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Tesla co-founder and CTO JB Straubel stepping down

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Re: Tesla co-founder and CTO JB Straubel stepping down

#121
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The sooner the music stops on this monumental fraud the better. While initially starting the race and pushing the development of electric cars forward I’ve got a feeling Tesla’s implosion will end up denting people’s confidence in them.

"monumental fraud" i take issue with that statement , they have best in class motors and battery mgmt unit coupled with awesome infotainment . the bad things are some choices on service model and huge bet on auto-taxi network .Still i dont think i want to drive anything other than a tesla.

Moreso the fraud is continually committing actual securities fraud: lying about production numbers between quarterlies when Elon knows he won’t make the nums he is promising, lying about roll out dates of cars, lying about roll out dates of factories, lying about Tesla’s cash position and capital raise needs to the market immediately before raising capital, lying about take private deals at 420, lying about short sellers, lying about ex employees who speak out against production quality, lying about the safety of beta features, lying about the solar city takeover, lying about solar city roofs, lying about service times, lying about service costs, lying about resale values, etc. Fake it til you make it is unacceptable behaviour in securities markets.

Those are all actual securities fraud that if someone without Musks name committed, we would go to prison, yet Musk gets away with it almost daily.

But yeah the cars are kind of cool. Or at least the Model S was when manufacturing quality wasn’t rushed in a mad dash to meet fraudulent promises to Wall Street.

Re: Tesla co-founder and CTO JB Straubel stepping down

#122
post #101
post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We need to stop this culture of taking single sentences and vilifying people over them. People get tired, they get mad, temporarily confused, and can be good people 95% of the time, and a bit of a jerk other times. But the internet never forgets, so we as a people need to learn to forgive a bit more.

95% of people aren't billionaires whose social media presence is followed globally and whose every public comment is repeated by the media, and 95% of people don't accuse someone else of being a pedophile because they're tired or mad or "momentarily confused." Like it or not, we live in a society in which words have social and occasionally legal ramifications. Elon Musk trying to ruin someone's life for bruising his…

>...isn't something society should shrug off and forgive simply because "people aren't perfect."

...but isn't the recourse that society has agreed-upon the very same lawsuit that is going on? Is this not adequate? Wouldn't it be more "woke" to fix the aforementioned avenue of recourse, if not?

Re: Tesla co-founder and CTO JB Straubel stepping down

#123
post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

95% of people aren't billionaires whose social media presence is followed globally and whose every public comment is repeated by the media, and 95% of people don't accuse someone else of being a pedophile because they're tired or mad or "momentarily confused." Like it or not, we live in a society in which words have social and occasionally legal ramifications. Elon Musk trying to ruin someone's life for bruising his…

> ...isn't something society should shrug off and forgive simply because "people aren't perfect." ...but isn't the recourse that society has agreed-upon the very same lawsuit that is going on? Is this not adequate? Wouldn't it be more " woke " to fix the aforementioned avenue of recourse, if not?

>..but isn't the recourse that society has agreed-upon the very same lawsuit that is going on? >Is this not adequate?

Humans are emotional and social beings, and we do not (nor should we want to) live in a society in which the proceedings of law, when found to be appropriate to remedy some social offense, become the only permitted form of public expression relative to it.

It's perfectly reasonable to find Elon Musk to be an objectionable person in the public sphere, regardless of the legality of his actions. Those are two different axes, and human beings don't live on only one.

>Wouldn't it be more "woke" to fix the aforementioned avenue of recourse, if not?

I don't know what "woke," is supposed to imply. I'm assuming (from the typical context of such things) that it's supposed to be a glib disparagement of something related to identity politics, which seems odd and inappropriate.

Re: Tesla co-founder and CTO JB Straubel stepping down

#124
post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Rather, they see Tesla as a small, unimportant, poorly run company (...) > (...) > Tesla is just another car company making just another car. Definitely false. Q2 revenue was 25% of Nissan's (which crossed my radar recently due to layoffs). That may be small, for some definition of small, but it's definitely not "small, unimportant". I won't comment on poorly run -- a qualitative assessment that does not lead to a…

What you're not following, I think, is how little I care about cars and car companies . :) I don't care about Nissan, and I certainly don't care about a company a quarter their size. I care a little about Toyota because they're huge, but yes, small companies in industries that don't directly impact me are unimportant to me. If I worked for a car company, I'd probably care, but I work for a tech company, so I don't. >…

> Again, I think there is a significant faction of Tesla fans that don't see Tesla as a car company, and instead see it more like SpaceX. I don't.

I do, and I'd like to explain why. This is not about cars. The single most important challenge our generation faces is dealing with climate change. We absolutely need to curb CO2 emissions. We don't need to limit CO2 emissions, we need to cut them significantly.

There are two avenues for this goal. Either we cut energy consumption, significantly, or we switch energy sources away from fossil fuels.

I believe cutting energy consumption is impossible. It goes against a five thousand year trend of per-capita energy consumption growth, amplified by population growth. If you step back from the ecologist message a bit and look at the overarching trend, the picture is clear: Cutting global energy consumption is a no-go.

The other path is switching energy sources. We're advancing on that front. However, for renewable sources to have the needed impact, they must be applicable to transportation. Here, in this specific point, Tesla was and is key. It has already succeeded. The BMW CEO was fired because of lack of focus on EVs. It's a stark change from pre-Tesla, and it is a market change created by Tesla. Every automaker will go the EV route, and I'm completely convinced that, absent Tesla, they would sit on their hands for at least another decade.

Re: Tesla co-founder and CTO JB Straubel stepping down

#125
post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ...isn't something society should shrug off and forgive simply because "people aren't perfect." ...but isn't the recourse that society has agreed-upon the very same lawsuit that is going on? Is this not adequate? Wouldn't it be more " woke " to fix the aforementioned avenue of recourse, if not?

>..but isn't the recourse that society has agreed-upon the very same lawsuit that is going on? >Is this not adequate? Humans are emotional and social beings, and we do not (nor should we want to) live in a society in which the proceedings of law, when found to be appropriate to remedy some social offense, become the only permitted form of public expression relative to it. It's perfectly reasonable to find Elon Musk t…

>Humans are emotional and social beings, and we do not (nor should we want to) live in a society in which the proceedings of law, when found to be appropriate to remedy some social offense, become the only permitted form of public expression relative to it.

What does the form of public expression hope to achieve if the recourse is adequate? Emotional release? Were it that it was you that was directly wronged, I could understand your subjectivity on the matter; however, being a third-party to whom there is no direct or indirect impact, it makes no sense.

In other words, using your statement, there is some assumed emotional or social end-goal of the behaviour is there not? Isn't that n+1 from the recourse already defined from society? The behaviour is designed to illicit something, is it not? Otherwise, why would you do it at all?

>It's perfectly reasonable to find Elon Musk to be an objectionable person in the public sphere, regardless of the legality of his actions.

The OC wasn't about whether it was unreasonable to find him objectionable but whether it was unreasonable to continue the "hate campaign" (apologies for a lack of better turn-of-phrase at the moment).

>I don't know what "woke," is supposed to imply. I'm assuming (from the typical context of such things) that it's supposed to be a glib disparagement of something related to identity politics, which seems odd and inappropriate.

Woke seems to be common parlance for people who have "woken-up" to some perceived injustice and are fighting the good fight, as it were.

An example of how it is apt and applicable is when Beto O'Rourke was continually forced to apologise[0]. In this case, we can draw the parallels by your statement:

>It's perfectly reasonable to find Elon Musk to be an objectionable person in the public sphere...

At what point would he no longer be objectionable and/or for the behaviour to stop? His death? That doesn't seem to matter in the case of lot of people previously hated throughout history, correct? So what overall, overaching purpose does it hope to achieve? When in the history of history has it achieved any appreciably good and desired outcomes?

Even if he profusely apologised, prostrated with guilt and remose today, wouldn't the behaviour still continue?

[0] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y_Y-wbhiOGI&t=190

Re: Tesla co-founder and CTO JB Straubel stepping down

#126
post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Rather, they see Tesla as a small, unimportant, poorly run company (...) > (...) > Tesla is just another car company making just another car. Definitely false. Q2 revenue was 25% of Nissan's (which crossed my radar recently due to layoffs). That may be small, for some definition of small, but it's definitely not "small, unimportant". I won't comment on poorly run -- a qualitative assessment that does not lead to a…

> [Tesla] Q2 revenue was 25% of Nissan's And a bit less than 10% of Volkswagen or Toyota's. With about 25% of their individual market caps.

I don't get the message you are trying to convey. It's natural that Tesla is smaller than the largest automakers. It's smaller than medium automakers. That much is expectable.

If you are referring to the disconnect between revenue and market cap, it may point to a valuation error by the market. Or not. The market is clearly incorporating expected growth into the current value. Is the valuation correct? I have no idea. I'd not infer too much from this fact alone, though.

Re: Tesla co-founder and CTO JB Straubel stepping down

#127
post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you're not following, I think, is how little I care about cars and car companies . :) I don't care about Nissan, and I certainly don't care about a company a quarter their size. I care a little about Toyota because they're huge, but yes, small companies in industries that don't directly impact me are unimportant to me. If I worked for a car company, I'd probably care, but I work for a tech company, so I don't. >…

> Again, I think there is a significant faction of Tesla fans that don't see Tesla as a car company, and instead see it more like SpaceX. I don't. I do, and I'd like to explain why. This is not about cars. The single most important challenge our generation faces is dealing with climate change. We absolutely need to curb CO2 emissions. We don't need to limit CO2 emissions, we need to cut them significantly. There are…

If the saving the world stuff was actually Tesla's mission they wouldn't have their CEO bounce back from LA to the Bay Area on a private jet every other day. Each time he flies he offsets the carbon savings of pretty much every Tesla driven in CA that day.

The switch to EVs has more to do with Obama than Tesla. He pushed through many of the incentives that made Tesla possible.

Re: Tesla co-founder and CTO JB Straubel stepping down

#128
post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like the saying goes: 'when someone shows you who they really are, believe them'. The whole Thai cave rescue really showed who Elon Musk is: an incorrigible sociopath who's shortcomings make it difficult to celebrate any success he has.

We need to stop this culture of taking single sentences and vilifying people over them. People get tired, they get mad, temporarily confused, and can be good people 95% of the time, and a bit of a jerk other times. But the internet never forgets, so we as a people need to learn to forgive a bit more.

The pedo thing wasn't a single sentence. It was something Elon doubled down on. And repeated. Many times. He deserves to be vilified for trying to abuse his wealth to destroy a critic who was correct about his grandstanding during a crisis where people's lives were at stake.

Re: Tesla co-founder and CTO JB Straubel stepping down

#129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Again, I think there is a significant faction of Tesla fans that don't see Tesla as a car company, and instead see it more like SpaceX. I don't. I do, and I'd like to explain why. This is not about cars. The single most important challenge our generation faces is dealing with climate change. We absolutely need to curb CO2 emissions. We don't need to limit CO2 emissions, we need to cut them significantly. There are…

If the saving the world stuff was actually Tesla's mission they wouldn't have their CEO bounce back from LA to the Bay Area on a private jet every other day. Each time he flies he offsets the carbon savings of pretty much every Tesla driven in CA that day. The switch to EVs has more to do with Obama than Tesla. He pushed through many of the incentives that made Tesla possible.

> If the saving the world stuff was actually Tesla's mission they wouldn't have their CEO bounce back from LA to the Bay Area on a private jet every other day. Each time he flies he offsets the carbon savings of pretty much every Tesla driven in CA that day.

I don't follow the logic. The impact of a jet flying back and forth pales in comparison to the impact of switching vehicles away from fossils. You're comparing the incomparable. Many orders of magnitude of difference separate the two.

Re: Tesla co-founder and CTO JB Straubel stepping down

#130

Why do some many people hate Tesla and want them to fail? Do they also want SpaceX to fail? Elon can be an asshat sometimes, and he oversells and is over-optimistic. But even if the short sellers are right and Tesla will go bankrupt (which, btw, does not equal failure in many ways), why are so many people excited about that? Most tech giants of recent times have done things I would consider to have made the world a m…

> Why do some many people hate Tesla and want them to fail? Do they also want SpaceX to fail?

Aside from the obvious fanboy vs anti-fanboy thing, all of the other players in these spheres tend to be huge companies and government contractors, who can afford large and aggressive marketing budgets. This will almost certainly include some sort of online forum monitoring and consensus building.

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