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Elon Musk Confronts a Fateful Tweet and an ‘Excruciating’ Year

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Re: Elon Musk Confronts a Fateful Tweet and an ‘Excruciating’ Year

#271

Post by whamlastxmas »

refurb wrote: post #245
bayesian_horse wrote: post #70

Twitter is bad for you. Repeat that a hundred times.

Underrated comment here. There is little to be gained and a ton to be lost with such a casual, public forum. If anyone in a leadership position thinks “I should tweet this!”, the default should be waiting 24 hours before making a final decision and even in that case the answer should be “no”.

Would you wait 24 hours before tweeting about that new car you just bought? The thing with people in Elon's position is that the gravity of their situation becomes normalized. They're regular people doing regular things from their own perspective. For Elon he doesn't put much thought into his tweets because for him, saying something that might impact the stock price is a pretty normalized. It happened recently with pedo-guy-gate. I can cut the guy some slack for potentially upsetting some people with his tweets considering the massive smear campaign against him and his life's work.

Re: Elon Musk Confronts a Fateful Tweet and an ‘Excruciating’ Year

#272

Post by whamlastxmas »

mikekchar wrote: post #73
speedplane wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're thinking about it wrong. Working 120 hours a week at a normal job is torture. Working 120 hours at something you love is just living. The 120 hour/week estimates are likely over-inflated folk-lore, but still, when you have a passion for something and care, it's not work, you're just living your life the way you want to. Many say Elon long work-weeks are super-human, they're not. He's just loves doing what he's…

I used to work those kinds of hours when I was young. 16 hours a day during the week and 8 hours a day on the weekend. No days off. I enjoyed it. It's tiring, though. As I get older (50 now), I can't do it any more. I still over work -- because I really like working. A while ago I ended up in the hospital from what seems to have been a panic attack (that lasted a week...) It appears that panic attacks can really feel…

What do you like about working? I'm really struggling to find something in life that I consider productive that I enjoy doing.

Re: Elon Musk Confronts a Fateful Tweet and an ‘Excruciating’ Year

#273

Post by shakestheclown »

compcoffee wrote: post #176
askaboutit wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tinfoil hat on. Big industry hates Elon. Rockets are his now. And soon cars will be Tesla’s or at least Electric. Maybe they’ve been bashing him in order to break him. Don’t break the company. Break its leader. Just need to take a look at how tides have turned so quickly against Elon in the last year. Seems very odd. And the short sellers could quite easily be hedge funds backed with big money interests.

> Big industry hates Elon Elon is Big Industry. Have you ever stopped to wonder that maybe people "don't like him" because he's a jerk and his company loses vast amounts of money? Don't need a tinfoil hat.

Why would you care if his company loses someone else's money?

Re: Elon Musk Confronts a Fateful Tweet and an ‘Excruciating’ Year

#274

Post by dwild »

akmiller wrote: post #251
mattmaroon wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who has come really close on several occasions to buying TSLA puts (the options version of shorting) I think I can answer: the shorts aren't haters. The shorts don't want Tesla to fail. The shorts don't even think Tesla will fail. The shorts just think the market cap of Tesla is insane. It's higher than much larger, profitable automakers who can provably make and sell cars at scale. For Tesla to be worth i…

Perhaps their initial reason in shorting the stock was not inherently evil. But at this point they risk losing billions of dollars so their only incentive is to ensure the company fails. I actually don't find their share price to be out of control at all. They have assets other companies would only dream of at this point. The data alone on miles driven is extremely valuable in the race to self driving cars. Their sup…

You bring a good point, they are not only a car maker, they are also the distributor and the gas stations and they are the best in electric vehicle in all 3 categories. They are also starting to become the best in solar electricity and thus may also produce the "fuel" of their cars.

That's not only being the GM of electric vehicle, they are much bigger than that.

I'm pretty sure they are overvalued right now because what they do is for the greater good, but they are also much bigger than what shorter want us to believe.

Re: Elon Musk Confronts a Fateful Tweet and an ‘Excruciating’ Year

#275

Post by rayiner »

varjag wrote: post #232
nostrebored wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They absolutely were. The push for non-gas cars existed before Tesla. Tesla made the commitment to make them cheap (which they've arguably failed to do, especially considering that you're being taxed to fund them, regardless of if you're a consumer). Musk is a world-class rent seeker.

Sorry, electric cars before Tesla were Trabant-like lunchboxes on wheels from 3rd tier/garage makers. They were looked upon as eccentricities like velomobiles or hot air balloons. Nissan Leaf of BMW i3 would not been happening if not a mainstream EV market single-handedly formed by Tesla. You can argue that someone else could have stepped in, but that someone had to be an outsider, not an established car manufacturer…

Toyota offered an electric version of its RAV4, an extremely popular crossover SUV, a decade before the Tesla roadster came out: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_RAV4_EV. But in 1997, gas was cheap and the government wasn't subsidizing EVs to the tune of $7,500-$10,000.

It's hard to say what would've happened in a hypothetical timeline. But Tesla didn't invent the underlying technology, the traditional car makers were already working on it. Tesla wasn't responsible for EV subsidies in 2008, it was a combination of exploding gas prices, middle east instability, the Iraq war, and Obama getting elected. Good chance that the EV market would've taken exactly the same course without Tesla.

Re: Elon Musk Confronts a Fateful Tweet and an ‘Excruciating’ Year

#276

Post by whamlastxmas »

I had noticed the constantly media bias against Musk recently but didn't realize the motivation until reading this. It feels sad that we live in a world where people plant media stories to tank someone's life work after short selling to make money off their misery.

Re: Elon Musk Confronts a Fateful Tweet and an ‘Excruciating’ Year

#277

Post by JoeAltmaier »

rayiner wrote: post #275
varjag wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, electric cars before Tesla were Trabant-like lunchboxes on wheels from 3rd tier/garage makers. They were looked upon as eccentricities like velomobiles or hot air balloons. Nissan Leaf of BMW i3 would not been happening if not a mainstream EV market single-handedly formed by Tesla. You can argue that someone else could have stepped in, but that someone had to be an outsider, not an established car manufacturer…

Toyota offered an electric version of its RAV4, an extremely popular crossover SUV, a decade before the Tesla roadster came out: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_RAV4_EV . But in 1997, gas was cheap and the government wasn't subsidizing EVs to the tune of $7,500-$10,000. It's hard to say what would've happened in a hypothetical timeline. But Tesla didn't invent the underlying technology, the traditional car maker…

A RAV4 would not (did not) capture the public imagination like the Tesla Roadster did. Like it or not, marketing was a huge part of the EV success. And Tesla did that marketing, not the other car companies, which seem culturally incapable of celebrating an EV's performance or coolness.

Re: Elon Musk Confronts a Fateful Tweet and an ‘Excruciating’ Year

#278

Post by kamaal »

Fricken wrote: post #270
akmiller wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never bought into this, and without significant evidence proving it to be true, I never will. Removing the soul of the company is never good. I've followed leaders who were passionate about their business and I've worked for companies where there is no passion. Hard to commit to the latter!

Tim Cook is a pretty boring guy, but he's an adult and he's responsible, and Apple has grown 4 times since he took the reins. Cook has the temerity to consult the experts he's surrounded by before making a big decision. Musk ignores the experts he (used to be) surrounded by and fires them if they resist his efforts to decouple Tesla from reality. Musk has never been a good leader, he's a full-blown textbook narcissis…

Something from Steve Jobs' life:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reality_distortion_field

Re: Elon Musk Confronts a Fateful Tweet and an ‘Excruciating’ Year

#279

Post by lossolo »

tomhoward wrote: post #37

But, he added, “if you have anyone who can do a better job, please let me know. They can have the job. Is there someone who can do the job better? They can have the reins right now.” I think this hits at the crux of the issue around the performance/behaviour of Musk and other leaders of hugely ambitious companies. And I think it highlights the importance of thinking about what kinds of people it will take to lead the…

> But when I see the hate and vitriol heaped on him, I'm compelled to wonder just what kind of alternative universe people are wishing for.

Well, maybe it's something different..

Stanford psychologists find that when online comments pile up against an individual’s questionable behavior, people are more likely to see it as bullying and start to feel sympathy for the offender.[1]

[1] https://news.stanford.edu/2018/08/09/moral-outrage-goes-vira...

Re: Elon Musk Confronts a Fateful Tweet and an ‘Excruciating’ Year

#280

Post by varjag »

rayiner wrote: post #275
varjag wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, electric cars before Tesla were Trabant-like lunchboxes on wheels from 3rd tier/garage makers. They were looked upon as eccentricities like velomobiles or hot air balloons. Nissan Leaf of BMW i3 would not been happening if not a mainstream EV market single-handedly formed by Tesla. You can argue that someone else could have stepped in, but that someone had to be an outsider, not an established car manufacturer…

Toyota offered an electric version of its RAV4, an extremely popular crossover SUV, a decade before the Tesla roadster came out: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_RAV4_EV . But in 1997, gas was cheap and the government wasn't subsidizing EVs to the tune of $7,500-$10,000. It's hard to say what would've happened in a hypothetical timeline. But Tesla didn't invent the underlying technology, the traditional car maker…

I honestly don't remember anyone saying Musk/Tesla invented electric car, this is quite obviously a point argued by zero people.

Sure there was that Toyota with NiMH batteries. How many of them were sold for enirety of its production run.. 2000? 4000? With Toyota resources and vast marketing force?

My friend had a 1990 VW Golf electric smallseries with lead batteries. It was also fun to ride.. as an experience. Like a hot air balloon ride. But not a very practical everyday car. It was also so obscure it has no own Wikipedia page.

Tesla took the EV business from the dumpster and made it mainstream.

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