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Elon Musk's finances

economist.com

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Re: Elon Musk's finances

#21

Post by nabla9 »

I have no problem whatsoever if Elon Musk destroys investor money to build new technological future. In fact, I fully encourage and support his endeavor as long as it's not my money.

Here is epic piece from Warren Buffet from November 22, 1999. Just five months before internet bubble collapsed he explained why he didn't invest in internet technology when everyone said that he was being stupid old fool. http://archive.fortune.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive...

> The key to investing is not assessing how much an industry is going to affect society, or how much it will grow, but rather determining the competitive advantage of any given company and, above all, the durability of that advantage.

Re: Elon Musk's finances

#23

Post by samfisher83 »

nabla9 wrote: post #21

I have no problem whatsoever if Elon Musk destroys investor money to build new technological future. In fact, I fully encourage and support his endeavor as long as it's not my money. Here is epic piece from Warren Buffet from November 22, 1999. Just five months before internet bubble collapsed he explained why he didn't invest in internet technology when everyone said that he was being stupid old fool. http://archive…

A 2010 decision, for example, eBay Domestic Holdings Inc. v. Newmark, held that corporate directors are bound by "fiduciary duties and standards" which include "acting to promote the value of the corporation for the benefit of its stockholders."

http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/04/16/what-are-cor...

Under US law there would be a problem if he did that.

Re: Elon Musk's finances

#24

Post by codeulike »

radiorental wrote: post #19
codeulike wrote: post #13

a business empire with a financial structure that works only if risky companies perform perfectly on ambitious plans Everyone talks about the wonders of capitalism and how risk is rewarded, but then someone comes along who is actually taking risks to achieve big objectives and the industry watchers collectively shit their pants.

> Everyone talks about the wonders of capitalism and how risk is rewarded Yes, when that risk is spread across the system and the fundamentals are stable ventures. Point being when all you do is take large risks, that's a problem. (fwiw: long on tsla)

Musk is basically undertaking a moon shot: either a huge success or crash and burn. There's not much point keeping reserves.

Re: Elon Musk's finances

#25

Post by sharpercoder »

anindha wrote: post #8
115100 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of the environmental impact of a car is in its manufacturing, so global warming is made worse by Tesla selling more cars instead of people buying older ones.

Tesla aims to make their cars last 10 times longer than the average gasoline car. There are less things that can go wrong with an electric car. They are creating ways to increase utility on each car. Less people will need their own car. Edit: I should clarify. Tesla is aiming to make their drive trains last 1m miles. Most car companies don't offer extended warranty past 100k miles. Normal car companies want you to bu…

I think you mean "use-span", not life-span. I can imagine an electric car doing 1M KM easily, and surpass 2M by manual driving. Furthermore, if we enter the robocar age, this may go up dramatically as computers may be able to drive much safer and therefore drivup the "use-span" even more.

Re: Elon Musk's finances

#26

Post by kryptiskt »

Rescuing SolarCity seems like a waste to me. It's in a commodity business and is performing awfully. Why not just fold that hand and not saddle the stronger company with it?

Re: Elon Musk's finances

#27

Post by tombone12 »

sweden wrote: post #17
115100 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of the environmental impact of a car is in its manufacturing, so global warming is made worse by Tesla selling more cars instead of people buying older ones.

What is a better situation: having a polluting factory making polluting cars or having a polluting factory making eco-friendly cars? Maybe if the automotive industry had made this step a long ago, we could have been buying old but eco-friendly electric cars right now instead of buying gas/petrol cars. On another perspective, Tesla is also heavily investing in self-driving technology. So we could even stop buying cars…

Buying an 8 year old car means buying a used car, no? In that case you are comparing the polluting factory to no factory at all.

Fleets of self driving cars are called public transport or taxis (depends on your preference), and have been around for a while. The environmental benefit of exchanging the bus driver with a more efficient steering method is probably offset by the idea that the inefficiencies of cars compared to buses for mass transit. Probably a net win for taxis though, but nothing revolutionary.

Re: Elon Musk's finances

#28

Post by finchisko »

kryptiskt wrote: post #26

Rescuing SolarCity seems like a waste to me. It's in a commodity business and is performing awfully. Why not just fold that hand and not saddle the stronger company with it?

I would say Musk is saving SolarCity just not to have failure on his back. It would be harder to get money, if investors can point out on your failures.

Re: Elon Musk's finances

#29

Post by TeMPOraL »

115100 wrote: post #4
xiphias wrote: post #2

The whole article is failing to point out the biggest risks that the clean-tech companies are fighting against: global warming and lung cancer. Even though all older car companies have the ability right now to take a huge financial and PR risk, they're still not talking about the damage car emissions cause. Tesla is the first company that convinced me to buy a new car instead of an 8 year old one, as I didn't see eno…

Most of the environmental impact of a car is in its manufacturing, so global warming is made worse by Tesla selling more cars instead of people buying older ones.

It's made worse in short term this way, yes. But the car production happens and will happen anyway - Musk is only a small fraction of that now. Tesla is aiming to convince everyone to switch to eco-friendly cars, which means that besides adding its own production, it's basically trying to force everyone else's production to switch to making electric cars.

So you can't look just at this year's increase in numbers of cars manufactured vs. environmental savings of those cars when in use. You want to look at how car manufacturing and use will evolve over the years. Tesla is trying to change the trajectory of the entire industry, and so far it seems to be succeeding.

Re: Elon Musk's finances

#30

Post by TeMPOraL »

RealityVoid wrote: post #16
JimmyAustin wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True, but it's easier to fix those causes. It's a lot harder to take the millions of ICE cars off the road then it is to cleanup the environmental impact of a lithium mine.

It's not about lithium mines per se... it's about needing a new car and not a used one since you're buying a (new) Tesla. That means extra carbon in the atmosphere.

New cars will be made and sold anyway; what Tesla is trying to do is to ensure that those new cars will all be electric.
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