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Tesla’s 4680 battery supply chain collapses as partner writes down deal by 99%

electrek.co

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Re: Tesla’s 4680 battery supply chain collapses as partner writes down deal by 99%

#541

Post by mikkupikku »

Neikius wrote: post #457
kortilla wrote: post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue is it had the range of a golf cart. So it basically ruled out 98% of the population that needs a car that can go on road trips. Tesla was the first to take range seriously.

Sure, but the original Tesla car received exactly 0 Musk input. That was pretty much a done design when he bought the company. And ofc he ousted the original designers and tried to erase them from history. And the model 3 is pretty much building upon that.

AC propulsion was founded in 1992 and began developing an AC electric powertrain then, using lead acid batteries. By 2003 they had three prototypes built, and in 2003 they converted to lithium ion. At this point they were encouraged to commercialize.

Tesla was founded in 2003, and licensed the power train developed above. Musk bought into the company in 2004. Tesla teamed up with Lotus in 2004. The first Tesla Roadster prototype was shown in 2006 and delivery of production cars began in 2008. By 2009 they had made 500 of them.

I don't like the man very much either, but exaggerating the state of Tesla before Musk was involved is silly. Before the Model S, Tesla was very small and it wouldn't have surprised anybody if it dried up and blew away in the wind.

Re: Tesla’s 4680 battery supply chain collapses as partner writes down deal by 99%

#542

Post by _heimdall »

bilekas wrote: post #482
szszrk wrote: post #435

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Neat. It's a bummer though that it's limited to Telsa. Would love to see a fuller one of his all bold statements about robotics, tunnel transportation, space travel, and AI.

This one was from a couple years back. The list could probably double with DOGE alone. https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-lists/elon-musk...

Its hard to hold his DOGE claims against him. He ultimately didn't have control there and it sure seems like he was either lied to about what he was going to be allowed to do or had the rug pulled out from under him.

Re: Tesla’s 4680 battery supply chain collapses as partner writes down deal by 99%

#543

Post by _heimdall »

mannykannot wrote: post #352
eru wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What evidence is there for the 'dump' part? Mr Musk is a strange fellow indeed, but he's not guilty of all the vices and sins. Just plenty enough of them.

That’s a fair point, but a combination of “fake it ‘til you make it” together with extracting massive “compensation” before you actually make it amounts to pretty much the same thing.

How is that different from any other CEO, especially of publicly traded companies?

CEOs are constantly making claims and promises that are aspirational at best, their compensation isn't held until all promises are reached.

Re: Tesla’s 4680 battery supply chain collapses as partner writes down deal by 99%

#544

Post by _heimdall »

ben_w wrote: post #450
eru wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What evidence is there for the 'dump' part? Mr Musk is a strange fellow indeed, but he's not guilty of all the vices and sins. Just plenty enough of them.

IIRC, back in 2022 or so he'd made about as much selling TSLA shares as Tesla Inc. has made lifetime profits selling cars. Tesla's profits have been positive since then, so this may no longer be the case, but still, that's a very iffy state of affairs.

That's more a sign of how poorly investors in the stock market today understand fundamentals, or how little they regard fundamentals.

Re: Tesla’s 4680 battery supply chain collapses as partner writes down deal by 99%

#545

Post by _heimdall »

nurettin wrote: post #399
eru wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What evidence is there for the 'dump' part? Mr Musk is a strange fellow indeed, but he's not guilty of all the vices and sins. Just plenty enough of them.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/antoniopequenoiv/2024/05/31/tes... > Musk sold 19.5 million Tesla shares worth about $3.95 billion in November 2022 I mean sure it is his to sell, but how is that different?

So is your issue here that a CEO makes public claims if his company that may be predictions or aspirations for the future, then sells shares he owns in the company to buy another company?

Re: Tesla’s 4680 battery supply chain collapses as partner writes down deal by 99%

#546

Post by ben_w »

KaiserPro wrote: post #539
ben_w wrote: post #453

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Likewise, but those were famously slow. Might have been expandable into other delivery vehicles, but neither the batteries nor the motors were up to being commuter vehicles… well, possibly electric bicycles back then, the European Blue Banana* was better positioned than much of the world to commute by bike, but not much more than that in performance or geography until much more recently. * https://en.wikipedia.org/wi…

But they weren’t designed as a commuter car. THey were designed to deliver milk.

I'm saying they couldn't have been designed as commuter cars: "neither the batteries nor the motors were up to being commuter vehicles".

Battery tech was way off on price/performance needed for commuting, until around Tesla happened: https://ourworldindata.org/battery-price-decline

IIRC, similar issues with compact powerful electric motors, but I don't have a chart handy for that.

Re: Tesla’s 4680 battery supply chain collapses as partner writes down deal by 99%

#547

Post by richrichardsson »

locknitpicker wrote: post #538
idiotsecant wrote: post #530

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am curious - are you familiar with inflation?

Are you familiar with the sunk cost fallacy?

I'm not sure you're familiar with it either, or I've missed how on earth it applies in this situation.

Re: Tesla’s 4680 battery supply chain collapses as partner writes down deal by 99%

#548

Post by _heimdall »

LunaSea wrote: post #209
qoez wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The best counter argument to that is that he did manage to predict/make into reality electric vehicles (when going into that industry was crazy) and reusable rockets. If someone makes a thousand moonshot attempts but still succeeds with two that's impressive.

Electric vehicles were the first types of cars invented. Musk also bought into Tesla. So its not like he invented some kind of alien technology. It was always about having good enough marketing to permit 10 years of R&D to make the car actually attractive.

> Electric vehicles were the first types of cars invented.

Where is this claim coming from? I don't see that in the history of the automobile wiki [1], and given that the first early motorized carriages were a century before Ben Franklin flew a kite I have to assume they were electric vehicles.

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

Re: Tesla’s 4680 battery supply chain collapses as partner writes down deal by 99%

#549

Post by b00ty4breakfast »

epolanski wrote: post #449
1121redblackgo wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At what point is it fair to call the list something other than ‘predictions’

Those are borderline lies that deceived both customers and investors.

Investors know what's up. They want number to go up, therefore they "believe" him and the number goes up.

The map precedes the territory

Re: Tesla’s 4680 battery supply chain collapses as partner writes down deal by 99%

#550

Post by _heimdall »

jqpabc123 wrote: post #5

For years, we’ve been told that the 4680 cell was the “holy grail” that would allow Tesla to produce a $25,000 electric car. For years, we've been told a lot of things that have never come to fruition. Just 6 months ago, we were told that Robotaxi would be available to half the US population by the end of the year. https://electrek.co/2025/07/23/elon-musk-with-straight-face-...

How should we consider other claims by CEOs, like claims made about the future of AI? What about claims made by politicians? Or claims made by the Federal Reserve?
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