Minute 53, very emotional moment by Elon Musk • Hacker News Board

Re: Minute 53, very emotional moment by Elon Musk

#51

Post by flinty » Wed, Jun 05, 2013, 10:47 AM UTC

mmaunder wrote: post #16

krosaen wrote: post #3

Start at minute 49 to see the full context - it's about fighting the automotive dealers association for the right to sell directly to consumers.

Thanks, agreed, crappy title. The insight he provides into the auto industry in those few minutes is awesome. It explains why I've consistently had a crap experience buying cars over the years (they don't make any money selling them) and why car service costs so much in the USA.

Yeah. This planet money podcast covers the same issues in a bit more detail http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2013/02/12/171814201/episode-...

Re: Minute 53, very emotional moment by Elon Musk

#52

Post by atdrummond » Wed, Jun 05, 2013, 10:47 AM UTC

cstross wrote: post #29

qwanzi77 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Incumbent manufacturers have to go through dealers. Allowing Tesla to bypass dealers wouldn't be fair to other car manufacturers. "Tesla repay a big federal loan a few weeks ago, many years before they had to?" Why does this matter? They were given a large loan. That large loan gave them a large runway to have one profitable quarter, which allowed them to pay back the loan by issuing shares and bonds. Another car man…

Why should incumbent manufacturers have to go through dealers? Why can't they sell direct to the end customers via the internet? Do the incantations "disintermediate all supply chains" and "disrupt all mature industries" suddenly lose all their magical HN mojo when confronted with the Kryptonite of the car industry?

Not legal in most US states, especially for established firms with outstanding dealer agreements. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Car_dealerships_in_North_Americ...)

A not insignificant portion of GM/Chrysler's restructuring costs were buyout payments for dealers, many of whom were not profitable.

Re: Minute 53, very emotional moment by Elon Musk

#53

Post by andyn » Wed, Jun 05, 2013, 10:54 AM UTC

sgt wrote: post #7

Somehow this seems a bit wrong though - to open this link, skip to minute 53, simply to "see an emotional moment", then close the browser.

Headlines with "Emotional" and "So Eloquent" are the new "L@@K! Must See!"

Re: Minute 53, very emotional moment by Elon Musk

#54

Post by javiermares » Wed, Jun 05, 2013, 10:57 AM UTC

qwanzi77 wrote: post #32

shrikant wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did they ask, and/or meet the requirements? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Technology_Vehicles_Ma...

Many asked. Only few were given those loans. Why not give the money to research universities instead? Wouldn't that be a lot more fair? We could all exploit the research, instead of just a few well-connected billionaires and corporations with lots of resources.

Building a car is an engineering project. Building a new kind of car will be a science intensive engineering project, but an engineering project nevertheless. Designing a new car is an attempt at optimizing a high dimensional design space that spans many disciplines that are interdependent. This requires fundamentally different methods and organization than those used conventional research.

Re: Minute 53, very emotional moment by Elon Musk

#55

Post by smosher » Wed, Jun 05, 2013, 10:59 AM UTC

qwanzi77 wrote: post #33

zalew wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

byd is small? this knock-off manufacturer is one of the largest in china and now even works with daimler.

I clearly stated "smaller". BYD has a market cap 10% the size of Tesla's current market cap.

"current"—out of curiosity, was it so small before Tesla received the loan?

Re: Minute 53, very emotional moment by Elon Musk

#56

Post by Confusion » Wed, Jun 05, 2013, 10:59 AM UTC

qwanzi77 wrote: post #33

zalew wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

byd is small? this knock-off manufacturer is one of the largest in china and now even works with daimler.

I clearly stated "smaller". BYD has a market cap 10% the size of Tesla's current market cap.

The key word being 'current', not 'back when the loans were given'.

Re: Minute 53, very emotional moment by Elon Musk

#57

Post by Confusion » Wed, Jun 05, 2013, 11:02 AM UTC

qwanzi77 wrote: post #10

mtgx wrote: post #5

He gets like that sometimes, and you can see he really cares about the products he's making and the change he's trying to make in the world. So sometimes he seems deeply affected that others are so much against him, especially when they aren't playing fair. He became a bit emotional in another interview where he said that Neil Armstrong was opposed to the idea of having SpaceX making commercial rockets (or any other…

"he seems deeply affected that others are so much against him, especially when they aren't playing fair" How exactly is Tesla playing fair? Did all car manufacturers receive a $500 million loan to build electric cars or something?

Why do you consider obtaining a loan an unfair advantage?

Re: Minute 53, very emotional moment by Elon Musk

#58

Post by Confusion » Wed, Jun 05, 2013, 11:09 AM UTC

bob13579 wrote: post #43

hb1742 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To rephrase this: Did all students get A on the exam? Did all even try to learn to get good grade? No. And why should it matter. Ones who did put some effort into learning got the loan. Others didn't. OMG HOW IS THAT FAIR? Yup, unfair indeed, lol.

How exactly did Tesla earn an "A" up to that point? Every small electric car manufacturer was losing money left and right. Two smaller startups got the loan (Tesla and Fisker) to survive, while the others didn't (Bright Automotive, etc.). The ones that didn't get the loans went out of business. The one that got the other $500 million loan went out of business (Fisker). Only Tesla survived by having one tiny profitabl…

> How exactly did Tesla earn an "A" up to that point?

Business plan, business model, customer research, advances already made, further along, ... There are dozens of possible reasons to loan $500M to Tesla, but not to another company.

There are dozens of possible reasons why you would loan $1000 to one friend, but not to another. Someone else wouldn't know those reasons, but if the friend complained about you being unfair, you would be quite miffed if someone went on the internet complaining how unfair you were, based on treating two people differently, without considering that maybe these people actually are different.

These companies may be alike in trying to sell an electric car. That does not make them comparable for the purposes of giving them a loan.

Re: Minute 53, very emotional moment by Elon Musk

#59

Post by bob13579 » Wed, Jun 05, 2013, 11:16 AM UTC

Confusion wrote: post #56

qwanzi77 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I clearly stated "smaller". BYD has a market cap 10% the size of Tesla's current market cap.

The key word being 'current', not 'back when the loans were given'.

"Honda, Toyota, BMW, Mercedes, or smaller ones like Think, BYD, Tango, or Venturi"

"smaller" was in reference to Honda, Toyota, BMW, and Mercedes. You can substitute Bright Automotive if you wish.

Re: Minute 53, very emotional moment by Elon Musk

#60

Post by saalweachter » Wed, Jun 05, 2013, 11:20 AM UTC

qwanzi77 wrote: post #17

ngcazz wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Playing by the rules against incumbent manufacturers. edit: didn't Tesla repay a big federal loan a few weeks ago, many years before they had to? Good citizenship is fair.

Incumbent manufacturers have to go through dealers. Allowing Tesla to bypass dealers wouldn't be fair to other car manufacturers. "Tesla repay a big federal loan a few weeks ago, many years before they had to?" Why does this matter? They were given a large loan. That large loan gave them a large runway to have one profitable quarter, which allowed them to pay back the loan by issuing shares and bonds. Another car man…

You don't need to be fair to incumbent manufacturers. They're the incumbents, they already have a bajillion advantages.

Aren't the incumbent manufacturers the ones who lobbied for those dealership laws in the first place, to raise the bar for entry into the market place? (And if not, haven't they had year with piles of cash beyond our wildest dreams to buy off legislators and get the law changed?)

I am perfectly happy to have the federal government give out loans to startups to disrupt stagnent industries. Can you imagine how our ISP industry would be doing if, instead of passing laws which make it impossible to disrupt, the US government was occasionally throwing half a billion at people who wanted to try? Granted, Elon Musk wasn't exactly at the 'rags' phase of a rags-to-riches story when he got his loan...