[heartofgold]

A lot of people want to trash Musk and Tesla, but I look at it this way:

- Sure the CEO might be too active on twitter and at times say or do things typically considered inappropriate CEO behavior.

- Musk often makes bold claims and sometimes misses his projected dates.

However:

- Musk also is often right.

- He delivered amazing things with the model s. The Audi e-tron looks quite nice and I think competition is nice, but it still doesn't match the 2012 model s specs.

- He wanted the model 3 entry price to be $35k. Lots of peopple doubted he could do it, and many projected it wouldn't be available until 2020 or later. It looks like the base model 3 I can order is about $39k and with tax credit brings you downt to $35k and change.

- He promised autonomous driving 2 years from 2016, and honestly many people thought he was nuts. And his prediction was overly optimistic here, but there have been a steady stream of amazing incremental improvements to auto-pilot. On freeways, the tesla can now determine when to change lanes and does it. It can follow navigation within freeways, and it can warn you if a stoplight or stopsign is approaching. They demoed true autonomy, and I believe it's actually getting quite close. Given 1 or 2 more years of incremental improvements, your tesla would be capable of driving you most places I would think. He didn't make his 2 year prediction, but his team at tesla is still doing amazing innovation in this space.

- Part of what makes a great innovator is being able to fail sometimes. Musk will continue to make bold claims, sometimes he will fail to fulfill it, but many times he will deliver.

What he's doing is nothing short of amazing. He's doing things people keep saying can't be done. Re-usable rockets that land? Electric cars? Cars that drive themselves? I'm willing to tolerate a little shenanigans in exchange for this kind of innovation.

[codeulike]

Agreed, Musk/Tesla/SpaceX set very ambitious targets and then scramble like mad to meet them or almost meet them. This means they're always pushing the limit, and hence you get an endless parade of 'Tesla are going to go bankrupt' stories. In a way they are kind of right, Musk is pushing Tesla so hard that they teeter on the edge of disaster quite often. I wouldn't quite say bankruptcy, but they teeter on the edge of a serious loss of confidence quite often. I think this is kinda deliberate, a tactic of shoot for the stars or just dont bother. I wouldn't invest, but its great to watch whats being acheived from the sidelines.

I think people have forgotten what innovation looks like. Innovation, from the outside, looks like a huge gamble, and thats because it is. Tesla is a series of huge gambles, and the people pointing out 'hey what Tesla are doing could go terribly wrong' have a point. But they are also missing the point.

Thankfully I think Tesla have enough cars on the road now that if they do strike disaster, there will be enough momentum to have some sort of Tesla remnant to keep the fleet running. But the progress would stop.

[hef19898]

Nothing wrong with innovation. But innovation on one front, in Tesla's case EVs, doesn't mean you have to innovate on other fronts like manufacturing and production. And the last thing is what might be killing Tesla at the moment.

When "we always did it that way" is a big corp disease, "we are doing it differently because we innovate" is just the start-up version of it. Tesla had, and still has, a great opportunity to disrupt the automotive industry. But not if they execute a lot worse then incumbents.

[codeulike]

There is an interview somewhere where Musk admits that their 100% automation plan was a bad idea. And the interviewer says 'well everyone told you it was a bad idea'. And Musk says (something like) 'everyone tells us everything we do is a bad idea'.

edit: interview is here: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-07-13/-the-last...

100% automation was a gamble that didn't pay off. They scrabbled around a bit, and got to more-or-less where they needed to be via a different route.

[Aromasin]

From watching some videos on the workings of their factory, it still seems like they've automated significantly more than their competitors. They reached for the stars and fell short, but that short is still ground-breaking.

[gamblor956]

If you think Tesla's factory is amazing, you need to check out Toyota's factories. It's like the difference between a Fisher Price playset and Disneyland.

Tesla talks big about automating...but Toyota actually did it, without fanfare, and managed to do so in a manner consistent with the kanban manufacturing philosophy that has defined their productivity and quality achievements of the past several decades

[_ea1k]

Toyota used to produce ~440k cars out of that plant. Tesla does ~360k. I'm not sure that "fisher price playset" vs disneyland is the analogy that I'd use for that difference.

[m463]

Are there decent videos of both factories to compare them? It might be interesting to see the state of the practice for an established player like Toyota.

I also remember way back when steve jobs tried to automate the production of NeXT cubes and broke his company doing it. I think a lot of folks do this sort of "follow one philosophy" into ruin. They want to be amazing and lose sight of what's doable/affordable/realistic.

[golfer]

Tesla's manufacturing capabilities are child's play in the automotive industry. Nothing Tesla has done here is revolutionary. Their quality control is abysmal compared to other major OEMs. They make the Model 3 in a tent. There are regular garbage fires at their Fremont plant.

https://boingboing.net/2018/08/24/fire-breaks-out-at-tesla-f...

And there was another one in February this year.

[codeulike]

The 'tent' was an improvisation when they realised their automation plan wasn't going to work. It was 1 of 3 lines I think, a way to expand capacity quickly. You could scoff at the 'tent', or you could think about what it takes to come up with a rapidly implemented and physically massive plan B involving hundreds of people and huge amounts of hardware when there's a huge amount at stake.

edit: Here's some pics of the tent, and description of the large scale scrambling it took https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-06-25/the-futur...

[Aromasin]

Manufacturing capabilities =/= % of process automated. I'm not saying they're effective at production output, or quality control, or a number of other things. I'm just saying that as far as I can tell as an interested outsider looking in, their automation processes are impressive compared to their competitors.

[tomnipotent]

How are fires at a paint shop indicative of abysmal quality control?

[hef19898]

And resulted in production hell, didn't it?

[Aromasin]

This is only going off of what I've read from private interviews with Tesla employees (I'm sure there are some lurking on HN that can give a better idea), but it seems the production hell came mostly from the constant product updates that were rolling through. A connector on a wire harness becomes obsolete, and all of a sudden your camera that picks out that connector from a bucket needs updating, the arm that grips it needs changing, the milling machine that machines the hole for the connector needs changing etc. One up-issue knocks on to the entire production process. This isn't an issue with humans. You tell them the new part they need to use and that's it.

[hi5eyes]

building cars in a tent is called disruption

[c0vfefe]

Often that's what it takes to achieve significant progress, even as an individual. Shoot for the stars and you'll likely see modest progress, but if you aim for mediocrity, you might not even attain that.

[grey-area]

100% automation was a gamble that didn't pay off

For now.

When they have a solid product, and a lot more money in the bank, I'd expect them to be at the forefront of automation, and then it will pay dividends, they just tried to do it too soon.

[hef19898]

There are plenty of car companies out there with solid products and very deep pockets. Nobody is going this direction. All it will do is increasing the production issues ten fold if Tesla is facing the first facelift or model change.

[fooker]

Nobody went in the direction of seamless internet payments before PayPal, despite banking existing for centuries.

Nobody went in the direction of landing boosters, despite rocketry existing for decades.

'Nobody is doing it', is more often than not, an argument for 'it' instead of against.

[grey-area]

Remember Nokia?

They had decades of experience in the industry and the software guys (Apple and Google) drove them to bankruptcy.

Also look at SpaceX - he’s not a complete novice at complex manufacturing, and knows how to assemble and motivate a good team, and is used to competing against even more entrenched incumbents.

I’ll be interested to see how this works out but I think Musk was just too early and trying to do too much at once; he’s not wrong that automation is the future.

[craydandy]

In fact others seem to go just the opposite direction. For example Mercedes is reducing the amount of automation as it makes the change too slow [1].

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/feb/26/mercedes-...

[TimTheTinker]

> When "we always did it that way" is a big corp disease, "we are doing it differently because we innovate" is just the start-up version of it.

That's a very insightful and prescient statement -- thanks for that. Certainly food for thought.

[hef19898]

Hard learned insight, at least for myself :-)

[grecy]

Thanks for this comment.

The Internet in general, and HN lately, have become extraordinarily negative places full of comments trashing people who try to do things that are bold.

I wish people would have a little optimism, or at least just say things like "wow, I personally don't think it's possible, but damn it's going to be exciting to watch them try".

We need people who are working hard to build a better future, so lets not bury them in a pile of hate and negativity.

[martythemaniak]

I too am sick and tired of this zeitgeist and I hope it passes soon, because otherwise I think people will just tune out until every only community is nothing but a hateful cesspool.

Musk and Tesla attract more than the average share of hate, but this sentiment feeds on itself and grows like cancer. Yesterday's thread on Eric Schmidt leaving Google was dozens of people competing to see who could trash him better.

Apart from the bad effects of negativity itself, it is also supremely boring. HN's comments are slowly going from being able to find tons of interesting ideas/reactions/perspectives to finding only different ways of trashing the same person/company/idea.

[Klathmon]

There's a growing list of topics I just entirely avoid online now, and it's a damn shame because I enjoy most of them.

Cryptocurrencies, "smart" things or IoT, anything Google related, anything even slightly related to or made by Facebook (the other day Facebook released info on their rewrite of Facebook.com and zero comments were about the tech on HN, it was just a bunch of people arguing over how awful Facebook really is), and many things that deal with JavaScript (at least on HN).

Sadly I'm going to be adding Tesla to that list now, something I should have done years ago, at least on this website.

Every topic related to those things quickly devolves into a bunch of people just yelling at each other over semantics, and it's very hard to have any real nuanced discussion.

[grecy]

I completely agree with you and the parent comment.

It's like people now come online to just loudly scream their opinion about something, then leave.

Whether a tech person likes or loaths Facebook is not really of interest or any gain to us as a community. Like you said, it would be massively interesting to learn exactly what tech and how facebook are re-writing their app, but those conversations don't even happen on HN anymore.

It's amazing to think what the state of automobiles and driving will be in 5 and then 10 years (which is really not far away at all), and yet every single discussion thread just argues about the demise of Tesla instead of discussing, planning for and building the future that is inevitable, with or without Tesla.

> Every topic related to those things quickly devolves into a bunch of people just yelling at each other over semantics, and it's very hard to have any real nuanced discussion.

As much as I hate censorship, I think the moderation team at HN would be wise to shadow ban (or just outright ban) accounts that post negative rubbish, or simply expose their opinion on a topic.

Maybe there should be a rule that a person's opinion is off-limits in HN discussions. Discuss the topic at hand, but don't just cram opinions down throats. (yes, I get the irony, I'm expressing my opinion here)

[c0vfefe]

Perhaps people are beginning to look at the downsides of innovation at all costs. Tesla's and Google's technical contributions can't be divorced from their failings. I'd think this would be a refreshing shift in startup culture.

[stcredzero]

I wish people would have a little optimism, or at least just say things like "wow, I personally don't think it's possible, but damn it's going to be exciting to watch them try".

Uninformed optimism? Not so much. How about some charity and informed, insightful analysis?

We need people who are working hard to build a better future, so lets not bury them in a pile of hate and negativity.

Agreed. By the same token, we can ditch the hate and have more informed negativity when it's warranted. It's mental laziness to just slam the lever all the way up because you like the feel of "up," or to slam it all the way down, just because you think "down is cool." The difficult and valuable thing is to move the lever to where it needs to go through technique and good judgement.

[grecy]

> How about some charity and informed, insightful analysis?

I agree, that would be great. Let's analyze stuff instead of just screaming out our opinions.

> we can ditch the hate and have more informed negativity when it's warranted

How does negativity (even informed negativity) help us?

How does it increase our knowledge, or ability to do new exciting things, or our ability to "push the envelope"?

It doesn't. It's a waste of time and effort. Worst case, just say nothing at all rather than being negative about a certain topic.

When working on an extremely complicated problem the last thing in the world anyone needs is a bunch of people reminding them it's really hard and that nobody has done it before and that it's going to fail for reasons x,y,z.

Remember, every breakthrough that has ever happened had a long list of reasons why it was "impossible".

[Robotbeat]

What's needed in the skeptic analysis is people who actually understand the point Elon is making. So often, the skeptics just completely don't understand what he's saying as he's speaking in terms of limits and fundamental principles, i.e. as a physicist.

In any good discussion and healthy argument, it is critical to be able to understand your opponent's point, be able to restate it accurately in a way they'd agree with, before being able to point out exactly how it's wrong (or at least unlikely).

Instead, we often see pile-ons and other supremely mentally lazy attacks.

[stcredzero]

How does it increase our knowledge, or ability to do new exciting things, or our ability to "push the envelope"?

It keeps resources from being wasted that would otherwise actually contribute to our ability to "push the envelope."

It doesn't. It's a waste of time and effort.

When something which really is impossible or impractical is called out, then huge amounts of resources can be redirected to genuinely beneficial projects.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=obS6TUVSZds

Are you advocating that we never doubt? Should we just "listen and believe" and somehow our positive energy will make things happen? Sorry, no. Scientific analysis has predictive power. That's what Elon Musk is all about.

[yourapostasy]

> ...and HN lately, have become extraordinarily negative places full of comments trashing people...

Considering that one of the tenets of good engineering cultures is blame-free environments, this negativity around ambitious engineering goals astounds me.

[grecy]

Me too. It's really sad, to be honest. HN used to be a place to come and learn really cool stuff, and I enjoyed the comments section much more than the articles themselves.

Now, the comments are hardly worth a glance.

[drb91]

It’s really hard to be optimistic when the good these companies do is bound by the same market dynamics that feed many of the crises we face today. I don’t like Musk, but I’m at worst neutral about the companies; what would optimism look like here in the best case scenario for carbon impact? SpaceX is cool but I don’t see it as the shortest route to solving any major problem we have. Same with the boring company—the impact will not be in the places that are facing a crisis. Sometimes it feels like optimism here is distracting from very hard problems. That’s not the fault of any single people or group of people it’s just the way the world works.

I really agree about the tone thing, these conversations are toxic and unproductive.

It might help if we stop referring to rich people as bold—it is honestly difficult to spend the type of capital Musk has access to, and he would have to intentionally give it away to be poor. What’s the risk? Not a risk most can empathize with.

[olivermarks]

why is Tesla's public face almost exclusively Musk? There are hundreds of talented people there taking huge risks, I personally find Musk as annoying as Donald Trump. There are a lot of people at Tesla risking a lot to do something bold. I'd like to hear a lot more from them and a lot less from Musk.

[shawabawa3]

> He promised autonomous driving 2 years from 2016... Given 1 or 2 more years of incremental improvements, your tesla would be capable of driving you most places I would think

I think it's way further off than that, like, 10+, and almost certainly not without extra hardware being added to Teslas

As of today, Tesla's autopilot page says "All new Tesla cars come standard with advanced hardware capable of providing Autopilot features today, and full self-driving capabilities in the future—through software updates designed to improve functionality over time."

This claim imo is at best overly optimistic, and at worst outright fraud. I'd be surprised if they don't get sued at some point over this. (their website used to be much more explicit about promising full self-driving too)

Full self-driving is 90% edge cases. Adaptive cruise control is not a few incremental steps away from full self-driving

[natch]

>I think it's way further off than that, like, 10+, and almost certainly not without extra hardware being added to Teslas

Doubting like this is a pretty common view outside of Tesla, and we've heard it repeated many times here. They clearly disagree.

>Full self-driving is 90% edge cases. Adaptive cruise control is not a few incremental steps away from full self-driving

This they would completely agree with, as you can see from watching their recent autonomy day presentations. And they have an overwhelming lead in collecting edge case data, so... they're in good shape with that.

[partiallypro]

I'm a fan of Musk and his projects, but I also understand finance... And Tesla's cash burn is unsustainable... He uses tactics to keep his stock over a certain value in order to protect company debts. I can like what the man is doing in terms of innovation and also see that he's gaming the system in a way that could end in ruin. He's playing a dangerous game and it's he has a lot of shareholder money on the line. He can afford the losses, others can't.

[jwlake]

An equity holder by definition signs up for that risk, and all it entails. Musk is playing a dangerous game but anyone that doesn't like it can just get out of the equity. He also has a responsibility to employees, but I'm guessing he has a very high approval rate internally.

[partiallypro]

You could have said the same thing about Enron. Some people have Tesla stock and don't even know it, because of their mutual funds and pensions.

[c0vfefe]

Those who own so little Tesla stock as to not be aware of it will also not be noticeably impacted by their failure. One could say that's the whole point of diversification.

[mobilefriendly]

Portfolio theory largely eliminates specific-company risk by having funds hold many companies.

[stevievee]

The problem is the purposeful deceit that causes retail investors to incorrectly assess risk. It's common in investor/public relations so I don't mind that Tesla and Musk do it better than everyone else.

[tim333]

It depends on how the company grows. The bull case is they grow exponentially taking share from incumbents because their technology is better. They sold very approx 40k cars in 2015, 100k in 2017 and talking 400k in 2019 and maybe 1.5m in 2021, 3m in 2023. (https://youtu.be/Y8dEYm8hzLo?t=252)

I remember with Amazon they were growing fast but the conventional analysts were saying but they make zero profit and then after a bit they are the worlds most valuable public company and Bezos the richest person. If Tesla keep up the growth it shouldn't be too hard to get finance.

Of course it remains to be seen if TSLA deliver the growth and self driving etc.

[baby]

I remember a time where people were saying that Facebook would never manage to make money or monetize.

[wesammikhail]

> He can afford the losses, others can't.

Then don´t buy the stock. Period.

I don´t like this idea of trying to protect every fool with 2 bucks. If you´re not qualified to make your own opinion about a stock then you shouldn´t be allowed to invest in the first place. Or at least, you loose your right to complain if you´ve not done your DD properly.

Some stocks are more risky than others; this is one of them. Hence why the returns might be amazing 10 years from now or be completely garbage. Pick a side and make a bet, or don´t. Either way, talking about protecting people from "risk" is a dead end.

[LiquidSky]

>Sure the CEO might be too active on twitter and at times say or do things typically considered inappropriate CEO behavior.

The problem is he's saying or doing things that are typically considered crimes, like securities fraud.

>Musk often makes bold claims and sometimes misses his projected dates.

Or, to use normal language, he's a serial liar.

>Part of what makes a great innovator is being able to fail sometimes. Musk will continue to make bold claims, sometimes he will fail to fulfill it, but many times he will deliver.

Being willing to fail and being dishonest aren't the same thing. It's bizarre how the Musk Cult contorts itself to avoid any possibility of criticizing the Great Leader.

[codeulike]

Mostly, it just that like any CEO, he will always paint the situation in the best light possible. "Semi is coming next year", "Model X deliveries will start in 2015" etc.

The going-private-at-420 thing was reckless, and he's paid the price for that.

But I don't think its accurate to brand him a serial liar. He's just doing what a CEO does.

[golfer]

"He's just doing what a CEO does."

I disagree. At a certain point, Musk turned the corner and became delusional. It's beyond simple boasting now.

[kaiju0]

I'm not a cultist but certainly a fan boy. You try innovating and putting a time box on it.

You need to be optimistic and a little crazy to think you know better.

[toddmorey]

A projection is always a messy mix of what you know at the time combined with your own emotional temperament and wiring. I think the big debate on Elon is if he's a serial liar or a serial optimist who's often wrong.

[Gpetrium]

At some point, people realize that they are underestimating their projections and that leads them to re-calibrate expectations with stakeholders. In this case, there is no re-calibration, which leads "non-believers" to think he is a serial liar. The answer is likely in-between, he knows he underestimates it and he is aware that if he doesn't do so, there wont be enough pressure on the employees and the money would likely dry up fast.

[LiquidSky]

>The answer is likely in-between, he knows he underestimates it and he is aware that if he doesn't do so, there wont be enough pressure on the employees and the money would likely dry up fast.

But that's the point, isn't it? We have a word for intentionally providing falsehoods to investors to get them to keep giving you more money.

[heartofgold]

Don't get me wrong, I'm not cultist. I agree w/ you that what is going on with the SEC seems reckless, and I don't like it. There are a number of things Musk has done that I definitely don't agree with. (However, I wouldn't call him a serial liar. He may exaggerate or stretch claims as many CEOs do.)

That doesn't change the fact that he's produced a great car and seriously innovated in many areas.

I am rooting for them to succeed because I think what they are doing is important and good for humanity. I am hoping Musk does the right thing, and doesn't get in further trouble with the SEC, etc. And I am hoping that the company is able to survive the tumult of the markets -- that is, the costs associated with electric cars and the supply/demand of the market. Sometimes the best technology doesn't win. It happens often. It would be a huge loss if it didn't work out.

[natch]

I've noticed the people who call him out for being dishonest are the same people who continually misquote him, claiming he "promised" things that he said were "expected" or "likely."

[jellicle]

I'd go the other way: HN users bend over backwards to give the guy the benefit of the doubt, which he then sets on fire.

He just held an event for Tesla investors called "Autonomy Day" at which he went on at great length about how Tesla robotaxis will autonomously ferry passengers around, anywhere they want to go, as a running, regulator-approved, income-producing service, by next year. There is zero chance of this occurring and he knows it.

[natch]

This is a perfect example. He said it could happen, pending regulatory approval that Tesla does not control, in certain locales, possibly with human supervisory drivers at the beginning, not at, but by (a different word with a different meaning) the end of next year. He had so many qualifiers on his statements, yet you missed every single one of them and came up with a totally different statement you just projected and attributed to him. Did you even listen to the event? This is basic listening comprehension 101.

Edit: ok you got the word "by" right but... everything else... wow. But it's not just you... the crazy thing is how many people do the same thing.

[hellllllllooo]

Regulations are not the problem here. He is clearly trying to imply something about his technology that, given the reality of self driving cars, can not happen next year even if everything else went positivity for him. The fact that he is using caveats around regulation etc. doesn't get him off the hook. He knows people will report the story as some amazing breakthrough that will help pump stock and sell cars. It's dishonest.

[mrep]

> given the reality of self driving cars, can not happen next year even if everything else went positivity for him.

Why is that? They've now got tens if not hundreds of thousands of cars running their FSD tech all the time comparing it to what the driver actually does and using that to get edge cases to add their every growing dataset to test and train their algorithms. The average American has a commute of 16 miles [0] which gives an estimate 13173 miles driven per car by the end of next year. At a low estimate of 10,000 cars, that would give them a subset of driving data for 131,733,333 miles driven. Presumably, they label these interactions with what should have been done and then throw it into a training/test pipeline. The US car fatality rate is just over 1 per 100,000,000 miles driven [1] so they should have a training/test suite multiple times the US car fatality rate and that's not even counting regular crashes. Granted, it won't actually be that large since they don't report back when the car is running fine, but I don't see why it is 100% impossible for them to get their FSD tech to human quality driving in certain conditions (like geofenced and only run during nice weather) at some point next year when they have that much data to work with.

[0]: https://itstillruns.com/far-americans-drive-work-average-744...

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transportation_safety_in_the_U...

[naveen99]

securities fraud is an ill defined, broad category, probably happens more than jay walking.

[golfer]

Here's my take on Tesla. It's an 18 year old company that has never been profitable on an annual basis. It's had 4 profitable quarters out of 72 tries.

It has over $9 billion in debt. The future is bleak with these financials.

Musk has accomplished a lot, absolutely. But as a thriving business, it's a failure.

And lately, Musk's ego has really shown, and not in a good way.

[computerex]

> What he's doing is nothing short of amazing. He's doing things people keep saying can't be done. Re-usable rockets that land? Electric cars? Cars that drive themselves? I'm willing to tolerate a little shenanigans in exchange for this kind of innovation.

Respectfully, I disagree. True, he has I think caused the spaceflight industry to think about re-usability again in a meaningful way. And arguably he has also generated a lot of hype for the battery electric car industry.

Having said that, his accomplishments often tend to be inflated by his followers. Tesla ultimately failed to deliver a $35k mass market affordable vehicle. Even Model 3, is out of reach for most people in U.S when the median household annual income is only $56k. At ~$40k, Model 3 essentially remains a luxury vehicle for most. Whereas the competition is quickly catching up. Arguably the Chinese electric vehicle market is now the global leader in electric vehicle market.

SpaceX still has yet to do a crewed launch to LEO. Rocket re-usability is great, but what we really need is a man rated launch vehicle. With the recent DM-2 anomaly, SpaceX won't be launching any people to orbit for at least a year.

Also, whilst propulsive landing looks very cool, it's been done before. SpaceX wasn't the first to do it successfully. Electric cars have been decades. Autonomous driving has also been conceptualized a long time ago, and hell, Tesla isn't even close to the leader in autonomous driving right now in terms of technology.

[jefft255]

Your biggest point for me is Tesla's failure to deliver an affordable electric car. I can buy a brand new Corolla for significantly less than 20k CAD, while realistically I won't get a model 3 for less than 50k CAD, except maybe in Quebec where big incentives are still in action (not for long).

I don't care that I get a better car for my money! When Tesla is saying that they have the best selling car in its class, you see the Mercedes C-class and the BMW 3-series in the chart. How can they seriously call it a mass-market affordable car when these are the cars that they are competing against?

[mjamesaustin]

SpaceX hasn't just caused the spaceflight industry to "think about re-usability". They are utterly crushing all competition in terms of price and launch cadence.

And while other companies are trying to play catch-up with them, they're testing their Raptor engine for a new rocket that will be dramatically larger than Falcon 9 but with a similar launch cost.

Name anyone who can do propulsive landing the way SpaceX does. They land their rockets on floating platforms in the ocean with amazing precision. Nobody else is remotely close to that kind of engineering feat.

[computerex]

You are making some really silly assumptions that are common amongst laymen in spaceflight.

> They are utterly crushing all competition in terms of price and launch cadence.

Launch market is not the entirety of the spaceflight industry.

"The share of launch vehicles is as small as 4 percent of the overall market of space services." - Dmitry Rogozin

And Blue Origin can do propulsive landing like SpaceX: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nNRs2gMyLLk

Propulsive landing has been around for a while: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39cjZTCay24

Whilst it seems (and is!) very cool to see the boosters land, it seems to impress the laymen a lot more than the true technical worth of the feat. Here's an addon to the Orbiter spaceflight simulator with recoverable falcon 9 stages: https://www.orbithangar.com/searchid.php?ID=7091

More or less requires college level kinematics at the core of the control/guidance.

Also with the recent DM-2 anomaly, SpaceX is playing catch up with Blue Origin, not the other way round.

[ChickeNES]

>Also with the recent DM-2 anomaly, SpaceX is playing catch up with Blue Origin, not the other way round.

Do you mean DM-1? Anyway, I don't see how SpaceX is playing catch up to BO when BO hasn't even built an orbital rocket or man-rated capsule yet...

[_ea1k]

You can buy a model 3 today for $35k US, and the car is better than what was promised. The sedan that Tesla released in 2012 has more range than any electric car produced by any competitor since then.

You are right that people overstate their accomplishments, but excessively downplaying them is actually the worse behavior.

[richardknop]

If you know the secret handshake. You need to call and spend couple hours on the phone with Tesla trying to upsell you to a more expensive model. Then, perhaps, if you are lucky, you will manage to order it. They don't even show it on their website.

[computerex]

Refer to the company website, cheapest configuration available is $39,500 USD. Not sure what you're on about.

[nradov]

Average new car price in the US is $37K. A $40K vehicle isn't a luxury car in any meaningful way.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/average-car-prices-more-1-110...

These price levels do seem high relative to median income and many buyers are overextending themselves. But the market is what it is.

[ghettoimp]

It seems completely crazy.

I spent $18k on what I still regard as a really nice car a couple years back, and it felt like a completely over the top extravagance.

I can't imagine what would compel me to spend 37k on a car...

[ckastner]

> A lot of people want to trash Musk and Tesla

A lot of people also seem to forget that it is in the very nature of outrageous statements to be challenged and criticized.

Musk was right with his predictions a few times, but the same could be said about his challengers.

[xeromal]

Literally no one on this earth has a Falcon Heavy except Elon Musk. His few right times are way bigger than your standard innovator BS like food delivery.

[natch]

>It looks like the base model 3 I can order is about $39k

You can also order the $35k model which is distinct from the $39k model. Yes, it takes a phone call, but it is available.

[rohit2412]

What exactly is your point?

You do understand that they have made it tougher to buy 35k$ model 3 only because they can't make profit off it?

According to Tesla they have the cheapest batteries, the best AI chips, the most automated factories, the most advanced self driving technology, have a driverless taxi coming soon etc. But after all these advantages they don't sell these technologies individually. They only sell cars with shitty interior and paint, panel, and quality problems at luxury prices. And even though they have a fanatic fanbase, and a lot of positive PR, they still make a loss on luxury priced shitty cars.

[natch]

He said $39k was the lowest.

My point was that $35k is the lowest.

[azinman2]

Full complete autonomy is very far off. Don’t let the salesmen fool you. The problem is that of an infinitely long tail — no one is close.

[stcredzero]

The problem is that of an infinitely long tail — no one is close.

The long tail can't be truly infinite. It is some very large quantity driven by the combination of many, many factors. Just that amount of analysis gives us some actionable insight.

It would be very easy to miss out on some of the factors, and be off by many orders of magnitude in either direction. The actionable insight, is that the analysis needs to be pinned down and made concrete. You'd better be damned right about it, or you're very likely going to be very, very wrong.

With regards to Elon Musk, the question is, how good do you think the analysis is. They got it spot on with rockets at SpaceX. They got batteries and motors in EVs right at Tesla. What about Tesla scaling production, automation, and AI? I'm less sure about that last one.

[natch]

The long tail is exactly where Tesla's strength is btw.

Things that are improving exponentially seem far off when you look at them with intuitions developed on linear growth. Autonomy may be far off... or it may be closer than we think.

I don't trust my own judgement to know the answer, but I suspect the people at Tesla have a better handle on it than you or I.

I'm sure they see things in their long tail data that we would probably never think of. Even top experts at other self driving tech companies don't know all of what Tesla is seeing in its long tail data... so I think Tesla has a few more clues than the rest of us.

[everdev]

His companies are exciting and I think we're all rooting for him to succeed.

I'm glad he's doing it privately though. If the government was spending the same amount of money (yeah, yeah, if the government was really doing it it would be 10x more expensive, slower, never gonna happen, etc.) and producing the same results I'm sure they would have pulled the plug already.

These companies could dramatically change the world and I'm glad he has the persistence and commitment to keep doubling down on these moonshots (or Mars shots).

[notabee]

It's really funny how all of the "failures" demonstrate more innovation successes than the impacted industries have had for decades. It's also apparent from the swarms of histrionic, doomsaying sponsored content out there (i.e. most contemporary "journalism", sadly) that the established companies have been very disrupted and are choosing to wage a media war. The fact that so many resources have been directed to making a furor over every Tesla crash (as if people don't literally die every day in fiery car crashes, often due to faults that necessitate recalls when the settlements get too expensive) and missed deadline does not necessarily mean that the other car makers won't also expend resources to catch up in actual material competition, but the sheer scope of it indicates that strategically they are in a panic. If you think you can directly compete with someone, you do so. If you cannot, then sow FUD.

[hellllllllooo]

I like what he has done for electric cars and without him we wouldn't have the shift towards them that is happening today. He made them cool and they are an important step forward which I respect.

What he has been saying about autonomy defies what anyone who works in the area knows about the state of the technology and is genuinely dangerous. People have died because he oversold autopilot.

https://gizmodo.com/tesla-autopilot-malfunction-caused-crash...

I wish he would just focus on building and selling great electric cars instead of pushing truth in areas where people's live are at stake.

[tim333]

The guy in that story had had autopilot malfunction several times on the same intersection so it seems unlikely he wasn't paying attention just because Musk oversold autopilot.

[hellllllllooo]

> The guy in that story had had autopilot malfunction several times on the same intersection

My point stands

[Judgmentality]

> They demoed true autonomy, and I believe it's actually getting quite close.

No. No no no.

Elon Musk has done some amazing things, but I am adamant his stance on Autopilot has led to unnecessary deaths and when anyone takes his side that they are actually close to true autonomy, you are undermining how dangerous it is to rely on Autopilot as anything other than advanced cruise control. As more time goes on, we find out more evidence about how Autopilot has been misrepresented, and while the NHTSA study being flawed cannot currently be directly tied to Tesla I cannot imagine that a governing body could be so incompetent without a corrupting influence from Tesla [1]. Elon Musk himself talks about how Autopilot requires driver attention when asked by critics, however when demonstrating the technology himself on national television he has his hands off the wheel and regularly is not watching the road [2]. He goes to great lengths to hide any negative data against Autopilot, as already referenced in [1] where it took 2 years to overcome the legal blockade just to get the data provided in a publicly released study, as well as getting Twitter to suspend someone's account for providing this spreadsheet of problems (including deaths) with Autopilot [3]. I absolutely believe an investigation, at the bare minimum for false advertising and personally I believe negligent homicide, should be brought against him because of it (I am not saying he is guilty, but there is certainly a need to find out).

How many people may have died because Elizabeth Holmes misrepresented (and in that case, quite obviously committed fraud) the capability of their product? I am not saying Musk and Holmes are the same, but people would not stop talking about how amazing she was until they found out she was just lying about everything.

Elon Musk is absolutely wrong about Autopilot. When lives are at risk, it is not okay to suspend disbelief just because of the hype.

[1] https://www.thedrive.com/tech/26455/nhtsas-flawed-autopilot-...

[2] https://www.forbes.com/sites/jimmcpherson/2018/12/11/in-his-...

[3] https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ESnyJ4b7m96OCjs3GSQ6...

[mjamesaustin]

Tesla released their accident statistics, and their cars have a significantly lower rate of accidents when Autopilot is engaged.

To me, that seems to indicate Autopilot is a net safety gain, despite not being perfect.

[Judgmentality]

Your response is not unreasonable, but rather than explain why their latest report is almost certainly misleading (it's complicated, and similar to the previous NHTSA study, data is missing so while I assume Tesla is misrepresenting the data as they have always done I cannot prove it today), I'll just say there is indisputable evidence that Teslas get into more fatal accidents than other cars.

https://medium.com/@MidwesternHedgi/teslas-driver-fatality-r...

[unityByFreedom]

> while I assume Tesla is misrepresenting the data as they have always done I cannot prove it today

Here's one way. Highway driving is already significantly safer per mile than local roads,

> The grim statistics provided by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration also show that drivers on rural roads die at a rate 2.5 times higher per mile traveled than on urban highways. Urban drivers travel twice as many miles but suffer close to half the fatal accidents. [1]

That explains away Musk's "AP is twice as safe" comment. It's only twice as safe because people generally only activate it on the highway, which is already 2.5 times safer!

[1] https://www.npr.org/2009/11/29/120716625/the-deadliest-roads...

[dcole2929]

>Tesla released their accident statistics, and their cars have a significantly lower rate of accidents when Autopilot is engaged.

That has absolutely nothing to do with whether people have died due to false claims about the ability of Tesla's autopilot. The cars may be safer, but if 1 person died or 100 people died because Musk/Tesla lied about autopilot that is a problem. It doesn't matter how many other accidents their cars have or have not been in.

[mactrey]

Probably has more to do with the fact that people preferentially engage Autopilot when road conditions are fair to good.

[xkjkls]

> - Sure the CEO might be too active on twitter and at times say or do things typically considered inappropriate CEO behavior.

> - Musk often makes bold claims and sometimes misses his projected dates.

This strikes me as some serious euphemising for someone who lied about his company having a buy out offer and randomly accused a hero of terrible tragedy of being a pedophile. We should not excuse the complete lack of maturity.

[_ph_]

The base model listed on the website is indeed $39, but when you go to a store or call Tesla you suposedly can downgrade it to the base model that does cost $35k - the model on the website includes autopilot and a larger range than the $35k model.

[_Codemonkeyism]

"and always misses his projected dates."

Fixed that for you.

[heartofgold]

In 2016 when you could pre-order a model 3, Musk said first deliveries of model 3 would begin in late 2017. About 2,500 to 3,000 model 3 had been delivered by the end of 2017, and over 200,000 have been delivered to date.

https://www.theverge.com/2016/3/31/11335272/tesla-model-3-an...

[dragontamer]

In 2016 when you could pre-order a Model 3, Elon Musk promised a $35,000 car with a $7500 tax credit.

The tax-credit is gone, never to return... and the $35,000 car is no where to be found.

> 200,000 have been delivered to date.

Elon Musk promised 20,000 Model 3 Cars created / month in 2017. https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/881757617416056832

In Q1 2019, the company created 50,900 Model 3 over three months, or 17000 Cars/month on the average.

This 20,000 / month number is important, it is estimated that 20k/month is roughly the profitability point for Tesla. Elon Musk is over a year late, the profits haven't come in yet, and they can't sustainably create cars at the promised rate.

-----------

I understand your optimism here. But this $1.5 Billion raise is more debt to a company that never has seen a yearly profit. It HAS to make money to survive, and Elon Musk has been wrong on every financial metric worth a damn.

If Tesla doesn't make a profit, it will run out of money, eventually. It can't just keep borrowing $1.5 Billion in loans every couple of years when they are late on these kinds of targets.

[magnetic]

> The tax-credit is gone, never to return... and the $35,000 car is no where to be found.

Where I live (CA), both Fed & CA tax credits are still valid. Go to tesla.com and configure your M3. I just did and it comes out as $33,250 (after tax credits) + $1,200 dest/doc fee = $34,450.

The above doesn't include the debatable "gas savings".

[dragontamer]

https://www.forbes.com/sites/alanohnsman/2019/02/28/tesla-fi...

Just a few weeks ago, Elon Musk claimed $35,000 cars will be available without any credits what so ever. This isn't some long-standing promise that slipped off the schedule, this is something Elon Musk has REPEATEDLY claimed to come, but has failed to deliver.

Its a message he's been hammering since 2016: $35,000, before tax credits. The idea was for the M3 to compete against low $20,000 ICE cars.

I recognize that the goalposts have shifted. Maybe it wasn't possible. But maybe... just maybe... Elon Musk shouldn't have set $35,000 before he knew if it were possible to do. He's done incalculable damage to the brand, and is no longer able to raise prices to make the company profitable.

If Tesla could raise prices to $40,000 base or even $45,000 base, they probably would be in a far better financial situation than where they are right now. They can't do that because of the multiple years of price anchoring at $35k.

[nicpottier]

I'm pretty sure there is a $35k model before tax credits, at least there was for a bit on the website. My understanding is this is a "special order" item now, as in, you have to call them to get it, but still available, just not on the website.

https://www.engadget.com/2019/04/12/tesla-35k-model-3-pulled...

[na85]

> Given 1 or 2 more years of incremental improvements, your tesla would be capable of driving you most places I would think.

Except for anywhere in snow or rain.

[heartofgold]

The improvements in autopilot in my friends model 3 is truly astonishing to me versus the first gen auto-pilot in the model s. If the incremental improvements over the last 2 years are any indication of what's possible over the next 2 years, we are going to see amazing things. It may not go everywhere in every condition, but so what? Isn't it still totally mind blowing how far it's already come?

[na85]

>It may not go everywhere in every condition, but so what?

The "so what" is that it isn't really an automomous vehicle of it can't navigate the roads for a solid 50 % of the year in a good chunk of North America.

>Isn't it still totally mind blowing how far it's already come?

Not really, to be honest.

[bsaul]

i don't know why you got downvoted. The engineer in charge at the latest autopilot meeting explicitely mentionned snow as not beeing specifically adressed yet. He did also mentioned that the autopilot performed quite well under snow right now, but that was indeed very surprising to hear that snow condition wasn't been specifically addressed yet, and yet they talk about robotaxi for next year.

[natch]

They probably got downvoted for wrongly assuming the technology doesn't deal with rain or snow, and then presenting that assumption as fact. It works great in rain. Snow, I have less experience with, but it seemed OK during a winter vacation with snow.

With neural nets, a lot of things just get learned. You don't have to specifically address them to get great progress. I'm not saying snow is 100% solved, and yes specifically addressing aspects like snow in the future will help make it even better, but autopilot has worked pretty great so far.

[mft_]

was indeed very surprising to hear that snow condition wasn't been specifically addressed yet, and yet they talk about robotaxi for next year.

I've never yet seen a city with a taxi service which is reliable in heavy snow - things usually fall completely apart. (Not to mention buses, trains, planes, etc...)

Even if the robotaxis are shown to not be able to operate in snow, it's not necessarily an indictment of the whole robotaxi concept. If they can work in snow-free conditions, it's still covering the majority of time, in the majority of potential markets.

[soperj]

There's literally snow on the ground for the majority of the year in Edmonton. There's snow on the ground right now.

[mft_]

Hah, as I wrote my previous comment, inserting a caveat about Canada ran through my mind :)

My point still stands for most of the rest of the world, though.

[mrep]

Not on the roads though and that is where it matters. Most snowfall gets plowed up within a day of the snowfall ending.

[na85]

Not in places like Winnipeg. Streets stay snowy for months.

[_ph_]

Driving through snow and rain with the computer vision syste that Tesla uses, requires training its neural networks accordingly, which still has to be done. Driving through snow and rain with a system which requires LIDAR for operations, doesn't work.

[gamblor956]

This is something that Tesla fans don't seem to understand. LIDAR isn't an either-or proposition for anyone except Tesla. All existing LIDAR-based self-driving systems (Waymo, Uber, etc.) also use computer vision for reading signs and recognizing objects. LIDAR is used as a faster and more accurate way of determining distance and position in 3D space, with the visual data mapped into the 3d space, all in less time then it takes to finish the parallax-based positioning processing required by purely stereovisual systems like Tesla.

[dougmany]

If you make the claim that Self driving cannot be done without LIDAR, then you are implying that if the LIDAR cannot provide accurate data due to weather, the car cannot drive autonomously.

[_ph_]

Thanks, that is exactly the point I was trying to make. If you need LIDAR, you have a problem in bad weather.

[badloginagain]

> Re-usable rockets that land? Electric cars? Cars that drive themselves? I'm willing to tolerate a little shenanigans in exchange for this kind of innovation.

The only problem with little shenanigans is that its market manipulation- even if it appears to be legitimately accidental.

[drb91]

Meh, most of it’s just having capital.

[dwaltrip]

Indeed, inert stacks of cash are widely known for being innovative.

[drb91]

Actually yea, the modern sense of innovation exists as an idea to serve capital. See: Joseph Schumpeter. The non-capital bound version is simply invention.

[dwaltrip]

Hmm, I took the parent to be implying that capital is the main ingredient in innovation. It sounds like you are saying something different.

Capital is necessary but not sufficient for innovation.

[drb91]

> Capital is necessary but not sufficient for innovation.

Yes, this is true. My point was more that innovative products are profitable, not necessarily the novel tool we need. See: smartphones and walled garden app stores. Innovative for sure, but an objectively shittier scenario than one built around the tool people want to use.

I don't see innovation (as in, using market forces to push forward technology) as playing any role in collective problems. The regulated market's popular hope for fighting global emissions with market effects, the carbon tax, will do very little to slow emissions on a global scale. We need to think outside the market to have any optimism.

[dwaltrip]

Interesting take, we definitely would agree on some things. Although, I perhaps would use a broader definition innovation. I wouldn't described it is as purely a market based phenomenon. Open source software is one obvious example of how innovation can occur outside of markets.

[6jwfhfture]

No, just for being simultaneously (a) the means of innovation and (b) the goal of innovation.

[grwthckrmstr]

This!

Thank you for writing such a crisp response covering all the right points.

I feel most people just piss on Musk/Tesla and his daring moves - actually IDK why but I don't care.

What I care about is trying to understand the other party. Where they come from. Why are they doing this. What are the risks involved. And in the long term, where are they headed.

Your post answers all of this.

More power to Elon Musk. We need more bold entrepreneurs like him who aren't afraid to be themselves and take world changing risks.