Tesla to lay off more than 10% of its staff

> hard free market conservative opinions

... I mean, advocating for protectionism could hardly be described as a "hard free market" position.

Protectionism doesn't fit neatly on a left-right scale (both sides have indulged from time to time) but it's clearly not a free-market position.

I've heard the same thing about Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Tiktok.

"I won't ever join those. Those are for kids. Those are weird. Why would I join them."

Society rules our lives far more than people are willing to admit to themselves.

Thank you for your kind words.

Going to inquire around getting a very cheap Tesla and hoping the stock crashes so that I can load up on more TSLA stock.

Sounds like lots of ex-Tesla fans bought in when the cars were over-priced.

Counter-trading HN has never been more profitable. [0] [1]

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34713073

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34618224

God forbid a CEO would express his sincerely-held beliefs.

All my favourite CEOs inauthentically mirror the perceived beliefs of their customers in order to sell more products.

He would have just been so much better off for his own mental health as a techno optimist rather than this spiral into psychosis and imagined harms inflicted on him. He really should have sprung for therapy rather than for xitter.

I must admit I enjoy seeing Cybertrucks in the wild. They are fugly, but not as fugly in-person as I expected. Putting the development resources into a cheaper Model 2 would almost certainly been a better investment for the company though. Cybertrucks will never sell in enough volume to affect Tesla's bottom line positively.

> To a first approximation, if you express a strong opinion about politics (particularly in these times), no matter which side you align with, you're going to alienate about half your customers, so it's always seemed like bad business sense to do so.

There's a basic principle as old as time which goes something like "never discuss politics, religion, and sports with co-workers". The reasons are obvious.

What kind of absolute moron is going to assume the public face of a few fragile companies and insist on making broad gratuitous ignorant public statements on each and every single one of these topics, sometimes bundling a bunch of them together?

> I don't go on the roof and shout that they should be "silenced"...

You're mixing up "I think they should shut up (and until they do, I'll vote with my money)" and "I think they should be forcibly silenced" here.

It's probably not lost on everyone, but assuming any irony at all here is a tall order.

That isn't accurately representing everyone's opinion.

There's a difference between "Musk should be silenced" and "Musk should be silent". One of them is a request directed to whatever sort of people might censor him, the other is a request directed to Musk himself.

There's more reasons to avoid Musk than just his politics (though that's certainly a part of it). There's his habit of publicly making tasteless remarks, his treatment of employees, and his broken promises to customers, to name a few.

Most people I've seen decide not to buy a Tesla because of Musk aren't acting like they've made some big sacrifice. At most, it's been "I wish I could buy one, but don't want to support him." Characterizing that as martyrdom is ridiculous.

Saying someone should ignore the people behind a product when deciding whether to buy it is also ridiculous. Yes, a lot of people do this in practice because they don't know who's behind the products they buy, or because they don't have a choice. But they do know who Musk is because he's so public, and they have so many other options.

I'm with you on the Altman thing. I've seen people on this forum worship all sorts of characters. Musk was one of those characters at one point. If you meant that as an indictment of this forum, it absolutely is, but the hate on Musk isn't the irrational part.

The parent doesn't want to support the business because of the owner. I don't see anything about political silencing or casting a judgment on the technology. Where does he talk about silencing Musk? Where does he criticize the technology?

>So if you are not purchasing a Tesla because of Musk congratulations but I suggest you also start boycotting all other CEO's who has a view you don't like, otherwise it will just make you a hypocrite.

People are free to choose what businesses they support. At the same time, I'm sure there's a certain amount of practical decision making that has to happen to meet one's needs. You can _choose_ to think of it as hypocrisy, but it's also just being practical.

Not that I'm even agreeing with the decision making of the parent. I just think your post is a ridiculous overreaction.

I have no idea who the CEO of Chrysler or Ford are, let alone what their political view is (I assume they are in favour of tax breaks for billionaires). Hell I don't really know what Bezos or Cook's view are, they certainly aren't part of Amazon or Apple.

Musk made Tesla an inseparable part of the Musk brand (so like Bezos and Amazon, or Gates and Microsoft), and then thus every rant he makes is inextricably linked to Tesla.

Interestingly, as Gates mostly retired form Microsoft decades ago, he's been a bit more known -- he does charitable stuff with malaria, and Musk powered outlets claim he's giving everyone free 5g. Both are great things. I'm sure you could dig into bad things, but Gates isn't linked to Microsoft in the way Musk is linked to Tesla

Saying that his views are dumb, or that he should shut up, is not remotely the same as denying his right to express those views.

This seems to be a willful conflation. You can't truly think those are the same thing?

"I don't like Musk so I will vote with my money and spend it elsewhere" is like the absolute pinnacle of free market economics.

Yeah but I have the impression it’s mostly about revenue tweaking, not evolving the platform in a way that benefits users. Which I guess is normal as it’s a late stage scale up.

It doesn't seem bad to use to me either. I think people are maybe put off by association with some of the more iffy content elsewhere on the site.

Well... whether he's responding to a market need versus creating a market need versus responding to a moral obligation is very hard to untangle. That's part of why nobody's found a better system than capitalism yet - the most self-serving actions are often also the most public serving. I will say from the perspective of someone who specialized in renewable energy all through undergrad, renewable energy is cheap but requires storage. Expensive storage is the reason wind and solar have trouble competing with coal and gas on a dollers per watt basis. Subsidizing the creation of a lot of batteries by bundling them with cars people would buy anyway is the kind of brilliant but dirty growth hacking only a Silicon Valley Techbro would have the audacity to try. I can't comment on his motives, but I don't have a better idea for how to accelerate renewable energy adoption than the path he's pursued. Affordable storage is the keystone that supports that entire structure, in 2009-2014 it was the big unanswered question among my professors.

As for enriching himself by helping... I don't think there's a perfect solution there. The Rockefeller-Gates system of making money in one industry and funding purely philanthropic ventures in another comes with its own moral hazards. For profit work in a field of public interest comes with different ones. Both are preferable to taking no interest in the public good IMHO. Personally, if I was a billionaire I'd try to fund ventures that are in the public interest and also have paying customers, it promotes a certain kind of honesty that would be important to me, but I think any oligarch that claims to be trying to help should be given the benefit of the doubt, societal incentives are just so much more aligned that way.

Dumping is a specific thing. Are Chinese EVs priced lower in international markets than domestically?

AFAICT China isn't dumping. They're subsidizing internal consumption.

A Chinese EV is ~$10,000 cheaper in China than it is outside of China. This is a massive advantage to Chinese vehicle manufacturers. They can scale up production using the internal market, and then use that scale to push down the external unsubsidised price.

Pretty much exactly the same as the US. An American EV is about $10,000 cheaper in the US than elsewhere. $7500 because of the rebate, and the rest in shipping and other costs.

BMW are doing pretty well growing their EV sales (admittedly not low cost)

https://www.fleeteurope.com/en/financial-models/europe/featu...

German cars are notorious for having unreliable electrical components. Now imagine the whole car is electric.

Dacia Spring is a Chinese designed and built car with a Dacia badge on it. It's really not great by EU standards[1]. The steel panels on it are incredibly thin and flimsy. It's more of an four wheel electric tuk-tuk with a shell, designed to reach a cheap EV price point. For some users that's good enough but for some it's a no-go.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hrXgJD4tooI

Tangent but: the ultimate "Elon handler" at SpaceX is not just Shotwell but NASA, the DOD, and their satellite customers.

Space launch is not like cars or really most other products. Your customer is highly technical and highly informed and they absolutely will not launch on a rocket that doesn't meet certain design criteria and in many cases they will require the ability to review the rocket's actual design blueprints and software (with NDA in place). NASA and the DOD will demand this, full stop.

If SpaceX didn't have someone like Shotwell pretty much running the show there's no chance they'd ever get a customer beyond the low end of the satellite launch market. They'd also have trouble getting the FAA to allow them to fly, and with good reason. A rocket is basically a bomb that explodes in one direction, and many of its failure modes involve it exploding in all directions.

Elon's been great (at least in the past) at assembling teams, getting funding, and motivating people to do really hard shit. (Not sure how he'd fare today with his baggage... his brand has taken a hit.) He also knows enough about engineering to hire competent engineers. Beyond that I see little sign that he's actually good at managing or day to day operation and certainly seems no good at product design. This differs from Jobs who at least had killer intuition there. Jobs would have laughed the cybertruck out of the room.

It’s true that they need to invest more but that’s a self-inflicted problem: they have enormous resources and lavish government support available but they really want the high-margin light-truck era to continue and have been treating EVs as a fad they’ll support only if ICE buyers are willing to overpay as much as ICE SUV buyers have. We’re reading about Ford cancelling battery plants, not being unable to find funding. When Chevy cancelled the Bolt, it was their best selling EV - but not nearly as profitable as the luxury models they wanted people to buy.

With solid state batteries you can puncture them, cut them, and shoot them with a bullet. It's much harder to make them catch fire and they keep working:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m9-cNNYb1Ik

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZOubFHO1I3o

> It's not a strictly zero-fluid solid-state chemistry, instead utilizing a semi-solid layout that includes solid material suspended in a liquid electrolyte.

It would probably kill the whole US industry.

Id rather pay more and have no Chinese involvement. China is not your friend.

And make sure the bean counters are kept busy somewhere else, otherwise they're just going to produce the same garbage that comes out of any MBA run manufacturing firm located in China. MBAs are the scourge of reliable products, they drive everything to shit all in the name of a few pennies of "cost optimization."

> I don't even know if I can buy cheap Chinese EVs in the US

The only one you can is the EX30, but even that's more pricy than a Tesla Model 3.

The truly cheap EVs you see in Asia (eg. The lower end BYD, Zeekr, MGs) are aimed at developing markets, not developed.

And yes, plenty of Eastern European members of the EU (the ones where the cheaper end EV makers are targeting) are still developing/emerging markets - Romania, Hungary, Poland, and Bulgaria still are developing (though might not be in 10-15 years).

Higher end Chinese EVs like Polestar and Volvo (Volvo has been Geely for almost 2 decades now) are aimed at developed countries, in order to manage the brand perception.

> when I'll be able to

You can go to Alibaba and buy a $5,000 EV and then spend a similar amount to import it. It's a lot of hassle, but makes for an entertaining Youtube video.

For the mainstream, likely about 18-24 months after BYD breaks ground on their Mexican factory, which could happen any day now.

And it depends on your definition of "cheap". BYD is obviously going to start with American sized vehicles. The Internet might want the subcompact $10,000 Seagull, but we're much more likely to get something like the $35,000 Atto 3 as the cheapest model to start.

It's not just the opinions he holds, it's the activist effort to implement those opinions in society. His access to capital assists those efforts, so buying a Tesla is seen as directly complicit. People then choose a substitute EV which may or may not be a Chinese brand.

Oh, you can find many people saying the first part on this comments page. Up to now, nobody is saying the second part, but I guess a lot of people will practice it mostly because of the price.

But then, I don't expect the people thinking about (and rejecting) buying a Tesla to be the same ones that buy a Chinese car because of the price.

You diesel-fascist.

/s (?) :-) (?)

It's also the fact that unlike with e.g. gas or coal, the uranium fuel is only a small factor in the overall energy production cost. Given the miniscule amount needed, you can stock up on it to protect against supply shocks.

But it doesn't matter. It's not possible to lead a factual discussion on nuclear energy in Germany. Since the 1970s it has been mainly an emotional / ideological matter.

"e.G. from Russia (as the US does)"

What is incorrect about "for example from Russia, like the US imports uranium from Russia"?

The minimal costs of operating nuclear are around the same as the investment costs of solar parks, around $30/Mwh (building nuclear power plants is around $200/Mwh).

For example a nuclear power plant has employed 700 people. A solarpark does not need a lot of FTE employees to operate (+ low maintanance).

That does not include waste deposit costs for hundreds of years and real insurance costs without subsidies by tax payers.

Not sure what your comment wants to say, that yes, the US is importing uranium from Russia, or yes, it is importing uranium from Russia, but more from other countries?

Sure. The amount of coal burned decreased by about 30%, and the decrease would have been different if this/that. It would not have been an increase though, and the people who predicted an increase ended up being wrong by a large factor.

The question is just exactly how large.

No, just take a look at installed power in Germany.

https://www.cleanenergywire.org/sites/default/files/styles/g...

What is that imported energy based on?

For Germany.

I live in a manufacturing city in .de btw, and the "badly hit" manufacturers are hiring.

Chemical manufactoring has been hit by the sanctions against Russia, not because of electric energy but because German chemical plants had sub-market price deals on natural gas for heat intensive processes. This has nothing to do with electric power.

It will keep growing until it doesn't - why people don't factor in that the sun will shine a lot longer than the wells will pump when discussing these plans I don't understand. Is technology so turbulent that no one wants to make predictions beyond the next ten years any more or what?

> As a founding member of the association, Greenpeace e.V. holds only five shares at €55 in the cooperative, otherwise the environmental group and the company are financially and legally independent, although they share the same office building in Hamburg.

It's kind of unclear just how much this organization actually is Greenpeace or not. That being said, extremist political parties and movements (e.g., UKIP), are so often financed by Russia as a form of covert ops that I wouldn't be surprised to find that they were a significant backer of Green Peace proper as well.

Batteries are important, yes, but the average American drives less than 30 miles per day. You can charge that at home without a special charger. At the very least, that’s a second car alternative with much lower maintenance and no need to drive to a gas station.

I think most of what's holding EV back is people having bad or outdated information. You don't need to drive to a charger, you use the same one you use to charge your phone: your house. Plug it in to your normal wall outlet when you get home and you'll have 100% charge every day. You only need a fancy charger for road trips. That's why there aren't a bunch near your house: you mostly don't need one at all.

You can’t charge at your house?

I feel like electric vehicles are great for homeowners to drive around town, but there are some hurdles to conveniently use them for cross-country trips.

Batteries can be improved but are workable. The real hold back is the charging situation. It's why ICE cars are even possible - the petroleum infrastructure needed to fuel millions of cars every day.

Most EVs are charged at home (great!) but any extended trip does require charger access and the situation in the US is quite patchwork except for Superchargers. Also chargers are needed for taxi/rental services and for apartment/condo dwellers who likely won't be able to plug in at home.

China and Europe (to a lesser extent) have made much bigger inroads than the US. I wonder why.

It’s 1.8x1.2m versus 1.7x1.3m for the smallest size F-150, which has larger sizes are 2x1.3m and 2.5x1.3m.

When did Tesla forecast that? Back in January they were just predicting lower growth in sales, not a drop.

Obvious slackers, sure.

But some people aren't obvious slackers. They might take a simple task ('you're in charge of logistics within the warehouse'), and make it far more complex than necessary ('we're gonna need 3 teams of logistics workers who will move parts only in a clockwise direction as directed by this homegrown custom designed work scheduling system, which by the way we're gonna need a team of 10 coders to maintain').

Those people aren't slackers. In fact, to everyone else around them, they look like the best workers who achieve the most. But, by overcomplicating tasks, they in fact pour resources down the drain when they solve a simple problem the hard way.

Sometimes these workers are overcomplicating tasks deliberately (an excuse to become a team lead), sometimes they have misunderstood the requirements, and sometimes because they failed to research or take advice from others on a simpler/easier/cheaper/faster approach.

Either way, firing them is good for the business, but usually bad for morale (because the people near them see a hard worker being fired and become scared about their own position, often leading to the real best people jumping ship).

So, the common approach is to do mass firings every ~5 years, because the morale hit is lower to do it all in one go.

That childish truck has been recalled. All 4000 of them.

> I will also note that most of the people I have seen not contributing positively were responding to the incentives management had set, or coping with policies and resource cuts.

Learned helplessness is a critical concept in organizational psychology. people eventually learn it's not worth pushing for things in the org, and stop caring and checkout.

Demming was all about how the system creates outcomes, and this is a common outcome.