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Elon Musk: Officially a fraud and piece of shit. Official or unofficial war criminal?


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49 minutes ago, BurntEyes said:

Driving from Dallas to Nashville today caught this on I30 in Arkansas... 

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With all of the drama surrounding them if they get rained upon, get road grime on them, bird shit, etc., you'd think they'd spend $50 or $100 for some fucking plastic wrap.  I've seen cheap-ass Toyotas a third the price of those get the full wrap treatment on car haulers.

Edited by atomheartbevo
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19 minutes ago, atomheartbevo said:

 

With all of the drama surrounding them if they get rained upon, get road grime on them, bird shit, etc., you'd think they'd spend $50 or $100 for some fucking plastic wrap.  I've seen cheap-ass Toyotas a third the price of those get the full wrap treatment on car haulers.

Dude, its Elon.

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1 hour ago, atomheartbevo said:

 

With all of the drama surrounding them if they get rained upon, get road grime on them, bird shit, etc., you'd think they'd spend $50 or $100 for some fucking plastic wrap.  I've seen cheap-ass Toyotas a third the price of those get the full wrap treatment on car haulers.

I'm guessing they were being shipped on a Sunday because all the weather in the area Saturday. Probably headed to Nashville and it's clear through. Plastic wrap is expensive bro.

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Just now, BurntEyes said:

I'm guessing they were being shipped on a Sunday because all the weather in the area Saturday. Probably headed to Nashville and it's clear through. Plastic wrap is expensive bro.

I figured these were recalled vehicles heading back to the factory. 

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Tesla drops FSD to $8,000: https://electrek.co/2024/04/21/tesla-lowers-price-of-full-self-driving-to-8000-down-from-12000/

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In addition to the price drop, Tesla has eliminated “Enhanced Autopilot” as an option, which previously cost $6,000. For owners who already have enhanced autopilot, the cost to upgrade to FSD is now $2,000, down from $6,000.

And dropped the S, X, and Y models by $2,000

https://electrek.co/2024/04/19/tesla-cuts-prices-by-2000-in-us-model-y-back-to-its-lowest-price-ever/

Not sure why it didn't drop the 3's by $2,000 so Musk could make a joke about S/3/X/Y being $2,000 cheaper.  Because naming the car models to spell "SEXY" is funny to a grown man child from South Africa.

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25 minutes ago, Neonmoon said:

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Earnings are expected to look terrible, and valuation is still very high compared to other auto makers.  I expect the share price to go sub 100 in the next few months as reality on over supply sets in.

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45 minutes ago, Hefeweizen said:

Earnings are expected to look terrible, and valuation is still very high compared to other auto makers.  I expect the share price to go sub 100 in the next few months as reality on over supply sets in.

Already down $3

32 minutes ago, BeardIP said:

Prices slashed; now’s the time to get one if you ever wanted one, I guess.

Gotta suck if you’ve bought one in the last 6 months,

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1 hour ago, Hank Kingsley said:

 

 

READY!!!

FIRE!!!

AIM!!!

 

BTW - not sorry if this already was posted, but I was on travel last week and I am just now catching up with my podcasts. This one ... WOW. This is exactly why lack of any sort of support/engagement is a bad thing.

 

 

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FYP broken again

currently

  • 3 tweets in a row about the mavericks game yesterday from the same account (all 21 hours ago)
  • 2 more tweets about the mavs from 2 different accounts
  • 1 tweet from the initial 3 tweets in a row account about Mavs game (20 hours ago)
  • tweet about Luka from 20 hours ago
  • mavs in game highlight from 20 hours ago
  • soccer account with quote in it from 20 hours ago
  • another tweet from the first account about mavs game from 20 hours ago
  • another tweet from the soccer account from 20 hours ago
  • Elon Musk tweet about Sheetz 20 hours ago
  • 2 more soccer tweets about a game yesterday
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another day, another major design issue with the Cybertruck

https://jalopnik.com/tesla-cybertruck-breaks-in-new-innovative-way-1851426532

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If you’re not familiar, Tesla really wants you to put your car in Drive or Park using the touchscreen. Since touchscreens can crash, though, you need a second way to get your car into gear. So Tesla put a panel in the middle of the windshield that allows you to put it in Drive yourself. The sun visors also attach to the same panel when in use.

Since sun visors get so much use, and moving them puts strain on whatever they’re mounted to, you’d assume Tesla would have done enough durability testing to make sure the plastic could stand up to repeated use. Apparently, you’d also be wrong.

Jalopnik also gave the CT a new nickname i haven't seen before

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incEl Camino

 

 

Edited by NoName
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https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/22/opinion/elon-musk-william-durant.html

 

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Before there was Elon Musk, there was William Crapo Durant. Billy Durant, as he was known, built one of the world’s biggest makers of horse-drawn carriages, bought control of Buick, co-founded General Motors, was forced out of General Motors, co-founded Chevrolet, regained control of General Motors, speculated on stocks, lost control of General Motors a second time, started Durant Motors, went bankrupt in the Depression, opened a bowling alley, suffered a stroke and died penniless in 1947.

 

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It’s highly unlikely that Musk, one of the world’s richest people, will die penniless, but in other respects he and Durant have a lot in common. They are, or in the case of Durant were, both brilliant, restless builders of empires and defiers of convention who experienced the highest highs and the lowest lows of business.

I talked to some experts on the wild, early days of the automobile to see what Musk and the rest of us could learn from that period of ferment and creativity. One thing I found out is that the world is not always kind to visionaries with self-control issues. Durant flamed out at G.M. twice. In contrast, the prudent organization man who eventually succeeded him, Alfred Sloan, went from success to success. Renowned institutions bear his name.

 

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“To Understand the Future of Tesla, Look to the Future of G.M.” was the headline on a 2018 article in Harvard Business Review by Steve Blank, a serial tech entrepreneur who has taught entrepreneurship at Stanford and other universities.

Referring to 1920, the second time Durant lost control of G.M., Blank wrote:

 

Spoiler

While everyone around him acknowledged he was a visionary, Durant’s one-man show was damaging the company. He couldn’t prioritize, couldn’t find time to meet with his direct reports, fired them when they complained about the chaos, and the company had no financial controls other than Durant’s ability to raise more money. When the stock collapsed, Durant’s ownership share was at risk of being taken over by the bankers he owed, who would then own a good part of G.M. The board decided that the company had enough vision — they bought out Durant’s shares and realized it was time for someone who could execute.

 

Founders often fail as managers, Blank noted. “As Tesla struggles in the transition from a visionary pioneer to reliable producer of cars in high volume,” he wrote in 2018, “one wonders” if the generous compensation plan that the Tesla board awarded to Musk that year “would be better spent finding Tesla’s Alfred P. Sloan.”

I called up Blank. He told me that the flaws in Musk that he identified that year remain today. “When you’ve been right in the beginning, you think you’re right forever,” he said. “You surround yourself with people who think you’re a genius forever. You run by whim rather than strategy.”

Edwin Land, a co-founder of Polaroid, was a technical genius but a terrible chief executive, Blank said. Steve Jobs bungled the chief executive job at Apple and was forced out, although he redeemed himself by doing better in a second stint, Blank said. Then there’s Durant.

“Musk is very similar to Durant,” agreed Christopher Whalen, an investment banker who is chairman of Whalen Global Advisors and the author of a 2017 book on the history of Ford Motor titled “Ford Men: From Inspiration to Enterprise.” Whalen told me that with Musk, “We’re repeating ourselves in a way.”

A big difference between Durant’s days at G.M. and Musk’s at Tesla is that G.M.’s board was strong and independent of the C.E.O. (as evidenced by the fact that it booted him twice). It’s hard to say the same of Tesla’s.


This past week, Tesla announced it was laying off 10 percent of its work force in response to a drop in first-quarter sales. Two days after that announcement, the company filed a proxy statement for its annual meeting asking shareholders to re-approve Musk’s 2018 pay package, which a Delaware judge had ruled illegally excessive less than three months earlier. The board also asked shareholders to approve Tesla’s reincorporation in Texas, which analysts said would be a friendlier jurisdiction for Musk.

Musk’s 2018 pay package, whose value is tied to Tesla’s stock price, was once worth more than $50 billion. As The Times described last week’s development: “Facing criticism that it is overly beholden to Elon Musk, Tesla’s board of directors said on Wednesday that it would essentially give him everything he wanted, including the biggest pay package in corporate history.”

Apart from how much money Musk deserves is the question of where he’s taking the company. He announced recently that the company will introduce a self-driving taxi, Robotaxi, in August, in spite of widespread concerns that the artificial intelligence required for self-driving isn’t mature. He seems to have stopped talking about his plan to roll out a $25,000 electric vehicle for the mass market — which would be less exciting but more reliably profitable.

“Musk shouldn’t give up” on robo cars, but it’s not wise for him to bet the company on them, Whalen said.

“If there were a functioning board, this would be a conversation,” Blank said.

After Durant was deposed from G.M. the second time, he flailed between a car company, a cinnabar mine and that bowling alley, which he hoped to turn into a chain. He lost all of his money in the process. Musk is such a creative genius that Tesla’s board has indulged his idiosyncratic explorations. That may be the right call, given that the company might be lost without him. But Tesla’s board, like G.M.’s, needs to keep in mind that it represents the shareholders — all of them.

 

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On 4/12/2024 at 10:39 AM, Captainant said:

Well and also that it will take at least DOZEN STARSHIP LAUNCHES AND ORBITAL REFUELINGS for each Artemis trip to the moon. NASA hadn't even thought about that aspect of the mission design until a guest speaker asked the question at a lecture. Starship hasn't even reached orbit, much less validated an orbital refueling procedure between two orbiting starships. And then they need at least a dozen of them to go flawlessly for a successful launch.

 

It reeks of the same slapdash design ethos that the rest of musk's projects have begun to exhibit. Amazingly groundbreaking promises that are astoundingly under delivered 

 

Sooooooo.....

I might have been a touch to quick to defend SpaceX and say they are all clear.

https://www.americaspace.com/2024/04/20/starship-faces-performance-shortfall-for-lunar-missions/

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Starship is facing a 50% underperformance in terms of the payload which it can deliver to orbit.  If this issue is not rectified, it could have grave implications for Starship’s ability to complete a lunar mission.

 

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On April 4th, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk provided a public update on the Starship program from his company’s facility in Boca Chica, Texas [2].  This was not a novel event; Musk gives an in-depth presentation on Starship on a roughly annual basis.  He provided ample discussion on his visionary goal of establishing a colony on Mars.  Spaceflight media outlets offered glowing commentary on his claimed goals for Starship’s marginal launch cost and payload to orbit.  In reality, the most important announcement was arguably contained within one sentence: 

“Currently, Flight 3 would be around 40-50 tons to orbit.”

To understand the significance of this statement, one only needs to review prior statements about Starship’s performance.  Ever since Musk’s 2017 presentation, Starship’s estimated payload capacity has ranged between 100 and 150 tons to Low Earth Orbit (LEO).  SpaceX’s official Starship Payload Users Guide clearly states that “At the baseline reusable design, Starship can deliver over 100 metric tons to LEO” [3].  For the past six years, Starship’s diameter, height, and propellant mixture have remained constant.  The most straightforward interpretation of Musk’s comment is that the rocket is suffering from a 50% underperformance.

 

The article gets way into the weeds on rocket design, but their basic point is that SpaceX has worked hard to make their rocket powerful, but they increased the weight of the rocket, and thus are costing themselves payload. And for Artemis to be successful, they need to hit a target of being able to get 100 tons of payload into orbit or they will have issues getting enough material into space.

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data published by the Potential Energy Coalition. This is based on a range of national surveys and messaging tests, with inputs from nearly 60,000 people.

It’s worth noting that Americans are some of the most reluctant EV adopters across the world. In 2022, just 8% of new cars sold were electric.¹ That’s far lower than the global average (14%) and way lower than in the EU (21%), UK (23%), China (29%), and enthusiasts such as Norway.

You can see these comparisons – based on data from the International Energy Agency – in the chart below. We’re still waiting for new IEA figures to come in for 2023, but I expect the overall differences between countries will be similar.

As we’ll soon see, there is a large partisan divide in attitudes to EVs. But, interestingly, in a poll conducted by the University of Maryland and the Washington Post, the same share of Republicans and Democrats owned one.

This is all to say that the US is one of the toughest markets to crack. If things really get moving there, we can be much more confident about uptake in other countries.

 

Up until like 2022 it wasn't considered unethical for a Democrat to buy a Tesla. In fact they probably proudly did so until Elon went publicly off the reservation. Now, I wonder which brand/car will fill the Tesla void for those who despise Elon Musk and all he stands for.

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