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Comment by epistasis | Hacker News Reader

Yes, Tesla's execution has been really terrible. There's some really good tech inside their cars, but the direction of which cars to make, when, and the investments in non-car tech, the over-promising of "Full Self Driving," etc. All huge detractors.

There's also the CEO, who has a huge public profile, deciding to become extremely political, which smart CEOs usually avoid doing because it has little potential to help and lots of potential to hurt.

Especially with Musk's particular choice of which politics he wants to push, which alienate not only customers but also the government political forces. Tesla has massively benefited from subsidies to EVs, but is alienating the political party that has enabled all of that.

If Tesla had been run by a different CEO for the past, say, 3 years, nearly any CEO, I think it would be in a better position.

I really like my Model 3, but I won't be buying it again, and the direction of the Cyber Truck is so repulsive to me that I'm really really against being associated with the brand at all.

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> deciding to become extremely political

personally, my purchase decisions do not include the personality or celebrity of the company (CEO or otherwise).

There's objective measures you compare against another product (like price, looks, performance, quality etc), and you choose the best fit.

It's not really different from the looks you mention.

Looks is not an objective measure. You buy a nice looking car because its look evokes positive feelings in you. But other things can evoke positive feelings by association. The brand itself, marketing campaign, corporate image. For many, these (usually carefully cultivated) associations are overshadowed by a loud, controversial, partisan CEO who doesn't evoke positive feelings.

It used to be that Tesla cars evoked for me feelings of progress, sort of futurism (although I never really digged its rather bland design), eco-friendliness. Nowadays I see a Tesla and feel a low-key disgust.

> personally, my purchase decisions do not include the personality or celebrity of the company (CEO or otherwise).

This is a normal hacker news commenter position, but not a normal consumer position.

One of the first things you learn in a freshman year marketing course is the fact that consumers in general make spending decisions on feeling, not on raw data. It's the reason commercials you see on television are all about vibes, and not remotely about the raw performance numbers. See also: Apple never wastes its time droning on about the specs of their devices in their commercials.

This is why the public persona of Tesla's CEO has a material impact on the company's sales, and why it's hurting the company. I'd argue that Musk has outright disdain for his customers and considers them 'woke,' and is enthusiastically running the company into the ground out of pure spite.

> Tesla has massively benefited from subsidies to EVs, but is alienating the political party that has enabled all of that.

Well, he's expecting some reciprocity from the next administration for all his help, and Trump has said openly that he will support EVs as a consequence of Elon's strong support.

> a consequence of Elon's strong support.

What strong support? I recall that Elon publicly announced he was going to do a massive contribution to Trump's campaign fund, and then he announced like two days later that he wasn't going to do it.

Musk never announced that.

> Elon publicly announced he was going to do a massive contribution to Trump's campaign fund

I don't think he has publicly announced anything like that. Actually, he denied it.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/article/2024/jul/24/e...

With the two parties involved in the will he/won't he, I wouldn't doubt either version of the story. It's beautiful

The fun part is, as far as I understand it, the EV tax credit as part of the Inflation Reduction Act, did eventually include Teslas - even though Elon wasn't invited to the initial photo-op announcement party thrown by the White House due to the lack of unionization at Tesla factories.

On the flip side, support for the EV tax credit will probably be phased out if Trump wins according to recent articles I've read.

So then it seems it's not necessarily business logic but more about personal ego, etc.

Must didn’t announce any kind of contribution to Trump. Various left leaning social media figures ran this misinformation, however, I assume in an attempt to galvanize their side into donating and to continue their unhinged attacks on Musk.

Yes, he did say he was contributing to a Trump PAC on his own Twitter: https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1815911188024225967

I guess you just ran your own misinformation.

The Wall Street Journal is hardly left-leaning, and they were the source of the story:

https://www.wsj.com/politics/elections/elon-musk-has-said-he...

… and you might want to check with the source before saying he didn’t announce anything:

https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1815911188024225967

WSJ is owned by Murdoch, who also owns FoxNews.

You know, I didn’t think that needed to be said but I might have been overly-charitable.

The political party that ignored Tesla’s accomplishments because of union politics?

The further subsidies were not "ignoring achievement" they were subsidies that were shifting to include union labor.

The idea that it has anything to do with Tesla, as opposed to anything else, is a bit weird.

If one or two Republicans like the idea of EV subsidies without union labor, their votes could have shifted everything. But of course, there was universal condemnation of these polices by all Republicans.

>The idea that it has anything to do with Tesla, as opposed to anything else, is a bit weird.

At the time of Biden's electic car summit in 2021 to which Tesla was not invited, Telsa had 75% of the EV market in the US.

The idea that US's EV policy didn't have anything to do with its largest EV company is perhaps surprising.

Doubt either next administration will do better for Tesla than Biden's up to $7500 EV tax credit and 100% import duty on Chinese EVs

Biden really should have made the import duty contingent on the US manufacturers not abandoning / slow-walking their EV lineups:

https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a61935592/ford-cancels-thr...

At this point, it feels more like a ban on affordable mainstream EVs than an anti-price-dumping measure.

> Trump has said openly that he will support EVs

Source?

Recent news says otherwise.

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-says-he-would-conside...

Trump says he's for electric cars because "I have to be, you know, because Elon endorsed me very strongly, Elon. So I have no choice":

https://www.thestreet.com/electric-vehicles/elon-musks-endor...

What Trump is really saying is that he's for sale.

Trump also told the oil industry he's for sale. He said they should give him $1 billion and that would be a "deal" because he would help them avoid taxation and regulation:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/05/09/trump-oil...

Everything is transactional with Trump. He's only interested if it benefits him personally. He only cares about himself.

> Joe Biden Rewards Donors With Admin Positions in Broken Promise to Voters

https://www.newsweek.com/joe-biden-rewards-donors-admin-posi...

https://www.barrons.com/articles/trump-harris-election-campa...

I feel that what Trump says out loud publicly others say behind the cameras away from mics with a wink and a nudge.

https://www.cnbc.com/2024/07/26/two-billionaire-harris-donor...

You asked for a source and were given one, then went on to talk about joe Biden for some reason, may I ask why?

> Trump has said

His word is worth nothing.

This is just an opinion but Musk, out of some level of autism and/or narcissism, must think those things just don't apply to him. I say that because sometimes the way he acts appears as he thinks he is so smart that he can circumvent typical social/economical/politica etiquette and even evade consequences.

Well, it has actually worked for him. The world makes a lot of exceptions about etiquette for him.

The world also likes to chew up people they once lionized who end up being deeply flawed. He had business making technology, but he has no business being in politics. He is literally the richest person on the planet, and the way that works is you no longer have any problems that anyone can relate to, and you can afford to not listen to literally anything that makes you uncomfortable. He's gone down a very dark path through his choices - choices that serve him and his ego above all. No wonder the only person he has anything in common with anymore is Donald Trump.

> There's also the CEO, who has a huge public profile, deciding to become extremely political, which smart CEOs usually avoid doing because it has little potential to help and lots of potential to hurt.

I don’t know about this. Virtually all CEOs of tech companies bent over backwards to support BLM and many donated tens of millions to those BLM affiliated organizations - many of whom turned out to be grifters. But if anyone takes a public stance supporting an opposing political ideology, suddenly it is a huge controversy for CEOs to be political? Or take something that liberal societies support like free speech - when Musk advocates for a minimalist approach to moderation it suddenly becomes “fascist”?

To me the hyperbolic outrage in response to Musk just seems like a dishonest power struggle, where people on the political left are bent on only allowing their voice and influence in society.

I think people are generally fed up with Musk's tweets, his Tesla marketing and his general lack of empathy. The public might have tolerated him until he got involved in politics and has shown support for Trump.

> when Musk advocates for a minimalist approach to moderation it suddenly becomes “fascist”

There has been nothing minimalist in Musk's moderation, he's been banning people on twitter all along. His whole free speech thing turned out to apply only to speech he likes and ban the rest.

Was it not the mission of Tesla to make electrical cars an alternative to cars running on petrol? To me this was achieved. Bmw or Tesla, i do not care about that too much. But we have an alternative. Great!

And politics, well, only for people who do not agree with him it is an issue. But that's normal in politics, is it not?

> And politics, well, only for people who do not agree with him it is an issue. But that's normal in politics, is it not?

50% is a big chunk of your target market to piss off

> But that's normal in politics, is it not?

Excluding a part of the population for no practical reason at all is bad business. But when the politics becomes extremist, that share becomes huge, and it becomes disastrous business.

Some people are motivated enough to lose business for their principles. But the guy's principles is "big business is right"... I'm not sure what he wants to achieve.

> Excluding a part of the population for no practical reason at all is bad business. But when the politics becomes extremist, that share becomes huge, and it becomes disastrous business.

Companies do this all the time though. The trade off is, of course, that you get more support from customers the other side.

> But the guy's principles is "big business is right"... I'm not sure what he wants to achieve.

This is not an accurate representation. For example, the Twitter acquisition followed a period of Twitter (and most other social media) banning a lot of conservative accounts for publishing truthful reporting (New York Post) or actual satire with the disfavored political leaning (Babylon Bee), at which point Musk did a Twitter poll asking the entire site if Twitter adheres to the principle of free speech:

https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1507259709224632344

70% said it didn't, so he bought it.

This upset a lot of people (not least the people who liked the preexisting system that tended to ban their political opponents) and they've been characterizing everything he does in a negative light since. So then you'll get a lot of stories about a left-leaning account being suspended with the implication that he's just doing it the other way now, with no investigation into whether the suspension was deserved, or just characterizing the unavoidable false positives and false negatives in moderation as a willful bias etc.

That isn't to say he's a saint, but the impression you'd get from reading a lot of this coverage is that he's the devil.

Talk about a not accurate representation...

> the Twitter acquisition followed a period of Twitter (and most other social media) banning a lot of conservative accounts for publishing truthful reporting (New York Post)

The NY Post's Twitter has been banned multiple times, including the most recent one that happened in March 2023, well after Musk's takeover of the company.

> or actual satire with the disfavored political leaning (Babylon Bee)

Yes. Twitter had terms of use. And posting hateful and targeted attacks misgendering people was against their terms. This wasn't some "THEY'RE PERSECUTING ME FOR MUH CONSERVATIVE BELIEFS!". This was just flat out them being unambiguous assholes.

> The NY Post's Twitter has been banned multiple times

They were, in particular, suspended immediately prior to the 2020 election over a story that was substantially accurate.

> Twitter had terms of use.

Everything has terms of use. All of the terms of use are purposely written so that anything the company wants can be construed as a violation.

But also, "misgendering people" is a point of political dispute. "We prohibited the opposition's politics and then banned them for it" is in fact what they're objecting to.

>But also, "misgendering people" is a point of political dispute.

If I ask you to call me Bill and you keep calling me William, you're an asshole. I don't know how misgendering people is any different. Just call people what they want to be called. You don't have to turn this into some ideological battle.

> I don't know how misgendering people is any different.

If your gender is like your name, which you can choose yourself, then it can't be bound to anything you can't change, like your chromosomes or the hormone levels you had during puberty. In other words, it can't map to biological sex. Which, okay, that's kind of the idea, isn't it? Someone wants to have sex male but gender female.

Except that then nobody really cares about gender at all. When you want to have things like women's sports or prospective dating interactions in which people may want to have biological children or anything else where sex differences actually matter, what people want you to declare is not your gender but your sex.

This then becomes the motte and bailey where gender is supposed to be different than sex but somebody who has reason to actually care about sex is then told that they have to accept gender instead or they're a bigot, as if they aren't different. And that is the point of political contention.

You're overcomplicating it. As I said, "You don't have to turn this into some ideological battle." Someone asked the tiniest favor of you, simply refer to them how they want to be referred, and you said no. That goes beyond any ideology.

But isn't the whole thing asking someone to accept/endorse a different worldview? Is that really a tiny favor?

What? I hate surnames like 'Bill', 'Chuck' and 'Dick' and wouldn't want them for me, but if some Charles explicitly asked me to call him Chuck, I would call him Chuck, I'm not an asshole.

Calling the man "Muhammad Ali" didn't mean you had to convert to the Nation of Islam. Just call someone what they want to be called. You can do that without any endorsement of the reason behind their request. A "different worldview" doesn't give you permission to be an asshole.

I don't think that's an accurate metaphor, given names are historically pure labels with no external semantic meaning. The direct comparison here is that a man could asked to be named "Karen" and that doesn't to me seem to cause any philosophical conflict. (Some people might not want to do it, but that doesn't mean they have a legitimate reason). (Although there must be some limit here as well, eg "the great and majestic Philip, he who we all aspire to be" surely must be agreed to be unreasonable.)

The difference with pronouns/gender is that they depend on and proclaim external facts. ("She" is used for women and by going by she, I am a woman.) And by asking someone else to say that I am a woman, then really, aren't I forcing someone to change their definition of "woman"/"man"? Why do I have the right to force someone to do that?

Out of curiosity, if someone asked you to use plural pronouns for them, would you? (This is hard to ask in English, because "your" is used for both singular and plural subjects, and "they" has also commonly been used for both singular and plural as well, but imagine) What about pronouns in other languages? Do you really think that in communication, the other speaker shouldn't have any say in any of this?

I don't appreciate comments that suggest that someone you're discussing is an "asshole" for doing something you disagree with and don't think that contributes to the conversation.

Forcing speech is different than recommendations.

I personally don't have a problem with any site having a rule of "don't be an asshole on our platform." It's the first rule of this site, for example.

That’s different than being fired if you use standard English parlance.

Ok, I personally don't have a problem with any employer having a rule of "don't be an asshole."

Holding the door open for someone is considered being an asshole to some minority.

I am for numbers. Thats very unideological. Then people can pick their identity/label as they want, but in the system its just a unique number.

> But also, "misgendering people" is a point of political dispute. "We prohibited the opposition's politics and then banned them for it" is in fact what they're objecting to.

You’re omitting that they had to make targeted attacks to be banned. You could talk in the abstract all day, as so many did, and never have a problem - it was only when they started targeting specific people who didn’t consent to some kind of debate. This is like going into a gay bar, yelling in some dude’s face that homosexuals are going to hell, and then whining about oppression when the bouncer tells you to leave.

wrong. it’s not political to disrespect someone’s identity. it’s the same as being racist. it wasn’t ok to support segregation, it’s not ok to support transphobia and banning medical care.

> Companies do this all the time though. The trade off is, of course, that you get more support from customers the other side

If by "do this all the time" - you mean pander towards a specific affinity group, then I agree. Patagonia's politics are well known.

What's less common is for CEOs to reverse polarity and publicly declare loyalty to a party in opposition of the products alleged mission.

> What's less common is for CEOs to reverse polarity and publicly declare loyalty to a party in opposition of the products alleged mission.

Take at a look at the list of US states by vehicles per capita or vehicle miles driven per capita. Red states at the top. If you're trying to get people to buy electric cars and stop burning oil, those are the ones you need to convince.

Extra miles don't earn Tesla additional revenue.

Aside: do you believe that Elon's actions are motivated by the desire to reduce gas emissions in red states, or is this more of a thought experiment? My hot take is that his frustrations with Covid lockdowns in California kicked his animus toward Democratic party politicians into high gear.

> Extra miles don't earn Tesla additional revenue.

They do when they run a charging network.

Also, it's easier to sell an electric car to someone who is going to put a lot of miles on it because of the lower cost per mile, and does more good if the goal is to reduce CO2.

> do you believe that Elon's actions are motivated by the desire to reduce gas emissions in red states, or is this more of a thought experiment?

It's a counterpoint to the notion that progressives who live in cities and ride mass transit are the people the CEO of a car company has to appeal to. Whether the goal is to make more cars electric or just to sell more cars.

> My hot take is that his frustrations with Covid lockdowns in California kicked his animus toward Democratic party politicians into high gear.

That's probably not irrelevant.

The problem with politics right now is that everyone sucks and instead of trying to do better they all just want to tell you that the other side sucks worse, which causes aggressive polarization when most people are only listening to one side's pundits or the other. Everyone is being told that they need to vote against the enemy without ever being told what they're voting for.

People (Musk not excluded) then end up in one bubble or the other and the people in the other bubble are obliged to hate them out of tribal loyalty. Which especially rubs people the wrong way when it's someone who isn't squarely in one tribe or another.

Nobody blinks an eye when a Texas oil billionaire takes the conservative position on some issue.

> 70% said it didn't, so he bought it.

70% of his followers and/or who saw the poll said it didn't. Hardly a valid survey by any best practice among pollsters.

The poll was reposted by tens of thousands of other people and more than two million people voted. Also, this was before he bought the site or made unfriends with Democrats and his followers skew disproportionately to electric car enthusiasts and Star Trek fans. It's not exactly a poll of Fox News viewers.

You’re not doing a very good job of arguing the poll was anywhere near scientific. And at any rate, he upset a lot of people long before then. Do you not remember the whole “pedo guy” brouhaha? And the “I can take Tesla private for $420/share” bullshit that got his in hot water with the SEC?

he also disowned his daughter and treats her terribly, and generally supports pretty evil right wing personalities like chaya raichik. lots of reasons to dislike the man.

> Companies do this all the time though. The trade off is, of course, that you get more support from customers the other side.

I'm not quite sure that Trump's publuc would rush over to buy Teslas.

Tesla is not only selling car in US, but Musk behavior is turning off people globally (especially in Europe)

Yeah, so are people turned on globally, especially Europe.

This does not tell me anything. Maybe the republicans just have better arguments this time. Or the other way around. And then the losing side after elections may have to grind their teeth for a while. That is the way it is supposed to be.

Not because of Musk, but maybe because it particularily doesn't work for them?

The mission of Tesla is to maximize value to its shareholders

Or shareholder, when one controls all the levers.

Not quite. Tesla's mission is to do what its voting shareholders want. Usually, shareholders want to maximize their returns, but Tesla's shareholders voted to reduce their returns to overpay Musk for work already done.

Presumably because they believe keeping Musk will increase value long term, so they are still maximizing the value of the future cashflows discounted to the present.

The size of Musk's ownership stake adds another layer to this metric, but at the limit, that really that just means the words "they" in my previous statement can be replaced with "Elon Musk"

No, the reason most voters gave is that the payment was promised, not that it maximized their returns. There are any number of projects that Tesla could spend $50 billion on that would provide a greater return to investors than giving it to Musk. Even giving him a fraction of that would have been enough to retain Musk over giving him nothing, if they really believe Musk's leadership will be positive for future returns.

I suspect many Tesla shareholder believe they are investing in Musk, rather than just Tesla. That explains much of their behavior.

> The mission of Tesla is to maximize value to its shareholders

That is one philosophy:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedman_doctrine

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shareholder_primacy

It is not the only one:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stakeholder_theory

* https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/2012/06/26/the-shareholder-v...

The shareholders literally own the company, so they are the ones who get to decide what gets maximized. Most shareholders decide they want returns to themselves to be maximized. Not all will in every single company at every point in time, but it's likely the case 99.9% of the time.

> The shareholders literally own the company […]

They do not actually.

* https://archive.ph/VCUp4 / https://www.ft.com/content/7bd1b20a-879b-11e5-90de-f44762bf9...

* https://www.pqmagazine.com/the-myth-of-shareholder-ownership...

* https://www.forbes.com/sites/petergeorgescu/2021/07/21/the-s...

* https://edwardslaw.ca/blog/shareholders-agreements-in-canada...

* https://www.ippr.org/articles/who-owns-a-company

* https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-instituti...

They have certain claims, but so do customers, suppliers, employees, governments (taxes), bond holders, etc. The claims of shareholders come last, which is why owning stock gets you higher returns (than, e.g., bonds from the company): you're at highest risk of losing money from being last on claims, so you should be rewarded for that higher risk.

Those are opinion pieces and meant to be contrarian. Shareholders by definition own the equity of the company. You're confounding the equity with the enterprise, while also ignoring the meaning of "control".

Having IOUs from the company in the form of future goods or services owed to customers, interest payments owed to debtholders or future taxes owed to the government do not equate to having an actual ownership in the business.

I was seriously considering a Model X until Mr. Musk decided to open up on his political ideology..

This attitude reads to me like: only those who agree with you deserve a place in our economy and society.

Huh, where have I heard that before?

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/06/gay-rights...

maybe guys don't want to buy cars that make them unfuckable

Funny, it reads to me like: my money should go where I see fit.

What I see is that people here and on places like Reddit seem to support expression of political views when it is for their side. They wouldn’t take issue with CEOs supporting leftist social justice issues, for example. But when it is a CEO supporting centrist or right-leaning views, they don’t support it. And not just that, but they go out of their way to manufacture outrage or signal their actions in order to suppress their political opposition, who they feel should not be able to express their views. When you can’t handle your opposition’s ideas being aired, you don’t support democracy. Sure you can make the claim that your money should go where you see fit, but it does also mean that you don’t support a society where ideas can be discussed.

> but it does also mean that you don’t support a society where ideas can be discussed.

No, it does not. Not buying something from someone does nothing to impede their right to free speech.

Mr. Musk is free to discuss whatever he wants to. I am free to spend my money like I want to. That’s a part of being in a democracy.

And your argument applies to the right-wing when it comes to left ideology as well. Like the Bud Light boycott.

usually this is because leftist views are inclusionary and supporting diversity and disability, while right wing views are marginalising and hierarchical

> when it is for their side. They wouldn’t take issue with CEOs supporting leftist social justice issues, for example. But when it is a CEO supporting centrist or right-leaning views, they don’t support it.

I want to push back on something here because I am centrist, even right-leaning in some respects. What Elon Musk has done is not normal. Donald Trump is not normal. He is dangerously unfit for office. The tactics he and Musk have engaged in (such as courting and amplifying extremist groups) have nothing to do with ordinary civil discourse between "conservative" and "liberal" philosophy or policy proposals. And it's a false equivalence to suggest that they do.

Hm. But we want "our" leaders to be controversial and to make points, no? To know where they stand and where they want to go to. I need this clear distinction. Before i did not really have a political home, i saw common-sense disappear, that i used to know. But with these controversial voices i got to know so many interesting people and their voices, it helped me a lot to be positive about the future, which i saw dim in the past.

The nail that sticks out gets hammered down!

These people shouldn't complain when their is no creativity left in society.

That will teach the atmosphere

There’s other EVs out there.

Yeah, but I’ve known others who get an ICE out of spite :)

Most of the EV market are people who find his politics disagreeable. He’s not doing his duty to shareholders by driving them away, especially for such pointlessly offensive things which have nothing to do with the business. This is why you almost certainly know nothing about the views of the CEOs of any other car company, and why Musk is almost certain to face lawsuits after the inevitable decline - a meme stock can’t last forever, and the fundamentals don’t support the current valuation at all.

I think that in addition to proving a point about technology, they also wanted to be a very economically successful company.

That second part is at risk, and if Elon's decision making power has been better reduced, they'd probably be really far ahead of where they are now.

>But that's normal in politics, is it not?

Yes exactly in politics and not in business, in particular if you are the CEO.

I don't really get this. "Love the art, not the artist" is pretty much an essentialism for participating in modern human society. Try taking a moment to trace through everything you consume and see how much of it was originated by very flawed human beings - some monstrously so. This extends in every direction, even all the way out to things like massive scientific discoveries. Nothing's immune, because we're all human.

I'm in the process of buying my 3rd Tesla, because I still don't think there's anything better out there (based on my personal needs). I'm not making any political or moral statements. I'm just buying an excellent vehicle.

This appears to be downvoted, but why? I'd like to see the counterargument that we need to put each executive, author, director, or artist through a purity test before we can appreciate or purchase their work. How about listing a few pure American car CEOs.

Consumers are free to make choices based on anything they want: but whining in public about how some tweets affect your opinion on a car is not the same thing as privately making choices. This subject was opened for discussion and it remains open.

Why? Because art and business aren’t the same. “Love the capital, not the capitalist” doesn’t work because unlike artists, capital influences elections. It influences policy and thereby impacts real people’s lives in a real way.

Also unlike artists, the head of a company oversees hundreds or thousands of people. Their whims and actions likewise have direct impact on people’s lives.

People don't want to do background checks on companies. But you don't have to do that for Tesla, Musk tries hard to shove his persona in your face.

i looked at tesla but decided against it after elon’s antics. bought a bmw i4 and wow it feels and drives like a premium vehicle. gets out of the way and does things well. drove my fam’s tesla model 3 (2024) and it felt super cheap and the ui and cameras were pretty bad

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