Elon Musk

Also legacy auto can’t seem to make an EV for under £25k.

Nissan sell the Leaf in the U.S. for US$27K. After tax credits, that drops to about $20K. The Ford F100 Lightning starts at about $40k and drops to under $33k with tax credits. If Tesla wants to become the dominant electric vehicle manufacturer, they will need to sell practical vehicles at prices like that, and they will have to comply with safety regulators. So far, they've gotten away with cowboy stuff but you can't get away with that sort of nonsense if you aim to be a market leader.

Tesla’s battery and motor technology is almost unique. Only Lucid have equivalent cells and better motors/controllers. Every other manufacturer is using prismatic cells, which are easier to make, but less efficient as it requires additional busbars and more connections, which increases resistance and decreases efficiency. Tesla’s are also some of the most aerodynamically efficient designs out there. Their software is also quite clever for both running and charging. I don’t think Tesla is going away - it may lose market share over time, but I still think it’ll be a big player in the future.

if you aim to be a market leader.

They're not aiming any more they are the EV market leader by a huge margin.

and they will have to comply with safety regulators. So far, they’ve gotten away with cowboy stuff

All Tesla cars have a Euro NCAP five star safety rating and the Model 3 has the highest NCAP score of any vehicle since the NCAP test was tightened up in 2018 so please explain to me what cowboy nonsense they are engaged in cause it looks like its working.

so please explain to me what cowboy nonsense they are engaged in cause it looks like its working.

https://twitter.com/DavidZipper/status/1530344456880259072

The best you can do is one article from a journalist who clearly has an agenda casting up stuff that may have happened 6-7 years ago (except for the diesel generator bit I'll give you that)?

As for Tesla cutting safety corners well the evidence from 22.5 billion miles travelled by Tesla cars is just not there.

Tesla aren't going away so just deal with it.

The best you can do is one article from a journalist who clearly has an agenda

If you take a look through that Twitter thread, it's not just one article, it's a bunch of journalists who started out with very positive views of Tesla and then saw how toxic the company and Musk are.

Journalists have an agenda, that agenda is to report on important events. Good journalists do that honestly. Dismissing news that you don't like as "an agenda" is exactly the sort of toxic behaviour that Musk and his fanbois use to try to deflect any criticism of his behaviour.

The key thing here is that Tesla cars aren't self-driving and the technology they have cannot support a self-driving car, but Musk refuses to acknowledge reality and attacks journalists who question things. Tesla fanbois keep proving that self-driving doesn't work by crashing and dying. Journalists' have a responsibility to report on that. It's not an agenda, it's their job.

Uncorroborated allegation from unnamed source comes out literally one day after he announces he’s no longer supporting the Democ-rats, because “they have become the party of division & hate”.

Offered a horse in exchange for an “erotic massage” ? Oh ok, entirely plausible scenario right there.

Musk is an idiot if he believes the Democrats and not the Republicans are the party of division and hate.

Alternatively he is cynical and playing to an audience of the gullible, credulous and insincere. So when he was asked to comment on the sexual assault allegations (before they were published) he asked the reporter for more time before he would respond further. He didn't. However he now knew the story was about to break, and in turn made the comment about being a republican and how he would now be the subject of dirty tricks and smears. And there are millions ready to lap all that shite up.

he is cynical and playing to an audience of the gullible, credulous and insincere.

This. He's just a smarter version of Donald Trump.

so please explain to me what cowboy nonsense they are engaged in

Did you see the story earlier this week of the guy who couldn't get out of his Tesla that was on fire? The doors are electrically operated, and (because they were on fire) the electrics had failed?

Tesla on fire.

There were similar cases a few years ago, so this doesn't seem to be an issue they've got under control.

Tesla the company makes money, Tesla cars do not.

The company makes money through carbon credits & stock market / bitcoin manipulation

As Benedict Evans says, musk is a bullshitter who delivers. This really confuses a lot of people because it's such an unusual combination.

I think he is an engineering genius, who has created 2 firms in which highly driven engineers can do extraordinary things.

Tesla is obviously massively over-valued, and will presumably come back to earth when VW ships a million EVs next year, and the carbon credits fade away.

The self driving stuff is fatally flawed - his "robo taxi" nonsense is decades away. Manufacturing quality isn't great, and they haven't got anything like the degree of manufacturing automation they envisaged. Yet.

Someone complained about tax earlier in the thread. He doesn't take a salary - almost all his wealth is in the form of stock in his companies. The tax bill only happens when you sell. He exercised a bunch of options last year and paid 12bn in tax. I guess that's the largest personal tax bill in history?

This year he will presumably sell/have sold a bunch more to raise the equity portion of the Twitter deal. If he ends up doing 20bn of his own cash, he'll pay another 6bn or so of capital gains tax when he sells.

Did you see the story earlier this week of the guy who couldn’t get out of his Tesla that was on fire?

Probably written by a journalist with an agenda that cars shouldn't be mobile crematoriums. Did they give equal space to Tesla's PR response? No? Must be a Democrat Fake Media hit job.

I think he is an engineering genius, who has created 2 firms

He bought nothing to Tesla (an existing company when he joined) but money. He's a computer nerd who bet some of his Dads wealth on what became PayPal, and then used the money he earned from selling shares to invest in Tesla. He has no engineering skill.

Tesla's look sh1t - absolute zero style. Way out of my price range - I say that, I could afford the lease costs easily, but it's a tin box on wheels. I don't use a car enough to spend silly money on one.

There are FIVE vehicles at my house of 4 people - son has a car and a company Caddy, and we've got a little Aygo as a learner for my daughter = shop run car for us - stupid cheap motoring.

Tesla fanbois keep proving that self-driving doesn’t work by crashing and dying.

Slight exaggeration. As far as I know there is only one lawsuit against Tesla for the self driving allegedly injuring someone. In any case Tesla's success is not dependent on self drive working but don't let facts get in the way of your prejudice.

Anyone see the recent documentary (C4 or C5) - shocking treatment of staff at Tesla

Tesla is obviously massively over-valued, and will presumably come back to earth when VW ships a million EVs next year.

Current waiting time for an ID3 is a year, so VW have some ground to make up. It takes 30 hours to make a VW; 10 to make a Tesla. And then you have to find a place to charge it.

VW have some ground to make up

Using VWs own figures for their future battery production capacity VW's EV business will be six times smaller than Tesla by 2030. Like I said above Tesla's competition is coming from China not Germany.

He bought nothing to Tesla (an existing company when he joined) but money. He’s a computer nerd who bet some of his Dads wealth on what became PayPal, and then used the money he earned from selling shares to invest in Tesla. He has no engineering skill.

This pretty much nails it. He's a nerdy guy with marketing skills but he leaves the engineering to others and throws tantrums when he doesn't get what he wants.

Their self-driving technology has some fundamental problems that mean it will probably never meet Musk’s exaggerated promises.

Have you taken a look at YouTube at some of the videos posted recently? Zero intervention drives across San Francisco at rush hour suggest that decent progress is being made.

Musk is partially right when he says that self-driving isn't computationally that intensive. Right now it's happening on some pretty weak computers in the existing cars.

What is crippling is the training of the neural networks. This is insanely energy and time intensive. It takes years for the human brain to become good at something, but almost no effort once trained. Similar thing here.

Musk is a privileged knob, but it's undeniable that he has pushed electric vehicles forward by leaps and bounds. Same with SpaceX, which makes Boeing look like a schoolchild launching a box of cheap fireworks.

Say what you want about Musk - I won't defend his personality, but when it comes to electric vehicles a lot of people on here have been hoodwinked by propaganda from oil companies and legacy manufacturers.

Jesus, some way off whack comments about Tesla from people who have never owned one!...but hey, it's STW after all! 😀

I have the second generation Model S 100D and it has been absolutely flawless performance and build wise. It is the best car i've ever owned. The Summon feature can be a bit flaky, but other than that it's tough to criticise.

@tekp2 - in my experience the self drive is fine, roundabouts, motorways, city driving, not even a hint of a problem...i've done over 80k in it.

If Tesla crack FSD and I admit its a big if but if anyone is going to do it it will probably be them, the underlying tech will be applied to a frightening number of simpler tasks currently done my humans.

Jesus, some way off whack comments about Tesla from people who have never owned one!

As the wise and insightful Taylor Swift said " Haters gonna hate, hate, hate, hate, hate"

I’ll caveat this with, I’m not a fan or hater of musk.

He’s not done anything new with stock market/share price shenanigans. That shit has gone on for years, he just does it via Twitter/insta/other social media. Wealthy people/institutions have done this since forever.
Tesla will remain, the cars may slip, but I still reckon his drive wasn’t really ‘cars’ but the battery technology and ultimately licensing that to others.
They also have a smart charging network, and that is years ahead of anyone else. Charging at home and commuting back and forth is great, but the big thing putting people off EV cars (whether it’s sensible to choose a car based a once a year trip of 350 miles is sensible is another discussion) is charging and they have that sewn up.
He’s not going anywhere for a long time, and Space X is going to see huge growth.

Have you taken a look at YouTube at some of the videos posted recently? Zero intervention drives across San Francisco at rush hour suggest that decent progress is being made.

"Decent progress" isn't what Musk is selling. A YouTube video of a single successful drive doesn't mean it's reliable enough to do it on a day to day basis in shitty weather sharing the road with pedestrians, cyclists, etc.

The Summon feature can be a bit flaky,

In other words, self driving isn't reliable.

Fortunately the brains behind full self driving at Tesla belong to a guy called Andrej Karpathy, not Musk.

Take a look at the synopsis of his recent "AI day" presentation (you don't need to watch it, there are some good write-ups but be warned it is technical). They're quite up-front about where they are and the work he's doing is genuinely innovative.

The only problem I see is that the enormously challenging and time-consuming training task may have to be repeated from scratch for countries outside of North America, due to different street furniture/ laws / and crucially, driving style.

It's unlikely it'll be true "self driving" for a decade yet, in my opinion, but getting to the point where it'll do most of the driving and occasionally interrupt your movie to ask you to make an either/or decision is probably not far off.

In other words, self driving isn’t reliable.

Has anyone said it is? Its still in beta FFS.

In other words, self driving isn’t reliable.

Has anyone said it is? Its still in beta FFS.

Tesla market it as "full self driving" capability and it's available for purchase by the public.

Tesla market it as “full self driving” capability and it’s available for purchase by the public.

From the Tesla website

Autopilot, Enhanced Autopilot and Full Self-Driving Capability are intended for use with a fully attentive driver, who has their hands on the wheel and is prepared to take over at any moment. While these features are designed to become more capable over time, the currently enabled features do not make the vehicle autonomous.

Elon Musk is just one of those new wave business men who have hit a certain area of the market with and won over the younger audience, that's what has allowed Musk to actually keep Tesla going, his showmanship has brought in more backers and money to allow it to be where it is today, as if it were any other business, it would have died years ago.

Tesla now produce decent EV cars, and are the market leader for this technology, they are perceived as being way ahead of the competition as well, which is always a good thing to have, yes they make their profits through carbon credits, other business interests and data, but they have pushed their technology and abilities upwards at the same time.

The future is also pretty good for Tesla, they have a good foundation, have built the support network required and yes, they will struggle with raw materials, but they've also quietly ditched that whole EV for under 30k or whatever it was, Musk was smart enough to see that was just one vanity project too much, and with a 33% increase in price for the base model over the last 4 years, it looks like they're going to have to play to the middle classes or above from now on.

The self driving thing is another bonus for them, we're all talking about it and discussing the viability, at the same time every Tesla out there on the road is providing data to the Tesla Corporation on road mapping, driver habits, etc, etc, etc, they are building up data packets that will be worth a fortune in the coming years!

The self driving thing is another bonus for them, we’re all talking about it and discussing the viability, at the same time every Tesla out there on the road is providing data to the Tesla Corporation on road mapping, driver habits, etc, etc, etc, they are building up data packets that will be worth a fortune in the coming years!

This is the core of Musk's problem - the idea that any publicity is good publicity. It's marketed as "full self driving" but that is a misrepresentation of what it can do.

Yes, the cars can record massive amounts of data, but using that data to train the self-driving algorithms requires a human to go through the video frame by frame and tag the key objects in it. That is extremely slow so the limit is the number of humans they can afford to employ, not the quantity of data. You would probably end up with better data by just employing ten professional drivers to drive selected routes that include the important things that the algorithm must identify rather than relying on videos of amateur drivers. The professional drivers will provide a better model for the algorithm than amateurs and it would probably take about 1000 humans to tag the data from 10 cars driven 8 hours per day.

However, the biggest problem with self-driving is simply that it requires massive computational power to identify and track all the objects in an urban environment. Tesla cannot afford to put that sort of computing power into a car so their current system will never be able to provide what Musk is promising without compromising safety. Still, if you think that any publicity is good publicity, killing pedestrians and cyclists probably won't be seen as a problem.

Musk is the GOAT and The GigaTrump. Now to:

1. Make Tesla cars affordable for the new Musktrutherz

2. OurDearLeaderDealer-ize Twotter

3. Deliver a mil-spec gigatruck so the Musktrutherz can #ownthelibz from behind bulletproof glass before buggering off to Mars. selling golden tickets for a post-WW3 off-Earth production of ‘Death on Mars‘ whereby we discover that Mars was once just like Earth until it was entirely consumed by greed, bots, infowarz, climate catastrophe and thermonuclear conflict.

killing pedestrians and cyclists probably won’t be seen as a problem.

The future = (still)cars, so zero cyclists and pedestrians will be available for comment/injuring. #notaproblem

#moarcarz
#cartrainz
#carwarz
#carwarez
#stillcarz
#ancapz

they are building up data packets that will be worth a fortune in the coming years!

as @thols2 points out, this sort of IA needs computing power that Tesla doesn't have, and even it's lead AI scientist in his own blog says pretty much the only -The Only - difference between what they're doing now, and what they did decades ago with what was hailed as the the first real AI system that could handle human interface information (crudely drawn numbers) is computing power and data size. In other words the technology hasn't advanced in 3 decades because they don't have the capacity to do so.

Nvidia are putting a lot (a real lot) of money and effort into solving this. If you’re expecting anyone to solve this in the near term, they’d be the smart bet.

It’s marketed as “full self driving” but that is a misrepresentation of what it can do.

No it's not. See the post at the top of the page.

Also...

He bought nothing to Tesla (an existing company when he joined) but money. He’s a computer nerd who bet some of his Dads wealth on what became PayPal, and then used the money he earned from selling shares to invest in Tesla. He has no engineering skill.

This pretty much nails it. He’s a nerdy guy with marketing skills but he leaves the engineering to others and throws tantrums when he doesn’t get what he wants.

...I thought he was an arrogant engineer? Is he or isn't he? Make your mind up.

One of the problems with engineers is they tend to be very arrogant about technological solutions and dismissive of people who disagree with them.

Your quote is still pish BTW, that's nothing to do with being an engineer and just basic arrogance/groupthink.

It’s marketed as “full self driving” but that is a misrepresentation of what it can do.

No it’s not. See the post at the top of the page.

You mean the post where Tesla call it

Full Self-Driving

?

using that data to train the self-driving algorithms requires a human to go through the video frame by frame and tag the key objects in it

You know those Captcha things on line to verify you're not a robot, and you have to look at a bunch of small pictures and identify the pedestrian crossing, traffic light, school bus, tree etc. It's no coincidence that all the things you have to identify are potential driving hazards...

It’s no coincidence that all the things you have to identify are potential driving hazards…

Chimneys are a driving hazard?

It’s marketed as “full self driving” but that is a misrepresentation of what it can do.

No it’s not. See the post at the top of the page.

As bails pointed out, it's marketed as "Full Self-Driving Capability." That is what Tesla call it. That's misleading, to put it very mildly, it cannot safely do anything without a driver keeping their hands on the wheel and constantly monitoring it to make sure it doesn't drive under a truck or into a parked car. Calling it "Self-Driving" just encourages idiot fanbois to do stupid things.

I cant recomend this enough*

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/musk-to-burns/idipbnhifibemlbkiljhdnibgodoieli

* im very easily amused

https://twitter.com/KarlBode/status/1532735413378424832

I saw his diatribe against home working and thought that it seems a brilliant way to advertise to Tesla's competitors that they might be able to poach their top staff and the knowledge they take with them.

Just because Musk spends his 60-hour working week on Twitter doesn't mean that everyone else needs to.

^^ completely agree about the stupid robot thing being used as a distraction.

FWIW Tesla have had their wrists slapped and significant fines for how they've advertised and marketed their "full self drive".

I saw his diatribe against home working and thought that it seems a brilliant way to advertise to Tesla’s competitors that they might be able to poach their top staff and the knowledge they take with them.

Probably no coincidence that he tweeted about layoffs a couple of days later. Getting rid of your best talent first probably isn't wise though...

Fools and their money...

https://twitter.com/Tweetermeyer/status/1533227865382129665

He’s obviously invested in upsetting ‘Democrats’ across the pond. I found this, how do they say, ‘spicy take’ (?) on the Tubes:

What does all the (largely manufactured yet now became Frankenstein’s Monster) ‘culture war’ stuff have to do with selling beans or beer or vacuum cleaners or electric cars?

What’s Musk’s long game now he’s trading divisive politics? It’s not like he’s vapour where is hasn’t been criticised for years and years is he just look at a way to silence/discredit critics by labelling them all as ‘nasty butthurt liberals’ or somesuch?

Is climate change denial just around the corner for Musk? I always wondered how you could claim to be helping to tackle climate change while simultaneously funding engineers to find a way to ‘better’ existing airliner travel with rocket travel at x1000 (fossil fuel) emissions.

It feels somewhat like we are all being trolled by an ‘edgy’ teenaged billionaire internet troll?

*oops

It’s not like he’s vapour where hasn’t been criticised for years and years is he just look at a way to silence/discredit critics

It’s not like his vapourware hasn’t been examined/criticised for years and years. Is he just looking at at a political way to silence/discredit critics? Or is this a career change to media/celeb/grifter?

Nvidia are putting a lot (a real lot) of money and effort into solving this. If you’re expecting anyone to solve this in the near term, they’d be the smart bet.

My money is on Qualcomm

What’s Musk’s long game now he’s trading divisive politics?

Isnt he is just a thin skinned manchild who cant handle criticism and hence lashes out whenever anyone dares to challenge his pronouncements?

This is an interesting point from the author of Black Swan.

https://twitter.com/nntaleb/status/1534173252226105346

Isnt he is just a thin skinned manchild who cant handle criticism and hence lashes out whenever anyone dares to challenge his pronouncements?

Possibly a large element of that - but I think he’s media savvy enough to turn it to his advantage. At least in the short term/ or while there’s still some gravy in this ‘culture war/antiwoke’ train.

It’s all a bit weird tbh, it does just make me think he’s a big troll looking forward to using his vast influence putting Trump back in power 😉