Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Is Elon Musk trying to commit ‘suicide by SEC’ by taunting the agency?

latimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 225 posts

Re: Is Elon Musk trying to commit ‘suicide by SEC’ by taunting the agency?

#101

Post by pbreit »

Rebelgecko wrote: post #84
iamcreasy wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What was said on that tweet, that made SEC angry was, already mentioned in the Tesla earning - therefore is a public knowledge. This tweeter thread has a screenshot of the transcript. https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1100215984713957376 Later Elon called SEC out on their lack of due diligence. "SEC forgot to read Tesla earnings transcript, which clearly states 350k to 500k. How embarrassing … " Source: https://twi…

Isn't there a difference between "350-500k" and "500k"?

The 350-500k was only for Model 3s. So really not much difference.

Re: Is Elon Musk trying to commit ‘suicide by SEC’ by taunting the agency?

#102

Post by tuxxy »

lisper wrote: post #78
travisoneill1 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If EV's do take off, it's likely to be the established car manufacturers who are good at making cars at scale who eventually capitalize on the opportunity. This is what I used to think, but every year the "Tesla killers" fail to kill, or even wound. I never even hear about the other EV's by themselves, only as the competition to Tesla. Anybody who watches the news would have known that the Model 3 was a colossal fa…

> every year the "Tesla killers" fail to kill, or even wound That's true, but I think it's because of bad marketing rather than bad technology. The Chevy Bolt has the specs to beat the Model 3, but it is being positioned as a low-end car, a competitor to the Honda Civic rather than the Model 3. Power seats, for example, are not even offered as an option. That is not a car a rich person is going to buy to impress thei…

GM is stopping Bolt production this year.

https://www.greencarreports.com/news/1120090_gm-to-kill-chev...

Re: Is Elon Musk trying to commit ‘suicide by SEC’ by taunting the agency?

#103

Post by berbec »

elliekelly wrote: post #91
newsbinator wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This begs the question: does Elon Musk seem like the kind of person who isn't willing to fail in public? Whether it's for personality reasons or for the sake of keeping his other companies well respected, is he unwilling to let the public lose confidence in him and/or his projects? My guess is he doesn't care that much about our opinions of him, personally and professionally. He might be picking a fight with the SEC…

There’s no such thing as “FU money” with the SEC though. They can bar him from serving in any fiduciary capacity on behalf of any company under their jurisdiction. For life. Musk is playing with fire.

I argue Bezos has FU money. He's about to lose half+ to his ex, and basically is funding a personal war against the Enquirer. I am sure he will spend them into the ground.

Re: Is Elon Musk trying to commit ‘suicide by SEC’ by taunting the agency?

#104

Post by vertex-four »

tuxxy wrote: post #102
lisper wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> every year the "Tesla killers" fail to kill, or even wound That's true, but I think it's because of bad marketing rather than bad technology. The Chevy Bolt has the specs to beat the Model 3, but it is being positioned as a low-end car, a competitor to the Honda Civic rather than the Model 3. Power seats, for example, are not even offered as an option. That is not a car a rich person is going to buy to impress thei…

GM is stopping Bolt production this year. https://www.greencarreports.com/news/1120090_gm-to-kill-chev...

The Bolt isn’t the Volt.

Re: Is Elon Musk trying to commit ‘suicide by SEC’ by taunting the agency?

#105

Post by lisper »

tuxxy wrote: post #102
lisper wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> every year the "Tesla killers" fail to kill, or even wound That's true, but I think it's because of bad marketing rather than bad technology. The Chevy Bolt has the specs to beat the Model 3, but it is being positioned as a low-end car, a competitor to the Honda Civic rather than the Model 3. Power seats, for example, are not even offered as an option. That is not a car a rich person is going to buy to impress thei…

GM is stopping Bolt production this year. https://www.greencarreports.com/news/1120090_gm-to-kill-chev...

That's the Volt, not the Bolt. Completely different car. The Volt is a plug-in hybrid. The Bolt is all-electric.

Re: Is Elon Musk trying to commit ‘suicide by SEC’ by taunting the agency?

#106

Post by sk5t »

appsonify wrote: post #36
Despegar wrote: post #8

>Of more concern to Tesla investors: What if he knows something they don’t know about the company’s financial future — and is hoping to hang any failure on the nasty, overreaching regulators rather than his own dubious management skills? That seems very possible. I think the reality of scaling up Tesla to live up to its valuation might be too daunting for Elon to handle. It might even be impossible. EV sales as a % o…

I agree, that Musk is hiding something, one that would seriously hamper his reputation. I think it might have to do something with the Solar City acquisition. He doesn't want to admit he fucked up and failed because it would cast doubt on all his other half-baked ideas. Tesla will definitely feel the pressure from other car manufacturers, but so far it has nothing much to worry about as the only really viable game ch…

Let's see how it goes with the Porsche Taycan. Porsche minds the engineering details that Audi, for some strange reason, often misses.

Re: Is Elon Musk trying to commit ‘suicide by SEC’ by taunting the agency?

#107

Post by computerex »

travisoneill1 wrote: post #47
Despegar wrote: post #8

>Of more concern to Tesla investors: What if he knows something they don’t know about the company’s financial future — and is hoping to hang any failure on the nasty, overreaching regulators rather than his own dubious management skills? That seems very possible. I think the reality of scaling up Tesla to live up to its valuation might be too daunting for Elon to handle. It might even be impossible. EV sales as a % o…

> If EV's do take off, it's likely to be the established car manufacturers who are good at making cars at scale who eventually capitalize on the opportunity. This is what I used to think, but every year the "Tesla killers" fail to kill, or even wound. I never even hear about the other EV's by themselves, only as the competition to Tesla. Anybody who watches the news would have known that the Model 3 was a colossal fa…

> This is what I used to think, but every year the "Tesla killers" fail to kill, or even wound.

The "Tesla killers" have been sleeping, but they are about to wake up. No doubt Tesla jump started the market, but the other manufacturers have decades of experience. On top of that, no other car maker has the problems that Tesla does due to its CEO and his inability to stop tweeting. Whilst Tesla had a start start, it fell behind in many other areas like production, delivery and customer service. Other car companies have been doing this successfully for decades. There are hundreds of horror stories on the Tesla forums and on reddit of people having nightmarish customer service experiences with Tesla, and delivery problems. Elon Musk himself has enlisted volunteers to help deliver the cars. Do you think an established car manufacturer like Toyota or Ford will have any problem in getting their vehicles anywhere on the face of the Earth?

When the giants have fully woken up, I suspect they'll utterly trample on Tesla.

Re: Is Elon Musk trying to commit ‘suicide by SEC’ by taunting the agency?

#108

Post by uptownfunk »

Musk is another tortured CEO prodigy, as was Jobs. You can get rid of him, he can inadvertently get rid of himself, but at the end of the day he is Tesla. Take him out of Tesla, and you get for electric vehicles what happened to the iPhone / Apple after Jobs died.

Yeah they may pump out a few more Model X's, S's, 3's with some minor mods, keep milking the cow (if it even is a cow, maybe a potential cow, and also if they can even get to a point where they can scale) and eventually... who knows? The scale problem hasn't even been solved yet. You're not going to find another leader with that much raw energy, intellect, drive, and passion who's going to have a chance at bringing us to that reality even close to as quick as Musk can.

My only concern with the whole show is, can anyone (particularly seasoned auto veterans) stand to work with him long enough for the scale and production problems be addressed. As well as iron out all the wrinkles with the designs (some notoriously faulty parts which take quite a long time to fix sometimes..)

Re: Is Elon Musk trying to commit ‘suicide by SEC’ by taunting the agency?

#109

Post by unityByFreedom »

Phlarp wrote: post #35
LiquidSky wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why this bizarre cultish paranoia? He's in this mess because he committed securities fraud. He got a slap-on-the wrist sweetheart deal and he can't even stick to that. He's done all of this to himself, and he can't seem to stop.

I completely agree with everything you've posted on this topic, Elon is 100% his own worst enemy on this front. However, as I scroll through this thread I see lots of top level comments with a single reply from the same (green) account; I can see how some might knee-jerk and jump to calling that astro-turfing/short sellers/someone with an axe to grind.

> I can see how some might knee-jerk and jump to calling that astro-turfing/short sellers/someone with an axe to grind.

I would've made the same comments if he were not making them. If it's green, sure you can be skeptical, but that does not prevent people from reading the comment for its merit. If someone wants to call someone a short just for being pessimistic about Musk's behavior then just add that to the pile.

Musk blames all his problems on shorts. Tesla's failures are not his responsibility. He's only responsible for its successes, including those of interns who make the media. Musk is the only one who can get things done quickly at Tesla because only what he says goes, and even his word does not mean much lately. Had a settlement with the SEC, backed out. Settled again with a worse deal a day later, and soon after violates the agreement and states on TV he never had any intention of following it.

Re: Is Elon Musk trying to commit ‘suicide by SEC’ by taunting the agency?

#110

Post by dingaling »

vertex-four wrote: post #104
tuxxy wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GM is stopping Bolt production this year. https://www.greencarreports.com/news/1120090_gm-to-kill-chev...

The Bolt isn’t the Volt.

But it does illustrate wooden-headed marketing. Two such similar names and no implicit means of distinguishing one from the other, except perhaps "the one that sounds like it should be the pure EV isn't". No wonder people are confused and think GM is discontinuing the EV.

I can't imagine Apple releasing the yPhone alongside the iPhone.

Post reply on HN