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Tesla Reports a Profit (Sorta) While Elon Musk Regrets Mentioning Hyperloop

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11–20 of 52 posts

Re: Tesla Reports a Profit (Sorta) While Elon Musk Regrets Mentioning Hyperloop

#11
post #7

It's more like he's trying to sell a car while publishing plans for a high speed people mover. You can just hope it won't displace the electric car in the inner city until Tesla become really profitable but you never know. It's a risky move that could potentially affect Tesla later on.

From what has been said a Hyperloop is closer to vary high speed rail than inner city transport so if anything it complements the electric car. AKA who cares about range limitations if you never bother to drive 500+ miles for a trip.

Assuming boarding time was 30 min and your going 500MPH a 500mile hyperloop trip would take 1.5 hours vs 7+ by car. And presumably drop you closer to mass transit / the center of the city than an aircraft.

Re: Tesla Reports a Profit (Sorta) While Elon Musk Regrets Mentioning Hyperloop

#13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not exactly "backtracking." Also, there's something strained about the structure of the article, like they were trying really hard to put as much negative spin in before they had to say "Tesla is doing well." They could have out and said: Tesla's doing well, but GAAP...etc, and left out 3 paragraphs.

They make it seem as if Tesla is doing shady accounting, but they explain in the very beginning of the shareholder letter: In this letter and going forward, we will report our results on a GAAP basis as well as on a non-GAAP basis, excluding lease accounting. We believe these non-GAAP financials are useful as they align with the underlying cash flow activity and timing of vehicle deliveries, and because we use such i…

Further, reporting non-GAAP figures alongside GAAP is fairly common practice. In some cases I view it as an increase in the honesty of the reporting. They're adding information here, reporting things they don't otherwise need to.

Re: Tesla Reports a Profit (Sorta) While Elon Musk Regrets Mentioning Hyperloop

#16
post #9

"I'm sorry. I'm too busy revolutionizing the automotive and space travel industries."

Musk has unquestionably changed the space transportation industry. It remains to be seen whether he's "revolutionized" the automotive industry.

With self driving cars on the horizon, it certainly feels like a revolution is looming, but Tesla doesn't seem to me to be nearly as singular of a force of change as SpaceX is to it's respective industry.

Re: Tesla Reports a Profit (Sorta) While Elon Musk Regrets Mentioning Hyperloop

#17
post #9

"I'm sorry. I'm too busy revolutionizing the automotive and space travel industries."

And those are big goals.

But creating a method for getting from one side of the country to the other in less than an hour (or even twice that long) is probably more ambitious.

Re: Tesla Reports a Profit (Sorta) While Elon Musk Regrets Mentioning Hyperloop

#18

How is this backtracking? Nothing has changed. He made it very clear from the beginning that this is an idea of his that he wants to release to the public, not work on it himself. Somebody then had the audacity to pester him with Hyperloop on the earnings call for Tesla. It's like asking the president about his veggie garden while hes giving a press conference on the war on (whistleblowers|drugs|terror).

Well, the veggie garden is supposed to be revolutionary

Re: Tesla Reports a Profit (Sorta) While Elon Musk Regrets Mentioning Hyperloop

#19
post #12

Title should remove backtracking. I don't think he ever said he'd build the hyperloop himself - though I don't personally trust anyone other than him to build it out successfully.

Yeah, the word 'backtrack' doesn't appear anywhere in the linked article, and is clearly editorializing in the title.

Re: Tesla Reports a Profit (Sorta) While Elon Musk Regrets Mentioning Hyperloop

#20
post #8

Interesting production numbers. The model S is now outselling the Chevrolet Corvette, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chevrolet_Corvette_(redirect)#P...

That's not too surprising; the Corvette's sales figures have plummeted in the last 10 years or so. That milestone is a little like outselling the PT Cruiser.

An even easier task now: http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/news/2010/07/end-of-the-r...
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