361–370 of 384 posts
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> Those in the know said electric cars in general were an unpractical waste of money. Really? Who said that?
I would like to point out that you go to any article written about tesla from "the industry" viewpoint from at least 2008 to 2010. It's actually quite vitriolitic, actually.
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First, large-scale manufacturing is a different thing from rocket engineering. It ceases to be about building something, and begins to be about understanding and managing people. That's what I challenge Musk is still learning, and far too slowly. He may never be able to learn at all—beliefs about people and management are far more hard-set than those about physics and engineering. That said, I think he'll get it done…
I think the reason he does it this way is to avoid reaching the same local maximum competitors are already stuck in - you can’t out-compete incumbents with more of the same but a little better. It is arrogant in many ways but there is a reason behind it, it’s not just hubris, and crucially it requires finding the right frustrated talented people and listening to them, it would be a mistake to think he comes up with a…
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As the price of oil continues to climb, EVs become more affordable than internal combustion vehicles. Seems like a poor time to drop your sedan production in favor of SUVs with oil prices climbing, considering Americans are already changing their behavior due to existing price momentum at the pump.
As it continues to? Please look at oil prices over the last 20 years. You will see a lot of fluctuation. > Seems like a poor time to drop your sedan production in favor of SUVs with oil prices climbing, GM can do this. They can change production so quickly that when oil is cheap and people want SUVs (aka now) they can do that. And when it is not, they can change production back to sedans and EV. Much more flexibility…
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For shareholders and customers that makes sense. For everyone else not so much. There are a lot of people in the everyone else column who are happy to see an entrepreneur take risks.
> who are happy to see an entrepreneur take risks. Are there really? I feel like a massive percentage of people are against Musk and Tesla precisely because he's trying to do something new, and take some risks. It's like a majority of Americans don't want anyone to do anything radical anymore, like they're happy to stagnate.
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More specifically, profits are a side effect of meeting sufficient numbers of individuals' needs. It does not necessarily follow that meeting the needs of those individuals benefits society at large. Profits are also a side effect of meeting needs today . It does not necessarily follow that meeting needs today benefits society in a meaningful way in the longer term. For what it's worth, I think your implication is tr…
Profits are also a side effect of grabbing surplus value from their workers. Just sayin'
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One cannot will anything one wants into existence. At some point, he'll need to understand how to design an effective large-scale manufacturing system, and not simply yell for one. Specifically, he should actually learn some things about managing people, and the place that has in producing quality at volume at speed. It's sad, because that's exactly the lesson Toyota was trying to teach at NUMMI, and their legacy has…
> One cannot will anything one wants into existence Let's just see now. Musk wanted to grow a plant on Mars, and when the Russians pulled out of a deal to sell him a couple of ICBMs he decided he would will his own rocket into existence. Then he decided he wanted it to be reusable, so he willed that into existence when everyone said it was impossible. Then he wanted to strap three of them together, so he willed that…
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> A company's true function is to benefit society. Could you elaborate on how did you come to said conclusion?
Sure, at its basics, society has needs, known or unknown, good or bad so companies are created to fill the needs. Companies survive if they reach enough people with their solution. Sure there are ways to manipulate needs but at its basics companies are supposed to benefit society by filling those needs. We are fed the idea that companies are created to profit the investors but profits are a side effect of meeting nee…
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The community is obviously divided about this. That's not the same thing as "astroturfing". The guidelines ask you not to insinuate that without evidence, so please don't. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Look at the comments. It's 90% anti-tesla and all the pro-tesla comments get down voted into oblivion. So the community is not "divided" it seems...Statistics is my evidence. The extreme slant and voting behavior of all Tesla threads, mixed with debunked misinformation peddled by oil and gas industries being presented as fact pervasively in these threads is plenty of evidence
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hostile_media_effect
https://hn.algolia.com/?query=%22hostile%20media%20effect%22...
It makes things seem intensely obvious that actually aren't true. People on the other side of the fence from you are just as convinced that HN is dominated by pro-Tesla shills.
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I think the reason he does it this way is to avoid reaching the same local maximum competitors are already stuck in - you can’t out-compete incumbents with more of the same but a little better. It is arrogant in many ways but there is a reason behind it, it’s not just hubris, and crucially it requires finding the right frustrated talented people and listening to them, it would be a mistake to think he comes up with a…
It's possibly(?) tangential to the discussion, but I would say that if he does not "highly rate the welfare of his workers" then, he is by definition not good at managing people.
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As it continues to? Please look at oil prices over the last 20 years. You will see a lot of fluctuation. > Seems like a poor time to drop your sedan production in favor of SUVs with oil prices climbing, GM can do this. They can change production so quickly that when oil is cheap and people want SUVs (aka now) they can do that. And when it is not, they can change production back to sedans and EV. Much more flexibility…
Please. GM has nowhere near the EV manufacturing capacity of Tesla. They also have a dealer network that is not interested in pushing EVs over internal combustion vehicles.
And yet Tesla will not be able to deliver the cheap model 3 and GM has been doing it.
That's a substantial claim - without any evidence. No surprise though - it's easy to be pulled into the Musk hype.