11–20 of 307 posts
I feel manipulated. Also that this publication should be doing a bit more investigation and a bit less pontificating.
IMO, they should fire musk, slow down their blue-sky research projects, rip autopilot out of the cars, and just build "boring" luxury electric cars with huge profit margins and rake in cash.
And their Chief People Officer, is not coming back from her leave. From the outside it looks like Telsa is about going to go into a tough winter like moment. They are almost losing by winning. They are at capacity in their Fremont factory but still not making a profit. They need to start designing and building out manufacturing facilities for their next car and the help bolster Model X manufacturing. Stop and think f…
Non-amp URL: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-09-07/tesla-chi... Better formatting, no hideously pixelated photos.
And their Chief People Officer, is not coming back from her leave. From the outside it looks like Telsa is about going to go into a tough winter like moment. They are almost losing by winning. They are at capacity in their Fremont factory but still not making a profit. They need to start designing and building out manufacturing facilities for their next car and the help bolster Model X manufacturing. Stop and think f…
They can't afford any capex on new factories though. They are extremely close to breaching covenants on their debt and personally can't understand why they are not raising equity money as their stock price, despite Musk's crazy antics, is holding up well.
So the headline is that the CFO is resigning, yet there's a huge picture of the photogenic HR chief(?), who, as a side-story, is 'not returning'. I feel manipulated. Also that this publication should be doing a bit more investigation and a bit less pontificating.
The photo was tiny in the original article. For some reason the AMP version has been posted, and it blows all the pictures up.
And their Chief People Officer, is not coming back from her leave. From the outside it looks like Telsa is about going to go into a tough winter like moment. They are almost losing by winning. They are at capacity in their Fremont factory but still not making a profit. They need to start designing and building out manufacturing facilities for their next car and the help bolster Model X manufacturing. Stop and think f…
When he first got the Tesla it had huge body panel alignment problems. Eventually these were fixed, but it took too long and was difficult to get Tesla to fully acknowledge them.
After that he had a range of little annoying problems, many of which were likely software bugs, but then he (actually his GF) experienced something in autopilot mode known on the Tesla forums as "shadow braking" -- the car braking hard on the highway because it seems to see the shadow of an overpass and think it's a wall. This is extremely dangerous. It was on the I-405 (SoCal) going 70-80mph, and such a thing could easily cause a rear end collision.
At that point they're starting the process of returning the car. Not only have there been many problems including a major safety issue, but Tesla has apparently been evasive and difficult getting them fixed.
I hate to type this because I love most of what Musk has done and I really credit Tesla with helping get the ball rolling on EVs. EVs are tipping now, and I'm not sure that would have happened without Tesla. It at least would likely have taken longer. But... it is what it is. I'm just telling the truth.
Reading between the lines a little Musk seems horribly burnt out. If I could give him advice I'd say pass Tesla to someone with more experience in the car industry, start gracefully exiting Tesla, take a break and do a little personal inventory, and then focus 100% on SpaceX. The latter is the far more important of the two companies and is in much better shape. I also feel like it's his real true love.
If Telsa can't be righted its fate will probably be purchase (or purchase of its assets in bankruptcy) by another car company. That's fine. As I said: EVs are tipping.
Finally to speculate a bit... I wonder if Tesla is an indirect victim of the latest wave of AI hype? It seems like they were on the right track until they decided to go all in and shift their major focus from making a great electric "driver's car" to self-drive or bust. Self-drive probably consumed insane amounts of capital, and has greatly harmed the company's reputation by causing serious accidents because it is clearly not ready.
The shadow braking thing really reveals how primitive "AI" actually is-- this is something a bumblebee would not do, and its brain consumes milliwatts of power. From what I've read self-drive is really just object recognition combined with spatial mapping, path finding, and a lot of heuristics. The latter is what worries me. "Expert systems" can't capture complex problem domains due to the exponential nature of a combinatorial explosion. There will always be edge cases. Needless to say we will not be uploading consciousness anytime soon, nor will fully autonomous AIs be taking over the world.
So the headline is that the CFO is resigning, yet there's a huge picture of the photogenic HR chief(?), who, as a side-story, is 'not returning'. I feel manipulated. Also that this publication should be doing a bit more investigation and a bit less pontificating.