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Elon Musk: To the People of New Jersey

teslamotors.com

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Re: Elon Musk: To the People of New Jersey

#171

Post by fennecfoxen »

Jgrubb wrote: post #141
bfe wrote: post #38

Just last week, Elon argued against a different legal monopoly, for national security launch services by the Boeing-Lockheed joint venture. [1] It's amazing how much building a new company in a supposedly free market requires arguing against politicians who claim to champion free market economics, but who actually use government to give cushy monopolies to incumbents with big lobbying budgets. "Crony capitalism" isn'…

Why isn't Crony Capitalism an accurate term for this? Seems like exactly the term to me.

Let's just play economist and call it http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent_seeking

> In public choice theory, rent-seeking is spending wealth on political lobbying to increase one's share of existing wealth without creating wealth. The effects of rent-seeking are reduced economic efficiency through poor allocation of resources, reduced wealth creation, lost government revenue, national decline, and income inequality. Current studies of rent-seeking focus on the manipulation of regulatory agencies to gain monopolistic advantages in the market while imposing disadvantages on competitors.

Re: Elon Musk: To the People of New Jersey

#172

Post by sp332 »

marssaxman wrote: post #164
batoure wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

whats the difference? 20% of Americans lease their cars from manufacturers right now, when you lease something by its nature you don't own it. Another 60% make use of financing when they buy, in which case the bank owns your car. If you are trying to make an argument about control then make it and maybe give us some more information than just the conclusion of your thoughts.

Sorry if my reference was unclear - I meant "0wned" in the hacker sense, in that ultimate control rests not with you, the owner, but with the manufacturer, who in the case of Tesla can apparently just pump new code out which your car will install. That seems seriously creepy and weird to me. When I buy a car, its previous owner should have no further control over it. OTA updates for a car sound really wrong.

Here is the changelog: http://www.teslamotorsclub.com/showwiki.php?title=Model%20S%... These changes sound worthwhile to me, even if the mechanism is creepy.

Re: Elon Musk: To the People of New Jersey

#173

Post by dangrossman »

dangoldin wrote: post #61

So it seems you can still buy it online. Does that mean you can go into a dealership and just buy it on your phone?

AFAIK, everyone who's ever bought a Tesla car has bought it online. In the states Tesla is allowed to sell directly, the process of buying one in the store is being sat at a computer and being guided through your online order with a sales rep's help. They don't have cars on lots you can purchase and drive away. The stores are all basically showrooms whether they're allowed to sell cars there or not.

Re: Elon Musk: To the People of New Jersey

#174

Post by Edmond »

TheMagicHorsey wrote: post #162
kenrikm wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Elon made enough off PayPal to never have to work.. ever again . Instead he put all of his money into Electric cars, solar power and rockets with a huge chance that he would loose it all (and almost did). I don't think that profit is his motivating factor.

I seriously don't understand people that get mad when someone makes a profit. Like are those people expecting to work and earn nothing? When you risk your capital, should you not get a return? And when you risk it on something crazy like electric cars, shouldn't the profits be even that much larger, to compensate you for the out of proportion risk?

No one's getting mad about profit making, the point being made is that when profit-making is the motive, it is disingenuous to position your argument as being about something else (such as pretending to be advocating for good government).

Re: Elon Musk: To the People of New Jersey

#175

Post by saraid216 »

stcredzero wrote: post #93
300bps wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chris Christie all but had the Republican presidential nomination sewn up before the bridge closure scandal. Between that and this nonsense, his reputation as a "non-politician" has been tremendously tarnished.

Given that everyone in the US, starting at least a level below State Governor, is basically required to play political hardball just to survive, why does anyone in the US believe anyone's "non-politician" or "non-insider" political marketing? Even Martin Luther King and Mahatma Gandhi knew how these things worked. The best one can hope for are high functioning sociopaths who are somehow invested in the betterment of…

> Given that everyone in the US, starting at least a level below State Governor, is basically required to play political hardball just to survive, why does anyone in the US believe anyone's "non-politician" or "non-insider" political marketing?

Wishful thinking. Same reason a lot of people felt George W. Bush was someone they'd have a beer with, and considered this a relevant datum for supporting his presidency.

Schwarzenegger was basically elected as state governor off this notion. And it wasn't untrue so much as... stupid.

Re: Elon Musk: To the People of New Jersey

#176

Post by dangrossman »

EGreg wrote: post #95

Musk's sales around the country are probably going up thanks to this event, and his taking the opportunity to tout Teslas using facts :)

There probably aren't many people reading Tesla press releases other than (a) people that already own a Tesla car, and (b) people that don't need to be swayed, they just can't afford/justify the price of one.

Re: Elon Musk: To the People of New Jersey

#177

Post by ghaff »

sheetjs wrote: post #88
thedufer wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its not clear that that's true. The law says "auto manufacturers can't sell cars" but it originally meant "auto manufacturers can't renege on franchise agreements (or otherwise abuse them)". Surely there's some way to codify the second one without resorting to the first?

The auto manufacturers can afford to eat into their normal profit margins and sell the cars at a much lower price (after deals) than the franchisees can, so it would be difficult to craft legislation that protects franchisees without allowing the manufacturers to massively undercut. The only real way to avoid abuse is to prevent auto manufacturers from selling in the first place

I do have to point out that lots of companies in lots of industries (including most B2B technology firms) sell both direct and through partners. Every one of them has to deal with "channel conflict" but that's what you do. It's a balancing act. The partners are never 100% happy but they add value to the manufacturer (or they wouldn't be allowed to stay partners) and the manufacturer can't routinely screw them over (or they'll depart for greener pastures). I'm guessing a mixed model wouldn't really make sense with autos though.

Re: Elon Musk: To the People of New Jersey

#178

Post by nawitus »

cheald wrote: post #56
djKianoosh wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

while "superior" is subjective, i agree it's best to let the market decide naturally, instead of putting up barriers...

Things like the Consumer Reports ratings and the Motor Trend "Car of the year" award are pretty objective. You're right that it's subjective, but there's empirical evidence that a lot of people feel it's superior.

I wouldn't call Consumer Reports that objective. They probably have a significant pro-United States bias.

Re: Elon Musk: To the People of New Jersey

#179

Post by samstave »

stcredzero wrote: post #102
ssmoot wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except at a service center there's presumably the opportunity to replace the firmware chip or board if they brick it during the update whereas a bad OTA update leaves you little option. OTOH I'd risk a bad OTA update 1% of the time if it meant avoiding the service center the other 99% of the time. And I'm sure a bad update is just a call and a tow away from a fix at a Tesla service center. Unless you're on a road-tri…

With the march of Moore's Law, it should currently be feasible for automobile controllers to actually run under a kind of hypervisor and keep a copy of the old system so that it can roll back. (Including by request of the owner.)

Yeah - I would not expect Mus to not have the foresight to do this...

Re: Elon Musk: To the People of New Jersey

#180

Post by nawitus »

jusben1369 wrote: post #78
thedufer wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're currently selling Teslas in NJ (without a middleman) and not having any legal problems because of it, so your example's premise seems to be flawed.

You have to dig deeper on the story than his post. They've been told for a long time that the license shouldn't have been issued and would be revoked and that a change in legislation was needed. Again, Musk knows all this. But it doesn't fit the dialogue.

>They've been told for a long time that the license shouldn't have been issued and would be revoked and that a change in legislation was needed.

Shouldn't have been issued according to who? According to law, it should've been issued, otherwise you don't need a law change to revoke it.

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