Elon Musk

poison can be medicine so depending how you look at it shes dr medicine

― lag∞n

turned evil because the insurance companies wouldn't cover her cosmetic botox procedures

object to neowhig characterizations of history as involving "seeing" "problems" and "deciding" to "fix" them, like we're one guy behind one wheel interested in going one place. if you think of things that way of course you'll always be shocked by our driving (and by the water level)

i haven't seen "wonder woman" but surely the fictional character "dr. poison" is a bad person because she's called "dr. poison"?

which returns us neatly to "elon musk"

however i am gung-ho pro-automation; as others have already said you just have to seize and equitably distribute the value it creates. just that, lol

It’s a tough job when you’ve got a government contract to send a mannequin smoking a huge doobie to space but somebody’s gotta do it

Now I want a high tech Zero-G Indicator, $35 when in stock.

Really looking forward to Tesla's "painful but necessary" cuts to referral program payouts... sorry, no more free $250k Roadsters!

Just kidding, that'll never happen. The shills getting six-figure payouts for their daily online PR aren't expendable. Perception is the entire game

— E.W. "Linear Thinker" Niedermeyer (@Tweetermeyer) March 3, 2019

https://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-faces-legal-trouble-financial-issues-in-2019-2019-2

The beginning of the year was consumed by delays in the production of the Model 3, the upscale company's more affordable sedan. There was "production hell" to make the cars, and then "logistics hell" to deliver the cars. There was a ramp up that CEO Elon Musk said took the company "near death."

Then, of course, there was the $20 million fine Musk had to pay for misleading the public about plans to take the company private — as funding was in fact not "secured"— and the $20 million fine Tesla had to pay for the same infraction. Meanwhile, all year in a still seemingly never-ending line, executives and engineers and VPs left the company. There were layoffs and leaks and of course there was that time Musk called a diver who helped rescue a children's soccer team a "pedo." It was quite a year.

But now it's 2019. This year was supposed to be different for Tesla. Musk said there would no longer be any need to take big risks and "bet the company." In Q3 of last year it turned a profit, and then it did so again in Q4, Tesla's first consecutive quarters of profitability ever. Musk told investors on a conference call that the company would be profitable going forward. It would be a new day at Tesla Motors.

Recent events have called this turnabout into question. In violation of his SEC settlement, Musk is still tweeting material financial information that contradicts company forecasts. The SEC has given him until March 11 to show how he is not in contempt of the court ruling that followed his "funding secured" debacle.

Both the company's CFO and General Counsel announced their exits. And analysts still worry that the Tesla isn't holding enough cash to finance its ambitious growth plans.

And in stark contrast to Musk's statements about Tesla's profitability going forward, on Thursday Musk told a closed call with select reporters that the company would not be profitable in Q1, maybe Q2. This accompanied the announcement that the company's long awaited standard Model 3 (at around $35,000) would be available to order — a feat Musk said would require the closing of the lion's share of its retail stores and Tesla's third round of layoffs in the last 12 months.

Wall Street, for its part, sounds exhausted.

"Last year featured a number of idiosyncratic events that shaped the Tesla narrative and, just 2 months into 2019, it seems to be another year of significant volatility, driven by both economic factors and company-specific factors," Morgan Stanley analysts wrote in a note to clients on Friday.

Welcome to a new year.

isn't it pretty widely accepted that there's massive accounting fraud going on here

no but its not a bad theory imho

have we heard any more about the giant parking lots full of reject cars lately

Tesla has a long history of using diesel generators to recharge vehicles. Back in 2015, I found Tesla using them to power backup Superchargers at Harris Ranch, while its supposedly open battery swap station sat unused. https://t.co/OxtOCjhNuj https://t.co/IxaT4iowvk

— E.W. "Linear Thinker" Niedermeyer (@Tweetermeyer) March 7, 2019

Now, a real visionary would figure out a clever way to install a diesel generator under the hood of a vehicle, so it could power the engine directly. You'd need a nationwide network of pumping stations though so you could refill the car's onboard liquid fuel tank when necessary.

I wonder how much it'd take to set up the power infrastructure to run a dozen charging rigs off the local electrical grid at each dealership or w/e

it's as if they're assuming the dealership is a pop-up shop and it's not going to last long enough to actually equip the location with real charging stations. hmmm.

I’m building a supercharging network right now (not for Tesla) and it’s actually quite challenging. The power draw on each charge head (140kW in the case of Tesla, soon to be 250kW) can be quite challenging for the grid in rural areas without a lot of power and urban areas with grid congestion. There’s also a pretty long lead time on things like transformers and MV switchgear and even longer lead times on getting the utility to uprate the grid if that is needed. You need to have charging stations at the right intervals so a diesel generator powered site will be (expensively: power at 4-5x the cost of grid) filling a gap whilst other infrastructure is getting sorted.

I’ve also never heard of Tesla battery swapping. No one has seriously considered battery swapping as ‘refuelling’ since Better Place folded nearly ten years ago.

I’m no Musk. Stand but my that is a very poorly written and researched article.

the tendency of people but esp. Americans (historically, per the book) to see a problem coming yet keep putting off the solution until the last minute, then successfully scramble to fix it, because it's worked like that time and again the past, however scary and inefficient?

― Josh in Chicago, Saturday, March 2, 2019 10:21 AM (five days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

(looks at march workload) nothing has been more @ me next time

Ed dropping the knowledge

imo a smart thing to do if you're into real estate investment would be to figure out the prime overlap between underutilized or at least well built-out power grids and prime commercial space for vehicle sales and grab some property to sell/lease to future electric car vendors

mine bitcoin while you're waiting

xpost

There's plenty of stuff to criticise Tesla on, many as well do it with actual facts. If you want to criticise the supercharger network you could start with the fact that Tesla chose a non-standard plug design which means non- Tesla vehicles can't use it (and Tesla's can't use off network chargers without an adaptor), leading to unnecessary duplicating of networks. This somewhat shows up Elon's line on wanting to stimulate the electric car uptake in general. (they are backing away from this in Europe, but only because the EU is moving towards a mandatory plug standard anyway).

If you've got land and a bit of under-utilised power grid then build solar or a wind farm, it'll pay off much better than EV charging will.

Please don't mine bitcoin

Although by all means build an EV charger as well.

I wonder how much it'd take to set up the power infrastructure to run a dozen charging rigs off the local electrical grid at each dealership or w/e

it's as if they're assuming the dealership is a pop-up shop and it's not going to last long enough to actually equip the location with real charging stations. hmmm.

― mh, Thursday, March 7, 2019 4:08 PM (five hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

you saw they quietly announced last week that they're closing all their dealerships, right?

If I had to guess they’ll probably sell off the charging network at some point. It’s a good asset and will continue to benefit tesla customers even if they don’t own it.

xp I either missed that or forgot about it! But yes, that explains why they had no interest in setting up dedicated infrastructure -- the whole thing was a trial balloon/pop-up shop thing

my cynical view for quite a while has been that Tesla isn't really an attempt to establish a long-running car company, it's a test platform for a handful of technologies that could be licensed or sold off to existing automobile manufacturers

that's at least partially shared by the companies that have established a competitor interest and hold Tesla shares. there's already plenty of collaboration and cross-licensing and production out there

SpaceX Dragon demo capsule returns to Earth

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-47477617

🚶🏻‍♂️

Ooof, what the hell are they doing? https://t.co/Qa9FBcRd5x pic.twitter.com/c8jS25kkhX

— Michael T Sweeney (@mtsw) March 8, 2019

this is some shit right here https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-03-13/when-elon-musk-tried-to-destroy-tesla-whistleblower-martin-tripp

glad someone's following up on that Tripp dude

when the initial articles about the battery factory shenanigans came out my friend and I started joking with a guy we know who got a tesla

"so did they stab holes in the lithium battery before it left the factory, or just throw it around a little? get the patch that causes spontaneous bursts of flame yet?"

Elon Musk but with Elizabeth Holmes' eyes pic.twitter.com/wpaJFTW6Zm

— Rob Beschizza (@Beschizza) March 22, 2019

laughing out loud at these Virginia transportation officials trying their best not to say "what the fuck was that" re: Elon Musk's car tube pic.twitter.com/V6En63P2fu

— snarkifesto (@lib_crusher) March 22, 2019

It’s a tough job when you’ve got a government contract to send a mannequin smoking a huge doobie to space but somebody’s gotta do it

― calstars, Saturday, March 2, 2019 11:02 AM (three weeks ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I know I'm a month late but new board description please

I have a major deadline on April 1 so it is very concerning to find out it already arrived

https://www.thefader.com/2019/03/31/elon-musk-soundcloud-rapper-rip-harambe

this is the most epic moment in Martin Shrekli's life and he's in jail for it

are we to assume that musk's recent personal and professional meltdowns are because he spent the better part of the last three years devoted all his time and energy to a two-minute ode to a meme

lmao that Elon is reliving his teen shitposting years that were taken away from him, Michael Jackson style

Promise kept: https://www.theverge.com/2019/2/28/18245165/tesla-model-3-price-lower-cost-elon-musk-news

― DJI, Friday, 1 March 2019 00:34 (one month ago) Permalink

well... i mean the promise hasnt been kept until the cars have actually been delivered. at the moment this is just another announcement.

― just sayin, Friday, 1 March 2019 00:47 (one month ago) Permalink

he also accepted pre-orders for the self-driving option... which hasnt happened

― just sayin, Friday, 1 March 2019 00:47 (one month ago) Permalink

I can't figure out who does more goalpost-moving, Musk, or the people in this thread.

― DJI, Friday, 1 March 2019 00:51 (one month ago) Permalink

https://electrek.co/2019/04/04/tesla-model-3-base-doesnt-exist/

Entertaining, insightful @latimes story on Elon Musk’s army of short-sellers, who are convinced he’s a fraud and Tesla is a house of cards — and aren’t afraid to tweet about it. https://t.co/YzpE31sU0x $TslaQ

— Laura J. Nelson 🦅 (@laura_nelson) April 8, 2019

there will never be a $35k tesla.

https://www.tesla.com/blog/update-our-vehicle-lineup

Sounds like you can have one but only if you go on a quest to a Tesla store and do battle with the Tesla sales team who will do eevrything they can to talk you out of making them take a loss on it.

A software-limited car model is an absurdity, who is that for

if you think about it, the software in a lot of cars could do a lot more things, just not very well or safely

you get heated seats if you preorder at GameStop

omg lol

unlock a classic aftermarket pioneer stereo skin for your display if you die during autopilot

A software-limited car model is an absurdity, who is that for

I’m mildly terrified whenever I’m in a car with software

I've got bad news for you

my last car was made in 1994 and I walk a lot

lol

i’m no pedant, sure, that works

I'm with sic here. Our car barely has an engine, let alone software.

even the odometer was still mechanical in mine, though I’ll admit I did get into it with a mobile phone in my bag