[HN Gopher] Tesla conducting more layoffs, including entire Supe...
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Tesla conducting more layoffs, including entire Supercharger team
Author : TheAlchemist
Score : 233 points
Date : 2024-04-30 10:33 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (electrek.co)
(TXT) w3m dump (electrek.co)
| Topfi wrote:
| I've always considered the Supercharger network as their most
| valuable asset, besides arguably their mindshare, so I cannot see
| how losing the entire team could be a rational decision in the
| long term.
|
| Also, after work on the Model 2 was canceled and reopened, I
| can't see Daniel Ho and his teams departure as a long-considered
| choice, to put it mildly.
|
| Feels all like emotionally driven decisions...
| projectileboy wrote:
| Agree 100%. The change in Musk's public persona combined with
| his more recent business decisions are alarming. And you may
| say that his public persona shouldn't matter, but when he
| willfully alienates a large portion of his traditional customer
| base, one wonders what he is even thinking.
| pfannkuchen wrote:
| This might ironically be the downside of being less money
| driven and more principle driven. I think he legitimately
| thinks "the woke mind virus" is a bigger short term threat to
| (western) civilization than failing to transition to
| sustainable energy (Tesla) or failing to become a multi
| planetary species (SpaceX). If he was primarily financially
| driven I think he would have kept quiet and just focused on
| the existing companies, like most people probably would even
| if they privately held similarly controversial opinions.
|
| I'm not saying he is correct by the way, just that it seems
| like he thinks that and it basically explains his behavior.
| lenerdenator wrote:
| The thing is, he's never been paid to stay quiet and focus
| on the money.
|
| Musk's value add is as the celebrity CEO; the Jobsian ideal
| taken to its natural conclusion. He's supposed to be this
| forward-looking visionary and having him at the helm of
| your company is supposed to make it forward-looking by
| proxy.
|
| This is all well and good until the celebrity CEO fries his
| brain with Special K and builds a bubble of yes-men around
| him. Then it becomes a massive liability.
| vundercind wrote:
| A lot of it's explained by drugs, incredible impulsivity,
| some magical thinking, and remarkably thin skin, plus (I
| think the rest are in plain evidence--this gets
| speculative) maybe some discontent over his personal life
| and especially his kids.
| spacemadness wrote:
| Tell that to the share holders who keep rewarding him even on
| a huge earnings miss.
| nostrademons wrote:
| TSLA down > 50% from the peak. The stock went up on
| earnings miss because things were not _as bad_ as
| shareholders were expecting, but the shareholders are
| expecting things to be pretty bad.
| yowzadave wrote:
| But I think the point people have made (correctly!) is
| that TSLA's price is detached from any normal way we have
| for pricing a car company. Their market cap is 160% that
| of Toyota, despite selling 16% as many cars. How are they
| ever going to justify their current valuation? Kicking
| Elon out to get rational CEO behavior could result in a
| rational market assessment of Tesla's value, which would
| be bad from the shareholders' perspective!
| lesuorac wrote:
| Toyota issues bonds (ex. [1]) so their valuation should
| be less than the multiple on cars sold as tesla.
|
| [1]: https://cbonds.com/bonds/1504323/
| gomox wrote:
| The only thing separating Tesla from a realistic multiple
| is Musk. For shareholders it's rational to want to keep him
| around. Otherwise they would have to face a much worse
| reversion to the mean.
| Terr_ wrote:
| Hmmm... Usually the fable of the Emperor's New Clothes
| implies the people around him went along with the fiction
| because they feared personal retribution from the
| Emperor... But what if nobles did it to prevent a drop in
| the "stock" of the empire itself?
| psunavy03 wrote:
| I've honestly wondered whether or not he's going to end up as
| this generation's Howard Hughes. Makes fortune in other
| industry, parlays that into becoming a
| manufacturing/aerospace titan, slowly goes insane. He's 2 or
| 2.5 for 3 depending on how you count.
| LightBug1 wrote:
| Started thinking that years ago ... and have always made
| the link, in my mind, between the Starship and the Spruce
| Goose ...
| psunavy03 wrote:
| To be fair, Starship has gotten further than the Spruce
| Goose ever did.
| sanderjd wrote:
| Yeah, of the full possibility space of mystifying decisions, I
| think this one might be the global maximum... It's such a
| "selling shovels to the miners" business line where they are
| (were?) positioned really well in.
|
| Maybe this isn't actually what's going on, but from an
| outsider's perspective, it really feels to me like watching a
| person's nervous breakdown play out, but at the scale of giant
| publicly traded companies.
| tzs wrote:
| What does the Supercharger team actually do?
|
| To build and run a charger network you need people for at least
| these things:
|
| * To design the stations (including the charging equipment
| (hardware and software), landscaping, buildings)
|
| * To manufacture the charging equipment
|
| * To decide at a high level were to put stations, and at a
| lower level to find specific sites, buy or lease those sites,
| and go through whatever legal process is needed to be allowed
| to build there.
|
| * To deal with electric utilities to get power to the site.
|
| * To do the actual building at the site, including preparing
| the land, maybe paving, installing the chargers, hooking up to
| the incoming power, putting up signage, etc
|
| * To maintain it. It will need regular cleaning and trash
| pickup. Someone should be checking regularly for problems that
| won't be found by whatever remote monitoring and diagnostics
| they have. When a problem is found, manually or by there remote
| monitoring, someone has to go fix it.
|
| * To provide customer support.
|
| If you do all of them in house you need a large team. But a lot
| of them are reasonably done by hiring another company to do
| them in which case you might not need a large in house team.
|
| I'd guess that they do the first (design), part of the second
| (assemble the charging equipment from components they have
| custom built by other companies), the high level location
| planning.
|
| I'd guess that the lower level part of site placement is done
| by local firms familiar with the area that Tesla hires, that
| dealing with the electric company and the actual building is
| done by a local general contractor and whatever subcontractors
| that general contractor uses.
|
| I'd guess that the cleaning and on site checking for problems
| is handled by a local maintenance company. Fixing problems
| would either be a local company or someone Tesla sends
| depending on what it is that needs fixing.
|
| Customer support would likely be Tesla.
|
| _If_ Tesla considers that their existing Supercharger station
| designs are good enough to continue using for a long time for
| new stations, then they might really only need to keep in house
| the high level decision of were to put them, charger repairs,
| customer support, and hiring the local companies that do the
| field work.
| cowmix wrote:
| 500+ people to even do the HIGH level bits of running a SC
| network isn't a lot.
|
| Everyone (even the most strident Tesla haters) agrees that SC
| is the one thing Tesla does the best, hands down. I own a
| model Y and tried to use only non-Tesla charging on a long
| distance trip a few months ago, it was a disaster.
|
| Telsa's charging network is a win on EVERY front:
|
| 1. Locations 2. Quantity of locations 3. Quality (high
| charging rates) 4. User experience / design of hardware -
| software 5. Realtime reporting and navigation 6. Uptime of
| network
|
| The SC network is why a lot people consider Tesla who
| otherwise it would be a big fat no.
| LUmBULtERA wrote:
| Same, I'm a new used Model Y owner, and the supercharger
| infrastructure (existing, expected expansion, and
| maintenance) was part of the reason I bought it. It would
| be nice if Musk would provide some rationale of what's
| going on over there so we know what to expect...
| matthewdgreen wrote:
| Tesla's engineering culture around the Supercharger is what
| makes it viable. They mass produce a custom-designed unit
| in groups of four, and then ship them from factory directly
| to job site. None of the other competitors are doing that
| yet, which is why Tesla has been both more profitable and
| more reliable. Maybe that culture will survive the layoffs,
| but it's a fast growing business with a _ton_ of
| complicated engineering work to do.
| supportengineer wrote:
| I wonder how many encryption certs are in the Supercharger
| environment and what will happen if they aren't maintained.
| wuj wrote:
| If I'm not mistaken, many companies do the product engineering
| in house and outsource the manufacturing/maintenance to
| contractors. Tesla's supercharger network is mature enough that
| it won't see much innovation moving forward, and that might've
| motivated them to remove the entire team.
| m5l wrote:
| Could a plausible explanation be that with the spread of NACS,
| the supercharger network matters more to the overall industry
| and so Tesla can get away without footing the costs of managing
| it?
|
| Even if that makes some sense, it seems early to make that
| judgment call.
| ianburrell wrote:
| In that case, they should have spun it out. I think
| Supercharger would be good if boring business by itself. That
| would also get rid of the conflict of having car company own
| biggest charging network.
| demondemidi wrote:
| > Feels all like emotionally driven decisions...
|
| Yep. This is why a CEO actually matters. Musk is a great
| example of what happens when a CEO is bad. He's turning into
| John Scully for those of you that remember. Unfortunately he's
| no Steve Jobs, but the board definitely needs to find a CEO,
| stat or that ship's going down.
| Havoc wrote:
| Must be bad layoff decision week. First googles python team now
| Tesla supercharger team
| vardump wrote:
| Perhaps we don't know the whole picture.
|
| I doubt Tesla is going to abandon Superchargers anytime soon.
| thejazzman wrote:
| Who exactly is going to pickup the work?
| citizen_friend wrote:
| Oh so you do know the full picture and organizational
| structure?
| steelframe wrote:
| Electrify America!
|
| (Sorry, I'll show myself out the door.)
| marcusverus wrote:
| Good question. The answer ain't 'nobody', is it? It's almost
| as though, perhaps, we don't know the whole picture.
| peutetre wrote:
| > _Musk said, in his typical bluster, that he wants Tesla to be
| "absolutely hard core" about headcount reduction, saying that
| executives whose subordinates "don't obviously pass the
| excellent, necessary and trustworthy test"_
|
| I'm not sure Musk passes that test.
| GolfPopper wrote:
| He's not talking about executives, he's talking about
| "subordinates".
| mint2 wrote:
| " continued layoffs have even worse optics, given Tesla's move to
| ask shareholders for a $55 billion payout for its CEO just days
| after firing 14,000 people. That $55 billion could pay for 40
| years worth of six-figure salaries for those employees."
|
| Musk is detached from reality. He seems to think firing most of X
| is a resounding success and Tesla, a car manufacturing company,
| needs to do the same. Also that cost cutting and performance
| reviews only apply to others, just like in Twitter and elsewhere
| free speech means his speech not critics.
|
| I really hope he doesn't wreck spaceX too.
| enraged_camel wrote:
| >> I really hope he doesn't wreck spaceX too.
|
| I think SpaceX is one disaster away from suffering the same
| fate, to be honest. Like, if the next Starship doesn't make it
| as far as the previous attempt (for example, if it blows up on
| the way up), Elon is going to come in like a wrecking ball.
|
| The pressure on the SpaceX team must be immense.
| thejazzman wrote:
| Once he rage fires Shotwell.. and given how insane that would
| be only validates its likelihood at this point
| treme wrote:
| you seem naive. SpaceX has made it to MI complex status, and
| US gov will easily bail them out should worst come.
| funac wrote:
| > SpaceX has made it to MI complex status, and US gov will
| easily bail them out should worst come.
|
| immaterial: "the worst" here is elon destroying the
| engineering culture & with it their ability to keep
| improving on what they've done so far. not going bankrupt
| (by way of a bailout or otherwise) is a necessary condition
| for avoiding the worst (boeing syndrome), but it's not
| sufficient
|
| fedgov can pour money into the military industrial complex,
| but it can't do a whole lot more, and that only goes so far
| mjhay wrote:
| Boeing destroyed its engineering culture and it isn't
| going anywhere.
| bunderbunder wrote:
| Suppose for the sake of argument I managed to secure some
| sort of annuity that pays just enough to subsist on,
| starting now.
|
| Knowing that I'm guaranteed enough income to stay
| minimally solvent does not mean I have no reason to care
| about losing additional income streams that enable me to
| have things like vacations and dinners at nice
| restaurants and digital watches.
|
| Similarly, the relative security of the ~1/3 of Boeing's
| revenue that comes from government contracts is probably
| small consolation to its shareholders. They do that
| business more-or-less at cost; essentially 100% of their
| profits come from other sources.
| htrp wrote:
| >They do that business more-or-less at cost;
|
| Aren't all govt contracts cost plus?
| lesuorac wrote:
| Developmental contracts sure.
|
| Buying COTS products; probably not.
| bunderbunder wrote:
| Also, the "plus" part covers both overhead and profit.
| So, depending on what your overhead situation looks like,
| profit can still be minimal or non-positive.
| lesuorac wrote:
| Sure but the "plus" part is capped [1] for cost+plus.
|
| If you're buying AWS compute through GSA I bet the rate
| is more than AWS's costs + 10/15%.
|
| Or if you purchase say post-it notes from Staples; I bet
| they're going to be way more than the cost of
| paper+glue*1.15.
|
| [1]: https://www.acquisition.gov/far/15.404-4#FAR_15_404_
| 4__d941e...
| janalsncm wrote:
| In other words, Space X will exist as long as there are no
| competitors. That gives them years, not decades.
| jml7c5 wrote:
| Are there any competitors expected to match SpaceX's
| launch costs or capacity in the next few years?
| mjhay wrote:
| SpaceX is in a much more solid position. You can tell that
| Musk hasn't interfered in its operations nearly as much as he
| has with Tesla or X (case in point: renaming it "X").
| bunderbunder wrote:
| I gather that SpaceX, too, is cash flow negative and heavily
| invested in moonshot bets.
|
| Meaning that, like for Elon's other companies, they might be
| in an incredibly vulnerable position, financially speaking. A
| disaster could sink the company. But simply failing to have
| some of these risky bets pay off could be just as damaging.
| For example, even if everything in the plan works on a
| technical level, if there isn't enough demand for Starlink's
| service to support the whole Starlink 2 project then that
| might turn the entire Starlink 2 project, including the
| Starship rocket they need to launch these larger satellites,
| into a big money loser.
|
| Not entirely unlike how we're seeing signs that Tesla may not
| be a sustainable business, not necessarily because of
| anything fundamentally wrong with their core business, but
| because they made some over-aggressive assumptions about how
| many golden eggs their goose would lay.
| petre wrote:
| > there isn't enough demand for Starlink's service to
| support the whole Starlink 2 project then that might turn
| the entire Starlink 2 project, including the Starship
| rocket they need to launch these larger satellites, into a
| big money loser
|
| I'm wouldn't worry too much. Uncle Sam probably wants those
| capabilities anyway for the SDA to ramp up the NDSA now
| that the Russian nuclear threat is renewed.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Development_Agency
| lamontcg wrote:
| I think the SpaceX disaster is more likely to be a loss of
| crew event.
| animex wrote:
| $10,000 bonus PER CAR that Tesla has sold in its LIFETIME.
| citizen_friend wrote:
| Did everyone forget how growth valuations work?
|
| Also that amount was from a contract made in 2018.
| bunderbunder wrote:
| I don't think I've ever known how growth valuations work.
|
| Sometimes I feel like the person watching the parade and
| wondering why nobody else is confused by the emperor's
| choice of attire.
| citizen_friend wrote:
| Tesla now sells as many cars in a year as it did in its
| whole lifetime up to 2018.
|
| So that's why it was worth paying Elon that much. The
| current sales position is tremendous.
| svnt wrote:
| The current sales position is 1/6 of Volkswagen.
| latency-guy2 wrote:
| Tesla outsells Volkswagen 8 - 16x.
| reitzensteinm wrote:
| https://cleantechnica.com/2024/02/06/tesla-still-1-in-
| world-...
|
| Worldwide BEV sales 2023:
|
| VW Group - 742k
|
| Tesla - 1,808k
|
| That's 2.5x, how did you get 8-16x?
| citizen_friend wrote:
| This is completely irrelevant to the original claim (it's
| outrageous for elons bonus to be X percent of every
| previous car) or my point (nurturing exponential growth
| is worth burning a lot of early cash flow).
| bunderbunder wrote:
| It's one thing to say Tesla has been successful. It's
| quite another thing to say that Tesla's success justifies
| a market capitalization that is not only the highest in
| the auto industry, but is greater than the combined
| market capitalization of the second through fifth
| automakers.
|
| Despite being the 11th biggest by revenue.
|
| It's true that high-end carmakers seem to get a lot of
| goodwill valuation simply for being high-end carmakers.
| But normally not _that_ much.
| huhuhu111 wrote:
| I knew that he could have reduced the price of these cars...
| they should cost the same as their ICE car equivalent, or
| less.
| talldatethrow wrote:
| That's not how it works. His $55b isn't in cash the company
| has and could have just charged less for the cars.
| huhuhu111 wrote:
| they just charge way too much though... it's a bit like
| Iphones... but both are not appealing to me, specially at
| a premium price
| m463 wrote:
| stock is a separate product than a car.
|
| investors buy stocks.
|
| customers buy cars.
|
| silicon valley's product is stock.
| EA-3167 wrote:
| He's personally very wealthy, seems to have some mental issues,
| and has admitted to having a ketamine habit (although he also
| claims it's good for share prices). That's a combination that
| would make pretty much anyone struggle with attachment to
| reality.
|
| The takeaway for me is that as a fundraiser and hype man,
| before he ruined his reputation, he was pretty successful, but
| in all other ways he's a massive self-promoting hack.
| rchaud wrote:
| He wasn't really talked about as a hype man before, was he?
| The world is full of them: Adam Neumann, Travis Kalanick come
| to mind.
|
| The hagification of Musk in the press was on another level,
| like Steve Jobs, DaVinci and Obama rolled together. That this
| carefully crafted illusion is falling apart due to his online
| ramblings and bizarre business decisions is something worthy
| of study. He and Kanye West share a very similar trajectory
| in this regard.
| dzhiurgis wrote:
| > ketamine habit
|
| I don't think you've ever seen anyone with ketamine habit
| (keywords: UK k-hole).
|
| Pretty stupid thing to say about someone who has medical
| prescription for ketamine to treat depression while they work
| 100hrs per week.
| EA-3167 wrote:
| Maybe working 100 hours a week to the point that you need
| ketamine to cope isn't a very bright idea. Based on the
| Cybertruck and "X", it's easy to see that this wouldn't be
| his first less-than-stellar move on the old 3D chess board.
| TylerE wrote:
| I was gonna say that doesn't math then I realized it's billions
| not millions.
|
| That's over $30,000 for every single car Tesla sold in 2023.
| leereeves wrote:
| It's not a cash payout. It's a stock grant that was worth a
| lot less when it was originally authorized.
|
| It's a weird situation. It sounds like an unconscionable
| amount now only because of Musk's success in raising the
| stock value. Like he's being paid too much because he was too
| successful.
| remus wrote:
| The size of the payout was linked to stock growth targets,
| so when the pay deal was agreed it would have been clear it
| would be worth a massive amount if the stock growth targets
| were hit.
| Modified3019 wrote:
| Oh wow I ended up reading it at millions as well. Likely
| because 55 billion wasn't within the real of belief.
| TylerE wrote:
| Right - I can remember when basically the only number that
| hit was Microsoft's market cap.
| pie420 wrote:
| wow i didn't know that tesla only existed in 2023, and all
| past and future years dont exist
| TylerE wrote:
| Bonuses are typically annual.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| To be clear, the 55 billion is a request to re-authorize his
| compensation for 2018-2022 that Delaware courts invalidated.
| toast0 wrote:
| The shareholders that will be voting to reauthorize are not
| the same shareholders that voted to authorize it originally.
|
| I'm not a direct shareholder, but if the Deleware court gives
| me an option not to pay $55 Billion that I thought was
| committed, I'd strongly consider.
|
| What are the implications of not approving? On the plus side,
| the company keeps the compensation. On the minus side, Musk
| will be upset; and there's a trust issue for future
| compensation. On the neutral side, those receiving future
| compensation will endeavour to follow an approval process
| that is likely to stand up in court.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| I think the incentives are the same if the shareholders are
| the same or not. You covered the implications as I
| understand it.
| tacticalturtle wrote:
| Is it really a minus if Musk is upset? If he's upset enough
| to leave, that seems like a potentially beneficial outcome.
|
| There's got to be some measurable number of people who are
| turned off from buying a Tesla because of his association,
| especially now that alternatives are available.
| EduardoBautista wrote:
| Tesla's current valuation is pretty much thanks to him.
| His personality meme stocked the company to a valuation
| that made no sense.
| janalsncm wrote:
| If I'm a shareholder, I don't want an overly inflated
| stock price. I want a high stock price due to solid
| fundamentals. Tesla was temporarily extremely overvalued,
| but has since lost 60% of its market cap. It's likely
| still overvalued compared with peers. It's a car company,
| not a b2b SaaS company.
|
| Put another way, which company is more likely to exist in
| 10 years: Microsoft or Tesla?
| mempko wrote:
| Not sure why you are down-voted. If you are an investor,
| you want a fair price when you buy. Think of going to a
| store, when there is a sale and prices are below value of
| a product, it's smart to buy. Same goes with stocks.
| ckastner wrote:
| > Tesla's current valuation is pretty much thanks to him.
|
| And nobody has a larger interest in Tesla's valuation
| them Musk himself, the largest shareholder.
|
| He _can 't_ walk and any threats to that effect are
| theatrics. Shareholders would be idiots to re-approve the
| $55bn.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| This assumes he cant sell and leave. It would be costly
| to him, but not impossible. Both sides have leverage in a
| situation of mutual assured destruction. I dont think it
| is accurate to only consider the leverage in one
| direction.
| toast0 wrote:
| It might be the case that shareholders wouldn't like him
| when he's angry?
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| > Musk is detached from reality.
|
| Musk is arguing that paying him $55B to pump the stock price is
| better than paying those employees for 40 years.
|
| If you're a shareholder that only cares about the stock price
| and not the underlying value of the company - that's a decent
| argument.
|
| I wouldn't buy it. But maybe the shareholders will.
| kazen44 wrote:
| the fact that this argument is logical in the current
| economic systems says so much about the sad state of the way
| we structure our economy...
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| Meme stocks are as old as time.
| renegade-otter wrote:
| It's a way to inject "office heroics" via fear, but it also has
| its limits. Once the burnout sets in, everyone is just part of
| the death march at that point, seeing the product or the
| company to its slow demise.
| brutus1213 wrote:
| I think a sad part of the calculus is there are lots of
| bodies willing to be thrown in the grinder. The only danger
| is a real competitor with a different business model that
| lets them treat people better.
|
| Case in point is AWS. I've been reading they are a PIP
| factory for the last couple of years. Doesn't seem like they
| have a major issue hiring (partly due to lack of a competitor
| who is doing better).
| leereeves wrote:
| I wonder if there's a slight possibility that Musk stopped
| caring about Tesla's long term success when his payment was
| cancelled, and he is now willing to temporarily inflate the
| price and dump the stock.
| rchaud wrote:
| I imagine he staked quite a bit of Tesla stock as
| collateral for the many billions in loans still owed for
| the Twitter purchase. If the stock value declines too
| much (down 35% this year), his creditors will want a
| higher interest rate to reflect the higher risk of
| default.
| ryandrake wrote:
| This is one of those things that Software Engineers don't
| believe until there is an extended Bear market: There is
| always a line of eager beavers outside your company's door
| just waiting to take your place if you leave. The last
| decade (especially the hot job market of 2020-2022) lulled
| everyone into a feeling of job security and even
| irreplaceability.
| unsupp0rted wrote:
| > He seems to think firing most of X is a resounding success
|
| Isn't it? I use X every day and it seems to be fine now and
| getting better on a good cadence.
| lesuorac wrote:
| Do you pay for X?
|
| Last I heard he's hemorrhaging paying customers (advertisers)
| who while publicly say it has to do with <insert popular
| issue>; privately say it has to do with worsening ROI
| (targeting).
| mint2 wrote:
| Is that why fidelity repeatedly writes down the value of
| their portion of the needlessly name changed company that
| hemorrhaged advertisers due his personal quirky decisions and
| favored groups?
| unsupp0rted wrote:
| It sounds like you're talking about a different topic.
|
| I'm saying the platform seems to be good and getting
| better, not worse.
| mint2 wrote:
| Is it? I used to find myself looking at Twitter due to
| the large number of places linking to it and orgs posting
| on it.
|
| Like the local earthquake tracker on Twitter used to be
| great, it became unusable after musk mayhem as Twitter
| intentionally only showed many years old posts to those
| not signed in.
|
| Nowadays that's super rare. And I used to remember seeing
| links to a lot of articles published as like 13 tweets, I
| can't even remember the last time I saw one of those. I
| think some used to be linked form HN.
|
| Twitter is basically a zombie now. It's way worse for the
| former user base at large.
|
| It's true that one groups probably think it's better,
| those who were banned and are allowed back for example
| and those who liked the banned accounts.
| babypuncher wrote:
| Is it getting better? The bots have only gotten worse. They
| even have blue checkmarks[1] and the company does fuck all
| about it. And that's before we start talking about the
| massive hypocrisy present in Musk's implementation of "free
| speech".
|
| 1. https://i.postimg.cc/Bbq0yX4J/image.png
| mrguyorama wrote:
| "Getting better" how? Be specific?
| unsupp0rted wrote:
| No downtime, my "For You" tab is interesting, media sharing
| seems to be good... if anybody other than Musk were at the
| helm, there'd be nothing here to complain about.
| matthewdgreen wrote:
| > I really hope he doesn't wreck spaceX too.
|
| We don't really need Tesla or Twitter/X. But we really do need
| SpaceX. He's already moved it to Texas to shield himself from
| lawsuits, so I wouldn't count on it surviving intact.
| johnthescott wrote:
| > so I wouldn't count on it surviving intact.
|
| why?
| yumraj wrote:
| > Musk is detached from reality.
|
| Don't think so, it's just that he's focused on another reality
| - losing the crown of the richest person in the world. And,
| he's doing everything to keep that crown, everything else be
| dammed.
| highwaylights wrote:
| You either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself
| become Russ Hanneman
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| Side note: The "Tres Comas" Tequila is actually pretty
| good. Surprising that it's been 4 1/2 years since it
| debuted as a promo for the show and they're still making it
| today, years after the show ended.
| r00fus wrote:
| He's #3 behind Jeff Bezos and the Bernard Arnault. That was
| before Tesla's very bad month.
| constantcrying wrote:
| The claim about pay is a complete lie. Musk doesn't demand
| money, he demands control.
|
| The alleged money he asks for does not exist, it is just shares
| in Tesla, which are currently owned by the company. It's
| bizarre how misinformed these Journalists are, the real story
| is far more interesting then just Musk being greedy.
| cs702 wrote:
| WTF? This is utterly bananas. I don't get it.
|
| The long-term cost of treating longtime, loyal, talented
| employees like Rebecca Tinucci as... disposable could be very
| high.
|
| It could even threaten the company's survival.
|
| But... I'm going to give Musk the benefit of the doubt, because
| he has proven me -- and lots of people who are way smarter than
| me -- wrong, again and again, over the past two decades. He has a
| long track record of making bets that look crazy-stupid in the
| moment but turn out to be crazy-brilliant in hindsight.
|
| The jury is out.
| dragontamer wrote:
| > He has a long track record of making bets that look crazy-
| stupid in the moment but turn out to be crazy-brilliant in
| hindsight.
|
| Like Cybertruck?
|
| Tesla Semi?
|
| Full self driving in 2017?
|
| Robotic snake to automatically plug into your car and charge
| it?
|
| Dojo?
|
| Hyperloop?
|
| Solar roofs?
|
| Battery Swap?
|
| Dogecoin?
|
| Tesla Roadster?
|
| Twitter?
| thejazzman wrote:
| That snake was bad ass I heard Elon designed and built it
| himself in his garage
|
| They didn't commercialize it because no one else was capable
| of making one and it was too much work for one person to mass
| produce
| potatochup wrote:
| Definitely not true. Source: I worked at Tesla at the time
| of the Snake robot.
| dragontamer wrote:
| The above post looks like carefully constructed satire,
| mostly there to make fun of people who hero-worship Elon
| Musk into thinking that Elon Musk personally handled all
| tasks at Tesla like Tony Stark / Ironman.
| ImPostingOnHN wrote:
| Poe's law strikes again
| orwin wrote:
| People really believe that? He seems he would have troubles
| changing a tire, but maybe he's a great mechanic?
| treme wrote:
| Tesla and SpaceX alone gives him enough credibilty for life
| as CEO
| lenerdenator wrote:
| SpaceX, maybe.
|
| He's actively sinking Tesla and that's his cash cow.
| dragontamer wrote:
| What decision did Elon make at Tesla was good for Tesla in
| the last 10 years?
|
| I listed off the big stuff I can remember above. I'll go
| add "Alien Dreadnaught" and full automation of the Model 3
| as another failure. Turns out that humans are way better
| than machines for the assembly line still, even today.
|
| ------
|
| So far, the best thing for Tesla so far has been Elon Musk
| losing focus and thinking about Twitter for a few years
| instead of sending Tesla down another $inkhole to lose
| another $billion on an insane, underdeveloped idea.
|
| Well, aside from Optimus I guess.
| sanderjd wrote:
| This is, frankly, a very silly way of thinking.
|
| Tesla and SpaceX are very admirable businesses that Musk
| deserves a lot of credit for, I'm totally with you there.
| But that someone made good decisions at one point in time
| does not imply that decisions made later are also good.
|
| Businesses change, people change, the world changes.
| TheCleric wrote:
| For the immense returns that he's been getting for over 40
| years, that alone gives Bernie Madoff credibility for life
| in investing.
| Terr_ wrote:
| "The 8 years of the Bill Cosby show alone give Bill Cosby
| enough credibility for life as a wholesome family man."
| Avshalom wrote:
| Oh on the battery swap note I heard recently that may have
| been a ... scam?
|
| Apparently there was an increased credit available for EVs
| that could be fully charged in under x-time and by claiming
| that they could battery swap tesla got a bunch of extra
| money.
| cs702 wrote:
| Thank you for that. It made me chuckle!
|
| Here are some counter-examples:
|
| * A new car company making a new kind of vehicle. The first
| time I heard he wanted to build a new car company that would
| sell EVs, I dismissed it as crazy. Tesla now sells close to
| 2M vehicles a year, roughly comparable to BMW.
|
| * A new network of EV charging stations. The first time I
| heard about it I thought the company would never recoup the
| capital cost.
|
| * A new rocket company. The first time I heard about SpaceX's
| early days I dismissed it as crazy. SpaceX now sends 10x more
| cargo to orbit than everyone else, public and private,
| combined.
|
| * A new satellite-Internet service. Prior to Starlink, every
| previous attempt to offer cheap and reliable Internet service
| via satellite had gone bankrupt.
|
| * A new brain-machine interface. The first time I heard about
| Neuralink I dismissed it as "way too early." The company just
| showed a disabled man using a computer with his thoughts.
|
| * The latest beta version of the self-driving software (FSD
| Beta >= 12.3.6). I've tested it and I am... impressed. Even
| though it happened much later than Musk predicted. Here's
| what it's like: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eIjOs1Gum2M
|
| * Dojo, which is now online. There's a picture of it on the
| last quarterly deck: https://digitalassets.tesla.com/tesla-
| contents/image/upload/... -- though I don't know if it will
| be able to keep up with Nvidia's offerings, which are always
| improving.
|
| Some things you mention failed, and the jury is still out on
| Cybertruck, Roadster, Solar Roof, and X (Twitter).
|
| But the track record is there.
| sanderjd wrote:
| It is an impressive track record. And something that does
| frustrate me is people who want to entirely dismiss his
| track record in order to bolster their current criticisms
| of him. I think that is motivated reasoning.
|
| But I think your benefit of the doubt in his judgement is
| similarly misguided.
|
| What I think is that he has been very adept in having a
| bold vision, using his showmanship to get the funding,
| talent, and visibility to get it off the ground, and then
| leveraging that into a feedback loop that bolsters his
| credibility for the next bold vision. I think it's very
| admirable that he has executed that playbook so well for so
| long! (And I think it's good for society that Tesla and
| SpaceX and Starlink and Neuralink exist, and I certainly
| appreciate his role in that.)
|
| But I think his track record for things that _aren 't_ part
| of that playbook is pretty bad. Buying Twitter was not a
| bold vision, it was dumb very-online pettiness. And there's
| now a history of specific business decisions that seem to
| come directly from him, which I think have just been bad.
| Not bold visionary risks that didn't work out, just
| foreseeable bad outcomes from bad, impulsive, ego-driven
| decisions.
|
| So sure, next time he's spinning up something visionary in
| AI or biotech or energy or who-knows-what, I'll pay
| attention and suspend my disbelief. But on the boring day
| to day executive decision making that every company has to
| do, I think he has earned _less_ credibility than most
| (maybe all) leaders of businesses of similar scale.
| cs702 wrote:
| Thank you. I find your comment insightful... but I don't
| think it gives him proper credit for a _lot_ of "boring
| day-to-day decisions" he's made at Tesla and SpaceX,
| particularly in operations and manufacturing, over the
| past two decades. Tesla's early team gives him all credit
| for ramping up Fremont's Model 3 production in 2019 to
| ~2.5x what even his execs had said was physically
| possible. He proved all of them -- and a lot of smart
| short-sellers -- wrong.
| sanderjd wrote:
| Mostly happy to agree to disagree on this!
|
| But I also think that it is mostly in the last few years
| (after your example) that his judgement has become
| especially questionable. There are examples from earlier
| on that I think can now be seen as a through line to
| where he's ended up today, but I think it is only in the
| last few years - basically, as his social media
| involvement has increasingly become a distraction - that
| he seems (to me) to have lost the plot with respect to
| managing his companies day to day. And I'm also not
| saying that every decision he makes is bad, but to me I
| think the recent track record is bad enough that these
| kinds of decisions deserve to be evaluated on their own,
| rather than given the benefit of the doubt.
| cs702 wrote:
| > but I think it is only in the last few years -
| basically, as his social media involvement has
| increasingly become a distraction - that he seems (to me)
| to have lost the plot with respect to managing his
| companies day to day.
|
| Hmm... That's a reasonable conclusion. You could be
| right.
|
| I'll be a bit more humble and admit that there's a lot I
| don't know, so for me, the jury is out.
|
| Things may implode at Tesla, or maybe the company will
| grow 10x. I wouldn't be surprised either way!
| sanderjd wrote:
| Respectfully, I think you're trying to do the humble
| thing by taking a neutral position, which I think is
| laudable, but your position in this thread has not
| actually been neutral. Your position has been (and my
| interpretation of this latest comment is that it still
| is) that this decision is more likely to actually be a
| good one, _because_ it was made by Musk. But that 's not
| a "humble" position any more than mine is. The humble
| position might be something like "beats me! what do I
| know?". I think your position is more like "deferential".
|
| Sorry if this turned out to just be a semantic point
| about word choice. I originally thought that maybe it
| wasn't, that maybe there's something real here about what
| it means to have a humble view, but now I think maybe you
| just did mean something more like "deferential", in which
| case this was a pointless comment and I apologize :).
| cs702 wrote:
| No. As I wrote in the top comment of this thread[a] and
| just repeated, _the jury is out._
|
| That phrase has a precise meaning:
|
| https://www.merriam-
| webster.com/dictionary/the%20jury%20is%2...
|
| --
|
| [a] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40211380
| sanderjd wrote:
| You also wrote:
|
| > _But... I 'm going to give Musk the benefit of the
| doubt, because ..._
|
| I think we're both agreeing that "the jury is out", but
| disagreeing about which side of the question that jury is
| deciding should be the one with the "presumption of
| innocence" :)
| ImPostingOnHN wrote:
| Yeah, there's an even _larger_ track record of making
| decisions that look unwise in the moment and everyone
| told him they were unwise and turns out they were unwise.
| That Bayesian prior makes it the most likely outcome
| until _the jury returns_ with sufficiently convincing
| evidence to the contrary.
| matthewdgreen wrote:
| If you take his good and bad decisions and order them
| chronologically, do any patterns emerge?
| zachmu wrote:
| You can just say: I don't know. I don't know why Tesla is
| pursuing layoffs, or this particular layoff strategy.
|
| And because I don't know, I don't have a strong opinion
| about it one way or the other. That's all "benefit of the
| doubt" means. "I don't know one way or the other, but
| this guy has a pretty good track record, so until I know
| more I won't assume anything bad."
| sanderjd wrote:
| "Benefit of the doubt" is not a neutral "I don't know".
| The commenter I responded to is giving the claim "this is
| a good decision" the benefit of the doubt, and I'm giving
| the opposite claim the benefit of the doubt. Neither of
| us is saying we know for sure, or even with much
| confidence, which is the right claim, but our defaults,
| our "priors", are opposite.
| dragontamer wrote:
| > Like a new car company making a new kind of vehicle. The
| first time I heard he wanted to build a new car company
| that would sell EVs, I dismissed it as crazy. Tesla now
| sells close to 2M vehicles a year, roughly comparable to
| BMW.
|
| Martin Eberhard and JB Straubel came up with that idea.
| Elon Musk's contribution was suing them so that he can be
| called a founder.
|
| > Like a new network of EV charging stations. The first
| time I heard about it I thought the company would never
| recoup the capital cost.
|
| You're literally commenting on an article where the ENTIRE
| supercharging team was just fired, presumably to save money
| at Tesla.
|
| > Like Dojo, which is now online. There's a picture of it
| on the last quarterly deck:
| https://digitalassets.tesla.com/tesla-
| contents/image/upload/... -- though I don't know if it will
| be able to keep up with Nvidia's offerings, which are
| always improving.
|
| Dojo is a 7nm design while NVidia's is a 3nm design. It
| won't keep up at all, despite costing Tesla likely a
| $Billion+ to produce (between $100M mask costs, large
| software teams working for multiple years, etc. etc. it
| wouldn't surprise me to see Dojo's total cost be well in
| excess of a $Billion).
| cs702 wrote:
| > You're literally commenting on an article where the
| ENTIRE supercharging team was just fired, presumably to
| save money at Tesla.
|
| Oh I'm in shock about that. As I wrote above, "WTF?"
|
| Whatever it is Musk is trying to do at Tesla, I don't get
| it.
|
| But given his track record, I'll give him the benefit of
| the doubt.
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| Are you saying he isn't allowed to have some failures on his
| very long list of ideas?
|
| SpaceX and Tesla are very likely his biggest successes, by
| all measures of the word. The amount of success these
| obtained easily tower over the failures by several orders of
| magnitude.
| browningstreet wrote:
| Except when you factor in timelines.. his successes are
| from before, not lately.
|
| From a trend perspective, he's disrupting continuities that
| don't seem rational to disrupt and shouldn't prevent him
| from moonshot-ing separately.
| Fricken wrote:
| Also, the "Alien Dreadnaught", a fully automated Model 3
| production line with robots that move so fast you won't even
| be able to see them!
|
| It was when he tried to pass that one off with a straight
| face that drove the final nail into the coffin containing any
| delusions I may have entertained about Elon's competence.
| JojoFatsani wrote:
| Don't forget the boring company! Let's invent the subway but
| worse
| thejazzman wrote:
| Lots of famous scams became insanely huge before collapsing
| under their facade. Enron, Theranos, etc.
|
| You rarely see any evidence that Elon does anything but pay
| (...sometimes...), threaten and scare people into delivering on
| his demands
|
| Everything is about first principles. You know, the most basic
| simple starting blocks. They teach it to high school kids.
| People act like that's magic....
| ethagknight wrote:
| Enron and theranos were actual scams though
| lenerdenator wrote:
| Enron had a decent core business (market making) that was
| run by absolute psychopaths.
|
| Theranos was a scam though.
| ethagknight wrote:
| I mean... sure... it was also propagating a massive,
| institutional scale accounting fraud that brought down a
| "Big Five" accounting firm. Comparing these two companies
| to Tesla is insincere.
|
| FSD is really the only product sold by Tesla that's been
| a true let down for years vs the marketing hype, but they
| have not given up on it, and are now delivering on the
| hype. The rest of their main line products are industry
| leading.
| lenerdenator wrote:
| I'm not sure I'd limit it to FSD. The CyberTruck has
| several very glaring flaws that would not have happened
| had someone at Tesla talked Elon into accepting just a
| bit of conventional wisdom from the automotive industry.
| Things like "provide a protective layer of paint over the
| sheetmetal of the vehicle's body to prevent rust."
|
| The new Tesla Roadster and Semis for commercial customers
| are either way off their timetable or facing further
| production problems.
|
| Fit and finish on some models remains subpar.
|
| I don't think it's enough to sink the company in the
| near-term, particularly in the US, but it's proof that
| charisma and vision doesn't solve issues with industrial
| capacity.
| ethagknight wrote:
| Disagree on that. Subpar quality, delays, rejecting
| conventional wisdom are not scams or fraud, though it is
| risky. He isn't promising magic that doesn't exist a la
| theranos, and he has even personally stated TSLA is
| overvalued (vs Enron...). except for FSD, which now
| exists with some imperfection.
|
| I don't own TSLA, I have owned a Y for 3 years and love
| it. I have a cybertruck on order knowing it may be my
| dumbest purchase of my life, but also maybe the best. I
| think Tesla is an amazing tech company that is needlessly
| brutal to its employees.
| rurp wrote:
| Enron developed quite a few actual energy projects in the
| real world. They were as much of a legit company as a car
| manufacturer, but the scam part of Enron eventually got so
| big that it blew everything up.
| Terr_ wrote:
| Many big scams involve substantial "real" components, and
| sometimes the scammers have a balancing-act where too much
| success in either portion can threaten the other.
|
| See also: _Lying for Money: How Legendary Frauds Reveal the
| Workings of the World_ by Dan Davies.
| rchaud wrote:
| Theranos fell apart the second they signed a deal with
| Walgreens and it became obvious they were using machines made
| by other vendors to do blood tests, because their own thing
| didn't work.
|
| Enron got away with as much as they did because of the far
| more generous accounting rules that were in play back then.
| cbeach wrote:
| I've owned a Tesla for the last five years. It's every bit as
| brilliant as Musk promised, and I can assure you Tesla is not
| a scam.
| yifanl wrote:
| Past performance is not indicative of future returns.
| autonomousErwin wrote:
| I really wonder how true/untrue this is? For example, if
| you've founded and exited a company before I'm guessing
| you're more likely to do it again (this is gut feeling - I
| don't have data so happy for someone to disprove this with a
| study) but is that only because people _think_ you 're more
| likely to succeed and therefore give you more resources
| (capital, employees joining, customers paying etc.) improving
| your chances thus perpetuating this idea.
|
| It's like some kind of twisted Hot Hand fallacy
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hot_hand) that bends in on
| itself actually making it not a fallacy if everyone believes
| it.
| sanderjd wrote:
| What are some recent examples of things that turned out to be
| crazy-brilliant that people have been proven wrong about?
| techdmn wrote:
| Hmm, time for the over under. Which happens first: Musk is
| replaced as CEO, or he drives Tesla into the ground? And in the
| latter case, how long do we think it will take?
| davidcbc wrote:
| That's not how an over-under works
| techdmn wrote:
| Fair. How about: "How long Musk continues to be CEO of Tesla,
| whether because he is replaced or because Tesla goes out of
| business."
| justin66 wrote:
| I guess the way to keep your engineering job at Tesla is to
| perpetually work on something that isn't finished, like self
| driving.
| Terr_ wrote:
| "Next year, oh next year, you'll love it, just next year, it's
| only some months a-wayyyyy."
|
| (To the tune of "Tomorrow" from _Annie_.)
| ra7 wrote:
| In my opinion, this is all a massive gamble by Musk to pivot
| Tesla to an AI-first tech company. Except that Tesla cannot
| really do AI well and don't have the resources or talent the
| likes of Google, Meta, OpenAI, etc. does to do novel research and
| push AI forward.
|
| And he has to make this gamble because Tesla's fundamentals as a
| car company is going down the drain and its entire valuation
| hinges on the fact that they are not just a car company. That's
| why he's constantly announcing new products (robotaxis, humanoid
| robots) that are nowhere close to materializing, making visits to
| China to ink HD maps deal with Baidu for FSD and claiming to
| spend $10B on AI infrastructure this year.
|
| He seems to be in forever stock pump mode, so much so that
| Tesla's best product till date might just be its stock.
| renegade-otter wrote:
| Except that AI has not shown itself to be useful, at least not
| considering the staggering costs, anyway. Tens of billions of
| dollars to... fix people's grammar and generate tons of SEO
| spam? What PROBLEM are they solving here?
| bunderbunder wrote:
| I think the parent poster stated it pretty clearly: the
| problem they're trying to solve is how to keep the stock
| price floating at a multiple of what the business's actual
| fundamentals suggest it should be.
|
| The problem is, while that worked well for a good 10 or 20
| years, it seems that people are now starting to catch on to
| the scheme. But I'm not sure that means that you can just
| stop doing it. As someone elsewhere in the thread pointed
| out, dragging things out as much as you can is probably
| preferable to a sudden and brutal value correction for just
| about everyone with actual skin in the game.
| 93po wrote:
| FSD is currently using neural-network style AI, and it's
| frankly amazing to use and watch and is massively useful.
| stetrain wrote:
| In what way is it useful? What value is being provided? In
| my experience it requires constant supervision and
| readiness to intervene at any moment. There are plenty of
| reports and photos of it running wheels into curbs with
| little time for the driver to react.
|
| Given that, while using it you do not regain any time or
| attention that you would have otherwise spent driving. That
| doesn't mean it isn't impressive. A car that can drive
| itself like a 15-year-old on their first outing with a
| fresh learner's permit that needs constant coaching from a
| parent or instructor is very impressive, just not useful.
|
| I will say that in clear conditions on long highway trips,
| basic Autopilot does have utility. It does allow you to
| divert some attention from keeping the car between the
| lines and matching the speed of the car in front, and use
| that attention to keep an eye on the large traffic picture,
| and arrive to your destination slightly less fatigued.
| Using FSD on city streets seems like the opposite of that
| to me, an increase in stress and workload that currently
| provides no practical utility.
| mplewis wrote:
| Is that the thing that keeps crashing people into highway
| barriers?
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| That, and inadequate sensor diversity and coverage.
| cbeach wrote:
| Any recent version of FSD (i.e. 12.3.x) is technology close
| to magic.
|
| There was a time when HN would recognise technological
| acheievement on its own merit, without allowing personal
| politics to cloud our judgement.
|
| But sadly, we're in a perverse era of political tribalism
| where FSD is bad because https://elonbad.com/
| nojvek wrote:
| FSD is cool as a great demo. But the optics and facts are
| that it's got people killed. Multiple people over the
| years. Silly mistakes causing crashes.
|
| It will get better but definitely does not live up to the
| "full self driving" marketing hype. That kills the magic.
|
| Meanwhile look at Waymo. They don't make a lot of noise.
| They take safety really seriously and keep on improving
| actual "self driving cars" city by city. Zero people
| dead.
|
| I've sat in both. FSD was a great demo, but Waymo truly
| felt like magic. No driver at all!
| mbrumlow wrote:
| I don't think we will ever have any self driving tech
| that inter mingles with non self driving cars that will
| result in zero deaths.
|
| While sad, mile for mile FSD is better than humans.
| Mawr wrote:
| FSD only drives in a subset of conditions humans drive in
| so the comparison is invalid.
| acdha wrote:
| > While sad, mile for mile FSD is better than humans.
|
| For this statement to be correct, we'd need to have full
| disclosure of all travel using FSD at any point,
| accidents which happened anytime FSD was active or had
| been recently deactivated (for example, that guy who fell
| asleep counts even if FSD deactivated a minute before the
| vehicle crashed), and be able to compare that to the same
| trips driven by human drivers. You especially need to
| avoid including incidents in the human stats which are in
| conditions where FSD would do even worse.
| boringg wrote:
| I subscribe to this thought. HN has really made a turn
| that anything Elon does is bad even when he has managed
| to pull off some unbelievable feats. He isn't binary in
| his accomplishments as most people are fairly complex.
|
| It's a sad state of affairs - though I imagine its mostly
| cross-over of younger generations blending in their
| polarizing reddit politics over here. It is a dilutive
| process unfortunately.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| "Any recent version", because "still recent, but not AS
| recent versions" were lucky to navigate a well marked
| roundabout in daylight without causing near misses.
|
| FSD will be "close to magic" when it's 11pm on a
| Pittsburgh night in January, with the snow coming down,
| road markings barely visible, if at all, and it still
| gets you home.
| everforward wrote:
| I don't think they lead the pack on that, though. Everybody
| in the self-driving space is using AI to some degree.
|
| E.g. Waymo was at 17,311 miles per disengagement (human
| takeover) in their 2023 report, and they're not even the
| top. Zoox was the top at 177,602 miles per disengagement,
| which is shockingly good if they're not gaming those
| numbers with tiny service areas or something.
|
| I don't think Tesla publishes their disengagement data, but
| what I can find crowdsourced from their users is pretty bad
| relative to the above. The most optimistic number I could
| find was from 2022 at ~400 miles per disengagement. That's
| not even very good for 2022; Mercedes-Benz was at 1,400
| miles per disengagement, and I didn't even know they had a
| self-driving division. Nissan was at 149
| miles/disengagement, which makes Nissan their closest
| competitor by capabilities (the next highest after Tesla
| was QCraft.ai at 863 miles/disengagement, no idea who they
| are).
| boringg wrote:
| You have to remember a lot of those expenses are actually
| goosing the companies revenues side with low qual revenue. A
| good portion of investment dollars into OpenAI are with
| Microsoft credits -- which OpenAI then uses as opposed to
| real money.
|
| Doesn't answer your problem issue - though the real dollar
| cost of investment and training is lower.
| demondemidi wrote:
| It's good at wake word detection and industrial anomaly
| autocorrelation.
|
| That's about it.
| Reubend wrote:
| Yes, that seems correct from what I've seen. And if self
| driving can be improved enough, then it will pay off. However,
| I remain skeptical that he'll be able to improve it enough to
| compensate for other deficiencies in the product.
| rchaud wrote:
| > And if self driving can be improved enough, then it will
| pay off.
|
| Hasn't Uber been waiting for the same thing to save it?
| ryandrake wrote:
| > He seems to be in forever stock pump mode, so much so that
| Tesla's best product till date might just be its stock.
|
| A lot of companies seem to be gutting everything to the point
| where their only product is their stock.
| iancmceachern wrote:
| This isn't new. Hp, IBM, GE, on and on
| quantified wrote:
| The TV series "Silicon Valley" does not disappoint.
| BeFlatXIII wrote:
| I can't wait to point and laugh when the correction comes
| due.
| tills13 wrote:
| you won't be laughing when your and your parents' pensions
| are wiped out because they buy proportionally into the
| S&P500.
| ShinTakuya wrote:
| It won't be a big deal given 5 or 10 years.
| ProjectArcturis wrote:
| If you're a top-tier AI researcher, why TF would you choose
| Tesla to work for? The shine has gone off Musk as a super-
| genius. All you'd be getting is an arbitrary, capricious boss
| and terrible work hours.
| boshalfoshal wrote:
| Tesla AI orgs can pay well above market for AI talent. Thats
| about the only reason anyone would join. If you are
| insensitive to work hours but want to get paid, its not the
| worst option.
| acdha wrote:
| Do they really outbid Google, Microsoft, Facebook, OpenAI,
| Apple, etc.? I totally believe they pay better than the
| average startup but those companies are spraying money
| around right now and their stock options have a lot more
| upside - Tesla's P/E is wildly high so they'd need a
| phenomenal reversal in fortune to drive it enough higher
| for anyone to see a great return.
| bamboozled wrote:
| And even if you delivered something nice you could still get
| fired for something stupid. No thanks.
| bdjsiqoocwk wrote:
| > That's why he's constantly announcing
|
| Security fraud.
| hankchinaski wrote:
| The real question is why people keep working for these obnoxious
| companies/leaders, I rather watch grass grow than work for Tesla
| and that egomaniac of Elon smuck
| ethagknight wrote:
| Tesla is in a bit of a bind in that the model y is difficult to
| improve (beyond the upcoming highland refresh). Fundamentally, it
| does its job so well that all it needs are minor tweaks.
|
| Supercharging network is essentially complete from a fundamentals
| perspective, you can nearly go anywhere with a EV with a bit of
| planning. The market can fill in the gaps.
|
| The roadster and semi situations are headscratchers, but I guess
| Tesla doesn't want to hassle with a "sports car" with the same
| performance as its biggest sedan. I don't think the Semi really
| works purely from an energy density perspective. Diesel-electric
| hybrids make far more sense for big rigs for current battery
| tech. The Tesla semi is sorta stuck.
|
| The layoffs make sense in that light. They have implemented the
| step change in Ev Manufacturing, built the machine to build the
| machines, are very close with FSD, built the charging network...
| working to avoid innovators dilemma, perhaps?
|
| Treating employees poorly is no good.
| xvector wrote:
| Advice for future Musk employees: Do a somewhat shitty job,
| otherwise you'll get fired as soon as you build a stable
| product.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| same could be said for home builders and heart surgeons. Do a
| shitty job or you wont be needed anymore.
| ImPostingOnHN wrote:
| Home-building companies and hospitals _do_ need home
| builders and heart surgeons. Are they all doing shitty
| jobs?
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| And Tesla still has employees, but fewer than before.
|
| I was trying to highlight the idea that most workers dont
| have to rely on having a shitty work product to ensure
| their job security.
|
| This itself is a reaction to the idea that a job offer is
| a life long commitment akin to marriage. In a healthy
| labor market, employers would want to retain talent
| because it is profitable to do so. I don't employers
| retaining unproductive employees is a desirable state.
| mandeepj wrote:
| > And Tesla still has employees, but fewer than before
|
| They know they can hire more; Anytime they'd post an ad,
| there'd be millions of applicants. So, the input funnel
| is not their problem.
|
| https://www.businesstoday.in/technology/news/story/much-
| more...
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Indeed.
|
| This means that they can employ more people when it is
| productive to do so, and let them go when they dont need
| or want them.
|
| I think this is a good thing in general. I dont think we
| should structure our expectations or the labor market
| around the idea that companies should retain unprofitable
| workers.
| matthewdgreen wrote:
| Developing a bad reputation is like sunburn. It doesn't
| turn into cancer instantly, but it slowly accumulates
| damage over time. Right now a top worker (particularly in
| a critical field like AI) has a lot of choices, and the
| company that gets a reputation for randomly firing entire
| teams is going to be a harder sell.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Perhaps, but that is a strategy decision for the company,
| and potential employee.
| mandeepj wrote:
| Checkout Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. Those who need a
| job urgently especially now a days wouldn't look into
| "reputation". They may not even leave later as long as
| their needs are met.
|
| https://canadacollege.edu/dreamers/docs/Maslows-
| Hierarchy-of...
| ImPostingOnHN wrote:
| _> I was trying to highlight the idea that most workers
| dont have to rely on having a shitty work product to
| ensure their job security._
|
| I think, then, that we're saying the same thing?
|
| That, yes, most workers, like heart surgeons, or
| engineers at a good tech company, don't have to do a
| shitty job to ensure job security, whereas Musk's
| employees do, because that means Musk will retain them
| while firing many workers who do a good job. I don't
| think either Musk retaining unproductive employees or
| firing productive employees are desirable, but that seems
| to be what he's doing, hence the advice spawning this
| thread.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| I guess I just dont understand where that assumption
| comes from. How is this or any tech layoff different?
| Builders and surgeons do suffer layoffs when they dont
| bring in more revenue than they cost.
|
| There are tons of industries where jobs, projects, and
| labor demands are cyclic that dont resort to cynical
| employee sabotage.
|
| I guess this is part of a greater pet-peeve where every
| time a layoff comes up the predominant sentiment is
| either: 1) that the workers are productive revenue
| generators and the company is stupid and less informed
| than random outsiders or 2) employment should not be
| contingent on the employer ROI.
|
| In my opinion at least, jobs aren't guaranteed lifelong
| appointments. They are open ended contracts that either
| party can terminate any time. Termination from either
| side isn't a moral transgression in general, but I
| understand there can be some issues on the margin.
|
| Im genuinely perplexed by others reactions and I think my
| post was an attempt to get at why so many people see it
| different
| ImPostingOnHN wrote:
| _> I guess I just dont understand where that assumption
| comes from._
|
| It comes from multiple people in this post, so it might
| be worth just asking them, if you want to find out. I'm
| sure the posters are willing to answer a good faith
| question.
|
| _> I guess this is part of a greater pet-peeve where
| every time a layoff comes up the predominant sentiment is
| either: 1) that the workers are productive revenue
| generators and the company is stupid and less informed
| than random outsiders or 2) employment should not be
| contingent on the employer ROI._
|
| I have not seen this, but there _are_ assumptions that
| the employees fired were somehow unprofitable. Perhaps at
| another company, this might be a safer assumption. In
| this case, it 's more likely the action was irrational,
| impulsive, and drug- and/or ego-fueled. We'd need some
| evidence that they were fired because they were worth
| less than they cost, to make that assumption.
| ein0p wrote:
| To be fair that's good advice for most people in large
| corporations. I've even seen people deliberately spin up
| crises out of nothing to then heroically solve them and get
| an easy promo.
| 93po wrote:
| Semi has specific use cases where it's great, it's not
| necessarily economic for all use cases as of today though
| ethagknight wrote:
| Its target market, per Tesla, is not those use cases. I think
| electric yard tractors are already a thing.
|
| The "electrify road shipping" would go a lot smoother if
| Tesla was honest about "electric performance + a diesel base
| load" but I guess Elon doesn't want to concede the argument?
| Honestly surprised no one else has moved in this space??
| Maybe it just doesn't work?
| xvector wrote:
| Musk's companies do great stuff but I wouldn't be caught dead
| working under him. An unwise decision in so many ways.
| Tiktaalik wrote:
| Seems troubling for the recent vendors Ford and Rivian that just
| signed on to be users of the Supercharger network if the thing
| now has high odds of (figuratively) rusting away without support.
|
| I wonder if Tesla is in any breaches of contracts that they may
| have signed with these companies, and how much Ford/Rivian paid
| for acccess.
| 4b11b4 wrote:
| I doubt it's going to rust away, they just don't need a large
| team anymore.
| wnevets wrote:
| Why would an AI company need employees to build cars and its
| charging network? /s
| tristanb wrote:
| I have a decent amount of Tesla shares, that I purchased around
| 2017. All I want is a shareholder vote to get rid of Elon. His
| time has passed.
| cbeach wrote:
| So, a very smart CEO works for six years to turn a minor
| automotive startup into the world's most valuable car company,
| enriching you while you sat on shares in the company. And
| despite this, you think he deserves his compensation (in the
| form of shares in the company) to be cancelled? Even though it
| was contractually promised, and agreed by shareholders? Bear in
| mind that the package is only worth a large amount because
| Tesla has grown so hugely under Musk's leadership.
|
| I'm interested to know how many other HNers also hold this
| belief, or think this is a reasonable way to treat
| entrepreneurs in America?
| JojoFatsani wrote:
| Not OP but as a very minor shareholder..
|
| I think it's reasonable not to allow a single employee to be
| compensated (55b$) more than all the EBITDA the company has
| ever made.
|
| I think it's reasonable to question the decision making
| demonstrated by firing the most successful team at the
| company and put the major competitive advantage at risk.
|
| I think it's reasonable to question the constant monkeying
| with product and design (Cybertruck, removal of loved
| features like LIDAR or physical wiper blade controls).
|
| I think it's reasonable to question how the CEO has lost
| first mover advantage so badly by failing to improve products
| and introduce new models as the legacy competition and
| foreign companies quickly have caught up.
|
| I think it's reasonable to want an engaged, full-time CEO who
| is not distracted by executive responsibilities at several
| other ventures, half of which are actively failing as well.
| cbeach wrote:
| When the deal was agreed, it wasn't worth anything close to
| $55bn. It's only worth that now due to the incredible rise
| in value of the stock under Musk. A deal is a deal. As a
| PSsix-figure shareholder I am voting for Musk to be paid
| what he is owed (in the June 13th meeting). And voting for
| Tesla to incorporate in a state where judges don't make
| arbitrary decisions on executive pay
|
| We don't know the full details of the Supercharger team's
| "firing" yet, so let's not speculate.
|
| Reuters speculated when they reported about the
| cancellation of the affordable Model 2, and they got that
| reporting horribly wrong (damaging the stock price with
| their error).
|
| As for Superchargers being a major competitive advantage,
| that's no longer the case, as the network is open to cars
| from other brands.
|
| Tesla hasn't lost its first mover advantage. Name another
| American or European carmaker that sells as many EVs as
| Tesla. BYD briefly caught up in terms of raw sales figures,
| but that trend quickly reversed when China's economic woes
| weighed on the company.
|
| As for "failing to improve products," the Model S has been
| improved in so many meaningful ways, it's practically a new
| car. The performance (0-60 in 1.99s) is absolutely mind-
| bending, and Tesla's innovations such as the carbon-wrapped
| motor are responsible for this.
|
| > I think it's reasonable to want an engaged, full-time CEO
| who is not distracted by executive responsibilities at
| several other ventures, half of which are actively failing
| as well.
|
| Which ones are failing? SpaceX is untouchable. Neuralink
| successfully implanted a brain/computer interface in a
| paraplegic man. X.com delivers features at a greater rate
| than Twitter 1.0, at lower operational cost, and -more
| importantly- it is defending free speech. xAI just secured
| $6bn in funding, with its value soaring to $18bn. All of
| which was acheived by a man who is "distracted."
|
| And other companies that Musk co-founded (e.g. OpenAI,
| PayPal), seem to be ticking along nicely also.
| redserk wrote:
| > A deal is a deal.
|
| Not if the deal had one party misrepresent the
| information they knew, such as in this case.
| ProjectArcturis wrote:
| You're giving Musk a lot more credit for the share price than
| he deserves. If there hadn't been a pandemic, and stimulus
| checks, and people playing on Robinhood for fun, TSLA
| wouldn't have gone up nearly so much.
|
| Put another way, sure, the stock price went above the targets
| he set for himself. How much did profits go up?
| ProjectArcturis wrote:
| Why would you want TSLA to be valued like a normal car company?
| r00fus wrote:
| It's going to be worth a lot less if Elon does to Tesla what
| he did to Twitter.
| constantcrying wrote:
| Musk is obviously the best thing that has happened to Tesla.
| Tesla the auto company is near worthless, Tesla the "making
| dreams real" company is worth money. Musk is the reason Tesla
| is the later and not the former.
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| > Tesla the "making dreams real" company is worth money.
|
| That company no longer exists.
| rawgabbit wrote:
| Lay off 20% of the work force to juice the financials and then
| dump the stock?
| babypuncher wrote:
| An old boss of mine tried to get me to come work for him at
| Tesla. This was early 2022.
|
| I told him this Musk fellow doesn't inspire much confidence in me
| with his increasingly bizarre antics.
|
| Seems like I dodged a bullet.
| mandeepj wrote:
| Interesting read below! Seems plausible, not sure how true the
| story though.
|
| https://x.com/fomahun/status/1785333618157527081?s=46&t=LAqP...
| resolutebat wrote:
| This is the stupidest theory ever. Supercharger expansion is
| not slow because of Tesla or any technical reason under their
| control, but because Supercharger stations require a) massive
| amounts of electricity and b) local government planning
| approvals, and the 2nd of those in particular only moves at the
| speed of government. There are sites in Australia that have
| been tied up for _years_ by petty council politicking.
| sp332 wrote:
| I don't know if "fired" means something different in Britain, but
| the article says they were let go or laid off.
| rjsw wrote:
| What does it mean in American?
| sp332 wrote:
| Let go for cause. It has different severance and benefits
| status.
| thejohnconway wrote:
| "Let go" is a horrible euphemism, like the employee wants
| to go, but is being prevented from doing so. I'm setting
| you free employee! Enjoy your no job and no money!
|
| Reminds me of Bill Lumbergh in office space, "so if you
| could just go ahead and [thing Peter Gibbons really didn't
| want to do]".
| rcstank wrote:
| Fired means the role will be backfilled, and the employee was
| let go for performance reasons or whatever else.
|
| Laid off means the role won't be backfilled. It could also
| mean the role was renamed, and they wanted to let the
| employee go but it looks better for everyone to say it was a
| layoff.
|
| Let go (at least to me) could mean either.
| wccrawford wrote:
| I think Fired means it _could_ be backfilled, but I 've
| seen plenty of instances where the company decided to
| restructure or do things differently instead of hiring
| someone else.
|
| Just because they were fired for cause doesn't mean the
| company wants to keep that job around afterwards.
|
| That said, it _is_ unusual not to say 'laid off' these
| days unless the person was fired for cause, but the
| recently media frenzy around the term might have them
| saying other things instead.
| jonathantf2 wrote:
| Isn't that what fired means?
| _fat_santa wrote:
| Fired = You did something wrong and were let go because of
| that thing
|
| Laid Off = You were let go for things outside your control
| (company downsizing, etc)
| simonbarker87 wrote:
| In the UK this would be done as redundancies with a
| consultation period and semi-strict laws to adhere to.
|
| In the US it seems like you can let people go for at moments
| notice with little process - in the UK that looks like what we
| would call "being fired" generally for cause.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| No, the "for cause" distinction matters in the US as well.
| The difference is that a layoff can happen without notice.
| Someone wrote:
| Parts of the USA has at-will employment.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/At-will_employment:
|
| _"In United States labor law, at-will employment is an
| employer 's ability to dismiss an employee for any reason
| (that is, without having to establish "just cause" for
| termination), and without warning, as long as the reason is
| not illegal (e.g. firing because of the employee's gender,
| sexual orientation, race, religion, or disability status).
| When an employee is acknowledged as being hired "at will",
| courts deny the employee any claim for loss resulting from
| the dismissal. The rule is justified by its proponents on the
| basis that an employee may be similarly entitled to leave
| their job without reason or warning. The practice is seen as
| unjust by those who view the employment relationship as
| characterized by inequality of bargaining power.
|
| [...]
|
| The doctrine of at-will employment can be overridden by an
| express contract or civil service statutes (in the case of
| government employees). As many as 34% of all U.S. employees
| apparently enjoy the protection of some kind of "just cause"
| or objectively reasonable requirement for termination that
| takes them out of the pure "at-will" category, including the
| 7.5% of unionized private-sector workers, the 0.8% of
| nonunion private-sector workers protected by union contracts,
| the 15% of nonunion private-sector workers with individual
| express contracts that override the at-will doctrine, and the
| 16% of the total workforce who enjoy civil service
| protections as public-sector employees."_
| tialaramex wrote:
| Yes that's what "fired" means. My understanding is that this
| means the same thing in the US as in Britain, although Britain
| has much stronger labour protection so a lot of these whimsical
| "I'll just fire whoever I want" things can't fly here.
| RobinL wrote:
| In Britain, 'fired' usually implies a problem with individual
| performance whereas ,'made redundant' could be part of
| corporate restructuring. 'let go' is more ambiguous
| philipov wrote:
| In the US, they're complete synonyms. You say "laid off" if
| you're trying to be less direct about it. It's the same as
| saying someone "passed away" rather than "died"
| mattkrause wrote:
| No, the US usage is pretty similar to the UK senses: no
| one is "laid off" for stealing from the cash register or
| napping on the job. They get fired.
|
| OTOH, you could say that a division was "fired" or "laid
| off" and they're almost interchangeable. "Fired" might
| carry the connotation that the specific division was
| underperforming while "laid off" _could_ mean that it was
| due to some outside factor (e.g., half of R &D was laid
| off because manufacturing costs shot up)
| philipov wrote:
| Nah, we say someone got fired regardless of whether it
| was for cause or not. It's the go-to word for any kind of
| employer-initiated employment termination when you don't
| have to be nice about it. It's just that when someone was
| fired for stealing from the register, you're not going to
| be nice about it.
|
| Those R&D folks who got laid off are going to go home and
| complain about getting fired. It doesn't imply it's their
| fault - it implies that they're angry about it.
| rcstank wrote:
| That's not what fired means in the US. Being fired is for
| cause. If I got laid off I would never say I was fired, I
| would say I was laid off. If I said I was fired I'd have to
| explain what I did wrong, whereas if I was laid off nobody
| asks questions.
| kibwen wrote:
| _> Being fired is for cause._
|
| Being laid off is also for cause, specifically the cause of
| "the executives need to juice the stock price".
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| In the US, "for cause" termination is specific
| terminology used to disqualify someone from getting
| unemployment benefits, which means the employer's
| unemployment insurance premiums do not go up.
|
| For example, if you terminate an employee for coming to
| work late over and over, then the employee was clearly
| not meeting their expectations and they get terminated
| due to their own actions, hence they are not eligible for
| unemployment benefits. Because the state does not have to
| pay unemployment benefits, the state does not increase
| the amount of unemployment insurance premiums the
| employer has to pay.
|
| If you terminate someone to improve cash flow, then the
| employee is not considered to be terminated due to the
| employee's actions, and hence they would be eligible for
| unemployment benefits. Hence the employer's unemployment
| insurance premium probably will go up.
| hbn wrote:
| For the cause of the person who lost their job.
|
| Most people wouldn't say "Greg was laid off for pissing
| in the water cooler"
| gipp wrote:
| Yes, sure, but it's also extremely common to just use
| "fired" colloquially for either case (in the US at least)
| bachmeier wrote:
| > Being fired is for cause.
|
| More generally, fired is used for anything specific to the
| individual, whether for cause (they were incompetent) or
| other reasons (the boss didn't like them). Laid off is for
| a departure due to company reasons (lack of demand for
| their product).
| singlow wrote:
| Technically "for cause" means anything other than when
| the position is eliminated. So usually "laid off" means
| that the total headcount is being reduced, or that being
| reallocated to other tasks, so employees that are no
| longer needed are laid off.
|
| If you fire a 500 person team and intend to replace them
| with new people who do the same thing, it's not really a
| lay-off, but for legal purposes they probably have to
| treat it as a lay-off in terms of severance /
| unemployment compensation because I doubt they can
| document an actual cause for most of them.
| madeofpalk wrote:
| "let go" is a corporate euphemism for fired.
| DontchaKnowit wrote:
| I find it so odd to describe firing someone as "whimsical"
|
| I think its even more whimsical to expect the government to
| step in and force your employer to continue employing you if
| they dont want to.
| diroussel wrote:
| So should you be able to terminate any contract for no
| reason and no notice whenever you want?
|
| Or should you be able to go to court and sue for breach of
| contract?
| piker wrote:
| You're operating under an assumption that there is an
| employment contract with a long notice period in place.
| In many (most?) American jobs this is not the case.
| tialaramex wrote:
| In Britain the "casualisation" of labour is considered a
| big problem and unions fight it.
|
| As we see in this thread, many Americans believe that
| it's actually a good idea. But if you go look at the
| actual behaviour at the top and bottom you see that as
| with many of these things the supposedly "bad" benefits
| labour movements in Europe fought to get for their
| workers are just like the things "good" senior management
| have agreed for themselves (but deny to their workers) in
| the US.
| _xerces_ wrote:
| Most jobs in the USA are "at will" meaning there is no
| contract and either you or your employer can decided to
| terminate the arrangement at any time for any (legal)
| reason.
| FredPret wrote:
| In practice the first is sometimes true, and the second
| always.
|
| Employment contracts in the US can be at-will, which
| means either party can walk away at any point for no
| reason.
|
| Sounds awful, until you look at US salaries and average
| wealth levels. Turns out that easy firing = easy hiring =
| more demand for workers = easier to be an entrepreneur =
| even more hiring = more market power for workers.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| I don't think you can infer causality here. There are
| plenty of countries with easy firing (think sweatshops)
| and abysmal wealth levels. The US is wealthy for a bunch
| of reasons, including being a superpower and controlling
| the global reserve currency.
| FredPret wrote:
| The US got to be a dollar-pringing superpower _because_
| of its commitment to economic growth.
|
| If you look at places with easy firing, I think you'll
| find they are growing extremely rapidly. Vietnam and
| China used to be the poster children for kids making
| sneakers and look at them grow today.
| davisoneee wrote:
| The US got to be a superpower because of 2 world wars and
| massive purchasing of US armaments by the allies,
| effectively transferring British Empire wealth across the
| water, kickstarting large local manufacturing, and being
| a safe production hub after the wars.
| FredPret wrote:
| Only militarily did the US become a superpower in WW2.
|
| I was an economic powerhouse long before then.
|
| The 1930's US stock market crash brought down the entire
| world!
|
| As another point, it's not possible to make a ton of
| money selling weapons if you don't already have a
| thriving manufacturing sector. You have to at least be
| doing well to begin with.
|
| According to [0], the US reached parity with the UK
| (probably the richest country in Europe at the time?) in
| terms of GDP per capita in 1880!
|
| [0] https://www.rug.nl/ggdc/historicaldevelopment/maddiso
| n/relea...
| VancouverMan wrote:
| Easy hiring/firing of employees may not guarantee a
| robust economy, but we can see from the situation in
| Canada, for example, that harder-than-necessary
| hiring/firing can definitely inhibit an economy that
| would otherwise be much stronger if it didn't have to
| deal with such artificial obstruction.
|
| The situation can vary by province, but hiring/firing
| employees in Canada immediately exposes businesses to
| significant government-imposed overhead (both
| administrative and financial) and risk.
|
| Maybe this is somewhat tolerable for larger organizations
| with dedicated HR and accounting teams, but dealing with
| all of the unnecessary and pointless government-imposed
| overhead and risk definitely harms the productivity of
| smaller organizations. This is especially true for small
| businesses that may consist of just one entrepreneur,
| who's also possibly facing tight margins, who'd just like
| some additional help.
|
| I know of a number of small business operators throughout
| the country who would love to hire a first employee, or
| additional employees, but can't justify it due to the
| overhead and risk that is unnecessarily imposed by
| government.
|
| I also know of businesses who had hired employees, but
| eventually had to let them go because the overhead and
| risk couldn't be justified any longer. Frequent and
| substantial minimum wage increases can really cause
| problems, for example, especially when margins are tight
| to begin with.
|
| Many jobs in Canada are definitely being lost, or not
| created in the first place, all thanks to government-
| imposed overhead and risk that supposedly makes workers
| better off.
| FredPret wrote:
| Anecdotally, my wife and I are both small business owners
| here in Canada, and everything you say is spot-on.
|
| I will almost certainly never hire in Canada. The next
| company I start will be in Delaware.
|
| More tax and regulation is a moat for larger
| organizations who can afford to deal with it.
| DontchaKnowit wrote:
| No I think you just should have the ability to have your
| contract with employees setup however you want it and the
| government can keep their mitts out
| criley2 wrote:
| A business having to keep someone for some time that they
| don't like is the reality of labor and the cost of doing
| business.
|
| If that business signed a contract for materials and turns
| out halfway through they don't like the materials, they
| can't just stop paying and fire the supplier. They have to
| deal with it as part of their business and move forward in
| the responsible and legal way.
|
| Treating labor similarly isn't shocking and the social
| benefits of folks having job security are hard to
| overstate. For example, all the places with these kinds of
| labor controls seem to have A LOT less homeless.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| I think it's fair to describe the way Elon fires people[1]
| as "whimsical". The reason the government has a role here
| is to prevent people getting fired for being
| black/white/male/female/etc.
|
| [1] https://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-elon-musk-
| ruthlessly-f...
| t_von_doom wrote:
| (UK) The govt. does not force the employer to continue
| employing you - but they do guarantee you are given a fair
| amount of notice and some severance pay depending on
| tenure.
|
| The above is in the case of redundancies, being 'fired' for
| cause has a different set of criteria and protections, but
| the onus is on the employer to prove beyond reasonable
| doubt what you are being fired for
| jefftk wrote:
| In casual speech it's common for people to use "fired" to cover
| both true firing and layoffs. It's not a great ambiguity, but
| when people talk about a whole team it's ~always a layoff.
| mdgrech23 wrote:
| Ah yea here in America you're employer and pretty much let you
| go for any reason and there is not a damn thing you can do
| about it. Layoffs imply they're not your fault and firing does
| but it has no real meaning and the terms are used
| interchangeably.
| rpmisms wrote:
| I think that the BBC reporter probably thought that "fired" and
| "axed" are interchangeable, which they are not.
| paxys wrote:
| In the US being fired means you had a job yesterday but
| involuntarily don't have one today. Most employment is at will,
| so the employer doesn't need a reason to discontinue your
| employment. It could be performance or cost savings or some mix
| of both. It could also be no reason at all. The specifics don't
| really matter. They also don't need to provide any severance in
| most states, no matter the reason.
|
| The "oh you weren't fired, you were _laid off_ " line is
| manufactured by HR and is meaningless. If you come in to work
| one day and your boss decides they don't like the color of your
| shirt and shows you the door, were you fired or "laid off"?
| lamontcg wrote:
| The title works fine for me. Using the word "fired" conveys to
| me that Elon walked into a room and fired everyone. Not that it
| was part of a months-long planned corporate restructuring
| process.
|
| zorg_fire_one_million_meme.gif
| cmsj wrote:
| This must be one of those 4D chess things I hear about...
| sp332 wrote:
| Now that the charger standard is open, they don't need to
| expand the network themselves.
| peutetre wrote:
| The charger standard is CCS. It was always open.
|
| What's happening in North America is that everyone will use
| CCS with Tesla's plug on the end. It's CCS type 3.
|
| Older Teslas will need a retrofit to be able to talk CCS.
| Tesla chargers will still support Tesla's now dead protocol.
| sp332 wrote:
| I think that's a weird way to look at it, but anyway, Tesla
| doesn't need to expand the network of Tesla-compatible
| chargers anymore.
| peutetre wrote:
| It's the factual way to look at it.
| quonn wrote:
| This seems to be wrong, CCS type 3 looks completely
| different: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_3_connector
| peutetre wrote:
| That type 3 was obsoleted and was never used as part of
| CCS.
| quonn wrote:
| Please stop your disinformation campaign here.
|
| You are making things up and as part of that you are
| giving an industry standard name a new meaning.
| peutetre wrote:
| There is no disinformation. The protocol is CCS. That's
| how it works.
|
| How do you think it works?
| quonn wrote:
| You claimed ,,It's CCS type 3", which it is not.
|
| Instead the NACS is the proprietary Tesla plug but using
| the CCS protocol instead of a CAN-based one. Practically
| this means that all superchargers remain compatible and
| it also means that all cars with the CCS plug are not
| compatible (unless the plug is changed or an adapter is
| used). Therefore your statement is misleading in addition
| to being plain wrong about ,,Type 3". Tesla has, of
| course, always also supported the CCS outside of the
| United States, both inside the superchargers and inside
| the cars.
| peutetre wrote:
| So you admit it's the third plug used by CCS. You've made
| progress.
|
| The Tesla plug is no longer proprietary. It's been
| standardized as SAE J3400.
|
| CCS won.
| quonn wrote:
| No, it's not the third plug and it's certainly not ,,Type
| 3".
|
| > The Tesla plug is no longer proprietary. It's been
| standardized as SAE J3400.
|
| Of course, that's the very meaning of opening up the
| plug.
| peutetre wrote:
| Of course it's the third CCS plug. Europe uses type 2.
| North America will slowly give up on Type 1.
|
| But they'll still be using CCS, as you yourself admit.
|
| Tesla's protocol is dead.
| quonn wrote:
| The NACS is not part of CCS. The plug type is not part of
| CCS either. And what you called ,,Type 3" is in fact a
| completely different plug that uses this name as
| standard.
|
| And I'll leave the ,,discussion" at that.
| peutetre wrote:
| There was never a version of CCS using that plug.
|
| NACS is CCS. It's how it works. It's the third CCS plug
| whether you like it or not. It's the practical reality.
|
| It's a bizarre hill for you to choose to die on.
| WorldMaker wrote:
| Perhaps this might help explain why you both are saying
| similar things in different ways and maybe just talking
| past each other:
|
| CCS doesn't exist as a standards body in and of itself.
| It's a joint effort by the North American SAE (Society of
| Automotive Engineers) and the European-based IEC
| (International Electrotechnical Commission). The CCS
| standard is actually sets of interoperable standards
| defined by both the SAE and the IEC built to work in
| tandem. There is no actual "CCS standards document" there
| are only SAE standards and IEC standards, but if the
| joint CCS work does its job they interlock to form one
| worldwide mega-standard which we call CCS because it
| useful to name the combined Voltron form.
|
| The NACS plug _is_ in the final drafting process of
| becoming a recognized SAE standard. In that SAE standards
| (help) define the CCS standard, NACS is being
| standardized as a part of CCS, or at least the part that
| SAE controls /owns. Whether or not you can name it "CCS"
| depends on what you think the name CCS stands for. SAE
| and IEC _always_ had different plug standards, so in that
| regard NACS isn 't new to CCS and is a normal part of CCS
| because whatever SAE says is the North American standard
| plug _is_ the CCS plug in North America. On the flipside
| with naming, is branding and NACS clearly has its own
| brand name and development history. It was developed for
| Tesla initially. It was opened under the brand name
| "NACS" to help sell it to the rest of manufacturing.
| "North American Charging Standard" was an intentional PR
| move. Because it wasn't intentionally developed _for_
| being called "CCS" and because it has a strong brand
| name of its own, does that mean you can't call it "CCS"?
| (A rose by any other name, right?)
|
| When that standard is finalized it _will_ be the third
| type of plug that has a practical rollout. Does that make
| it the real "Type 3" as opposed to the older prototype
| that didn't make it past standards processes? Do we want
| that to call it "CCS Type 3" in the long run to reduce
| confusion? If "CCS Type 1" is truly dead, but is also the
| standardized name for "Plug that North America uses and
| is SAE standardized" should we refer to it as "CCS Type 1
| 2.0" or something like that?
|
| Names are one of the hardest problems to solve. But to
| recap the facts: NACS will be as close to a part of the
| CCS standard as it gets (because it will be an SAE
| standard), and is a new type of plug now directly related
| to the CCS standard. Whether you want to call NACS a
| _part_ of CCS is a matter of perspective and branding as
| much as "standards" on the ground.
| donor20 wrote:
| Scame plug is dead dead - how is NACS ccs type 3. The whole
| point is that it's is NOT ccs type 3 - which is actually
| largely dead everywhere anyways
| peutetre wrote:
| It's the third plug that CCS uses. The whole point of
| NACS is that it is CCS.
|
| It's going to be easy for everyone to support it because
| they support CCS already. Charger manufacturers like
| that. Charging networks like that. Car manufacturers like
| that.
|
| All they're changing is the plug.
| revnode wrote:
| The plug is the thing that matters, not the protocol. It
| will enable non-Tesla vehicles to use the Tesla network.
| peutetre wrote:
| No, it all matters. Supporting yet another protocol was
| not wanted by anyone.
|
| The CCS support was already there so it won out.
| threeseed wrote:
| But why not spin it off into a seperate company rather than
| just let an incredibly valuable team go.
|
| Surely the superchargers can be made to be self sufficient
| with rates and advertising etc.
| nindalf wrote:
| Control right? This way Tesla keeps ownership and control
| of the network and can license access out to competitors.
| If they spun it off, they would have to pay for access
| themselves.
|
| Still, I can't see the 4D chess behind this move. It's far
| beyond my limited understanding.
| anonymousab wrote:
| If you want to settle for the Electrify America charging
| experience, sure. The plug on the end of the charger was
| never the main advantage that the supercharger network
| brought to the table.
| cj wrote:
| For the uninitiated, what is the main advantage?
| boringg wrote:
| I'm going to a wild guess and that it is reliability.
| peteradio wrote:
| I would guess a consistent and effective maintenance of
| equipment and decent payment system. I thought that the
| network was the only thing really going for Tesla, I hope
| everyone involved on this makes out well because I don't
| really care to trust some mom and pop to set the
| standards even though in general I really care about mom
| and pop.
| preinheimer wrote:
| I don't own an EV.
|
| When I hear about Tesla and the Supercharger network what
| I hear about most is how easy it was to plan long trips.
| A road trip on gas is easy, there's a gas station in
| every town with a few thousand people, fast EV chargers
| aren't yet as common. So if your routing system
| understood its range, and where the charging stations
| where it was pretty seamless. Much better than the stuff
| from other EV makers.
|
| Less often I'd hear about the chargers working more
| often. e.g.
| https://arstechnica.com/cars/2022/07/electric-cars-are-
| doome...
| figers wrote:
| and there are a lot of them. Usually 8-16 per
| supercharger chargers at a single location vs the few
| electrify America stations I'v seen to on the east coast
| that have only two chargers at the station. So I'm less
| worried charging at a Supercharger that all the chargers
| will be taken. It also tells you on the screen how many
| chargers are available at each location before you get
| there.
| SirSourdough wrote:
| Deep integration with the car is the most difficult piece
| of the Supercharger system to achieve for any other
| charging network. They have the best in-car and in-app
| charging experience, with the best routing to chargers
| and scheduling tools. Most networks still require you to
| use an app or RFID card to start a charge, Tesla you just
| plug in.
|
| The other is probably just scale of the parent company in
| terms of being able to build out and service the network.
| They tend to have more prominent, nicer locations for
| their stations.
| WorldMaker wrote:
| CCS2 supports "just plug in to charge" as an optional
| feature so depending on your manufacturer and CCS Type 1
| charger it worked some of the time. All the charger
| networks and manufacturers are now migrating to NACS
| hardware over (the ugly) CCS Type 1 and NACS requires
| that CCS2 optional feature (NACS uses Tesla designed
| hardware but CCS protocols/software) so _most_ charger
| networks including Electrify America and _most_
| manufacturers moving forward past the current transition
| to NACS should all support "just plug in to charge".
| "Soon."
|
| Standardizing NACS was an interesting win for Tesla
| because their hardware design won out, but it was also a
| massive breach in their "moat" putting the other charging
| networks and other manufacturers on a much more equal
| footing with the charging story.
|
| On the one hand it makes direct dumb "bottom line"
| business sense why Tesla would stop investing in its own
| network with such a massive breach in their "moat" about
| to spill out and maybe equalize the playing field.
| Perhaps especially if you think you've already earned
| enough recognition for your brand that you don't need to
| maintain it long term, just maintain the facade and PR
| spin of it. On the other hand, with such a huge first
| mover advantage and what everyone knows was a respectably
| huge "moat", you'd think there would be pivots to take
| advantage of to bulwark other parts of the same moat and
| still maintain some other advantage along the way to the
| old adage that "Teslas are the easiest to charge".
| Gutting the department may truly be a short term gain for
| shareholder quarterly results traded for a long term
| mistake and the risk of the loss of that first mover
| advantage they worked so hard to earn.
|
| It's certainly fascinating to armchair quarterback what
| other options were in play here.
| tekla wrote:
| I rented a Tesla and did a East Coast to West Coast
| journey in a week and the Tesla did all the work for me
| for charging planning. I had never driven a Tesla or any
| EV at that point and I figured it out in about 5 mins on
| how to drive and how to plan charging after playing with
| the computer. I didn't think about it at all, and a week
| later got the charging bill from the rental company and
| it was hilariously cheaper than gas.
|
| That's the advantage
| mingus88 wrote:
| The Electrify America experience is pulling into the far
| corner of a Walmart parking lot, and often waiting for
| one of the working units, or struggling for 10 minutes to
| even start one.
|
| The reliability is terrible and perhaps forcing VW to
| operate a charging network as a punishment does not lead
| to a good customer experience
|
| Tesla and Rivian network charger locations are usually in
| better spots than a Walmart. The chargers work the first
| time, at full speed and availability is always correct in
| the vehicle display.
| hedora wrote:
| There's roughly a 25% chance the credit card reader / app
| will incorrectly reject payment (broken or not) on
| competitors' stations, and roughly a 10% chance the
| charger will be broken. There's a 1% chance it'll feed
| bad voltage to your car. There's also a 5% chance you'll
| have to make a phone call to arrange payment.
|
| Of the dozens of issues that I've had across a few
| different cities, I think the problem was related to the
| connector once.
|
| If they'd simply put standard vending machine credit card
| readers on them and not bothered with apps, they'd have
| cut their downtime by at least 75%.
| mdgrech23 wrote:
| I feel like this kind of attitude is where we go wrong as
| engineers. We spend so much time and energy bickering over
| and creating the perfect solution when sometimes you just
| need to ship and provide a solution.
| callalex wrote:
| I agree that sometimes things are either "a solution" or
| "not a solution". EV chargers that do not charge more
| than half the time are still squarely in the "not a
| solution" category.
| throw0101b wrote:
| > _Now that the charger standard is open_ [...]
|
| For anyone curious, this will be SAE J3400 when finalized:
|
| * https://www.sae.org/standards/content/j3400/
|
| * https://driveelectric.gov/charging-connector
|
| Previously the open standard was SAE J1772 / IEC 62196 Type
| 2:
|
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAE_J1772
|
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_2_connector
| WorldMaker wrote:
| The IEC 62196 Type 2 connector is the European connector
| and still standard in Europe. It is different from the CCS
| Type 1 connector that has been used in North America, also
| known as the SAE J1772 Type 1 "Combo" connector as it was
| also standardized originally in North America under SAE
| J1772. Wikipedia doesn't have a separate page for the
| "Combo" connector and mentions it in the SAE J1772 page
| instead. (The base Type 1 is the Level 1/Level 2 charger
| and the "Combo" Type 1 is the combined one with AC plugs.)
|
| It's very useful to note that the North American SAE Type 1
| "Combo" connector and the European IEC Type 2 connector
| have surprisingly different form factors with the SAE one
| being bulkier by quite a bit. That too was a factor in NACS
| getting fast tracked for standardization. (It's the least
| bulky of the three hardware designs.)
| Avshalom wrote:
| To be fair, regular chess is 4d and playing isn't the same as
| winning.
| xipho wrote:
| If chess were 4d then it wouldn't be playable on (2D)
| computer screens would it?
| calderknight wrote:
| Why not?
| xdennis wrote:
| I think your (plural) problem is that you're talking about
| chess as opposed to a chess board.
|
| A chess board is 2D. But, you could technically say it's 4D
| (3 dimensions + time). You could also technically say it's
| 1D (a string) if you play by just writing the chess
| notation.
| xipho wrote:
| Just a thought experiment. I was implying that chess is a
| game, not a board. That game can be encoded/coded without
| any need for a Z variable, can't it? My Rook doesn't go
| up and down an ladder, it doesn't need a 3D array to
| record its position. So that's 2D + Time, or 3D. YRMV.
| kibwen wrote:
| Reminder that a chessboard is a 3D object and the game of chess
| takes place over time, so 4D chess is just... chess. :P
| anbende wrote:
| You're getting downvoted because chess is 2D, not 3D. The
| pieces only move on a flat plane. 3D chess exists and pieces
| move up and down as well.
| rchaud wrote:
| The movements on a chess board can be mapped using purely x
| and y coordinates, so it's 2D.
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| You jest, but it is impossible to say this is a mistake without
| knowing the future. If anything, it's a good indicator that
| Tesla is forecasting very hard times for EV charging adoption.
| Killing the goose that lays eggs all day may be justified if
| the egg supply is exploding.
| Stranger43 wrote:
| It's the rational consequences of Tesla failing to turn it's
| charger network into an network effect creating an monopoly for
| Tesla.
|
| Essentially the ploy was for Tesla to use the charging network
| as a loss leader to make Tesla the only/most viable EV brand,
| and because both roads and electricity grids are well regulated
| utilities that failed so from here on the only source of money
| for Tesla is going to be the company revenue/profit, as it's
| phase as a buy an monopoly startup is over.
| SmarsJerry wrote:
| There are a crazy number of charging companies out there.
| They literally just install a charger at any parking spot
| anywhere and connect electricity. It's the simplest thing in
| the world, there is no ploy to be a monopoly in the space.
| The issue is there is not enough EVs on the road. Think cell
| towers in the middle of no where, sure you wish they were
| there but they just are not useful or profitable to many
| people.
| secabeen wrote:
| This. I think because NACS is becoming the standard is
| exactly why they don't want to invest in EV Charging. When
| Superchargers were Tesla-only, they were a way to promote
| and market Tesla cars. Now that every car will be able to
| use them, that's gone. Let someone else run EV charging
| networks.
|
| Additionally, EV Charging is not going to be a high-margin,
| disruptive industry that is a darling of wall street. Can
| you imagine investors getting excited about investing in
| the largest operator of Gas Stations? I don't think so.
| It's going to end up being a tight, competitive business
| where people pick where to charge based on prices down to
| the penny. No one's going to end up as a billionaire
| running that business.
| lpapez wrote:
| Masterful gambit sire.
| throwaw12 wrote:
| Elon is very interesting guy, on one side he complains about
| birth rate, on the other side impacts people's mind to not have a
| kid, because they're not safe in their workplace and expects they
| must dedicate large part of their lives to his companies
| snapcaster wrote:
| Oh come on, i'm not a fan of elon musk but jeez
| throwaw12 wrote:
| I am a fan, that's why saying he is interesting. Tell me it's
| not true?
| UniverseHacker wrote:
| Your comment elevates him to godlike status... you expect
| him to be managing humanity's birthrate with his corporate
| decisions? He's just running a company here, and by all
| indications, he's struggling at it.
|
| It would be a violation of his job responsibilities, and
| get him in trouble with shareholders if he was doing
| anything other than trying to make the company succeed.
|
| Moreover, this is the basic challenge of running a
| business: if you are you afraid to make hard decisions, the
| company will collapse and every employee will be out of a
| job.
| snapcaster wrote:
| You really think it's fair to make Elon Musk responsible
| for the global birthrate and population?
| chefkd wrote:
| i think it's just his presidential endorsements (pay
| package blocked by a Delaware judge c'mon 571% growth) +
| his comments (advertiser revenue drop) gonna be a hectic
| couple of years but it's comforting to know even when
| you're Elon rich there's still restrictions
| FredPret wrote:
| He works a ton and also has about a dozen kids, so maybe it
| makes sense to him.
| nindalf wrote:
| It's curious that you remain a fan despite being able to
| see his hypocrisy. I wonder why you haven't made the
| logical leap that it isn't worth being a fan of a hypocrite
| like this.
| jjulius wrote:
| I mean, it's completely fair to downvote that comment,
| because it's not entirely productive. That said, it's an
| interesting point.
|
| Musk makes no secret about how he feels people should be
| having more children, but at the same time he runs his
| companies in a way that makes it hard for people to
| prioritize their families. He intentionally pressures his
| teams to choose his business over the families that he
| insists people have.
| silverquiet wrote:
| Honestly, it seems like a cognitive dissonance of the
| entire right wing in the US these days; they expect people
| to work ever harder to produce more and more GDP while they
| lament that people are having fewer children. In the end,
| there are only so many hours in a week and at some point
| people burn out.
| timdiggerm wrote:
| Hypocrisy sure is interesting
| thejohnconway wrote:
| Almost like he's full of shit a lot of the time eh?
| greenavocado wrote:
| If you work for Elon chances are you aren't interested in
| sexual activity (too busy working 110+ hours per week, no
| libido or time) or you live in an area where childcare is
| difficult to accommodate.
| feverzsj wrote:
| Tesla supercharger is fully compatible with BYD ev. Coincidence?
| I think not.
| peutetre wrote:
| Tesla's chargers have charged all brands in Europe for a long
| time now.
|
| Here's one charging a BMW:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Y33AArvMUQ
|
| Another BMW: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mox4tL3dR8o
|
| Here's one charging a 400 volt Kia:
| https://www.youtube.com/shorts/yflZN0dLT8s
|
| Here's one not doing a good job charging an 800 volt Kia:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sEJ2KtzMeh8
|
| Tesla does need to do better on 800 volt charging. If
| Alpitronic, Kempower, ABB, EvBox, and friends can all do it
| then Tesla can do it too.
| andix wrote:
| In Europe they are. All new chargers in Europe use the CCS2
| standard, and teslas have a CCS2 socket. NACS is not suitable
| for Europe, because of three phase AC charging (which makes
| home charging much easier/faster than in the US).
|
| I think all of the V3/V4 superchargers are open to all cars,
| otherwise Tesla wouldn't get government funding for expanding
| the charging network (at least in the EU, maybe UK changed that
| after brexit).
|
| Interestingly it's still mostly teslas charging there, although
| superchargers are one of the cheapest options to charge.
| moogly wrote:
| Next piece of news I'm expecting at this point is "Tesla stops
| Model Y production worldwide".
| RaftPeople wrote:
| Musk: "We want our customers to be hard-core just like we are,
| so the Model Y will now be a home-assemble model."
| olyjohn wrote:
| If you don't get it built using every spare waking hour of
| your life, Elon calls you up and starts yelling at you.
| AbrahamParangi wrote:
| Kind of buried the lead when they wrote that regulators are
| pushing Tesla to effectively nationalize their charger network
| and they just _coincidentally_ cut the entire team.
| potatolicious wrote:
| > _" But with regulators in both Europe and the US pushing the
| firm to open the Supercharger network to owners of other
| electric vehicles, it will offer less of an advantage in the
| future."_
|
| Mandatory interop is not nationalization. Words have specific
| meanings.
|
| As far as I can tell there have been _zero_ calls to
| nationalize the Supercharger network from anyone.
| tejohnso wrote:
| > "But with regulators in both Europe and the US pushing the
| firm to open the Supercharger network to owners of other
| electric vehicles, it will offer less of an advantage in the
| future."
|
| How hard can this be pushed? Tesla put in all the work, took
| all the risk, and now they can be forced to share it and give
| up one of their competitive advantages? Maybe in Europe, but it
| doesn't seem like a U.S. kind of move, where normally you put
| in the work and risk, you reap the rewards rather than being
| forced to hand over what you've earned to the competitors.
| kgermino wrote:
| Your parent is either misinformed or misleading. At least in
| the US (not familiar with Europe) there haven't even been
| mentions of nationalization.
|
| Beyond that, the "pressure" for interoperability has entirely
| been tied to federal funding. The feds have money available
| to build electric charging stations, but the catch is that it
| has to work with cars from other manufacturers. If you don't
| take the money, you can do whatever you want
| tiahura wrote:
| Not really. This isn't about government boogeymen, it's that
| people have wised-up about paying 50 to 80 grand for a golf
| cart.
| cptskippy wrote:
| > ... regulators are pushing Tesla to effectively nationalize
| their charger network...
|
| No.
|
| Nationalize: To convert from private to governmental ownership
| and control.
| xyst wrote:
| " "But with regulators in both Europe and the US pushing the
| firm to open the Supercharger network to owners of other
| electric vehicles, it will offer less of an advantage in the
| future." "
|
| How exactly does making the Tesla charging infrastructure
| system open for other car manufacturers "nationalize" the
| network?
|
| Network still owned and managed by private company. Private
| company has still manages day to day maintenance. Maybe private
| company gets a small kickback in return or tax deduction? But
| this is far from a nationalization of a privately owned
| infrastructure.
|
| Looking of the popular VOD service, I see Tesla offers
| membership for non-Tesla owners and they can pay the membership
| fee or the market price at point of sale.
|
| https://youtu.be/W-oaVLRH-js
| Dalewyn wrote:
| For those in the thread confused about Fired vs. Laid Off in the
| US:
|
| Being fired means your employer was unsatisfied with employing
| you, reasons can include insufficient performance, inappropriate
| conduct, breach of contract, and so on.
|
| Being laid off means your employer no longer needs or wants your
| manhours, with no negativity otherwise implied. Reasons can
| include corporate restructurings and so on.
| paxys wrote:
| These definitions are manufactured by HR. Being fired means
| being fired. What reasons the company had for it are
| irrelevant. Most employment in the US is at will, so the
| company doesn't need to provide a reason for the firing. In
| fact they don't even need to _have_ a reason.
|
| Plus most layoffs are also taking performance into account. If
| every department is tasked with cutting headcount by 10%, they
| aren't going to pull the numbers out of a hat. The lowest
| performers will be the ones shown the door.
| sgnelson wrote:
| With all those people who have "range anxiety" and thus avoid
| buying EV's, this is going to do a good job of selling more
| Teslas...
| alephnerd wrote:
| I've been in the market searching for a car for sometime, and I
| was about to go with a Tesla, but this layoff pushed me away
| from the brand.
|
| I don't care about Musk's politics (everyone has skeletons in
| their closet, so idgaf) but I don't have confidence as a
| customer anymore now that Tesla has truly become erratic
| recently.
|
| The only reason I even seriously considered a Tesla is the
| supercharger network.
|
| I don't want to have a Daewoo Motors 2.0 on my hands.
| boringg wrote:
| I think you probably need to look closer at the their numbers
| if you are really trying to claim that it is unstable car
| company. This comment sounds to me like you are looking for a
| reason to not get a Tesla because you don't like Musk.
| Larrikin wrote:
| It's a valid reason to not give money to someone you
| dislike. Tesla is not owed his money because they were
| first movers in the serious EV market, especially as time
| goes on and more and more options exist.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Sure, as I read the parent post, they were just saying
| you don't have to dress it up and pretend it is a
| different reason.
| boringg wrote:
| You read it right.
| boringg wrote:
| I don't disagree with your comment - not liking Elon is a
| great reason not to buy a Tesla.
|
| I think it's a faux moi thing to say you don't want to
| support Tesla because you were disenfranchised with them
| because of them laying off the super charger team - that
| hardly seems like a major enough reason for someone to
| dislike a car company unless theres a personal connection
| to that team.
|
| To me OP comment sounds like they are using that reason
| but they really don't like Musk. Just be honest about
| your position.
| relaxing wrote:
| "Skeletons in the closet" implies an issue in the distant
| past.
| panick21_ wrote:
| > but this layoff pushed me away from the brand.
|
| Why? They already have the largest network in the industry.
| And whatever the news says, they not gone fire everybody
| involved and stop making more superchargers.
| alephnerd wrote:
| > And whatever the news says, they not gone fire everybody
| involved and stop making more superchargers
|
| The entire supercharger division was laid off [0], from the
| head of the BU (Rebecca Tinucci) to all the ICs.
|
| [0] - https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-
| transportation/musk-d...
| panick21_ wrote:
| > according to two former employees and multiple postings
| on LinkedIn
|
| I have serious question about what 'entire' means here.
| This is almost certainty a reorganization and not
| everybody is gone. Manufacturing and maintenance is
| certainty gone continue.
|
| Musk then said:
|
| > Musk subsequently said on X that the carmaker still
| plans to expand the Supercharger network, "just at a
| slower pace for new locations and more focus on 100%
| uptime and expansion of existing locations."
|
| The reality is, Tesla Superchargers are still far more
| reliable then the competitors (at least in the US). And
| its unlikely that these firing will change that balance
| anytime soon.
| alephnerd wrote:
| That's too much risk for me to put on a $50-70k car -
| that's downpayment money for a condo.
| panick21_ wrote:
| So you are gone trust the companies that have invested
| virtually nothing in charging for 10 years instead, and
| trust them? Seems a bit strange.
|
| I'm not saying you should buy a Tesla, but this reason
| doesn't really add up to me.
| greedo wrote:
| They literally just did this...
| panick21_ wrote:
| We have no actual data about exactly what happened and
| how they are actually reorganizing things.
|
| There is literally 0% chance that literally everybody
| related to Superchargers was fired. There is 0% chance
| that the whole maintenance organization was fired.
|
| The sources that are suggest here its comments from fired
| employees, and those kinds of comments can very much lead
| exacerbation.
|
| This isn't the first time we got reports that 'every XY'
| was fired and it turned out to not actually be true in
| various ways.
| smith7018 wrote:
| > There is literally 0% chance that literally everybody
| related to Superchargers was fired. There is 0% chance
| that the whole maintenance organization was fired.
|
| The only sources we have say they fired the entire
| division. Sure, we can wait for the dust to settle before
| conclusively saying what happened but "literally 0%
| chance" is objectively wrong.
| panick21_ wrote:
| They have 10000 of chargers in the wild. Do you think
| there is nobody at Tesla that knows anything about
| Supercharger because somebody that was just fired used
| the term 'entire division'? And what 'division' was it,
| what was its responsibility exactly?
| delabay wrote:
| Allow me to drop an alternative theory for this mass
| firing.
|
| Tesla had a large layoff several weeks ago. Some execs
| pushed back, requested waivers or flat out refused to
| comply. Elon says: can't give me 20%? How about 100%.
|
| This is all about sending a message to executive staff
| about who is in control. Not about the business unit, not
| about performance.
| jonny_eh wrote:
| He's a white supremacist, but I guess nobody's perfect?
| jdewerd wrote:
| Ford bought a newspaper to complain about the Jews, and
| just wait until you hear about the VW guy...
| octopoc wrote:
| Ford also wanted to lower consumer prices and raise
| salaries to help people have easier lives. But that was
| ruled illegal by our "justice" system, because his
| primary duty is apparently to shareholders[1]:
|
| > The Michigan Supreme Court held that Henry Ford could
| not lower consumer prices and raise employee salaries.
|
| > ...Russell C. Ostrander argued that the profits to the
| stockholders should be the primary concern for the
| company directors. Because this company was in business
| for profit, Ford could not turn it into a charity.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodge_v._Ford_Motor_Co.
| jonny_eh wrote:
| So he wasn't a supporter of Nazis? I don't follow.
| ReptileMan wrote:
| >I've been in the market searching for a car for sometime,
| and I was about to go with a Tesla, but this layoff pushed me
| away from the brand.
|
| Depends on the reasons for it. If their performance is low
| why not lay them off?
| alephnerd wrote:
| A BU level layoff is not performance driven. I've done
| layoffs and this means an attempt at investor relations.
| pensatoio wrote:
| The supercharger network isn't shutting down or even
| shrinking. We don't really know the reason why this team was
| fired, but it's obviously not because the charging network is
| losing priority. Maybe the team had internal politics or low
| performance or a myriad of other issues?
| jdewerd wrote:
| Rebecca Tinucci started showing up above Elon in listicle
| popularity contests. Investors loved her, the industry
| loved her, the media loved her. She wasn't yet a challenger
| for CEO, but she could have become one if investors soured
| enough on Elon.
| whoisthemachine wrote:
| One can't help but wonder (or personally, hope) if this
| move sour investors enough on Elon...
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > it's obviously not because the charging network is losing
| priority
|
| Why is this obvious?
|
| It seem _obvious_ to me that the Twitter acquisition made
| Tesla as a whole lose priority to some extent.
| Stranger43 wrote:
| The likely scenario is that the local electrical utilities
| supplying/servicing the chargers will take over the
| operation in the shadows until they develop their own
| brands and change the signage and payment terminals.
|
| The Immediate effect is likely going to be that the prices
| are going to be readjusted to make sure the network makes
| money for the owners without Tesla funneling investment
| capital(they likely cant raise anymore) into the network.
| mig39 wrote:
| Somebody's gotta pay the twitter loan interest payments.
| paxys wrote:
| It's hard to feel optimistic about Tesla these days. Musk is
| gutting the company while dangling bizarre and wildly unrealistic
| promises in front of shareholders (releasing Optimus robot, self
| driving taxis, licensing self driving tech, training AI models on
| all Tesla cars, launching unnamed cheaper product lines - all by
| the end of the year). This will get a short term stock price
| boost and probably get his $56 billion pay package approved, but
| when then? Who saves Tesla from reality after Musk gets his money
| and checks out?
| Maxious wrote:
| > Musk made clear in a call with analysts earlier this month
| that he is focused on opportunities in artificial intelligence,
| robotics and autonomous robotaxis.
|
| https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/musk-d...
|
| Presumably that was before Tesla needed to recall all the
| cybertrucks for stuck acceleration. AI says blame the floormats
| throw310822 wrote:
| > Optimus robot, self driving taxis, licensing self driving
| tech, training AI models
|
| I think it might be worth saying that:
|
| 1) Tesla has already accomplished its stated mission of making
| EV cars mainstream. This was Musk's goal from the beginning,
| and (insofar it is true that he's interested in working on
| "world changing problems" and not in making money per se) the
| mission of Tesla as a driver of transformation is accomplished.
|
| 2) Musk might have decided since a while that Tesla has a
| desperate need to pivot, because being a mass producer of a
| mature technology in the West is not sustainable in the long
| run.
| ToucanLoucan wrote:
| > Musk might have decided since a while that Tesla has a
| desperate need to pivot, because being a mass producer of a
| mature technology in the West is not sustainable in the long
| run.
|
| I'm sorry just... what? Being in a position to sell products
| to a robust and demanding market is a _bad thing?_ What in
| the Business Major brain are we saying here?
|
| And frankly calling their products "mature technology" feels
| like a stretch given Tesla is regularly stubbing it's toe on
| pretty benign design problems that numerous other automakers
| have had nailed down for decades.
| dawnerd wrote:
| Yeah nothing about my Tesla is mature technology. Every
| update is a couple steps back. Every design revision is
| cost cutting and feature removal (in the name of simplicity
| of course). We still don't have auto wipers that work.new
| still don't have rear cross traffic alerts when backing up.
| The cars are laughably bad at parking themselves still.
| Tesla made a slightly polished MVP and stopped there.
| ToucanLoucan wrote:
| My former boss who owns one once had to have their
| service person come up to Green Bay from Chicago (about 3
| hours) because his stupid door handles wouldn't extend
| and he was stuck at a grocery store.
| grecy wrote:
| > _Yeah nothing about my Tesla is mature technology_
|
| Do you honestly believe the battery, charging, inverter,
| motors and drive train are not mature tech?
| Timshel wrote:
| The usual point is that to "justify" Tesla total valuation
| they can't just be an automaker.
| ToucanLoucan wrote:
| Almost seems like the valuation is the problem then, not
| being in the business of selling cars.
| mingus88 wrote:
| EVs are mainstream now?
|
| Try planning a trip from Seattle to Madison, WI and let me
| know how normal that feels for you.
|
| Try driving from Mt Shasta to Sacramento in 115 degree heat
| and see how many fast chargers are working on I-5
|
| I don't think I would call EVs mainstream until your average
| renter has access to a home charger. It simply will never be
| mainstream if people have to worry about when they'll be able
| to get their next charge.
| imglorp wrote:
| Getting there? EV and hybrid were 16% of US 2023 sales.
|
| All new apartment construction and shopping centers near us
| includes some EV chargers, so renters are slowly catching
| up. We're getting there. Until then it will be driven by
| homeowners and fleets.
| Jcampuzano2 wrote:
| As an apartment renter, unless they mandate or even
| completely subsidize existing apartment complexes of a
| certain size or larger (i.e 100+ residents or something
| along those lines) install EV charging it will remain an
| issue here.
|
| The vast majority of apartments still have no EV chargers
| and simply aren't moving to get them installed at all.
|
| I myself was in the market for an EV but would have
| trouble charging at my apartment. I messaged my apartment
| complex about installing EV support and whether they
| considered it and they basically sent a 1 sentence email
| which can be summarized as "lol no".
| robertlagrant wrote:
| They're definitely a luxury good in areas where housing
| is expensive.
| Velofellow wrote:
| As A renter, I wish more people thought like this. It is
| 100% the impediment for me going EV on my next vehicle
| purchase. I don't see apartment complexes like mine (built
| ca. 2000) retrofitting parking stalls for any level of
| charging without subsidy and lots of kicking and screaming.
| as-j wrote:
| Ok.
|
| Seattle to Madison: https://abetterrouteplanner.com/?plan_u
| uid=026855c9-03d6-408...
|
| Mt Shasta to sac: https://abetterrouteplanner.com/?plan_uui
| d=a5a84688-8fbc-412...
|
| For some reason I have initial charge set to 40%, but even
| then there's several chargers in range. At recharges are
| quick going to 60% which means if consumption is higher you
| could charge for a free more minutes and easily get to 80%.
|
| Can you be more specific?
| mingus88 wrote:
| I have done the second drive a handful of times. The
| Anderson Rd and Airport Way Walmarts are your best bet
| for DCFC.
|
| When temps are above 110, which is at least a month of
| normal summer weather, you will be lucky to have 2/5
| chargers operating at those sites. And they will be
| throttled to 30kW which is a pitiful fraction of the
| advertised 350kW rate
|
| EA didn't install the transformers in the shade. They
| don't work, period. This was my experience two summers in
| a row.
|
| Imagine having kids and a dog in your car for a road trip
| and having to park for over an hour in direct sunlight at
| 3pm while you squeeze enough charge to limp through the
| wastelands of NorCal. And I-5 is still your best route.
|
| I haven't even tried the ride east through Idaho and
| Montana. In winter it will be much riskier and you have
| to put a lot more faith that the station is working as
| expected. The mountains and freezing temps will also add
| a huge variance to your estimated range.
|
| We stayed at Leavenworth,WA in a cabin and there were
| exactly two EA fast chargers at a Safeway on the
| mountain. Woke up one morning in 20 degree cold with 25%
| charge and wasn't sure I could even make it
| balls187 wrote:
| By your definition garage doors aren't mainstream because
| renters don't have ubiquitous access to them...
|
| My definition of mainstream: nearly all major automotive
| companies offer EVs that are mass marketed.
| Jcampuzano2 wrote:
| Garage doors aren't mainstream by this definition because
| they aren't essential for owning a car. They're just a
| convenience.
|
| EV charging is essential to owning an EV. Almost all EV
| manufacturers ask that you keep your EV plugged in
| practically as much as possible for battery health. In
| most apartment dwelling this is currently not a
| possibility and there isn't enough incentive for many
| existing complexes to install anything in much of the
| country.
| balls187 wrote:
| At home charging isn't essential for owning an EV.
| They're just a convenience.
|
| We can argue back and forth, about ubiquity vs
| mainstream, but ultimately the point I am making is that
| these definitions are merely opinions.
|
| Who cares if evs are mainstream or not. If you can get
| at-home charging, speaking from my own experience, owning
| an EV is awesome. If you have to rely on public charging,
| it is not as convenient, and requires more effort.
|
| If you are someone who goes to Costco, the PX, or Walmart
| to get gas, then using public charging is a wash. If you
| are like me, who uses the nearest gas station, public
| charging was a bigger pain than filling up a tank.
| mingus88 wrote:
| Here's a more practical definition of mainstream:
|
| CA has only 1 fast charging station per 5 gas stations,
| and they are by far the most kitted out state
|
| And the biggest footprint of those is Tesla, which still
| is restricted to only Teslas
|
| And a fill up with gas takes 5 minutes compared to up to
| 45 minutes at DCFC, assuming you aren't waiting for one.
|
| So yes "all major automotive companies offer EVs" but the
| mainstream experience that drivers expect is nowhere near
| there for an EV unless you own a home and have installed
| a charger.
| hwillis wrote:
| If either of those were true Musk would sell Tesla and/or
| step down so he could have cash and time to do something
| else.
|
| Something tells me there isn't a chance in hell of that
| happening.
| cqqxo4zV46cp wrote:
| This is unbelievable.
|
| Insanely wealthy person is not interested in "making money
| per se"?
|
| Nobody amasses this wealth without being financially
| obsessed. No amount of 'effective altruism'-esque "I need
| more money so I can do more amazing things" justifies it,
| especially when you put so much on the line to...buy a social
| network and as a vanity project.
|
| Elon Musk is not a God.
| kolinko wrote:
| How many high net worth individuals do you know / have you
| met?
|
| Most of the ones I know consider money as a tool that can
| be used towards something, not as a goal by itself.
| John23832 wrote:
| > Most of the ones I know consider money as a tool that
| can be used towards something, not as a goal by itself.
|
| And if you need a massive amount of money to achieve a
| goal, you obsess about money. Elon (ostensibly) isn't
| building soup kitchens and community gardens.
|
| > How many high net worth individuals do you know / have
| you met?
|
| If you don't think wealthy people obsess over money, I'd
| honestly wonder how many YOU have met. Not fretting over
| small amounts of money, or not being ridiculously frugal
| does not mean that wealthy people do not stress over
| money.
| badpun wrote:
| If they really used money towards that goal, wouldn't
| they cease to be HNWIs? The fact that they still holding
| large wealth kind of contradicts what they're saying.
| xNeil wrote:
| It actually does seem to be correct, in that Musk doesn't
| exactly spend his money on homes or cars or yachts or other
| material possessions - it seems all his money goes to
| philanthropy and his businesses (hence the 'per se').
| greedo wrote:
| Philanthropy?
| robertlagrant wrote:
| > especially when you put so much on the line to...buy a
| social network and as a vanity project
|
| This is not what people who are obsessed with money do.
| boringg wrote:
| Tesla going forward with next level fSD and competition (Ford)
| is recalling 130k vehicles for hands free tech.
|
| Optimistic about your equity you invested or the problems they
| are working on? I mean equity been overstated for awhile - but
| that's the Musk effect. However Tesla is still far ahead of the
| competition - I see more Teslas coming on the roads around here
| then any other EV (not as many cybertrucks though).
| itsoktocry wrote:
| > _I see more Teslas coming on the roads around here then any
| other EV (not as many cybertrucks though)._
|
| Because we can't buy vehicles from the Chinese competition.
|
| > _However Tesla is still far ahead of the competition_
|
| Are they?
|
| Did anyone catch the recent All In Podcast? They were talking
| about Tesla's robotaxi lead, so Calacanis showed them a video
| of Waymo operating robotaxis today and Chamath and Sacks had
| _literally never seen it before_ ; "This is amazing!".
|
| Pretty easy to believe Tesla is the leader when you don't
| know what's out there.
| boringg wrote:
| No I don't listen to All-in I can't stand listening to any
| of that self-indulgent nonsense.
|
| FYI - because Chamath and Sacks haven't heard of Waymo
| operating robo taxis before (which is mind-blowing that
| they didn't know that considering a good portion of their
| job is an alternative take on the news) does not mean the
| rest of the world doesn't.
|
| Tesla is indeed way ahead on self-driving.
|
| In terms of Chinese EVs - that will certainly bring in a
| lot more competition but they aren't the same class of
| vehicles. It's like comparing fiat 500 and an audi a6.
| thebigman433 wrote:
| In what metrics is Tesla ahead on self driving? Waymo has
| been operating (actual self driving) in SF for years
| without major incidents, and has been doing revenue
| service for nearly a year now. Tesla has shown nothing
| even remotely close to the level of self driving as
| Waymo, even in a controlled environment.
|
| For actual self driving, Tesla is going to need a fully
| revamped sensor package on the car, as well as major
| updates to their core software. Id be shocked if they are
| operating revenue service within even a few years
| robertlagrant wrote:
| I haven't seen Waymo videos for a few years, but can they
| do things on highways the way Teslas can? I've only seen
| a couple of around-town videos, so I don't know.
| recursivecaveat wrote:
| Apparently yes now:
| https://www.theverge.com/2024/1/8/24029932/waymo-
| driverless-...
| robertlagrant wrote:
| Interesting! I don't know loads about self driving cars,
| but my understanding was that Tesla's self driving has
| done a lot of freeway miles, and not just in a small
| simple area.
| rsynnott wrote:
| > They were talking about Tesla's robotaxi lead, so
| Calacanis showed them a video of Waymo operating robotaxis
| today and Chamath and Sacks had literally never seen it
| before; "This is amazing!".
|
| ... Why on earth would anyone listen to this? I mean, based
| on this, it's people who don't know even the very basics of
| the market talking about it anyway.
|
| (I'm still struggling with the idea of _Jason Calacanis_
| being the voice of reason, in any context...)
| boringg wrote:
| Also Chamath the "SPAC king" who made his money on the
| transactions selling garbage companies to the masses as
| someone being quoted as a source on anything is right
| there with Calcanis.
| boringg wrote:
| Best selling cars in 2023 -- BYD isn't even top 3 right
| now. Tesla is back in China as luxury brand.
|
| Model Y: 1.23 M Rav 4: 1.07 M Corolla: 1.01 M
|
| https://www.best-selling-cars.com/brands/2023-full-year-
| glob...
|
| https://www.theverge.com/2023/5/26/23738581/tesla-model-y-
| ev...
| rsynnott wrote:
| BYD have about 30 models, is the thing. Tesla have gone
| with a rather unusual product strategy for a car maker;
| four models, of which two have negligible sales.
| Realistically, any large manufacturer who went down this
| road could take that crown away from them, though it
| probably would not be a good idea for that manufacturer
| to do that.
| m_fayer wrote:
| Also their entire lineup of actual cars is now outdated.
|
| The ark is almost Shakespearean. Pioneering renegade builds an
| empire, lets it go to his head, and leads two thirds of it to
| ruin. I just hope spacex escapes the same fate.
| eagerpace wrote:
| They have the best selling car on earth, how are they
| outdated?
| surgical_fire wrote:
| Is this true? Care to share some numbers?
| HappySweeney wrote:
| I thought it was total bs, but [0] shows it to be true.
|
| [0] https://www.statista.com/statistics/239229/most-sold-
| car-mod...
| shakesbeard wrote:
| Yeah, but that's not a fair comparison. Toyota alone has
| 40 hybrid models. Tesla has like 4 ...
|
| Here's some stats from 2022 and Tesla was 15. in total
| car sales. [0]
|
| [0] https://www.carlogos.org/reviews/worlds-top-selling-
| automake...
| deelowe wrote:
| Made the headlines last month. Tesla Y was the best
| selling car worldwide last year. That said, sales have
| dropped off a cliff going into this year.
| surgical_fire wrote:
| Caveats aside - other manufacturers are a lot more
| segmented in terms of brands/models trying to cover more
| price points while Tesla has like 5 models - it is still
| pretty impressive. I wonder if it would perform as well
| without Chinese EVs being banned on the US (my guess is
| yes), but that's another story.
|
| The fact that sales dropped off a cliff this year is also
| interesting. What meaningful happened in this period?
| More competition from other manufacturers in the EV
| space? Market saturation (the addressable market of
| people that would buy EVs was already covered)?
| fullshark wrote:
| Yeah a lot of comments here reek of the comments you always
| see dancing over FB/Google/Whoever's grave.
| drawkward wrote:
| Ok, Elon.
| jayd16 wrote:
| Why do you say the lineup is outdated? The 3 just had a
| refreshed version and the y is likely to get it soon.
| dragontamer wrote:
| The tech sucks. Lack of 360 cameras. Lack of RADAR. Lack of
| Ultrasonic sensors. Lack of Android Auto/Apple Carplay.
| Lack of integrated Rearview mirror camera. Lack of Heads-up
| Display (let alone augmented reality HUDs integrated into
| the GPS navigation:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T8tl0KmqaqU)
|
| That's just the standard tech everyone likes in cars in the
| year 2024. There's also the lack of physical windshield
| wiper controls, physical highbeams, or physical climate
| control buttons. (Everything is tablet-only for the
| ultimate cheapness / low-end experience).
|
| ----------
|
| The funny thing is that we're in a situation where a
| 2016-era Model 3 has a better driving experience than the
| refresh. Well, you know, until they software-disabled the
| Ultrasonics and RADAR units to make the older model worse.
| noncoml wrote:
| No HUD. Auto sensing wipers that never actually sense
| when it's raining. Lack of physical buttons. No way to
| keep the sun out of the car making it feel like a
| greenhouse. Much less A/C vents than other cars. Plastic
| horrible interiors. No road noise isolation. You have to
| share the only screen with the passenger.
| MarkMarine wrote:
| They actually continuously deployed that wiper breaking
| update. My car in 2019 had wipers that worked.
|
| That and the phone key never working, especially when it
| was raining and I was holding a child and groceries...
| that was it for me. Traded it in for a gas car. I'm not
| pumped about oil changes but at least the company won't
| be able to remotely deploy bugs to my working car
| features
| tzs wrote:
| > Auto sensing wipers that never actually sense when it's
| raining
|
| I've never had auto sensing wipers, and am curious. Do
| they actually make enough of a difference to be worth the
| added hardware?
|
| The manual wipers with controls on one of the steering
| column stalks in my car are so little effort to use that
| I usually am not even aware of it. I see rain on the
| windshield and then I see the wipers deal with it and
| have to infer that I must have started them because that
| is much more likely than someone surreptitiously install
| an after-market automatic wiper system.
| noncoml wrote:
| I'd say they are ok. But the problem with Tesla is that
| you either have the auto-sensing option or you have to go
| through the screen in the middle. The don't have the
| stalk option.
|
| They have a shortcut but still requires you to look at
| the screen in the middle. I don't know how this car is
| considered safe
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| It's one of those things that's kind of nice, but also
| generally unnecessary and I could easily live without,
| for the exact reason you mention. Manual wipers on a
| stalk are just right there next to your hand anyways,
| hardly an inconvenience when you need to use them.
|
| About the only time auto wipers are handy is when you're
| driving through an area where the precipitation is highly
| inconsistent, torrential downpour one minute, a light
| sprinkle the next.
|
| Of course, Tesla doubled down on their automatic wipers
| by removing the stalk. -_- In my 2019 Model 3, I can't
| change wiper behavior on the stalk, though there is a
| button on the end that if I press, it forces a single
| wipe, or continuously wipes if I hold the button. It also
| causes the display to show the wiper speed adjustment UI,
| and allows me to tilt one of the steering wheel controls
| to change the setting, so I don't HAVE to use the touch
| screen. But tbh, I'd still rather just have a stalk with
| a knob that sets the setting.
| moogly wrote:
| > Do they actually make enough of a difference to be
| worth the added hardware?
|
| The hardware is super simple. Probably costs $5.
| benoliver999 wrote:
| This is all valid, but I would say that their actual EV
| tech, ie battery management, charging network and
| efficiency is still best in class.
|
| Of course now they've gutted this team perhaps that won't
| be the case for long
| grecy wrote:
| I'm always fascinated to see a critique about a device
| (car in this case) that never once even mentions the core
| thing(s) the device is supposed to do.
|
| You didn't even mention any of - fuel mileage, road
| noise, driver fatigue, comfort of seats, performance of
| HVAC, visibility, crash safety, passenger comfort and
| entertainment, storage volume, leg room. You know,
| transporting meat sacks safely, comfortably and cheaply.
|
| I personally think it's because vehicle manufacturers
| have spent the last ~20 years not really improving the
| core vehicle at all, and instead convincing people that
| massage seats and car play are actually important.
| Personally I think they're a distraction from the fact
| most cars today get the same horrible mileage they did 20
| years ago.
|
| If someone made a car that was comfortable, easy to
| drive, had plenty of storage and was super cheap to drive
| (like 3l/100km / ~70 US MPG) I'd be all over it.
|
| And that is what EVs are. So far they're mostly focusing
| on the core product and have not spent the time or money
| on the fluff.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| I find this to be a weird perspective because EVs, and
| especially Tesla, seem to be focused entirely on fluff.
| That's one of the reasons they cost so damn much compared
| to ICE "economy" compacts.
|
| Things like "pop out" door handles and steel body panels
| are fluff. A steering "yoke" is fluff. Side glass that
| can withstand a steel bearing is fluff. Constant (broken)
| FSD promises are fluff.
|
| Features like a HUD or stalks on the steering wheel would
| make a driver's experience better and more comfortable.
| The former they never added, the latter they removed
| (probably to improve margin).
| Symbiote wrote:
| The last EV I drove was a Renault Zoe, as they're
| available for hire from the street with an app.
|
| It is a normal, small, city car. Windscreen wipers on the
| usual stalks, knobs and buttons for climate control, etc.
| In part because it lacks some electronic safety features
| (lane-departure warning, automatic emergency braking) it
| has a very poor safety rating.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renault_Zoe
| everforward wrote:
| > Side glass that can withstand a steel bearing is fluff.
|
| This one I actually think would have been somewhat
| useful, presuming it was cheap enough to actually use. I
| don't throw steel bearings at my car, but I would imagine
| that strength probably carries over to stuff falling out
| of trucks, rocks being flung by tires, etc.
|
| It's not world-changing, but it would have been useful.
| dragontamer wrote:
| This is a $40,000 to $60,000 vehicle.
|
| I have expectations. If I just wanted to safely transport
| people from pointA to pointB reliably and efficiently,
| the answer is a Toyota Corolla Hybrid at nearly half the
| cost.
|
| If you're competing against $40k vehicles, then I think
| its fair to compare to... I dunno, an Ioniq 6 or
| something? Full EV, faster charging, better tech, better
| road noise, etc. etc. etc.
|
| Tesla's core product, the car, has worse safety, tech,
| and other features than any competitor. And with regards
| to the Highland update, it doesn't even add any of the
| recent innovations that are "fashionable" in today's day-
| and-age.
|
| Its 2024. A freaking Corolla has some of the features I
| listed above, at again, nearly half the price of a
| typical Tesla. Tesla's tech stack is severely out of date
| even with the update.
|
| > If someone made a car that was comfortable, easy to
| drive, had plenty of storage and was super cheap to drive
| (like 3l/100km / ~70 US MPG) I'd be all over it.
|
| I think that's called a Ford Maverick. Ford Maverick
| ain't 70mpg, but its cheaper to drive than supercharger /
| fast chargers (where costs skyrocket for EVs to 30+ cents
| / kwhr).
| antisthenes wrote:
| > Personally I think they're a distraction from the fact
| most cars today get the same horrible mileage they did 20
| years ago.
|
| You can't fight physics. A gas-powered sedan weighed down
| by all the modern safety requirements can only get ~43mpg
| on the highway.
|
| A hybrid boosts this to ~55mpg and also greatly improves
| city efficiency.
|
| Above those numbers, you're looking at engines that are
| severely underpowered (1.0 liters) or is more EV than gas
| car.
|
| > I personally think it's because vehicle manufacturers
| have spent the last ~20 years not really improving the
| core vehicle at all, and instead convincing people that
| massage seats and car play are actually important.
|
| Well, yes. To please the American consumerist mindset,
| you have to keep inventing new features even if the new
| feature is a complete gimmick or just a subscription, or
| taking out physical buttons (e.g. all strictly
| negatives).
|
| > If someone made a car that was comfortable, easy to
| drive, had plenty of storage and was super cheap to drive
| (like 3l/100km / ~70 US MPG) I'd be all over it.
|
| At that point why not just wish for a magic horse that
| flies or something. 70 MPG is an EV number. You'll never
| get a gas car that gets that mileage.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| > 70 MPG is an EV number. You'll never get a gas car that
| gets that mileage.
|
| My old 320d did those on the motorwaym and more
| sometimes. It wasn't the average, but given almost all my
| driving was motorway, it wasn't far off.
| callalex wrote:
| Diesel fuel contains more energy per gallon/Liter so
| that's not a useful comparison.
| Symbiote wrote:
| Also if "motorway" implies Britain, Imperial gallons are
| 20% larger than US gallons.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| It does! But then also I don't know what a gallon of
| electricity is.
| kod wrote:
| https://ecomodder.com/forum/em-fuel-
| log.php?vehicleid=3158
|
| https://ecomodder.com/forum/em-fuel-
| log.php?vehicleid=7982
| jjav wrote:
| > A gas-powered sedan weighed down by all the modern
| safety requirements can only get ~43mpg on the highway.
|
| Meanwhile in 1988 (36 years ago!) one could buy a Honda
| CRX that got 49mpg on the highway.
|
| Weight is indeed the enemy here. To cut energy
| consumption and emissions we need to rethink the madness
| of 4000lb+ cars. I want to buy a 1600lb car with
| mindblowing mpg numbers using modern engine technology.
| dragontamer wrote:
| Not 1600lb, but the lightest traditional ICE car I'm
| aware of is the Mitsubishi Mirage at 2106lbs.
| thereddaikon wrote:
| Most of those examples aren't the cars being outdated
| really. They were intentional decisions to either cut
| costs or two stubbornly do it their own way. A tech
| refresh wont give you radar because Elon didn't want
| radar. They could have had it years ago but didn't. Same
| with carplay and android auto. They wanted their software
| stack.
| dragontamer wrote:
| > They could have had it years ago but didn't.
|
| They did have it years ago. That's the insult.
|
| Elon is specifically removing features and trying to sell
| a worse car to people. Here we are nearly a decade later
| and people are seriously asking "what's wrong with a
| Tesla??"
|
| Well, have yall seen what the Highland Refresh has
| ___removed___? That's my point, its a worse car now.
| ncallaway wrote:
| The more distracted he is by those two, and the more Shotwell
| is running things, the more optimistic I am about SpaceX's
| future.
|
| I trust her, and think she's a capable pair of hands.
| ozr wrote:
| She's 60 years old now.
| mempko wrote:
| So, more mature than Musk?
| marcusverus wrote:
| I recall that she landed some clutch contracts for SpaceX
| >10 years ago, but I haven't heard much about her since.
| What has she done that makes you think she's up to running
| SpaceX?
| xenadu02 wrote:
| She is the one in day-to-day control at SpaceX.
| foobarian wrote:
| You know, I have to hand it to Elon. We often hear about how
| successful companies turn "corporate" and stop being able to
| innovate because they need to preserve their successful product
| lines; e.g. Google's ad business. And the leadership in those
| companies often talk about how they want to "be a big company
| that acts like a startup" but it's usually just lip service.
| Well, this is what it actually looks like and it's not pretty;
| even the customers hate it let alone the employees.
| atonse wrote:
| I will always remember what one of my previous bosses told
| me.
|
| I had built this whole E-Commerce platform for him and his
| company (I single-handedly did all the coding,
| infrastructure, etc. Not taking any credit for their
| incredible sales team.) that was running in multiple
| countries, bringing in millions in sales.
|
| But I started getting pretty bored once it was stable enough
| and just running and started seeking greener pastures.
|
| And he said (I'm paraphrasing) most people are either
| builders or maintainers, and rarely both. And he said I was a
| builder at heart. So I hate maintaining things. Which is why,
| when I helped hire my replacement, he was VERY much a
| maintainer, and he flourished in that second phase since it
| had reached maturity.
|
| Using that framework, I think that the ratio of builders to
| maintainers at Tesla is not healthy right now. It seems VERY
| healthy at SpaceX, for example. They're innovating on new
| technology AND on efficiencies of the existing tech and
| logistics.
|
| The builders got them to where they are (I'm still a
| generally happy Model 3 owner), but the maintainers are the
| ones who make the maintenance and service experience great,
| incrementally improve manufacturing, parts availability, all
| those unsexy things that have more to do with logistics,
| building superchargers etc.
|
| Because they are too lopsided with builders, they keep
| inventing new stuff instead of continuing to innovate with
| EVs. For a while there were enough builder type challenges
| with manufacturing but even those challenges seem to be
| exhausted.
|
| I'm surprised to see that they've gutted the supercharger
| team because it seems like the ultimate "services" sector
| where they're in better shape than anyone else to make
| basically free "services" type money from ALL EVs in coming
| years with NACS.
| cqqxo4zV46cp wrote:
| One person's maintaining is another person's building.
| There are definitely many many very competent people with a
| "builder" mindset that would get a kick out of building a
| good maintenance / service experience.
|
| It's simply that these things aren't respected
| by...someone...or someones, and don't get the attention
| they deserve from the people that could provide it.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Yes, maintainer deserve respect.
|
| However, This is just wordplay redefining the concept
| building.
|
| If the purpose is maintenance, it is maintaining.
| JTyQZSnP3cQGa8B wrote:
| > One person's maintaining is another person's building
|
| IMHO, if you have a shitty harassing manager, you can
| switch from maintaining to being anti-work in a few
| months. And having a good manager can lift you from being
| a maintainer to being a tech lead at any company. This is
| a simple psychological trick that most companies have not
| figured out yet and it's very sad.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Management is hard and ICs often underestimate the
| difficulty.
|
| Employees are diverse, and what works for one, doesn't
| work for another. Similarly, what ICs say will work and
| what actually works are usually very different.
| cm11 wrote:
| To be fair, I think everyone underestimates the
| difficulty--including managers, the people that hire
| them, and the people who org companies to "require" a
| large number of people with these scarce skills.
|
| While I agree ICs underestimate the difficulty, I think
| what ICs are usually responding to is that the managing
| isn't good. Whether that's because managing is difficult
| or because their manager is bad is in some sense not what
| matters. Those problem are the managers' job or the
| managers' managers' job.
| ed_blackburn wrote:
| If you haven't seen it before, you may find this
| interesting: https://medium.com/building-the-agile-
| business/a-structure-f...
| Ductapemaster wrote:
| Thank you for sharing this! I read this a long time ago
| and promptly lost the link, despite me coming back to the
| principles often.
| dlivingston wrote:
| Wow, great read. I'm 100% a Settler. What should I be
| doing career-wise to maximize this? Joining startups?
| josephg wrote:
| Yeah I absolutely agree. The way it was told to me, there
| are 3 types of people: Commandos, soldiers and police.
| Commandos like cutting their own path through the jungle
| and going behind enemy lines to do something nobody thought
| possible. Soldiers work as a team to make a stable
| foothold. And after the area is secure, police keep the
| peace and deal with problems that come up.
|
| The world will always ask commandos to stay around as
| soldiers and soldiers to stay around as police. But that's
| not their role. They're needed elsewhere.
|
| I saw this with my own eyes back in college. A friend
| started a computing facility newsletter. Every Sunday he
| was up until dawn finishing the copy in it, and then Monday
| he would find a working printer and print copies. I think
| he was funding it himself for the first few months. One of
| the computing staff (the "student liaison") fought him
| every step of the way. He was constantly being trouble,
| making it hard to distribute the newsletter. Telling him he
| couldn't use the printer. Random stuff like that.
|
| Well. My friend was reliable and 6 months passed. Every
| week the newsletter came out and it became part of life on
| campus. My friend moved on and guess who put up their hand
| to keep running it? It was the liaison. The same guy who
| had made it so hard to start in the first place. He's just
| a born police man. I think deep down he loves maintaining
| the status quo. Once the newsletter was part of the status
| quo, he naturally took it on himself to keep it going.
| ivan_gammel wrote:
| I have heard another version of this classification: people
| are either builders, or scalers, or optimizers, but rarely
| combine the traits. They are good for different stages of
| the company growth. Builders are good at the most risky and
| innovative stage from founding the company to getting first
| customers. Scalers know how to become big and profitable.
| Optimizers squeeze the juice and keep moats deep.
| jeffwask wrote:
| About 5 years ago, I had a conversation with my CTO that
| amounted to this. He told me paraphrasing, "I'm a one
| trick pony. I take companies from this size to this size
| and when I'm done, I move on to the next. I'm very good
| at this and I'm happy doing it." Plus he made a lot of
| money doing so. I'd worked with him at two companies and
| it clicked that he had a playbook and he ran that
| playbook at each new company. He refined the art of going
| from this stage a to stage b.
|
| I really took it to heart and changed what I thought
| about career progression. I'm probably a builder/scaler I
| def get bored in the maintenance phase.
| ivan_gammel wrote:
| Maintenance/optimization is an interesting stage: on one
| side, there you mostly need to execute by playbooks
| rather than be creative. Is it boring? On the other side,
| it is the stage where you need the most skill and
| expertise: you actually need to know all those playbooks,
| and standards, and regulations, and best practices, and
| war stories. There you stand on the shoulders of giants
| and establish connection between today and many centuries
| of others experience. You do need to innovate still, but
| that is now an intricate art of balance between not
| wrecking the ship and still being relevant. Is _that_
| boring? I don't know. I want to try it closer to my
| retirement.
| jeffwask wrote:
| > You do need to innovate still, but that is now an
| intricate art of balance between not wrecking the ship
| and still being relevant. Is _that_ boring? I don't know.
| I want to try it closer to my retirement.
|
| It's probably experience bias but the maintenance phase
| orgs I have worked for were more like warehouses that
| kept systems on shelves and let them rot until all the
| customers bled away. These were mostly growth by
| acquisition PE companies. It was like working at a fruit
| stand selling only rotten fruit. We were never given
| time, budget, or resources for even basic modernization.
| Everything was firefighting. One team after acquisition,
| lost their devops team, and let their pipelines degrade
| over 5 years to the point they couldn't deploy anymore.
| I've seen on-prem solutions deployed 20 times to a VM
| across 50 VM's and called cloud. It took a weekend for
| the team to deploy (10-15 people because support had to
| manually test every env because it was so fragile). They
| also tend to attract and retain talent that is done
| learning and growing. I had an Ops Engineer at one of
| these orgs tell me in 2023 that no one told them they had
| to learn Docker. They know what they know, and they push
| back on anything new which in turn drives away engineers
| that do want change. Everyone knows it's broken but no
| one will commit any resources to fixing it. The business
| doesn't care as long as they are retaining.
|
| It's minefield and even when they talk about how
| committed they are to change during the interview you
| walk into fortified silos and no support or budget to
| break the deadlock.
| tom_ wrote:
| See, perhaps, explorer/villagers/town planners:
| https://blog.gardeviance.org/2023/12/how-to-organise-
| yoursel...
|
| Clearly this basic idea crops up in numerous forms. Part
| of the point of this specific scheme is that it is
| circular: once a given thing has reached the town planner
| stage, it has become some combination of pervasive and
| dependable and well-understood, ready to be used as one
| of the foundations for future exploration.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| >you actually need to know all those playbooks, and
| standards, and regulations, and best practices, and war
| stories.
|
| The way I see it is these companies need it, but it is
| impossible to satiate that need, so they must find the
| next best thing.
|
| If you have a project with 500 individual contributors or
| even just 50, it is impossible for one person, even
| geniuses, to understand and comprehend the whole. It is
| also impossible to staff all those positions with top
| talent at scale.
|
| Raw talent and engineering is replaced with heuristics
| and policies and red tape.
|
| It becomes like sailors operating a ship made with
| forgotten technology. They each have superstitions and
| operational knowledge about their little part, but nobody
| has the ship schematics.
|
| Similarly, there probably isn't single person on the
| planet that could fully explain how a modern computer
| works in detail.
| ivan_gammel wrote:
| >If you have a project with 500 individual contributors
| or even just 50, it is impossible for one person, even
| geniuses, to understand and comprehend the whole.
|
| It is impossible to know every detail, but it is
| certainly possible to understand and comprehend it. The
| ability to zoom out and zoom in is essential for senior
| leadership (even if some people appear unfit based on
| this criteria). Of course it works only if your
| organization is... ehm... organized and doesn't look like
| a bunch of unicorns of all sorts and colors, so that you
| can extrapolate the methods of work of one team to
| another.
| gowld wrote:
| What's fneascinating is that build -> scale -> maintain
| is a similar lifecycle to a human: create and pivot
| quickly with fluid intelligence and high energy at first,
| then settle into your lane and grow, and then use your
| accumulated domain-specific knowledge and wisdom that no
| one else has, at a slower pace.
|
| But the progression is not necessarily the same time
| scale for the product and the person. Maybe it was in the
| past, before computing.
| antisthenes wrote:
| The Jobs, the Wozs and the Cooks.
| throw4847285 wrote:
| I think there are only 2 types of people: those who buy
| into schemas that divide people into between 3 and 16
| groups with cool names and those who don't.
| utensil4778 wrote:
| I think this explains the trouble at my current company.
| We're a couple years into the scaling phase and it's
| become clear that our CEO is a builder and doesn't know
| how to scale.
|
| I don't think he understands that and there's really not
| anything I can do about it but move on.
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| That is not good, because what Tesla needs is a much larger
| range of models. Minivans. Delivery trucks. A real pickup.
| Work trucks. The Semi.
|
| What really disturbs me about recent Tesla communication is
| that the Semi is just not being mentioned.
|
| Tesla is basically a battery packager at its core business.
| The Tesla Semi represents a massive amount of demand for
| packaged batteries, and Tesla's model has the best
| prototype-demonstrated abilities. That is what the next ten
| years of the company is about at the core.
|
| Elon needs to go. Give him the 56 billion, and then send
| him off his way to ruin Twitter which isn't important.
| Tesla is one of the most important companies in the world
| in terms of keeping the EV transition on the cutting edge
| and keeping the feet to the fire on the old ICE companies.
| Maybe the Chinese companies will take that up, but there is
| so much uncertainty in China now.
|
| Tesla is taking too long to release models. It is NOT good
| at building. Their battery leadership is gone, CATL and
| other chinese companies raced past them.
|
| The future of EVs is LFP and Sodium Ion, and then probably
| Li-S or Na-S. Tesla has no leadership in those, it's all
| China.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| > What really disturbs me about recent Tesla
| communication is that the Semi is just not being
| mentioned.
|
| There's a pretty compelling argument out there that an
| electric semi is currently not economically viable
| because the weight of the battery cuts into the weight
| the semi can haul without exceeding the gross vehicle
| weight limit on public roads. In this regard, it may be
| telling that Tesla's first customer was a company that
| sells potato chips - one of the lightest weight per
| volume products you can transport.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| It may not completely offset the battery weight, but
| electric class 8 trucks have an additional 2000 pounds of
| GVWR allowed.
|
| I would say the biggest headache for Tesla in the semi
| space is that they were not first to market and there are
| multiple competitors shipping trucks now. And while Tesla
| has decent battery production, CATL makes way more and is
| evolving the technology much faster. Everyone else will
| just use those batteries. Maybe Tesla will too, if they
| keep trying to make the Semi a viable product.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| > What really disturbs me about recent Tesla
| communication is that the Semi is just not being
| mentioned.
|
| It's not being mentioned because it's a dumpster fire.
|
| It has delivery rates that today are 30% of their
| contractual obligations for 2017, seven years ago now.
|
| Pepsi, Sysco, UPS and Walmart have or are all given up
| and gone to competitors.
|
| Musk even implies that the outlook won't improve there.
| Blames battery availability, actually.
|
| EV trucks should have a shoe-in for lot tenders, it works
| well with the recharge cycle, would work with drop in
| batteries, etc., but Musk wants his on the Interstate,
| regardless of feasibility.
|
| He's also managed to convince the faithful that no-one
| else is doing or capable of doing commercial sized EVs,
| despite BYD having 60,000 electric buses operating, and
| others.
|
| Source: https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-
| transportation/tesla-...
| dylan604 wrote:
| > I'm surprised to see that they've gutted the supercharger
| team because it seems like the ultimate "services" sector
| where they're in better shape than anyone else to make
| basically free "services" type money from ALL EVs in coming
| years with NACS.
|
| Yeah, this did seem surprising to me as well. This is one
| of those mailbox money type of systems. However, I'm
| guessing they've realized that maintaining the
| infrastructure is something they do not want to do. So
| instead of running the network, they should just make the
| chargers, or license them for others to build. Tesla is
| pretty much the quintessential example of a rent-seeking
| company, so these ideas seem right up their alley
| robertlagrant wrote:
| > Tesla is pretty much the quintessential example of a
| rent-seeking company
|
| This seems impossible. How is it doing rent-seeking?
| dylan604 wrote:
| My understanding is they were offering subscription
| services. I could have misremembered that. I know other
| makers were considering the same type of thing.
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| There are only two subscriptions that Tesla offers: FSD
| and Premium Connectivity.
|
| And since you still have the option to purchase FSD
| outright, I don't consider the subscription option as
| rent-seeking.
|
| With Premium Connectivity, the way I see it, it's
| necessary to actually cover the costs associated with it.
| For those unaware, Premium Connectivity, you don't get
| any video/audio streaming services in the car, and the
| navigation can only use bare maps rather than satellite
| imagery. Note that these limitations don't apply if you
| instead tether to a mobile WiFi AP, such as your phone.
| The $10/month pays for the extra data your car uses on
| the mobile network, which could be a LOT of data if you
| watch video streaming while supercharging frequently.
|
| Unless Tesla is getting a sweetheart unlimited data deal
| from some carrier, there are probably some people that
| actually cost Tesla money from streaming a ton of video.
| But someone like me, who drives only ~5 hours/month, I'm
| probably not using much data from the audio streaming.
| moogly wrote:
| There are more. In the US, there's Tesla Electric for
| home charging at a fixed rate. Then there is the
| Supercharger membership for non-Tesla owners for a
| reduced rate per kWh.
| YooLi wrote:
| Look up "rent-seeking".
| rootusrootus wrote:
| It is too bad we cannot come up with a better name, so
| people do not confuse it with everything else we call
| rent.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Anytime someone is trying to keep their hand in my pocket
| with continuous payments for something used to be a one
| time payment rather than offer the same but as a service
| is rent seeking to me. Am I confused on the definition?
| sowbug wrote:
| The pejorative term, in the economic sense, tends to be
| reserved for rents obtained by gaming the system, rather
| than the usual kind that charges for use of property or
| capital.
|
| Example: a utility company lobbies for a law requiring
| utilities to charge a junk fee.
|
| Non-example: I charge someone to live in my spare
| bedroom.
|
| Tesla is offering use of something they built
| (Superchargers, self-driving software, etc.) in exchange
| for a fee. They aren't gaming the system to force anyone
| to pay. You might not like the pricing model, but there's
| nothing economically wrong with it.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| What would be an example of that? Most that I can think
| of involve a company ( _cough_ BMW _cough_ ) offering a
| feature they used to sell outright, for a monthly fee.
| The fee being much lower than the outright price of that
| feature. They're still offering something of value, in
| this case convenience and lower cost (if you don't want
| it all the time, buying it incrementally may well be
| cheaper than buying it outright; Tesla FSD comes to mind
| as a contemporary example).
|
| I think the problem most people have with the BMW trick
| is that they include the feature physically, but disable
| it. That does almost smell like rent seeking, but I think
| it does not quite get there. Manufacturers routinely hold
| back a bit and don't deliver maximum capability. For
| reasons like emissions, or longevity, whatever. This
| isn't much different IMO, if you're not paying anything
| for it then the fact that they included it anyway is
| immaterial.
|
| Probably the most common kind of rent everyone thinks of,
| property rental, is also not rent-seeking. There is value
| in what is being provided.
|
| To go back to a car analogy, it would be like BMW
| engaging the brakes on your car and then charging you a
| fee release them so you could drive (even better, making
| it legally required to pay the fee in order to drive on
| public roads). They're not providing any value at all,
| and then demanding money for it.
| Sammi wrote:
| This is the PAEI model which is from the 1970s.
|
| People are either Producer, Administrator, Entrepreneur, or
| Integrator.
|
| It's a scale from E to P to I to A in order of early to
| late in the company lifecycle. There are even personality
| tests for this online.
| oars wrote:
| This is a very valuable observation ("builders" vs
| "maintainers") along with the comments below this.
| balls187 wrote:
| The Innovators Dilemma.
| Timshel wrote:
| Don't know for me Tesla Innovations look more like
| traditional corporate innovation which can continue no matter
| the cost as long as the correct person support it.
|
| And in the context of this news I don't see much innovation
| just some cost-cutting to continue to prop up some moonshots
| to the detriment of the automaker portion of Tesla.
|
| Would Optimus survive as its own startup ?
| api wrote:
| There is a place for maturity.
|
| The answer is probably for big companies to let themselves
| get big but then start investing in the startup ecosystem.
| New things that aren't a good fit for BigCo should be done in
| actual startups.
|
| I think trying to put everything under one umbrella is
| actively harmful. In its most extreme it gives you the Soviet
| politburo. I've speculated before that the real reason that
| capitalism seems to work better is because of this
| multiplicity of organizations allowing the system to route
| around dysfunction. When everything is all one big
| corporation (as it was in the USSR) dysfunction in any area
| becomes fatal and cannot be recovered from.
| lamontcg wrote:
| No, this is phase 2 of what every SV business[*] looks like
| these days. Once the initial growth period is over in
| whatever the business is actually good at, you need to pivot
| into some new nonsense (AI these days) because the business
| is chasing infinite growth. That leads to this kind of
| flailing around trying desperately to hit another bullseye,
| instead of focusing on what the business already does well.
|
| [*] and more and more all the rest of them as well.
| mempko wrote:
| What are you talking about? Tesla has been SLOW to ship
| innovative products after they grew. Musk focused on SCALE
| not new product development. That's why a 2015 Tesla, now 8
| years old practically looks the same as one today. Even the
| cyber-truck was slow to deliver (other manufactures got to EV
| trucks first).
|
| Tesla is the perfect example of going corporate.
| jrflowers wrote:
| This is a good point. Innovation is when you put out press
| releases about an idea that came to you as you crawled out of
| a k-hole. Few large corporations have the smarts to promise a
| vehicle that can cross a small sea and deliver one that goes
| out of warranty if you take it through a car wash
| hehdhdjehehegwv wrote:
| It looks like they are a car company in the rise, taking on
| huge incumbents with a 100 year lead, are in spitting
| distance of becoming one of those multigenerational
| institutions and decided to blow their brains out on stage.
|
| They aren't at the point of disrupting themselves, this is
| like if Google terminated search in 2004. It's idiotic,
| period.
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| > and probably get his $56 billion pay package approved
|
| Maybe I'm not understanding something here, but how does him
| getting the $56B not crash TSLA stock and the ultimately the
| company? AFAIKT TSLA has only made about $32B in profit during
| it's entire existence as a company (and that could be an
| overestimate - I don't think it accounts for earlier losses
| which would take it closer to $27B). So why should Musk get
| almost 2X that? Why would any shareholder (other than Musk)
| vote for this kind of payout?
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| You are freely conflating profits and stock valuation, which
| aren't comparable.
|
| The vote is basically on if the shareholders want to honor
| musks 2018-2022 comp package, which was recently thrown out.
|
| The deal was that if Elon got the stock to 600 billion for
| shareholders, he got to keep 50 billion.
| boringg wrote:
| I mean the fact that the comp package got thrown out well
| after it being approved and him making the metrics is mind
| blowing. It is not honoring a deal but hey - someone has to
| pay the lawyers.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Yeah, I'm split on the issue. The court was right on the
| technicalities around disclosure, but it was also plain
| as day the board was musks buddies and the stockholders
| still approved it the first time.
|
| Could the board have negotiated a better deal if they
| weren't buddies? Probably, but that's why board
| composition matters.
|
| The judge said they thought Musk would have made the
| milestones without the comp because he already had skin
| in the game.
|
| Ex-post facto recontacting is just icky overall.
| everforward wrote:
| This is just kind of an artifact of how our legal system
| works. Judges don't generally answer hypotheticals, you
| have to do it and then see how it pans out.
|
| All that being said, I would be pretty surprised if this
| outcome wasn't mentioned as a risk to the board or Musk.
| They're talking about paying him ~10% of the company's
| _market cap_ as a bonus, and almost double the revenue
| the company has made in its entire existence. I'm not
| terribly surprised that a judge looked at that and
| immediately thought "breach of fiduciary responsibility
| to the shareholders".
|
| That brings up an awful lot of questions. Does it really
| take $50B to motivate him, given that his wealth is
| largely denominated in TSLA stock anyways (meaning he
| suffers if the stock price drops)? Is there really no one
| who would do it for cheaper? Firing Elon and hiring a
| $200M/year CEO would save the company like $50B; why is
| the board so confident that Elon is going to provide more
| value to the company than saving $50B on labor costs?
|
| Perhaps paying Elon is the right move to make. I'm
| dubious, but I'm also not a shareholder, so my opinion
| does and should mean basically nothing. I do hope that if
| the shareholders vote to approve the bonus, they're
| allowed to pay it out. They're adults, they should be
| allowed to do what they believe is in their best
| interest.
| indigoabstract wrote:
| It was about reaching a certain stock valuation only, not the
| the profits.
|
| Public companies are strange creatures. You'd expect a
| company's valuation to be proportionally tied to its revenue
| and profit, but it rarely is and Tesla is an extreme case of
| this.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| > You'd expect a company's valuation to be proportionally
| tied to its revenue and profit, but it rarely is and Tesla
| is an extreme case of this.
|
| No, you'd expect it to be tied to the market's assessment
| of the company's total lifetime value. That will hopefully
| be informed by revenue and profit, but isn't limited to
| those, as disruptive companies might be round the corner
| about to wipe it out, or vice versa.
| indigoabstract wrote:
| Yes and since no one can accurately predict that, its
| valuation is based more on speculation, rather than what
| could be extrapolated from the numbers alone.
|
| Which is probably a bit counterintuitive for most people.
| At least for me it was.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| All valuation is based on speculation. "The numbers" are
| always subject to change.
| indigoabstract wrote:
| I guess I was thinking about how a more
| regular/predictable business would usually be sold by its
| owners for a multiple of its yearly revenue, for example.
|
| Would the same apply to unicorns? Probably not, because
| they're special.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Both situations are still betting on future potential,
| either via earnings maintenance/growth, or via betting on
| being able to sell the equity at a higher price to a
| subsequent buyer.
| ranger_danger wrote:
| Not to mention he took $17M from federal charging grants right
| before firing everyone. FTC should be investigating.
| buildbot wrote:
| Lol, if he is planning on training on his cars Mercedes/Daimler
| had that idea back in 2018. I built the demo for the idea using
| nomad and a bunch of Jetson/Drive boards, and gave a quick
| presentation to the new CEO (of Daimler!). It's also patented,
| for what that is worth.
| api_or_ipa wrote:
| On the contrary, it's hard _not_ to be impressed with Tesla.
| They moved more Model Y cars than any other car the world over.
| They unseated Toyota Corolla as the best selling car. That's
| just incredible.
| hehdhdjehehegwv wrote:
| I was seriously considering getting a Tesla despite my visceral
| hatred of what Musk has done to Twitter, primarily because the
| price incentives are really amazing compared to other
| alternatives, but most of all the charging network.
|
| So this is beyond bonkers for me - literally about to hand cash
| over while holding my nose, but then they kill one of the major
| reasons I was willing to overlook Musks behavior?
|
| Seriously, WTF is this guy on, and more importantly, how much?
| Nobody sober and sane would do this.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| Meanwhile -actual- end stage FSD is nowhere in sight (this
| means northeastern winter nights with poor road conditions, not
| "it handles roundabouts so much better than the previous
| version!")...
|
| The cheaper CT and whatever else he's promising will never see
| the light of day...
|
| And he's delivered 36 of 100 Semis promised for 2017, and has
| basically implied there's little chance of that situation
| changing (blaming battery availability).
| rpmisms wrote:
| Theory floating around Tesla spaces right now is that they
| weren't executing well enough or fast enough, so Elon is going to
| start a new team from scratch. Given the remarkably slow rollout
| compared to most things Tesla does, wouldn't shock me at all.
| Elon generally does not fall victim to the sunk cost fallacy.
| andix wrote:
| Especially in Europe there are many locations that don't make a
| lot of progress. Some locations are in construction for over a
| year now, others just got announced and never started.
|
| It's mostly a problem with getting permits and connections to
| the power grid, but still it's not a great performance. I don't
| know if they could do better.
| paxys wrote:
| This phenomenon is well known in tech. "The product doesn't
| work as well as expected. We can painstakingly investigate all
| the different issues one by one, root cause them, and put in
| the effort to fix them. Or we could just throw out the whole
| codebase and start again from scratch. That's sure to be more
| effective right?" Spoiler - it isn't. Musk just threw out a
| thousand+ years of combined experience in the area, and the new
| team is going to come in and repeat years' worth of the same
| mistakes in order to realize why things are the way they are.
| IshKebab wrote:
| People aren't code. Sometimes teams get a culture that you
| want to change and it's generally _extremely_ difficult, if
| not impossible to change team cultures incrementally because
| a) they always hire people that have the same culture as
| them, b) they 're used to the existing culture, and c) people
| _hate_ being told they have to change.
|
| So I think it may not be as crazy as you make out. On the
| other hand were they really underperforming? Isn't Tesla's
| charging network still world leading?
| paxys wrote:
| If there is a bad culture then work to fix it. If there are
| underperforming employees then root them out. Like you
| said, it's not like 500 totally incompetent people built
| out the largest and most powerful EV charging
| infrastructure on the planet in a matter of a decade.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Not all processes are reversible, and not all problems
| are fixable. When there are solutions, that doesn't mean
| the ROI is there.
| IshKebab wrote:
| That's my point. Sometimes the best way to fix bad
| culture is to start from scratch.
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| How much of that is the result of the individuals on the
| team themselves and how much is that the result of the
| organizational pressures, constraints, and expectations
| they're working under?
|
| I suspect that just replacing the individual people would
| result in more or less the same unhealthy culture unless
| you also took steps to change the rest of the
| organizational context.
| user90131313 wrote:
| you mean how twitter was gonna break after so many fires but
| it didnt? yeah he probably knows a thing or two
| throw4847285 wrote:
| P U S S Y I N B I O
|
| But seriously, how can you not go to Twitter and see that
| it has become totally enshittified. The real lesson learned
| there is that large tech infrastructures are actually
| stable enough to survive a lot of BS without collapsing.
| Doesn't make the products pleasant to use, though.
| LordKeren wrote:
| The Twitter acquisition is like paying 500k for a house
| that's worth 300k, turning around and gutting it so it's
| only worth 175k, then claiming victory because "hey at
| least it didn't burn down".
|
| I think it's hard to see what has happened to Twitter as
| anything but utterly breaking the business.
| andix wrote:
| I wouldn't call X-Elon-Twitter a success. It was more like
| not a complete failure.
| andix wrote:
| Throw out and rewrite can work. If you know that the old code
| base is beyond repair, you know how to rewrite it and are
| able to estimate it correctly.
|
| What often happens is a rewrite that keeps the same mistakes
| as the original product (either organizational, specification
| wise or technical).
|
| I have no idea about management, I just constantly see
| restructurings of departments going wrong.
| TheCoelacanth wrote:
| The likelihood of doing that successfully goes up the more
| you know about the problems with the old thing and the more
| people who were involved with creating the old thing are
| still around.
|
| Just firing everyone and starting over from scratch is
| never going to result in an improvement. Even if the
| problems were because the original team was just
| incompetent (which it rarely is), you aren't going to get a
| better team the next time because if you knew how to hire a
| competent team you wouldn't have hired an incompetent team
| the first time.
| Aerbil313 wrote:
| I disagree. Rewrites can often get rid of more debt than they
| generate. They are always scary for psychological reasons,
| nevertheless.
| jprete wrote:
| The sunk cost fallacy means that you should compare future
| costs to future costs, not that you should automatically
| discount all past efforts to a value of zero. You still have to
| consider the cost of reacquiring institutional knowledge and
| rebuilding the team and project from scratch. That particular
| "sunk cost" needs to be considered in the calculation.
| stetrain wrote:
| "Tesla spaces" tend to be dominated by Tesla stockholders who
| care more about share price than cars and customers. They have
| a way of turning every bit of Tesla news into actually being a
| good thing for the stock because <reason>.
|
| Supercharger rollout wasn't slow. They have been averaging more
| than one new station opened per day in the US alone. If a new
| gas station brand were opening 30+ new gas stations per month
| in the US I think we'd find that impressive.
| cactusplant7374 wrote:
| I think in the future we're going to see a stock price that
| mirrors traditional auto manufacturers. It will take some
| time to get there and when it does it will destroy the
| retirements of those Tesla stockholders most active on
| Twitter. It's going to be interesting to say the least.
| Probably a lot of lag time built into the outrage because the
| Tesla folks are a patient bunch.
| greedo wrote:
| I never understood how any investors really thought this
| wouldn't be the case. They seemed to think that Tesla was
| going to devour all the traditional carmakers in a borg-
| like fashion. The evaluations have always been
| unsustainable.
| throwaway5959 wrote:
| Right? Even if they did somehow take over all traditional
| carmakers, the margins on those businesses suck. It'd
| just scale a shitty business (making cars).
| throwaway5959 wrote:
| > It will take some time to get there and when it does it
| will destroy the retirements of those Tesla stockholders
| most active on Twitter.
|
| Well at least there's that silver lining: a lot less noise
| in the EV space on YouTube.
| api_or_ipa wrote:
| There are about 200,000 gas stations in the US. At one per
| day, it would take >500 years to rebuild the network.
|
| 1 super charger station per day is pitiful, you don't need to
| be Elon to realize that is nowhere near fast enough to
| transition to electric vehicles.
| stetrain wrote:
| You don't need one Supercharger to replace each gas
| station.
|
| About 2/3s of Americans live in single-family homes. Some
| of those won't be conducive to home charging, but most will
| be. If even 50% of households can charge at home, that
| eliminates the need for huge numbers of gas stations
| supplying cars for the normal daily commute.
|
| We can also build these cheaper slow-chargers at offices,
| in parking garages, along urban street parking to cover
| many of those who can't set up their own home charging.
|
| What you're left with is covering long-range travel along
| highways, as well as those who don't have the ability to
| charge at home or work. This is what Tesla has always been
| targeting with their charging network.
|
| Most people who buy a Tesla do not go to a Supercharger
| once or twice a week. I use one about 4 times per year.
|
| For the chargers that we do need, we also shouldn't be
| counting on one company to build all of them for us.
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| > Given the remarkably slow rollout compared to most things
| Tesla does
|
| Oh, yes, that 1M strong self-driving taxi network promised to
| be delivered in 2019 is rolling out really well.
|
| As is the Cybertruck, robots, and AI.
|
| The supercharger network is arguably the most successful Tesla
| product.
| jszymborski wrote:
| > Elon generally does not fall victim to the sunk cost fallacy.
|
| That, or he erratically makes decisions on a whim. Depends on
| how charitable your reading is.
| rpmisms wrote:
| What you said is compatible with what I said.
| jszymborski wrote:
| Fair enough!
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Musk said the rollout will be slower but continue on Twitter.
|
| Maybe he meant in the short term, but I would expect a
| different kind of bluster if what you said was true.
| spixy wrote:
| He has done similar thing in SpaceX and it worked:
| https://twitter.com/FoMaHun/status/1785333618157527081
| Dunedan wrote:
| Replacing a few executives is something quite different than
| laying the whole team off.
| jjav wrote:
| > Elon is going to start a new team from scratch
|
| I wonder where they'll find people at this point that haven't
| heard the news that the entire organization can be fired on a
| whim?
|
| What experienced capable person would want to go to that new
| team? Unless the pay is far far above market, it's not
| attractive.
| demondemidi wrote:
| Yeah that's totally a good idea. Take the team that invented
| the product and made it so successful that other companies
| switched to the standard. Then fire all of that expertise and
| start from scratch. 5-D chess all the way.
|
| > Elon generally does not fall victim to the sunk cost fallacy.
|
| Did you see the news a few years ago when he bought a media
| company for $44 B and drove its profits into the ground?
|
| What amazes me the most is that absolutely loyal cult following
| this guy has built. For decades Apple fans were mocked
| relentlessly for the adoration of Jobs. Now that cult has moved
| on over to Musk. Different people but same worship.
| boringg wrote:
| Anyone have any information about the actual individual asset
| valuations for a Tesla Supercharger station? I have to imagine
| that without tax benefits accruing to Tesla these investments
| don't pencil out on financials but are a necessary investment for
| people to feel comfortable about buying an EV.
|
| So probably individual losses on their books that they no longer
| need to underwrite because the competition can start investing
| and operating them which expands the network for users.
| pocketsand wrote:
| I understand the competitive advantage has changed with the NACS
| deal, but the last major Tesla brand advantage I as a lay-
| observer saw was their clearly superior charging network and
| connector. People seemed to unanimously agree their connector was
| better, that opening it up was good, and that Tesla charges are
| more reliable and more available than competitors'. Why you'd
| immolate that brand equity is beyond me.
| foobarian wrote:
| My guess is, it was too expensive. That was a huge team with a
| huge capex outlay and for what? They still had to slash prices
| to keep moving inventory.
| kjksf wrote:
| They are not destroying superchargers. They are still there and
| even if they don't add a single new one for the next 5 years,
| it'll still be the largest and the best supercharging network
| in US. No need to be so melodramatic about it.
|
| If you ask me it's a temporary cost cutting. When interest
| rates come down, car sales pick up and revenues pick up,
| they'll re-start the build out of the network.
| pocketsand wrote:
| I did not say they're destroying the chargers. You are
| nevertheless underselling the potential implications IMO.
| These chargers are finicky. People's primary complaint with
| Electrify America is how hit or miss they are in actually
| working. People have the same complaint about Tesla, but to a
| lesser degree. That combined with Tesla's wider presence have
| made people correctly laud the quality of the market.
| Expansion aside, these chargers will need to be maintained,
| and sacking the entire division doesn't leave me hopeful they
| will be.
|
| Moreover, EVs are going to just keep growing in number. Every
| brand now has a pretty solid EV for sale. Keeping the same
| number of chargers isn't helping anyone.
|
| It's their right, but my main point is that this just further
| convinces me Tesla isn't serious about keeping up with EVs.
| Pumping money into a useless truck, chasing a dozen other
| fanciful projects, abandoning their world class charger
| network. The future is -- every other manufacturer -- it
| would seem.
| casperb wrote:
| The speculation that I heard was that Tesla saw a potential
| government enforcement of 1 type of connector. So they made the
| deals with other car makers and opened their connector so that
| their connector would be the open standard instead of something
| else. So yes they gave up their advantage, but there was a
| possibility that is was ending either way.
| linsomniac wrote:
| Musk has clarified: "Tesla still plans to grow the Supercharger
| network, just at a slower pace for new locations and more focus
| on 100% uptime and expansion of existing locations"
|
| https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1785406795814510785
| greedo wrote:
| Why anyone gives credence to what Musk says is beyond me. The
| hype this guy has spewed the last decade is beyond credulous.
| linsomniac wrote:
| Cruel, but fair. But, it is a part of the story...
| chefkd wrote:
| hmm debt financing, layoffs, advertiser pull out just gotta make
| it to 2031 and win the pay package dispute golden after that
| leesec wrote:
| Elon regularly fires teams that don't perform. He fired the
| management of Starlink in 2019 and the product was still a mass
| success. So much hatred and negativity for one of the most truly
| innovative companies of our time.
| smith7018 wrote:
| The Supercharger program is arguably Tesla's most valuable
| asset, though. Arguing that they're "under preforming" and
| therefore deserved a mass firing is unbelievably shortsighted.
| Without the Supercharger network (that was on its way to
| becoming a US monopoly), there isn't much differentiation
| between Tesla and other EVs beyond brand recognition and
| largely controversial design decisions.
| leesec wrote:
| It's still an asset, and it's still becoming a monopoly.
| Nothing has really changed except the team
| nightshadetrie wrote:
| He'll most likely re-hire the core engineers (maybe 1 per
| team) at higher salaries to maintain context. That's what he
| did at X
| oxqbldpxo wrote:
| 2018: My next car is a Tesla. 2024: There is no way I'd buy a
| Tesla. Cybertrucks are the 2024 version of "The Emperor's New
| Clothes."
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| Me in 2016: Elon Musk is real life Tony Stark! :-D
|
| 2019: _Buys a Model 3 Performance_ I love this car, though I
| wish Elon Musk would stop over-promising on FSD. I hope one day
| to get a Roadster 2.0!
|
| 2021: Elon is becoming a bit of a nut job, but his large
| presence in the news is good for Tesla sales.
|
| 2024: The absolute best thing Tesla could possibly do for the
| survival of the brand is to get rid of Elon Musk. His hard
| right-wing shift has destroyed left-wing environmentalist
| desires to get a Tesla, and if Tesla dies, the entire market
| takes it as a signal that EVs are not viable in the market. His
| claims on FSD "coming soon" are no longer forgivable and are
| just outright lies. No longer interested in the Roadster 2.0,
| hoping someone else can make an EV convertible that'll do 0-60
| in under 2.2s and have a $200K or less price tag.
| ldbooth wrote:
| It seems they looked at the market, saw their 6% return on SC's
| and saw a lot of competition that would be drive down that low
| margin and be installing their NACS ports going forward anyway.
| If they can back away to to let 3rd party developers/funds build
| the low margin stuff, it could be a wise use of capital.
|
| However, this is the ChargePoint model having 3rd parties
| buy/build/own/operate the stations and although Tesla's DC/AC
| charger builds are better, they will be confronted with the same
| issues ChargePoint has where station uptime is much lower due
| under 3rd party ownership because Tesla does not directly own and
| monitor the stations and it's up to the owner to maintain. The
| owners are more lax and the ports experience more downtime,
| disrepair. Literally the opposite of increasing SC uptime that
| was Elon's justification tweet on this team layoff. Maybe they
| can find a solution to the problem (only selling to large
| orgs/projects like they do with Megapack) but the likely outcome
| is the network will grow slower with outside capital but the
| quality/uptime is lower than before. And non Tesla SC
| stations/networks will be integrated into the Tesla dash like
| everyone other OEM does.
| Germanion wrote:
| Elon wasting too much time on Twitter.
|
| Prev I thought good leaders don't matter (and musk is still bat
| shit crazy) but plenty of times now I took care of stuff (a team,
| a product) and made it good.
|
| But keeping it good needs still attention or someone taking over.
|
| That Elon was/is hands on was.critical.
|
| With him spending time on Twitter too, stupidest thing he ever
| did.
| pipes wrote:
| Part of the reason seems to EU saying that Tesla must let it's
| competitors use it's networks. Probably didn't occur to them that
| this might disincentivise Tesla from investing in it.
| quantified wrote:
| > And while the last layoffs were distasteful enough, continued
| layoffs have even worse optics, given Tesla's move to ask
| shareholders for a $55 billion payout for its CEO just days after
| firing 14,000 people. That $55 billion could pay for 40 years
| worth of six-figure salaries for those employees.
|
| Ok, I'm interested in the rebuttals from the "Elon knows better
| than you, as measured by his net worth" perspective. It might be
| really clever business, or it might be a spasm. Is this just an
| HR maneuver to weed out the less-than-fully-committed?
| OscarTheGrinch wrote:
| How much of Tesla's downfall can be attributed to Elon's decision
| to build a clusterfuck clown truck?
| jdlyga wrote:
| Superchargers are the only good thing that Tesla has going. What
| a shame.
| pellucide wrote:
| Everyone on HN were predicting death of X.com under similar
| layoff news. But it is still ticking.
|
| Seriously, whats different this time?
| constantcrying wrote:
| Keeping a website afloat is far less capital intensive than
| running a car maker. If you are building cars, you have to have
| a continuous massive amount of investment into development. For
| running a social media website you just need competent staff
| and cover hardware costs.
|
| You can free-float X to a certain extent, just make sure
| neither users nor advertisers run away. If you are building
| cars and a model completely falls flat you are easily down
| billions of dollars.
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