Tesla co-founder and CTO JB Straubel stepping down • Hacker News Board

Re: Tesla co-founder and CTO JB Straubel stepping down

#161

Post by Faark » Fri, Jul 26, 2019, 12:59 AM UTC

hyperbovine wrote: post #144

ck425 wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lying is perhaps the wrong word here. Sharing self-delusion is probably a more accurate way of describing it. He genuinely believes many of his own exaggerations. But to be fair without a big dose of self delusion no one would be crazy enough to try these things in the first place. I take his claims with a massive pinch of salt, while also appreciating that trait is somewhat necessary to solve the problems he's tryin…

> He genuinely believes many of his own exaggerations. Either a) he is lying, or b) the CEO of multiple companies worth a combined ~$100b is delusional to the point of being unable to recognize basic facts. Pick your poison.

He is CEO of those companies exactly because of his above average ability to make those delusions reality, no matter how impossible people considered e.g. landing rocket stages. I'd prefer him to project more of a visionary image with less harmful/psychotic aspects, but you can only get humans as a complete package and I'd have a hard time coming up with people to replace him.

Re: Tesla co-founder and CTO JB Straubel stepping down

#162

Post by dang » Fri, Jul 26, 2019, 7:54 AM UTC

bitL wrote: post #92

I am wondering how much Andrej Karpathy changed; from a happy Stanford lecturer to somebody whose immature tech killed/maimed a few people already due to managerial pressure from Elon...

Personal attacks are not ok on HN, regardless of whom you're attacking. Please don't do this again.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Tesla co-founder and CTO JB Straubel stepping down

#163

Post by titojankowski » Fri, Jul 26, 2019, 1:58 PM UTC

Rescis wrote: post #156

titojankowski wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fun fact: Planes are efficient for long trips. According to “sustainable energy without the hot air”, you need three people in a gas car to beat the efficiency of flying on a long trip. It seems like driving to LA with one or two people in the car is less carbon efficient than flying. With an EV you’re probably good though.

I think those numbers are for passenger flights carrying large amounts of people, not private jets carrying very few.

Good point, you're totally right! I don't think they covered that in the book. Here's the relevant chapter if calculations on flight: http://withouthotair.com/c5/page_35.shtml

Re: Tesla co-founder and CTO JB Straubel stepping down

#164

Post by grandridge » Sun, Jul 28, 2019, 4:08 PM UTC

sergiosgc wrote: post #124

Lazare wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you're not following, I think, is how little I care about cars and car companies . :) I don't care about Nissan, and I certainly don't care about a company a quarter their size. I care a little about Toyota because they're huge, but yes, small companies in industries that don't directly impact me are unimportant to me. If I worked for a car company, I'd probably care, but I work for a tech company, so I don't. >…

> Again, I think there is a significant faction of Tesla fans that don't see Tesla as a car company, and instead see it more like SpaceX. I don't. I do, and I'd like to explain why. This is not about cars. The single most important challenge our generation faces is dealing with climate change. We absolutely need to curb CO2 emissions. We don't need to limit CO2 emissions, we need to cut them significantly. There are…

Climate change climate change climate change.

Such a religion now.

Re: Tesla co-founder and CTO JB Straubel stepping down

#165

Post by gamblor956 » Mon, Jul 29, 2019, 10:58 PM UTC

sergiosgc wrote: post #129

gamblor956 wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the saving the world stuff was actually Tesla's mission they wouldn't have their CEO bounce back from LA to the Bay Area on a private jet every other day. Each time he flies he offsets the carbon savings of pretty much every Tesla driven in CA that day. The switch to EVs has more to do with Obama than Tesla. He pushed through many of the incentives that made Tesla possible.

> If the saving the world stuff was actually Tesla's mission they wouldn't have their CEO bounce back from LA to the Bay Area on a private jet every other day. Each time he flies he offsets the carbon savings of pretty much every Tesla driven in CA that day. I don't follow the logic. The impact of a jet flying back and forth pales in comparison to the impact of switching vehicles away from fossils. You're comparing t…

Ah, I see. So we should all be lauding Toyota for it's role in launching the Prius when there was literally no existing demand for green cars, leading to the US and EU governments creating incentives for additional green car manufacturing, and creating the market that Tesla is now trying to cater to with poorly-made luxury vehicles.

Re: Tesla co-founder and CTO JB Straubel stepping down

#166

Post by FrojoS » Tue, Jul 30, 2019, 11:29 AM UTC

sangnoir wrote: post #152

FrojoS wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What would these companies invest into if Tesla hadn’t proven long range BEVs to be viable? What could the public and policy makers point to when the old car companies keep stating that there are no current alternatives, that we have to wait another decade or two for their R&D projects to pan out? Besides, I was replying to a post that said Tesla was unimportant. Well, I personally doubt it, but yeah maybe what VW di…

I think Tesla 'proved' the viability of long range BEVs the same way Newton proved calculus to Liebniz (and I'm only being slightly hyperbolic). Some ideas/discoveries/technologies are more or less inevitable as the newly-existing but disparate building-blocks are there, waiting for a receptive mind to piece everything together and usually with a surprising level or synchrony. Tesla didn't have any ground-breaking re…

> I think Tesla 'proved' the viability of long range BEVs the same way Newton proved calculus to Liebniz (and I'm only being slightly hyperbolic). Some ideas/discoveries/technologies are more or less inevitable as the newly-existing but disparate building-blocks are there, waiting for a receptive mind to piece everything together and usually with a surprising level or synchrony.

This effect can be observed often in the case of low investment advances like mathematical breakthroughs, inventions that are limited to a bunch of papers, gadgets or Uber for X type, X as a service startups etc. But, it is evidently not true for hard problems, advances that require huge investments, bear enormous risks and uncertain payoff.

The people who go for the relatively low hanging fruits know this very well, evident in their rush to the market, patent or to publish in academic journals.

In contrast, the hard problems, like landing a man on the moon, measuring the higgs boson, retro propulsive landing of orbital rockets or, case in point, the development of long range BEVs would not have happened if someone would have had the ability and courage to go all in at enormous cost and risk. Progress is not automatic! It may appear though but in reality people are sometimes willing to pay enormous prices for lofty goals. Or they don't and progress simply does not happen.

In fact, these tasks are so hard, that none of the achievements mentioned above have been repeated so far, despite arguably ample time for copy cats. No one but NASA went to the moon, no second LHC was built, only SpaceX has landed orbital boosters and the 2012 Model S still has more range than any non Tesla BEV. Another evidence is that there are problems that we know are arguably solvable and desirable, yet we still haven't solved them, e.g. putting a man or women on Mars, switching to 100% renewable energies, fusion, making certain diseases extinct etc.