This looks like a very complicated pump and dump case.
Elon Musk Gambled Tesla to Save SolarCity
201–210 of 282 posts
Re: Elon Musk Gambled Tesla to Save SolarCity
#202Earlier quoted context omitted.
And if he succeeds, the Mars colony could come to be worth more to SpaceX than its satellite launch business. By a lot. While the concept of settling Mars is understandable from an academic perspective, what is the economic justification for claiming that Mars is valuable? Any Martian colony would require hundreds of billions of Earth investment just to become habitable for a few dozen people and there aren't any res…
I've always liked the idea of a low-gravity forge: mixing metals on Earth is difficult because the heavier metals separate from the lighter metals due to gravity. This wouldn't happen in low-gravity situations, so you can truly make "space metals" that cannot be manufactured on Earth. However, this only calls for a LEO (low earth orbit) colony, not really a mars colony. Even then, shipping raw material up to LEO is s…
Interesting. If we can manufacture rocket fuel and forge these 'space alloys' on Mars (or in LMO, low mars orbit), the transport cost to get those alloys to Earth could be theoretically much lower once you have a stable, relatively automated Mars base.
Re: Elon Musk Gambled Tesla to Save SolarCity
#203Well, Tesla is one long stream of gambles. You dont get to school an established, global, trillion dollar industry without taking risks. The only notable thing here is that hating on Musk is really popular these days. So the failed gambles (this, falcon doors, the initial overautomation of the Model 3 production, etc) will be highlighted and mocked, while the successful gambles will go unmentioned or incorporated as…
Hating on Musk is popular these days in large part because it is becoming more and more obvious that he is in many ways a con artist. Look at his recent self-driving car promises, for example. I don't believe that he is so misinformed as to actually believe his own self-driving car promises, so I view his over-promising as deliberate deception.
Classifying him as a con artist based on his tendency to overpromise and underdeliver is a stretch when taking the colloquial definition of "con artist". Is he telling a lie? Yes. Does his audience, in general, feel "conned" when they realize he overpromised? No.
Re: Elon Musk Gambled Tesla to Save SolarCity
#204Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Now Tesla shareholders, who overwhelmingly voted for the merger, made a big mistake. But Tesla shareholders own the company, they are allowed to make whatever decisions they want. They voted for the merger based on Musk's claim that SolarCity had a good financial position and that they were releasing a revolutionary solar shingle product. Both of those were wrong.
Note: the financial positioning of SolarCity was obvious to anyone who could read a 10k. SolarCity never made a profit, and it spent tons of money chasing imaginary products (similar to a lot of other Musk-based properties). 10k documents exist for a reason. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1408356/000156459017... In 2016, SolarCity lost a full, solid, $Billion. The Tesla investors who voted for SolarCity / Te…
As you say, investors should do their research but, I don't think that absolves Musk from making false or misleading statements.
If someone claims to be a Nigerian prince who just needs a few hundred dollars to give away their fortune, the potential customers/marks should certainly do their research and can easily learn that the offer is a scam, but the scammer is still in the wrong both legally and ethically.
Re: Elon Musk Gambled Tesla to Save SolarCity
#205There are real "solar shingles", but not from Tesla/Solar City.[1] The big player is CertainTeed, which makes roof components. CertainTeed is for real; you can order those. The strange thing is CertainTeed makes both regular and solar shingles, but don't offer a matching set. DeSol has a product line of roof components, with solar, non-solar, and edge parts that all fit together. Theirs looks good, but may be vaporwa…
I remember seeing a write up about solar shingles in an engineering magazine back in the 90s. The idea has been around for as long roof installed solar panels.
Re: Elon Musk Gambled Tesla to Save SolarCity
#206For all the negativity here about Musk and his business decisions, there is something to be said for integrating transport and energy services in one great package. I consult for a large energy conglomerate that wants to get into this market from the energy suppliers side, but the problem is that they are completely clueless when it comes to expanding beyond their traditional business. In their vision, they'll supply…
If Tesla can get China factory open, the Y launched and some more stable financial ground, I do believe Elon & Tesla will indeed work on the residential solar business in earnest and that it is a reasonable Tesla product offering.
Looks like they're getting model 3 production setup up at Gigafactory 3.
https://electrek.co/2019/08/26/tesla-gigafactory-3-leak-imag...
And in the process of getting battery supply secured.
https://electrek.co/2019/08/23/tesla-battery-supply-deal-lg-...
Re: Elon Musk Gambled Tesla to Save SolarCity
#207I have solar panels on my roof. The were installed on top of regular roof tiles, since my house was already built by the time I was ready to install solar panels. But if you are building a new house, I think it makes a lot of sense to use Tesla Solar Roof. The roof looks great, you get clean energy and the warranty is for the lifetime of your house, or infinity (whichever comes first). From a personal standpoint, I wish these had been available when I built my house.
As for the gamle on Tesla/Musk part, I would say that this is a long term, strategic move. More an more energy will come in the form of electricity. The solar panel market is full of chinese panels to put on top of your existing roof tiles. But in the future, when the "normal" will be to generate your own electricity, people will want the cool roof that looks like a normal roof. Not then weird "add-on".
Re: Elon Musk Gambled Tesla to Save SolarCity
#208Earlier quoted context omitted.
> On a separate note, SolarCity stopped innovating after it was acquired You're conflating innovation with sales. SolarCity was a financing business more than they were a product company. They were selling financing of solar generation via Power Purchase Agreements. Installation and equipment manufacturing was largely outsourced. That was a business model innovation and for a while it worked splendidly, which is why…
Techies really like to knock down financial innovation as if technological development was the only thing that mattered. Must explain why Betamax and HDDVD won the home media wars. SolarCity's innovation was the financing model. It was adopted by the rest of the solar panel industry. The problem was that they fucked up the investment side and paid for this business model with expensive debt instead of cheap capital.…
A lot of the financial innovation was about obscuring the actual costs (and potential cost/obligations) and benefits to consumers. For example, liens and potential maintenance obligations down the road. It was also driven by the tax incentives that existed for a time. I notice I don't get practically tackled by solar panel installers every time I enter Home Depot any longer.
Re: Elon Musk Gambled Tesla to Save SolarCity
#209Earlier quoted context omitted.
Very interesting, but can you elaborate how we could benefit from colonizing Mars? Even more so - how could SpaceX be much more worth by being able to go to Mars, and how others wouldn't be able to achieve similar step sometime after them (depriving SpaceX from exclusivity of operation) Mars is much smaller than Earth with much more hostile environment. I heard some ideas of growing trees or putting air on Mars, but…
Most people will not want to move to Mars, just as very few Europeans wanted to move to the New World in the 1500s. However while relatively few people want to move to Mars, it is a large absolute number. For example a few years ago when Mars One called for volunteers for a one way trip to Mars, they got 200,000 people volunteering. Even filtering for people whose education and skills would make them useful, they had…
I think everyone else would conclude that Musk is welcome to have the Mars monopoly.
There's nothing there you can't get on Earth without the hassle of climbing out of a gravity well, schlepping across in front of a 24-hr supercharged X-ray machine, then climbing back down into another gravity well, then gathering whatever it is you felt is worth a hundred billion dollars of investment, waiting 2 years for the planets to align again, climbing back out of the gravity well you descended into, crossing the same X-ray moat, then finally returning to Earth and discovering some cheap bastard got it all from a mine in Australia.
Re: Elon Musk Gambled Tesla to Save SolarCity
#210Earlier quoted context omitted.
> what is the economic justification for claiming that Mars is valuable? In all likelihood, it will be intellectual property. Putting people who have taken a risk to go to a new world (literally) in tight proximity with a shared goal is a proven path for innovation. The lack of many Earth-based restrictions boosts that tendency.
I reminded of the early days of Silicon Valley when it was mostly suburbia, farmland, and chip manufacturers and I think of all the hardships they must have gone through creating startups in their parents' garages. CA is one of the most regulated, least risky places, on Earth and yet has led the way in innovation in multiple industries for decades. More likely, Mars will be like Antarctica: a desolate and undesired r…
CA is one of the most regulated, least risky places, on Earth and yet has led the way in innovation in multiple industries for decades.
You are mixing cause and effect.
CA started off as an unregulated wild west. It became a center for innovation, and then added regulations. But retained critical innovation mass as it went. However the regulations came after.
You can verify this by looking at industries. Gold mining, no regulations except what the miners invented back in 1849. (And we are still dealing with the weird way of regulating water rights that they came up with.) Shipping because some idiots built a railroad across the country, and therefore Los Angeles/Long Beach was the cheapest way to trade with Asia. Hollywood moved here because lots of good weather, open spaces, and no regulations. Agriculture moved here because of the same plus some ambitious water projects. (Plus available migrant labor that nobody enforced wage laws for.) Aerospace moved here for the same. Silicon Valley started for a different set of reasons (see Steve Blank's Secret History of Silicon Valley) but I guarantee you that there weren't a lot of regulations when that got going in the 1950s.
In all cases regulation came later, often much later. And the result is that many industries that got going in California, such as the manufacture of semiconductors at scale, wound up moving elsewhere. But so far, at least, we've been lucky enough to dream up new ones. :-)