Elon Musk Is Spiraling | Hacker News Reader

Elon Musk Is Spiraling

theatlantic.com

30 pointsjasonhansel25 comments

He seems like exactly the same stupid, entitled con-man he's always been to me.

Idk, Tesla and SpaceX are doing better than ever. Twitter is doing alright as a much leaner company.

Tesla’s facing strong competition, losing marketshare, and has a number of legal/regulatory problems related to quality control and material misrepresentation about their full self-driving feature.

Twitter lost almost half of their revenue, has notably more downtime, and needs to be considerably more profitable than they were just to make up for the massive debt load Musk added.

⅓ isn’t such a great score?

What problems are you referring to w.r.t quality control, that are relevant in 2023? Also, I wouldn't have thought tesla would survive this far, but the year over year production increase has been insane.

"Auto safety regulators in the US have opened an investigation into Tesla following reports that steering wheels on Model Y SUVs have fallen off while the vehicle is being driven. In documents posted on Wednesday, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) said it’s aware of two separate incidents involving 2023 Tesla Model Y vehicles in which the SUV’s steering wheel completely detached from the steering column."

In the last month, they’ve had steering wheels falling off, FSD, and loose seats:

https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/16/business/tesla-fsd-recall/ind...

https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/cars/2023/03/05/tesla-r...

https://static.nhtsa.gov/odi/inv/2023/INOA-PE23003-5769.PDF

Now, every company has recalls but I was also thinking about the way I’ve heard a ton of people say the vehicle quality isn’t up to the other vehicles in that price range. They had the EV market largely to themselves for a while, and redefined performance, but in the subsequent decade they’ve acquired a lot of competition from companies which are more experienced on everything but the powertrain. In 2023, they don’t have the performance or handling crown, and they also don’t have the lead in luxury interior or other creature comforts, or even CarPlay.

That doesn’t mean they’re even close to doomed, of course, but it’s cutting into profits and especially their margin for soaking up Musk’s misjudgments and lapses. I think there’s a fair chance that FSD will control what happens next: it’s not hard to imagine the various government investigations and lawsuits about misrepresentation culminating in Musk taking a deal to step down as CEO, a job he doesn’t appear to want to show up for, and I would not be surprised if it leads to some kind of merger. I’d assume that e.g. Toyota might have a plan waiting for the right strike price.

I'm sure the competition is just prim and spotless. What kind of movie logic is it that being investigated is bad? Being found in the wrong after being investigated is the beginning of bad.

Your post isn’t coherent enough to know exactly what you’re referring to. My point was simply that they have a tougher competitive environment than they’ve ever known and their CEO is moonlighting at three other jobs in between trolling on Twitter. That doesn’t mean they’re doomed but it’s hardly the rosy portrayal being made.

Well, if the competition isn't "prim and spotless" while eating into Tesla's market share, that's even worse for Tesla.

Because it means even if Tesla cleans up it's act, so can the competition.

And then they continue to eat into Tesla's market share.

You REALLY don't want to be getting beaten by competitors who aren't even doing their best ...

> losing marketshare

Tesla has made mode cars than ever. Their market share has gone up.

Unless you mean EV marketshare, but the whole point of Tesla is to make EV's mainstream not to be the sole EV manufacturer.

And Twitter is cash flow positive now, so they'll be fine.

Lean on revenue, lean on paying their bills, lean on real users, lean on people doing anything but trying to keep plates spinning and very lean on empathy.

Yep... Twitter has become very lean.

The media's breathless coverage about how Musk is a volatile glass cannon ready to collapse has been going on for practically a year now... definitely has an air of "Drumpf is finished" to it.

Trump does seem pretty finished though?

He says he will run in 2024

He is running in '24. He'll also likely get his first post-presidential indictment next week with possibly more to come.

About god damn time too. I really do not understand why tf he hasn't been arrested for taking the ultra top secret nuclear secrets that he was not allowed to declassify. Why did he even have access to them, they are need to know.

DeSantis will get the nomination.

That's nice for him

I am not a fan, and would not bet on Musk, but the attention does seem inordinate.

Not really because Musk constantly trolls on Twitter instead of running his companies.

So does every CEO, just not publicly

Musk does because he has a pathological need for attention.

Extremely strange comparison to make. Trump's first term ended in a very rare re-election loss and endless lies that he actually won and then finally an actual attempt to prevent the electoral college vote from being certified by the VP by organizing a riot at the US capitol that led to the death of one person. In a just country Trump would be in prison for the rest of his life.

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