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Tesla is committing automotive suicide

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Re: Tesla is committing automotive suicide

#231

Post by NetMageSCW »

dlisboa wrote: post #8
the_sleaze_ wrote: post #4

BYD is slapping the EV industry around like a gorilla, Tesla simply cannot compete in any meaningful way. Waymo has achieved profit per unit and people are happy to see driver-less taxis in their city and pay for the service. Tesla also cannot justify valuations based on automotive sales/subscriptions alone - they were always going to have to pivot. They're in a tight spot and they need to do something drastic.

> Tesla also cannot justify valuations based on automotive sales/subscriptions alone - they were always going to have to pivot. Their valuation was never justified by that. They always sold a fraction of what other companies do.

But at one time they sold the majority in what many saw as a disruptive new replacement for what those other companies did.

They were poised like Apple which sold relatively few iPhones in the first few years compared to the other companies, all of which are gone now. But Tesla squandered that advantage.

Re: Tesla is committing automotive suicide

#232

Post by cosmicgadget »

Qwertious wrote: post #206
cosmicgadget wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Almost certainly neither.

The DeLorean was a stupidly-expensive car that had a lot of maintenance problems, decided to use an unpainted stainless steel exterior and had corrosion issues as a result, but is remembered despite all of this engineering mediocrity due to its unusual stylistic choices. I'm guessing Tesla's cybertruck will be the DeLorean of the 2020s.

If you want to restrict the discussion to just the Cybertruck, it's more like the Edsel - an embarrassing failure from a dominant manufacturer. The Delorean similarities are largely skin-deep.

Also probably 99% of people here are familiar with Deloreans and stainless steel.

Re: Tesla is committing automotive suicide

#233

Post by burnte »

p-o wrote: post #2

What makes this move even more incredulous is that none of the two market they want to move towards are proven markets: - Waymo is generating less than 150m in 2025. - Consumer robotics is an absolute unknown. How can the transition be rationally justified? Let alone the valuation.

> How can the transition be rationally justified? Let alone the valuation.

Musk seems to have successfully decoupled investors from results. The stock price seems to move far more based on what he says and does than what the company says and does. It's completely irrational. Tesla is a huge bubble.

Re: Tesla is committing automotive suicide

#234

Post by NetMageSCW »

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #171
lallysingh wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If a robot can do basic cleaning, laundry, and dishes, that's worth a lot to a lot of people. Dual-professional households have the money, and not having to do this housework could save some marriages.

I don't think it actually is worth a lot to people. I know dual-professional households who don't even use their dishwasher consistently, and multiple companies have gone bankrupt trying to bring automated laundry folding (which does exist in industry) to the consumer market.

There are a lot of maid services that imply (to me) otherwise.

Re: Tesla is committing automotive suicide

#235

Post by delecti »

SilverElfin wrote: post #179
z2 wrote: post #7

Tesla also announced they will be discontinuing the basic lane keep + adaptive speed cruise control they helped pioneer in cars sold going forward. But this is now a standard (free) feature even in basic vehicles like the Toyota Corolla. Why would they intentionally cripple their vehicles to the point hat they would be inferior to most cars today? Then I learned that Musk's incentive pay has a 10 million full self-dr…

> Then I learned that Musk's incentive pay has a 10 million full self-driving subscription hurdle, and it all made sense. Wow that is diabolical and such a scam. I didn’t realize he was gaming the incentives this way. Is that what happened with that previous $54 billion package too?

As far as I can tell, the criteria previous package were basically about getting the market cap up. Based on all the "no"s in the "Met" column here [1], I think you could reasonably accuse him of hitting the goals for that bonus package by driving investor hype for what Telsa "might" accomplish some day.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_predictions_for_autono...

Re: Tesla is committing automotive suicide

#236

Post by cosmicgadget »

littlestymaar wrote: post #125

I have no issue understanding why Musk does that, he's gone from “weirdo with lost of enthusiasm and charisma” to “batshit crazy, so full of himself there's basically no negative feedback loop anymore”. What I don't understand is why are the Tesla shareholders accepting his bullshit?

Cults of personality are all the rage these days. And in this case, people are probably just ratcheting up their stop loss prices and hoping the market is suckered by his next grand scheme.

Re: Tesla is committing automotive suicide

#237

Post by NetMageSCW »

vel0city wrote: post #200
duskwuff wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A teleoperated robot is little more than a human worker with extra steps. (And an expensive, clumsy human worker at that.) I can't imagine many situations where that would make sense instead of having a human do the work in person.

Yeah but with a teleoperated worker you can have them work remote from a place with poor labor regulations and extremely low pay. The future with this as a reality is a really dark place, where the uber wealthy live entirely disconnected from the working class except through telepresent machines half a planet away. That way the wealthy don't have to be inconvenienced by the humanity of the poors.

Suddenly I think Musk is trying to turn Earth into Solaria.

Re: Tesla is committing automotive suicide

#238

Post by godelski »

NetMageSCW wrote: post #193
godelski wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Simple cooling sinks, dense I think you need to go back to physics class. You seem to not even understand the very basics of heat transfer. You need more than "cold". I'll give you a hint, the problem is the same problem as "in space no one can hear you scream." I'll also mention that the moon isn't very cold, except on the dark side. In the moon's day the temperature is 120C and at night -130C. The same side of th…

Well, there are the permanently dark crater bottoms that might contain water ice and are definitely very cold. Turn the water ice into thermal transfer fluid and drill (The Boring Company) cooling loops underneath and the try to heat sink into the very cold ground. I’m sure you could run the Data Center for months before you exceed the radiative heat dispersal available to the ground.

You don't need to but in a dark crater to use the ground as your sink.

Also you need to consider that the thermal conductivity of lunar regolith is quite low.

I'm not saying it's not possible but I am saying there's a lot of technical challenges that make naïve approaches not so simple. The reason doing things in space is hard is not just the difficulty of getting things up into space. It's that all the things you take for granted just don't work.

Oversimplification is a footgun. Or more accurately, in this case a foot taser (if you know why you've found one of the major challenges of doing anything on the moon and mars)

Re: Tesla is committing automotive suicide

#239

Post by scottyah »

TacoCommander wrote: post #35
this_user wrote: post #10

They had the first mover advantage, but then Musk lost interest in the company and let it just sit there for the last five years or so without making sure that they have a future-proof product pipeline and that those products are actually being delivered on a reasonable schedule. Now they are increasingly turning into an EV also-ran while their moonshots are unlikely to work out any time soon. Realistically, he shoul…

The end game is the SpaceX IPO which will make him a trillionaire, and then he doesn't need Tesla any more.

He barely needs Tesla now, pretty much the only thing stopping electric cars from being ubiquitous are people in politics and media. The new mission statement is just to make everything for everyone, which I guess solves the people-on-earth problems he wanted to tackle. Next is a push for Mars (which again is mostly threatened by some politicians at this point).

Re: Tesla is committing automotive suicide

#240

Post by scottyah »

alterom wrote: post #149
rchaud wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regular IPOs usually have commitments from pension funds, mutual funds, private equity firms and other institutional investors secured in advance of going public. How many of those parties would be interested considering that SpaceX really only has one main customer whose business isn't guaranteed considering his political partisanship?

Unfortunately, enough for many regular people to be screwed when that stock crashes.

What do you base this on?
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