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Comment by toomuchtodo | Hacker News Reader

Consider the nuance. Tesla the org does good work (lots of EVs sold, lots of good people doing good engineering, 40GWh/yr of utility scale battery manufacturing capacity). Its North America ops are now being run by Tom Zhu. Elon is incinerating his wealth, diminishing his own power it took him two decades to build (which is his choice). These can all be objectively good outcomes, although the process is…messy. We’re headed toward the ideal outcome of Tesla continuing to grow while Elon slow burns his way out.

Yes, Elon should be more kind, but like a great white shark, put a cage between you and them and move on. This holds for most people who reach the level he has. You don’t become this wealthy by being a decent human (broadly speaking, there are always exceptions).

https://www.scmp.com/news/world/united-states-canada/article...

(no current TSLA exposure, I intend to donate to Halli in some fashion)

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The lesson I've learned from his Twitter acquisition is that (1) he has vast influence over his companies, when and if he chooses to, and (2) he is sometimes willing to use that influence in ways that cause harm to his customers and the business (even to his own wealth), even in cases where his actions violate explicit contractual promises. And (3) if/when he chooses to do this, his business partners, C-level employees and fellow investors will facilitate his behavior rather than providing any counterweight or cautionary advice.

I'm a current Tesla owner (2018 Model 3) and really like the car. But these are all reasons why I'm uncomfortable investing in another 5-7 years of Tesla ownership. Right now Musk has chosen to not destroy Tesla (or at least, not harm it much) but at any point he might decide to illegally void all warranties or triple the price of supercharging just for fun. Plus I intensely dislike the guy and want to encourage the growth of the EV industry away from a single, potentially unreliable supplier. And this is sad, because two years ago I would have gone to the mat to convince my friends and family to buy Teslas.

> (3) if/when he chooses to do this, his business partners, C-level employees and fellow investors will facilitate his behavior rather than providing any counterweight or cautionary advice.

This is a common thread from multiple people I've talked to who have worked for his companies. Everyone who works even close to his orbit are sycophants. You have to be or your career is... limited. I remember even applying for one of those companies some time ago. The phone screen went well and when I called the recruiter back a week later to ask how things were going, she said "[Hiring Manager's name] disagreed with Elon about something and no longer works here." Yow.

Also don't forget that Tesla Inc. (and by extension Elon) has root access to your car's onboard computer.

He could literally brick your car tomorrow, or make it play an endless loop of Nyan cat at full blast or grab the camera footage and publish it on Twitter if he felt like it.

An administrator with root access could cause your car to unexpectedly lose braking power, accelerate into a wall, or if there was an adverse event claim they downloaded complete logs and it was all your fault because you're a bad person. Tesla has remarkable real-time power over you, but CEO's wield great power in general, which is the reason they normally are quite a lot more measured and balanced in their public interactions.

this comment is stupid.

you're suggesting tsla is going to brick someone's car because of something they said on twitter just because elon told them to?

You mean just as stupid as the richest person in the world who runs like 5 companies to spend his time bullying an employee of Twitter on Twitter? Yup, you're right, it's that stupid.

> bullying an employee of Twitter

Bully a disabled employee about their disability being a sign of weak character.

> https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/feb/03/elon-musk...

Isn't that just the next step of this? I'm not saying it would happen, but it doesn't seem totally out of the realm of possibility given the level of petty we're dealing with.

They've cancelled orders, denied access to the software betas, revoked investor access, etc already. So not entirely out of the realm of possibilities.

I don't think he'd do anything risking him an "attempted murder" charge. But some kind of "trolling"? Or gathering information that would give an advantage? Absolutely.

Mind if I ask: do you feel any sort of stigma attached to driving your car these days? Do you feel like you get looks or anything?

I see Teslas in town and admire them still. But wondered if this is a thing now for some.

It’s a thing for me, Teslas have become much less psychologically desirable over the last few months. Nothing personal to anyone who bought one, but now I see them and wince/feel sorry for the owner rather than feeling mildly impressed and jealous.

I don't feel like I get looks for driving my Tesla. However, my confidence in them has dwindled significantly since we got our Model 3 in 2020.

Just last year, I was all-in on getting the Model S despite its cost going way up. I was determined to figure out how to do it. I was also extremely bullish on FSD and definitely had a few shares.

Today, I have almost no interest in getting a new Tesla, have serious doubts about FSD long-term and have sold all of my shares.

Tesla, as a company, is absolutely fantastic, and I am thankful for Elon doing an excellent job at pushing the old guard towards electric. However, I can't continue supporting a person who has such obvious disregard for others he thinks are beneath him.

Not OP, but I own three (S, X, Y) Teslas of various vintages and feel no stigma. Life lesson: don’t care what other people think about your consumer purchases. Those are not people you should associate with.

Alternate view: perhaps you could learn something from people who try to apply ethics and responsibility to their life choices?

I keep seeing Teslas described as a toupée on wheels which feels about right.

Also flagged at the time...Despite the intellectual snobbish stance of some against Redditors, in this case HN could not handle a BBC article...

"Elon Musk has made me embarrassed to drive my Tesla now" - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34568470

Elon owns Twitter privately. Tesla is publicly traded and falls under SEC regulations, fiduciary duty, etc. He can do with Twitter as he pleases; not so with Tesla. In fact, the SEC filed suit re: Tesla and forced Elon to step down as chairman.

He doesn't seem to mind breaking SEC regulations much. He may get punished, but that's afterwards.

He's the CEO and the largest single shareholder of the company. Plus he's the face of it, and the cause of it's meme-stock status. I've seen this show before and I know that nobody is going to dislodge him until the company is a breath away from bankruptcy (or deep in it.)

>The lesson I've learned from his Twitter acquisition[...]and (2) he is sometimes willing to use that influence in ways that cause harm to his customers and the business (even to his own wealth), even in cases where his actions violate explicit contractual promises[...]

This is kind of an odd lesson for you to take honestly. Everything he has done with Twitter has not merely been completely legal, but in fact has underlined how Musk couldn't get out of law and contract. He made a very, very bad buy, and Twitter's owners were happy to take it and made out like bandits. He tried desperately to get out of it, and despite effectively unlimited funds for legal representation, he could not. He failed to take precautions upfront, made a deal, and he was held to it. After that Twitter became private (though since he financed the purchase in part vs buying with purely his own wealth there are still some other players involved). He has since tried to blow off various other contracts and such, and there is no sign he'll get away with that either. It's just that it takes time for the legal process to take out and it's only been months. Twitter is also in a vastly less regulated space then vehicles.

I think there are reasonable reasons to be concerned about Tesla, but

>but at any point he might decide to illegally void all warranties or triple the price of supercharging just for fun

this isn't one of them in the slightest.

> but in fact has underlined how Musk couldn't get out of law and contract.

I have friends who worked at Twitter and were owed (and additionally, were promised by Twitter and Musk, in writing) both severance and RSU payouts. Musk has decided not to make these payments, so they are forced to sue/arbitrate for them. Similarly, Musk has decided not to pay AWS for services that AWS is contractually obligated to provide.

As a car owner, I'm confident that if Musk decided to break my warranty agreement I might eventually receive (some) compensation from the courts. Could his lawyers drag the process out by 2-3 years while my car remains broken? Absolutely. The only real protection I have against this is not to do any further business with Musk's companies, and I intend to do that.

My biggest concern is not warranties being broken: it is stuff like "Tesla issues a software update that disables core features of the car", which actually happened to my radar.

Sorry about your friends being abused by what turns out to be a malicious employer. That stress ripples. Good luck to them in finding a healthier work environment.

I always felt like the marketing around self-driving Tesla's was misleading. They named it misleadingly, ambitiously but misleadingly. So I feel Musk has broken the integrity of the feature since its inception and roll out.

Bizarre about the radar, that sounds like an actual safety problem.

Seeing how he makes guinea pigs out of everyone, to me suggests he'll do anything to get to Mars.

> Everything he has done with Twitter has not merely been completely legal

> He has since tried to blow off various other contracts and such, and there is no sign he'll get away with that either

You're certainly allowed to contain multitudes, but these seem to contradict each other?

Also, he's done a bunch of things at Twitter that are most definitely not legal, like attempting to fire/lay off people without proper notice in several different ways and jurisdictions.

> Tesla the org does good work

Tesla has:

* falsified worker injury reports

* fired employees for raising security concerns

* fixed cars under goodwill service instead of warranty repairs to avoid lemon laws and various other accounting shenanigans

* blatantly lied about and marketed products named as Autopilot and Full Self-Driving, both of which have led to several accidents and even deaths

* personally attacked regulators or former regulators

* tried to quiet sexual harassment happening at the company

* industry lows in quality and reliability

* abused government subsidies

These are fair critiques offsetting the benefits of the org accelerating the electrification of some forms of transportation. Whether it’s worth it will come down to personal beliefs around climate change (imho) and what should be done to dent its impacts.

The labor abuses, personal attacks, and dishonest FSD marketing are downright distasteful (and illegal when found to be so by a court or regulator), but creative application of government subsidies is fine if the ends justify the means. There are no heroes, just people.

To be fair, you could substitute Tesla with any big auto company and draw up the same list

I get the sentiment, but I'm not sure that's true.

What government subsidies?

There are several links here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Tesla,_Inc.

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