man-Month on their bookshelf. Musk and his advisors almost definitely do.

In any case, coaches that make these kinds of announcements several times and fail to achieve them, do not stay in the job very long. In Musk's case, this is immaterial as he has rigged the Tesla board with loyalists and family members.

Most managers I know have the mythical man month in their bookshelf.

> Meanwhile the model 3 and Y dominate world EV sales,

They are the top two models, but they don’t dominate the market: BYD sells more EVs (mix of PHEVs and BEVs) than Tesla, but makes mamy more models. Tesla’s models “dominate” the EV market no more than Apple’s have historically “dominated” the desktop PC market.

For those (like me) who had to look up "BYD":

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BYD_Auto

> The company has mainly based its sales in Mainland China, but is undertaking rapid expansion into the global market, with sales hitting over 100,000 per month in March 2022, and is expecting to sell between 1.5 million to 2 million plug-in EVs in 2022, around 3 to 4 times the volume in 2021. In June 2022, BYD Auto announced that it had sold about 641,000 EVs in the first half of 2022, overtaking Tesla to become the largest EV manufacturer in the world.

The question is where do Mr Musks claims become similar to Ms Holmes?

He promised a lot and the team delivered part of it.

People are making investments based on him saying that he’ll have mass production of a personal robot in a few years. If that robot can’t water the plants in my house, then his recent demo was a lie.

I’m not wanting to pull him down, but Tesla is over valued and a potential house of cards. Having more realistic targets means it’s easier to beat expectations.

Also, try buying solar panels or batteries from Tesla these days.

There is a reason Enphase's stock is on a tear.

Sure, the technology is great, but Power Wall sales are Tesla's "deals to lose", and their sales team is aggressively losing them.

https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/ENPH

Yep! Been on a wait list for Tesla solar tiles for 2 years now... Even the Powerwall people won't come out until I have solar (either Tesla / otherwise)

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