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Grand jury indicts Trevor Milton, Nikola founder, on three counts of fraud

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Re: Grand jury indicts Trevor Milton, Nikola founder, on three counts of fraud

#451

Post by sellyme »

yumraj wrote: post #267
ashtonkem wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve learned to cast a more cynical eye towards companies claiming to be accomplishing grand, ethical aims. Sometimes they’re right, of course, but it’s also a phenomenal way to sweep abuse and fraud under a rug.

> I’ve learned to cast a more cynical eye towards companies claiming to be accomplishing grand, ethical aims. People have stopped talking about Google's famed "Don't be Evil" thing.. But hey, it served a purpose for Google when it mattered.

It also helped that Google, by-and-large, were doing extremely good things. For all the complaints about the (very real) problems the internet has today, I think people have lost sight of how much the internet sucked in 1997.

There's a website you loved, but you forgot the URL? Good luck ever finding that again. Want to watch a video? Hope you've got an updated QuickTime plug-in and a lot of time to wait for the shitty webhost to serve a 240p video at 80B/s. Your daughter just emailed you a few photos of your grandchildren? Better delete the last 5 years of your conversation history to make space for it - Hotmail and Yahoo! only offered 10MB of storage before Gmail launched with 100x that. Want to monetise your blog? Hope you're happy with your readers getting malware, because every ad service out there is insanely shady.

Re: Grand jury indicts Trevor Milton, Nikola founder, on three counts of fraud

#452

Post by speedgoose »

gpt5 wrote: post #347
speedgoose wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most gas station in the Oslo area in Norway have fast chargers.

The point is that when every parking spot is a fast charger, why bother with the gas station model? Even in our way to get there, it makes more sense to put the charging at the origin or destination, except for long trips.

Every parking spot may be a charger, but not a fast charger. That would be way too much expensive, just in cabling for example.

Re: Grand jury indicts Trevor Milton, Nikola founder, on three counts of fraud

#453

Post by cma »

onethought wrote: post #419
slownews45 wrote: post #386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one has been confused I don't think. I saw the considering the $420 buyout, I took it to mean just that. The short sellers around tesla have been pathetic. Note I don't own any tesla stock, but the short seller hype train is just ridiculous around tesla. How there has been no action there is mind boggling. He's a crazy guy willing to take crazy risks - look at SpaceX -> they are operating COMPLETELY outside all no…

I think you've hit the nail on the head. The Battery-Solar-Car angle is such an obvious integration for Tesla. I guess on paper it is frustrating it was a family connection, but their alternative was for Tesla to start building their own Solar capability when they had a significant stake in one already. SEC is a joke - chasing Elon is like a weird hobby for them... meanwhile things like 2008 happen and they shrug and…

Sure, battery solar goes together, but why did they need to specifically buy his conflict of interest failing one instead of another solar company? Because he had leveraged investments in it and even mixed SpaceX into it having them use NASA money to buy SolarCity bonds. Crazy self-dealing and ultimately fraud with the fake shingle demo and claims.

Re: Grand jury indicts Trevor Milton, Nikola founder, on three counts of fraud

#454

Post by simondotau »

dangrossman wrote: post #444
simondotau wrote: post #443

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You appear to be misquoting. Can you please cite this 2020 quote verbatim and in context? If you can, and the context is consistent with what you have inferred, I will retract everything and offer my most generous and profuse apology.

The quote is from further up this thread we're in: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28002731 It's verbatim from Elon Musk on Autonomy Day 2019, per this article: https://www.engadget.com/2019-04-22-tesla-elon-musk-self-dri... This is the same event where he promised a million Tesla robotaxis on the road by 2020.

> It's verbatim from Elon Musk on Autonomy Day 2019

No, that was NOT a verbatim quote. Here is the exact quote with me adding emphasis on the critical (but oft omitted) qualifier:

"All Teslas being produced right now have this computer. We switched over from the Nvidia solution for S and X about a month ago, and we switched over the Model 3 about ten days ago. All cars being produced have the all the hardware necessary, compute and otherwise, for full self-driving. I'll say that again. All Tesla cars being produced right now have everything necessary for full self-driving. All you need to do is improve the software."

https://youtu.be/Ucp0TTmvqOE?t=5663

> This is the same event where he promised a million Tesla robotaxis on the road by 2020.

That is, in my opinion, not a contextually correct reading of what Elon said. Within the context of the speech it's clear (to me) that for him, "robotaxi" is used as shorthand for "vehicles with the hardware capable of being a robotaxi." Obviously I cannot prove this, and I recognise that responsibility ultimately lies with Elon to be clear.

I do agree Elon did say multiple sentences that are absolutely misleading when read in isolation, but his actual words in context (and with some recognition that this is a forward looking statement made with optimism) were far less egregiously wrong than the snipped quote implies on its own. You can watch him say it in context and make up your own mind:

https://youtu.be/Ucp0TTmvqOE?t=11612

Re: Grand jury indicts Trevor Milton, Nikola founder, on three counts of fraud

#455

Post by bagels »

nickik wrote: post #272
lotsofpulp wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My guess is fossil fuel cars will remain competitive with electric cars (cost per mile wise), since the more demand for fossil fuels drop, the cheaper it gets to operate fossil fuel cars. It really depends when the governments actually start banning fossil fuel cars. Or implements higher fossil fuel taxes, but I do not see a chance of that. And I do not see bans for new fossil fuel cars actually going into effect for…

The problem is that the infrastructure of ICE and oil massively profits from scale, as this drops many of these assets will turn negative. Even if per mile the car would be competitive, the lost of value of the car itself would be incredibly. Who will still buy an ICE car in 2030. And that is before the new regulation that potentially makes these cars even less wanted.

This was my point. Gasoline will be banned for new cars at some point.

Re: Grand jury indicts Trevor Milton, Nikola founder, on three counts of fraud

#456

Post by Cthulhu_ »

makeitdouble wrote: post #430
xapata wrote: post #427

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you think funds our union pension plans?

I don't have a union pension plan, and I'd argue they should be backed by less volatile investments than "innovative" companies.

They are, generally speaking; pretty sure they're mandated by law on how much risk they are allowed to take.

But, I'm convinced the stock brokers at pension funds are also playing the market a lot, because better results is better for them.

Re: Grand jury indicts Trevor Milton, Nikola founder, on three counts of fraud

#457

Post by shapefrog »

beeboop wrote: post #212
shapefrog wrote: post #163

I thought Elon was the Electric car maker most likely to get caught perpetuating a fraud?

I'm amazed at the lengths people go to bring Elon in on discussions. Can we get Elon Derangement Syndrome in the DSM?

There are a number of tin-foli hat minded people that have elon as the top of the tree in a number of criminal enterprises ranging from mexican drug and people smuggling cartels to good old fashion accounting fraud.

The two electric car celebrity startups have been trading blows for years, perhaps the guy who jsut got convicted is behind some of the stories?

Re: Grand jury indicts Trevor Milton, Nikola founder, on three counts of fraud

#460

Post by uCantCauseUCant »

makeitdouble wrote: post #400
jdminhbg wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure creating a multibillion dollar vaporware fraud shell company and being a dick on Twitter are comparable sins.

From my point of view as a peasant without any shares anywhere, multibillion dollar vaporware companies have very little impact. We could argue this investment could have gone into better companies who could have made the world a better place, but it's purely hypothetical (the money could have gone to a worse company, or political lobbying as well...). Basically, from afar, it's a "rich people lost some money" drama.

I actually would argue that Vapoware has a net-positive effect. It creates incentives to "involuntarily" get inventive. The "We got to get this working, they did it" effect is real and has created several involuntary inventions. In my eyes, even a con-man who commits fraud, gets humanity to progress, by getting "real" companies to compete against a "virtual" adversary and humanity in total reaps the reward.
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