[sophistication]

I'm not losing optimism because of this. Musk fits right into the current political & cultural trajectory and the Tesla brand is sleek & timeless. The media is framing Musk's flaws (Twitter insults, weed & booze) as a bad thing, but outside of the media, people do not care about such things nearly as much. It just requires a few years of optimization and the cars are going to be en par with established brands.

[wyldfire]

Musk is truly visionary. But that doesn't dictate success.

> It just requires a few years of optimization and the cars are going to be en par with established brands.

The world is littered with visionary companies that paved the way for new technology but ultimately failed themselves. "A few years of optimization" gravely undervalues the complexity of modern auto manufacturing. I will concede that it's astonishing that Tesla has come so far, so fast. But perhaps this is time for an inflection point.

> people do not care about such things nearly as much.

You're right that Tesla's customers aren't influenced much by this news in particular. But Tesla's long-term success will be impacted by their capability to attract talent. If Musk drives away all the talented R&D, marketing, finance leaders, he'll be stuck with second-rate talent. It's clear that he has shown that there's a luxury EV market. True, the big players move slowly but won't hesitate to pivot into this space.

[chooseaname]

I don't think he's visionary. We all want to play with rockets and electric cars. He just happens to have enough money to go out and do it.

[leesec]

I think you are drastically over estimating how many people with his money would go out and start a rocket company and an electric car company and risk losing all of their wealth because of it.

[gbear605]

Then why is Musk (and Bezos with Blue Origin) the only ones who have done so? There are a lot of people who have more money than Musk had when he founded SpaceX and Tesla.

[chooseaname]

Interest?

Look at Bill Gates. He could certainly build rockets, but he'd rather help people solve other, arguably more important, problems.

Or Larry Ellison. He'd rather go race boats and play with swords.

[kitsunesoba]

I’d argue that opening up a new frontier for society’s restless (space) to relieve the pressure that’s been mounting from the lack of any kind of frontier is as important as anything else. If we keep ignoring that pressure it’s eventually going to have massive destabilizing effects… in fact, I think we’re seeing some of that already.

[kgwgk]

John Carmack has also burned some money playing with rockets.

(And Musk did not really found Tesla.)

[antoniuschan99]

Whats the explanation for why all the talent leaving?

[velcrovan]

You're right that Musk does not need to score political points with the everyday person in order for Tesla to succeed.

But by the same token, Musk's "fitting into the current political and cultural trajectory" (whatever that means) is also of no value to Tesla.

The actual concerns people have are much more concrete.

Tesla has already had "a few years of optimization". They have been making cars for ten years now. They are still burning bales of cash. They have consistently failed, by large margins, to deliver on production targets. Major competitors who DO have a consistent history of large-scale production are coming out with comparable products that will actually be possible to buy without waiting in line for two years.

Their accounting chief quitting after a month only adds to the pile. Anyone who has been in management at a failing concern knows the numbers people are the canaries in the coal mine. No, it's not a guarantee they will fail, but only an inexperienced person would ignore it.

[sophistication]

> whatever that means

I mean that he is a rare kind of public figure who is really down-to-earth, yet proponent of the free market & innovation. Like Trump he breaks with the norms, but he's a lot more sincere. He also does not seem to outsource overseas very much, which kind of fits into the MAGA narrative.

[velcrovan]

Well, like you said, the average person does not care about stuff like that.

By the way if you like sincere down to earth people who break with norms and are in favor of tariffs, check out the chapo trap house podcast

[sophistication]

There are good reasons to assume that tariffs are not enough. From the episode I've listened to it seems they are hypergamy deniers.

[AJ007]

For the general public, SpaceX = Elon Musk = Tesla. The successes of SpaceX have carried over to the Tesla brand for consumers and probably many investors, both large and small. If Elon Musk was separated from the Tesla brand, it would be a negative.

It is also worth pointing out that Elon Musk's "other" public company, Paypal, today is valued over 2x Tesla's market capitalization ($105.7b vs $44.6b.) While what Paypal is now is far disconnected from Elon Musk today, that is a big win for creating an enterprise able of delivering incredible value over the long term for investors.

I don't have a problem with critical reporting on Tesla and Elon Musk from any media entity, backed by hedged funds otherwise. I do have a very, very big problem when they compare Elon Musk to someone like Elizabeth Holmes. (e.g. "The Age of Tech Superheroes Must End" WSJ https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-age-of-tech-superheroes-mus... )

My big concern is what happens if consumers do not want Tesla vehicles. The current problems are solvable. If Tesla vehicles become as desirable as a chunk of lead, then no amount of cash, engineering, or R&D will fix it.

[cecja]

Talk about gaslighting yourself. If you are not recoginizing that something fishy is going on at tesla you are not reading the same articles as the rest of us.

[rcMgD2BwE72F]

What's fishy? I've been following Tesla since 2010 and the main changes since then isn't what appears to be fishy but what the media are making of it.

Do you realize that Tesla sold more cars in the US that Mercedes and BMW this summer? How many media reported that?

Do you know that the most trusted car analysts who tear-down the car said it's expected to be the most profitable car produced in high volume?

Do you know that all data analyses about turnover in top positions at Tesla indicated that they are average? How many reports about such moves (at legacy automakers) make headlines?

They've only increased their coverage of the company and try their best to make every thing more clickbait. It's worked great so far, for sure.

[Fricken]

"We think Tesla is worth zero" -Jim Chanos

You haven't been reading the same news I have. While there were plenty of red flags prior, Musk began digging Tesla's grave in earnest in fall 2016. He Started with the Alien Dreadnought, which was bonkers. He sold shareholders on buying Solar City using fake solar shingles which don't exist, that was $5b+ flushed down the toilet. Also he implemented HW2, which is thousands of dollars of hardware going into every new car regardless of whether customers pay for it. When Solar experts, finance people, Vehicle manufacturing experts and Autonomous vehicle experts get together and compare notes there's only one conclusion to arrive at: Tesla is fucked.

Alien Dreadnought, Solar City, HW2. I call it the ASH doctrine: Musk's 3 point plan to reduce Tesla to ashes. Post chapter 11 Tesla may have a life ahead of it, but it's been a slow motion trainwreck for years. The Shorts, the Media, the Koch brothers, they didn't destroy Tesla. Musk did. He's incompetent, and nuts. It's pretty obvious now, but if you were paying attention, it was obvious before too.

[rcMgD2BwE72F]

>he implemented HW2, which is thousands of dollars of hardware going into every new car regardless of whether customers pay for it

Seriously? Do you know the take rate of the option? It's been widely considered to increase margin, but if you have other sources, I'm interested.

>He sold shareholders on buying Solar City using fake solar shingles which don't exist, that was $5b+ flushed down the toilet.

That's false. The solar roof thing was accessory to the acquisition. More than a hundred have been installed and are being used as beta tests to improve it further. Since the beginning, Musk said the v1 should be considered like the Roadster 1, i.e not intended to be mass produced until v3 (remember "BlueStar"?)

As for Alien Dreadnought, he did say that wouldn't be possible with Model 3. So OK, that was one failed promise, but the Model 3 production and assembly lines remains one of the most automated one in the industry.

So for this one little think (which is more a name than a project), you conclude that Tesla is fucked. Okay.

[Nokinside]

>Tesla sold more cars in the US that Mercedes and BMW this summer? How many media reported that?

Please, that was one month of backlog deliveries (July, 16,000 deliveries) and only in the US. 16, Nobody expects that Tesla manufactures 16,000 Model 3's per month.

Meanwhile Mercedes sells 30,000 C-Class Saloon and Estate models per month globally. In the US Mercedes and BMW each keep delivering 12,000 or so vehicles per month in the same category as Tesla models are.

[rcMgD2BwE72F]

You're right, because August is the month during which Tesla surpassed both BMW and Mercedes. We're in September so how can there be more than a month? Both BMW and Mercedes US car sales are falling hard: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20180904005710/en/Mer..., https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20180904005748/en/BMW...

[perl4ever]

Is there something going on with tariffs?

It was well publicized that the President doesn't want people buying Mercedes.

[leesec]

>Nobody expects that Tesla manufactures 16,000 Model 3's per month.

What are you talking about? They are sustainably producing 5000/week now, and have backlog for the next 1.5 years at least.

[cecja]

You know that you are literally falling for all the PR moves tesla made in the last year? The whole tent thing to get the quota up or delaying deliveries so they can ship a lot of cars in one month or the going privat stunt. I don't mind if some little startup wants to pull shit like this but Elon really thinks he can outsmart everyone with stuff like this and it gets annoying real fast.

[wetKoala]

That's not how you use the word "gaslighting" in a sentence. I don't think you know what the word means.

By definition, it's not something you can do to yourself, so what you wrote is like saying someone stole their own car. Unless there are some strange mental gymnastics going on, it's not possible to steal your own property from yourself.

Nor is it possible to maliciously conspire against your own healthy sanity in secret. You can try and argue about cute ideas where that might be curiously plausible, but the definition of the verb doesn't play into that idea.

[cecja]

You are just retarded. The guy which tells people with depression to snap out of it. If you think there is no way to manipulate yourself into a delusion you better read a bit more than the wikipedia article of the term you want to school people on the internet.

[dang]

We've banned this account for repeatedly violating HN's guidelines and ignoring our request to stop.

If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email [e-mail] and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

[wetKoala]

Hey, wow, you still used the term incorrectly the first time. And continue to do so even now.

Did I say it's not possible to do something like that? No. No, I didn't. I did not say that anything is prevented by anything.

I'm saying you used a word incorrectly. What you just said you're trying to talk about? That word doesn't mean what you just said.

[dang]

Can you please not add to flamewars here, even when another comment is wrong or has broken the rules? We're trying to avoid this level of discourse and do a bit better.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

[perl4ever]

Being crazy subjectively seems like being gaslighted by everyone else. I think "gaslighting yourself" amounts to a figure of speech that means the same thing. While you may not think it's a technically correct usage, there are other similar expressions in English. I would say it's an example of an oxymoron.

[wetKoala]

Delusional. Being delusional.

A person is simply delusional, if they are deceiving themselves.

May as well start gangstalking myself. Hold on, let me stand outside my window with all my other selves. brb

[cecja]

Same.

[aintnoprophet]

It doesn't seem anymore fishy than a lot of software/IT companies. Tesla is designed to produce a product not necessarily for profit. CFOs, like most corporate execs, are more concerned about money than philosophy. Musk thinks he is/can change the world. He's not concerned with how much he can profit.

[ModernMech]

> Musk thinks he is/can change the world. He's not concerned with how much he can profit.

Then why didn't he start Tesla as a nonprofit? Your characterization would be much more credible if he didn't personally own a very valuable chunk of a multi-billion dollar company.

[whatok]

Can't complain about any of that if you're a public company.

[Nokinside]

He is bipolar and it's going to end with tragedy if it's not addressed.

[_pmf_]

It's strange how much Elon Musk and Nikola Tesla have in common.

[Nokinside]

If you could maintain mild hypomania (hyperthymia) endlessly without succumbing to depression or slipping to full mania most people would prefer to stay in that state forever.

People in hypomania maintain mental clarity and don't suffer from functional impairment. They have energy, confidence and increased creativity.

But it's usually just a phase between depression and mania.