Elon Musk Gambled Tesla to Save SolarCity • Hacker News Board

Re: Elon Musk Gambled Tesla to Save SolarCity

#151

Post by kelnos » Mon, Aug 26, 2019, 9:19 PM UTC

thecleaner wrote: post #3

admiralspoo wrote: post #2

What are actually Elon Musk's engineering talents? It seems he is not much more than a marketeer. It's not even clear his visions of reusable rockets and electric cars were original...he is known to take credit for subordinate's ideas and achievements.

Cult of personality mostly. However Electric cars are actually useless for the environment without renewable energy. So it probably made sense to save Solar City. This whole thing seems like a long term plan for building an absolute monopoly - like what would happen if oil companies also owned all the cars.

> However Electric cars are actually useless for the environment without renewable energy.

Isn't even a modern coal-fired power plant cleaner than the ICE in a car? It certainly isn't perfect to have fossil fuel sources powering the electricity used to charge a car, but I'd much rather isolate and improve CO2 capture at coal-fired plants over having 250+ million polluters spread out over the entire country.

Re: Elon Musk Gambled Tesla to Save SolarCity

#152

Post by cma » Mon, Aug 26, 2019, 9:21 PM UTC

martythemaniak wrote: post #50

danso wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You read this story and think it boils down to "hating on Musk"? Which of the story's numbers or claims about SolarCity finances and production do you believe are distorted or misleading?

It's more of a meta comment on which stories surface up on Hacker News and other media. The selection of content you get exposed to can matter more than the exact content you consume. I went for dinner to my in-laws a few months ago and my mother-in-law asked if I had heard about the Tesla that caught fire in Shanghai. I said, yeah but did you hear about all the combustion cars that had combusted that day. She had no…

After the Shanghai fire Tesla did an over the air update to lower the cars’ capacity by charging to a lower voltage.

Your uninformed mother-in-law may have actually had a better handle on things by not being a major fan and not internalizing the Tesla PR response.

Re: Elon Musk Gambled Tesla to Save SolarCity

#153

Post by threeseed » Mon, Aug 26, 2019, 9:23 PM UTC

seem_2211 wrote: post #118

martythemaniak wrote: post #36

Well, 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…

Pretty unsurprising really - sure, hating on Musk is popular, but it's mostly a reaction to the fawning uncritical gaze most people give him, and the way he's portrayed as this genius who is amazing at executing. Elon Musk is great at promising stuff, and then terrible at executing. For every promise he fulfills there are 20 that he doesn't. But sure, the guy who flies private everywhere and shitposts more than I do…

Actually a lot of hate on Musk is coming from him being completely unethical.

From transactions like SolarCity to calling divers pedophiles to allowing Autopilot to even be deployed en masse.

Re: Elon Musk Gambled Tesla to Save SolarCity

#154

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Aug 26, 2019, 9:24 PM UTC

spiderfarmer wrote: post #102

For 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…

[deleted]

Re: Elon Musk Gambled Tesla to Save SolarCity

#155

Post by btilly » Mon, Aug 26, 2019, 9:25 PM UTC

vkou wrote: post #132

btilly wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As laid out in the article, at the time of the merger, Solar City was indeed trying to get into manufacturing solar panels. That it hasn't worked out doesn't mean that the attempt doesn't fit within SpaceX's goals. I'm sure that the Boring Company also has investments from SpaceX. As to mine, refine, etc, he has generally tried to go down to things that he can get off of mass markets. The thing he avoids is having a…

And he chose to do this by lending money at way-below-market rates to a financial dumpster fire of a company that didn't, and still doesn't have any capacity or secret technical expertise to manufacture one component of his Mars plans, which are still decades in the future? All the while, knowing that the financials of SolarCity are worse then he publiclly claimed? Pardon me, but given the personal financial gain he…

Keep your companies straight.

The bonds that SpaceX bought both helped the company stay afloat, and were at above market rates. And SpaceX made money off of that. SpaceX's involvement made sense, both tentatively (in the hope that SpaceX would get technology that they want down the road) and immediately (financial returns). The deal worked out well for SpaceX. Though it didn't pan out for their eventual hopes down the road.

Tesla is the company that really sank money in. Their synergy made more sense, Tesla has a lot of expertise in batteries and solar panels + batteries is a great combination. This is true at a small scale such as the home installations of solar panels + batteries that Tesla sold. Or at a large scale such as the South Australian battery project. And even in a distributed project such as the solar panels that Tesla added to a ton of supercharging stations.

That said, the Tesla involvement in Solar City has been a disaster for Tesla. (Though not for Elon Musk.) But Musk has always run financial house of cards. And he has enough going his way that he could still come out on top. The story with Musk is that he either will change the world or go out with a bang. This is still true. But he's coming ever closer to really changing the world, and the bang if he goes out will be truly spectacular.

Re: Elon Musk Gambled Tesla to Save SolarCity

#156

Post by threeseed » Mon, Aug 26, 2019, 9:26 PM UTC

moosey wrote: post #85

martythemaniak wrote: post #36

Well, 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…

Currently, Tesla and SolarCity and others like it are dealing with current political turmoil. It's obvious to anyone with secular attitudes that we need to build up battery and renewable energy technologies. When we appeared to be moving in the direction of supporting the technologies with subsidation, it appeared that this was the path that we'd be taking long term, that the US political system was coming to term wi…

> There are far larger financial crimes to go after

That isn't a reason to not go after Musk.

Executives at all levels need to be made an example of when they commit a crime. Otherwise it encourages others to do the same.

Re: Elon Musk Gambled Tesla to Save SolarCity

#157

Post by kelnos » Mon, Aug 26, 2019, 9:28 PM UTC

gnulinux wrote: post #121

davinic wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Musk wasn't even the founder of Tesla, he rewrote the history in order to call himself that.

> Tesla was founded in July 2003, by engineers Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning, under the name Tesla Motors. The company's name is a tribute to engineer Nikola Tesla. In early Series A funding, Tesla Motors was joined by Elon Musk, J. B. Straubel and Ian Wright, all of whom are retroactively allowed to call themselves co-founders of the company. from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla,_Inc .

Just because you're allowed to rewrite history, it doesn't make your rewritten history true. Musk wasn't involved in Tesla until their Series A (a round which he led as an investor), but soon after became involved in the company's operations. Eventually the original founders were ousted from the company, and later Musk just started calling himself a founder. There was a lawsuit[0], and the eventual settlement allowed this revision to occur. Reading between the lines suggests that the original founder just gave in, thinking that it was better for his reputation just to let it go.

We have no idea, of course, what would have happened if the original founders had stayed in charge and Musk hadn't joined. Maybe the company would have failed. Maybe it would be doing even better than it is. Who knows. That's immaterial to the argument. Regardless of what Musk would like you to believe, or what a court settlement allows, he did not actually found Tesla.

[0] https://www.cnet.com/news/tesla-motors-founders-now-there-ar...

Re: Elon Musk Gambled Tesla to Save SolarCity

#158

Post by sooheon » Mon, Aug 26, 2019, 9:29 PM UTC

martythemaniak wrote: post #148

danso wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Genuinely curious: how did you identify this story as being low value? The Shanghai anecdote to me seems self-evidently low value (since the incidence of car fires is still rare, and individual incidents have low impact). But this story's headline (on the article page) alleges serious misconduct, as well as financial problems/shortfalls that unavoidably impact Tesla.

I didn't say this particular one was, I was cautioning people against what I see as an instance of a very tight social media bubble. My example may seem low-value, but I've seen lots of very long and detailed discussions around here about Tesla's "Executive Exodus", which fall into the exact same selection bias pitfall.

It's strange how you are responding to a perceived trend, yet will not respond substantively to the actual contents of this particular post. Are you correct, and is this part of anti-musk mania which must be discarded? Or does this report have some value?

Re: Elon Musk Gambled Tesla to Save SolarCity

#159

Post by smallgovt » Mon, Aug 26, 2019, 9:31 PM UTC

seem_2211 wrote: post #118

martythemaniak wrote: post #36

Well, 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…

Pretty unsurprising really - sure, hating on Musk is popular, but it's mostly a reaction to the fawning uncritical gaze most people give him, and the way he's portrayed as this genius who is amazing at executing. Elon Musk is great at promising stuff, and then terrible at executing. For every promise he fulfills there are 20 that he doesn't. But sure, the guy who flies private everywhere and shitposts more than I do…

> Elon Musk is great at promising stuff, and then terrible at executing.

His behavior of overpromising and underdelivering is a deliberate strategy to drive productivity within his employee base. You may not like that approach, but it seems to have worked.

You may judge him to be "terrible at executing" if you compare his output with his promised output. If you compare his absolute output with that of a common industrious person, you'll find he scores off the charts.

Re: Elon Musk Gambled Tesla to Save SolarCity

#160

Post by kelnos » Mon, Aug 26, 2019, 9:31 PM UTC

xkjkls wrote: post #97

standyro wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ponzi schemes don't produce anything of value, like amazing supercars that cost By that same logic, any Y Combinator "unicorn" startup is a ponzi scheme. Overvalued, unrealistic investor expectations. Granted, this SolarCity deal was definitely not in Tesla's best interest... having chatted with a former engineer there who left because of their dysfunction.

Most Ponzi schemes usually do produce something of value for those who cash out early enough. I'm not saying the comparison is apt though.

Do they, though? My impression was that most Ponzi schemes generate cash for early participants by paying them with cash infusions from later participants. Nothing of value is created there; it's just taking money from suckers and giving it to unethical speculators.