At what point is it fair to call the list something other than ‘predictions’
Now excuse me while I go check on where my 2016 full-self-driving Tesla car. It was supposed to pick me up 9 years ago, something must have happened.
Because you can cancel your reservation and get your deposited refunded. See terms at Tesla.com
This is a textbook sunk cost fallacy.
And if you don't think so, please give me $50k, I'll give you back $50.001 in 8 years, a dollar more! You'll come out ahead, right?
The map precedes the territory
I think you have it backwards. The entire tech bro scene reeks of fraud schemes, and the most successful ones seem to be pulled into all kinds of government schemes as well.
Mr Musk is a strange fellow indeed, but he's not guilty of all the vices and sins. Just plenty enough of them.
CEOs are constantly making claims and promises that are aspirational at best, their compensation isn't held until all promises are reached.
Tesla's profits have been positive since then, so this may no longer be the case, but still, that's a very iffy state of affairs.
Maybe I'm misremembering but I seem to recall him (Tesla?) selling a bunch of doge and bitcoin after months of pumping despite some big drops between.
> Musk sold 19.5 million Tesla shares worth about $3.95 billion in November 2022
I mean sure it is his to sell, but how is that different?
My evidence is that in America people sue for these things left and right all the time. It's a popular pastime for lawyers to get a class action lawsuit for securities fraud together. But as far as I can tell, Musk / Tesla weren't convicted of these things in conjunction with the sale of Tesla stock to buy Twitter.
So the statement does not necessarily be false to be a lie - if the intent is to deceive.
But Musk often acts as if he does actually intend to be taken seriously. In the case of the current story, consider the marketing resources Tesla have poured into their previous "Battery Day" events and look at the press reaction; it's clear that at least some people believed that the claims stacked up.
A quick search of the hn archives for "4680" shows a similar picture. Yes, there were always some sceptical voices, but they were often shouted down as being from people motivated by an anti-Elon grudge. Nevertheless, the sentiment tended to be overwhelmingly positive with many posters actively reinforcing the hype.
Now, whether or not a self-selecting sample of hn posters can be seen as "reasonable bystanders" is certainly debatable - but it does seem that we're getting close to the point where Musk is going to have to start branding those who believe him as being exceptionally gullible in order to escape a charge of misleading advertising.