Elon Musk

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"more cars" is ipso facto a bad idea from a societal point of view.

( ͡☉ ͜ʖ ͡☉) (jim in vancouver), Friday, 1 March 2019 21:14 (five years ago) link

if Elon Musk were ambitious he'd spend his money lobbying to ban cars.

moose; squirrel (silby), Friday, 1 March 2019 21:16 (five years ago) link

driverless cars just equals a whole lot more unemployed truckers and farm workers right?

not to mention they are still a very long away from actually working except in the most idealized conditions, AFAICT

bhad bundy (Simon H.), Friday, 1 March 2019 21:22 (five years ago) link

the most ambitious thing any california billionaire could do is bankroll a ballot measure to repeal proposition 13.

𝔠𝔞𝔢𝔨 (caek), Friday, 1 March 2019 21:26 (five years ago) link

Less self driving more self guillotining

A funny tinge happened on the way to the forum (wins), Friday, 1 March 2019 21:28 (five years ago) link

the most ambitious thing any california billionaire could do is bankroll a ballot measure to repeal proposition 13.

Truth.

And I'm fine with tech dudes trying to automate all the jobs away, as long as we can get a 90% marginal income tax rate on their robot-fueled profits.

DJI, Friday, 1 March 2019 21:57 (five years ago) link

I mean getting rid of relatively shitty jobs should be a net good where a better job exists or we have the ability to educate/compensate people, but our societal idiocy about employment means making an autonomous semi truck makes a couple people unemployed. Unless you count the incremental number of road crews we're going to need to maintain interstate highways once unmanned amazon trailer drones are rocketing down them.

mh, Saturday, 2 March 2019 05:04 (five years ago) link

it would be cool for the rich people to support some sort of improves social safety net before they eliminate a ton of jobs

Karl Malone, Saturday, 2 March 2019 05:08 (five years ago) link

it would be cool for the rich people to support some sort of improves social safety net before they eliminate a ton of jobs

― Karl Malone

it would be but man my level of trust for "rich people" as a class is fairly low

if i'm going to take musk seriously, which nobody should because he's a clown, the idea of technological progress driving social progress is not a bad one, and also technological "progress" which brings about actively bad social change - like for instance the cotton gin - don't necessarily make their inventors bad people (elon musk is a bad person for other reasons and promoting electric cars does nothing to mitigate that)

i don't think fully automated gay space communism will become a thing until the technological infrastrucure to support it exists. i don't trust elon musk to effectively put that infrastructure in place.

the scientology of mountains (rushomancy), Saturday, 2 March 2019 13:59 (five years ago) link

you can choose what to invent and put money into developing. for example, in the wonder woman movie, dr. poison was a scientist working on technological progress and her choices about this made her a bad person.

|Restore| |Restart| |Quit| (Doctor Casino), Saturday, 2 March 2019 15:10 (five years ago) link

driverless cars just equals a whole lot more unemployed truckers and farm workers right?

This is not just OTM but I've seen folks (possibly in this thread but certainly in interviews and whatnot) note the huge impact driverless cars would have on employment in the US - esp. truck drivers and taxi drivers (I think a lot of farm work has steadily become automated in some sense?). Millions of relatively low-skilled but good paying jobs, poof, gone. We should probably be planning for this, as a society, but of course we're not.

Anyone else ever read The Confidence Trap, about 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? It's a pretty interesting read.

Josh in Chicago, Saturday, 2 March 2019 15:21 (five years ago) link

you can choose what to invent and put money into developing. for example, in the wonder woman movie, dr. poison was a scientist working on technological progress and her choices about this made her a bad person.

― |Restore| |Restart| |Quit| (Doctor Casino)

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

the scientology of mountains (rushomancy), Saturday, 2 March 2019 15:40 (five years ago) link

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

lag∞n, Saturday, 2 March 2019 15:43 (five years ago) link

it’s actually pronounced poy-sahn, she tried to work for the good of humanity but repeated misunderstandings due to nomenclature soured her outlook

mh, Saturday, 2 March 2019 15:44 (five years ago) link

This is not just OTM but I've seen folks (possibly in this thread but certainly in interviews and whatnot) note the huge impact driverless cars would have on employment in the US - esp. truck drivers and taxi drivers (I think a lot of farm work has steadily become automated in some sense?). Millions of relatively low-skilled but good paying jobs, poof, gone. We should probably be planning for this, as a society, but of course we're not.

― Josh in Chicago

we're not really capable of "planning" for anything as a society because we don't have a functioning society right now imo

if we're talking about making drastic societal changes like, i don't know, getting rid of cars entirely, these are changes that can come about either slowly and steadily, or rapidly and, er, "disruptively", under extreme circumstances. the existence of organized opposition to changing our society to make it sustainable is, ultimately, what will cause those changes to be radical and less-than-fully successful.

the scientology of mountains (rushomancy), Saturday, 2 March 2019 15:44 (five years ago) link

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

the scientology of mountains (rushomancy), Saturday, 2 March 2019 15:45 (five years ago) link

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

difficult listening hour, Saturday, 2 March 2019 15:48 (five years ago) link

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, 2 March 2019 16:02 (five years ago) link

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

moistly harmless (Sanpaku), Sunday, 3 March 2019 16:48 (five years ago) link

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

lag∞n, Sunday, 3 March 2019 18:38 (five years ago) link

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.

𝔠𝔞𝔢𝔨 (caek), Monday, 4 March 2019 19:34 (five years ago) link

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

frogbs, Monday, 4 March 2019 19:35 (five years ago) link

no but its not a bad theory imho

lag∞n, Monday, 4 March 2019 19:36 (five years ago) link

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

mh, Monday, 4 March 2019 19:46 (five years ago) link

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

lag∞n, Thursday, 7 March 2019 20:26 (five years ago) link

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.

mick signals, Thursday, 7 March 2019 21:03 (five years ago) link

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, 7 March 2019 21:08 (five years ago) link

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.

American Fear of Pranksterism (Ed), Thursday, 7 March 2019 21:20 (five years ago) link

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

theorizing your yells (katherine), Thursday, 7 March 2019 21:23 (five years ago) link

Ed dropping the knowledge

mh, Thursday, 7 March 2019 22:43 (five years ago) link

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

mh, Thursday, 7 March 2019 22:45 (five years ago) link

mine bitcoin while you're waiting

moose; squirrel (silby), Thursday, 7 March 2019 22:54 (five years ago) link

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

American Fear of Pranksterism (Ed), Thursday, 7 March 2019 23:01 (five years ago) link

Although by all means build an EV charger as well.

American Fear of Pranksterism (Ed), Thursday, 7 March 2019 23:01 (five years ago) link

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?

𝔠𝔞𝔢𝔨 (caek), Friday, 8 March 2019 02:27 (five years ago) link

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.

American Fear of Pranksterism (Ed), Friday, 8 March 2019 02:46 (five years ago) link

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

mh, Friday, 8 March 2019 14:49 (five years ago) link

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

mh, Friday, 8 March 2019 14:52 (five years ago) link

SpaceX Dragon demo capsule returns to Earth

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

koogs, Friday, 8 March 2019 15:03 (five years ago) link

🚶🏻‍♂️

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

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

𝔠𝔞𝔢𝔨 (caek), Saturday, 9 March 2019 00:09 (five years ago) link

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?"

mh, Wednesday, 13 March 2019 20:43 (five years ago) link

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

— Rob Beschizza (@Beschizza) March 22, 2019

mookieproof, Saturday, 23 March 2019 06:19 (five years ago) link

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

lag∞n, Sunday, 24 March 2019 03:57 (five years ago) link

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

flappy bird, Thursday, 28 March 2019 05:00 (five years ago) link

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

like, I’m eating an elephant head (katherine), Sunday, 31 March 2019 18:24 (five years ago) link

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

frogbs, Monday, 1 April 2019 13:51 (five years ago) link

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

mr greta t. gremlin (bizarro gazzara), Monday, 1 April 2019 13:59 (five years ago) link

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

frogbs, Monday, 1 April 2019 14:01 (five years ago) link

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/

just sayin, Sunday, 7 April 2019 22:26 (five years ago) link


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