Elon Musk Emails Employees About 'Extensive and Damaging Sabotage' By Employee (cnbc.com) 490
An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNBC: Tesla CEO Elon Musk sent an email to all employees on Monday morning about a factory fire, and seemed to reference possible sabotage. Now, CNBC has learned that Musk also sent an e-mail to all employees at Tesla late on Sunday night alleging that he has discovered a saboteur in the company's ranks. Musk said this person had conducted "quite extensive and damaging sabotage" to the company's operations, including by changing code to an internal product and exporting data to outsiders. In the email, Musk said "the investigation will continue in depth this week" to "figure out if [the saboteur] was acting alone or with others at Tesla and if he was working with any outside organizations [that want Tesla to disappear]." You can read the full email via CNBC's report.
A common refrain from Musk (Score:2, Interesting)
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Also, if there is any substance to this, the last thing he should do is communicate it in this fashion.
Re:A common refrain from Musk (Score:5, Informative)
Also, if there is any substance to this, the last thing he should do is communicate it in this fashion.
If you read the email, he's actually caught the guy and had a confession. Getting this guy, likely with the police arresting him (given the accusation) likely blew the cover of the investigation. There is no benefit from secrecy any more.
At this point he firstly deters any other conspirators by letting them know he knows. They are less likely to do damage during this crucial time. Secondly he warns other loyal Tesla employees to look out, and that's a real reason to give accurate information so that they are more likely to spot the problem.
Open communication is probably the right thing at this stage.
Re:A common refrain from Musk (Score:4, Interesting)
And also opens himself up to libel action, comments on a legal case (if there even is one!) outside the scope of his legal department, insinuates that his competitors have access to his supposedly secure network (trade secrets, et al presumably).
Honestly, there's a reason that people shut their mouths in certain situations and let the lawyers / HR people talk rather than themselves. Every employee who works near this guy will know who he is. Certainly if anything in this email is factually wrong, he would have basis to sue. Hell, if there's anything in this email that CAN'T BE PROVEN, he would have basis to sue (i.e. the supposed "confession").
This could prejudice a trial too... now a judge might need to find a jury who hasn't heard of Elon Musk and hasn't heard such a statement.
There's also - and this is critical - no need for it. You can send out a message about finding a potential saboteur, stating your suspicions that they aren't alone, reminding people of the need for security and confidentiality, and providing the line to allow whistleblowing, without mentioning half the details Musk has.
Like Trump, Musk "reacts" rather than acts. He just codifies his internal emotion towards something and sends that out to the world as a quotable company statement, rather than thinks or checks or moderates.
Anyone with a brain is just thinking "Well, you must have really poor source control, then".
Re:A common refrain from Musk (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:A common refrain from Musk (Score:5, Insightful)
FYI, production scaleup has been going really well these past several months, hitting 2k/wk sustained early in the quarter, 3,5k sustained in the middle of the quarter, and well en route to 5k/wk by the end of the quarter.
I must have missed where VAG built a factory capable of producing 5k EVs per week in 15 months from the start of tooling, on a brand new line with a newly hired workforce. Literally, the first 467 Kuka robots arrived, were placed, and workers were hired, in April-June 2017.
Teslas "problems" are that they set absurdly aggressive schedules for themselves.
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I guess it's good for them that they are overcoming these problems but I don't know why anyone would want to be an early adopter until there were resolved.
Re:A common refrain from Musk (Score:5, Insightful)
but I don't know why anyone would want to be an early adopter until there were resolved
Maybe it's because they are dealing with a company that stands behind their products, repairs and upgrades them, and resolves issues if they are discovered, and are not dealing with a car manufacturer.
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I don't want a brand new car that needs to be repaired
Don't be an early adopter then.
There are plenty of people who are perfectly happy buying things that are fixed on the go.
And all car manufacturers offer a vehicle warranty.
hahahahahahhahahahahhahahahahahahahahahahhahahaahahahaha
Yeah my own state had to pass laws to hold car companies accountable when delivering lemons. I'll also leave it as an exercise to you to figure out how many people died due to Ford not recalling and repairing faulty ignition switches.
and a failure to think things through.
Yes people seem to often not think things through, especially when it comes to comparing car manufact
Re:A common refrain from Musk (Score:5, Informative)
Yes how foolish that those early adopters bought things that work just fine.
There are not many vehicle manufacturers with as bad a reputation for QC as Tesla.
Now let's talk about reputation shall we?
Telsa has a QC reputation mostly built up based on incredibly stupid nit-picking with only one real major flaw to date: The doors on the Model X. Most of their quality control issues were along the lines of "OMG the gap in this pannel is 1mm wider than that other panel, oh woes me!" In the mean time customers are like "LOL this door has panel gaps? I didn't hear you over the sound of how fast this thing accellerates and how sweet the ride is!" Hell most early reviews about fit and finish which grilled the few minor nitpicks reluctantly then proceeded to say how absolutely awesome of a car was produced. Oh but the stitching on the leather wasn't perfect, so horrible, much upsetness!
But all in all QC isn't the issue here. We're talking about company responses. So what kind of a reputation does Tesla have there?
- They caught the world by surprise when they offered free feature upgrades over the air.
- They borderline no questions asked repair shit most companies need to get dragged to court over (my own experience with GM was having the ignition switch fail 3 days before the warranty expired on my Astra and them then waiting 3 days to get back to me so they could try and tell me it was out of warranty and charge me $400 for the repair, and towing as well. Fortunately I lived in a country where the regulator had teeth and they forced GM to not only tow and fix the car but also re-imburse me for the rental costs for delaying me as long as they did).
- Tesla invested in a mobile repair fleet sending people out to customer's houses for this kind of stuff.
- A consumer reports came out with a sub par rating for the Model 3 brakes. Tesla stepped up and fixed it.
- Telsa recalling cars with actual faults quickly and voluntarily. In the meantime what did an NHTSA rep say in a public hearing about Chyrisler? "In every one of the 23 recalls, we have identified ways in which Fiat Chrysler failed to do its job."
Yeah you're right. Fools and their money are easily parted. One day maybe the fools will wake up and actually buy from Tesla instead of risking their lives.
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Why are OTA updates a good thing? It just indicates that what I purchased isn't really mine, and can be taken away by a malicious or malformed update.
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"I don't want a brand new car that needs to be repaired because it wasn't adequately QCd in the first place."
Then you won't want to ever buy a car from companies such as Honda or Toyota (or any car company for that matter), provided it is the first model year of a new engine, new body, or both. Every car company has issues with the first year model of a new model or engine, guaranteed.
Pretending like they don't so you can shoot darts at Tesla is disingenuous.
As for why people pre-ordered, we both know why
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I don't know much about how Tesla does these things. So I'm kind of curious.
Okay, your Honda CRV/Kia Forte had recall repairs inside 5 years. So, I assume, you took the appropriate car to the appropriate dealer and either waited around or got a loaner or something like that while they fixed the problem.
Without dealers for this sort of thing, how does it work with Tesla?
Tesla does have sales locations you can bring your car to for service -they are just not 3rd party dealerships.
By not having 3rd party dealerships, Tesla has a direct relationship with each owner. They know what car you have, and what version of what model it is.
-Software fixes are provided over-the-air.
-Physical defects are likely to be fixed by Tesla sending a tech out to you. Minor fixes can be done on-site. For larger fixes they can bring you a loaner car, drive your car to the shop, fix it, and retu
Re:A common refrain from Musk (Score:5, Interesting)
BEV cars go together pretty much like PHEV and HEV cars do. The drivetrain comes in as components. You put them together. Assembling a Tesla's not all that different from assembling a VW, and companies like VAG routinely go from Kuka/Comau/Kawasaki/Fanuc arriving on the floor to full mass production at design rate in a matter of months, because, unlike Tesla, they're experts are what they're doing. Even workforce training isn't as important as you think, because they're experts at that, too.
This isn't meant to be a Tesla slam, because if Tesla keeps at it, they'll eventually become experts, too.
Re: A common refrain from Musk (Score:4, Insightful)
Which is why I just bought some TSLA. The problems they have are all problems of inexperience, which will slowly disappear. Musk keeps his promises, as long as those promises don't have a date attached. The basic business model (essentially being the Apple of automobiles) is very promising.
Reality check (Score:5, Interesting)
I must have missed where VAG built a factory capable of producing 5k EVs per week in 15 months from the start of tooling, on a brand new line with a newly hired workforce. Literally, the first 467 Kuka robots arrived, were placed, and workers were hired, in April-June 2017.
Hate to break it to you but the big auto makers build assembly lines with FAR larger production rates in shorter time periods than that routinely. It's normal for companies like Toyota to go from start of DESIGN to production in 20-30 months. Not start of tooling, start of design. They do tooling in far less than 15 months. And the process of assembling an EV isn't wildly different from a car with an internal combustion engine. A chassis is still a chassis. A suspension is still a suspension. I've seen them tool up an entire factory in under 10 months. (I work in the industry)
What makes Tesla struggle is that they don't have the institutional knowledge of a company like VW or Toyota and they are still building their production system procedures. They're having to learn it as they go and develop their production system from scratch which is genuinely hard to do. What Tesla has done is very impressive but let's not pretend they have mastered assembly better than companies that have been doing it for decades. Tesla is bringing a lot of awesome innovation to the party on the design and product engineering but to date they are still behind the curve when it comes to manufacturing prowess. If they survive I think they'll be fine in the long run but they have a bumpy road ahead of them for a little while. People tend to think manufacturing assembly is easy and it's actually one of the hardest things to do well you can imagine. I think Musk gets it and his job is just to keep the cash flowing until Tesla can get their production system scaled up and stable.
Re: Reality check (Score:3)
What makes Tesla struggle is they thought they could design a much more automated assembly line. They made plans based on being able to perform much more of the work without humans. The idea was to apply software agility to the assembly line, iterating rapidly and developing something better than everyone else. But like many agile projects, the end is hard to see and harder to get to by simply tweaking and tweaking. At least in a short time frame.
Instiutional knowledge (Score:5, Interesting)
What makes Tesla struggle is they thought they could design a much more automated assembly line.
That's an institutional knowledge problem. They just don't have the collective experience to know what won't work yet or where the boundaries of the technology lie. You can do a lot with automation but there are limits which a more seasoned company would understand. Experience can be a double edged sword because it can keep you from trying something new but it also can keep you from making mistakes.
The idea was to apply software agility to the assembly line, iterating rapidly and developing something better than everyone else.
That's not a new concept. You think nobody at Ford or Toyota or GM has ever had that thought? The difference is that they've already tried and figured out where it works and where it doesn't. Tesla is just reinventing the wheel here and learning lessons the hard way. To be honest they got a bit cocky and it bit them in the ass.
But like many agile projects, the end is hard to see and harder to get to by simply tweaking and tweaking. At least in a short time frame.
The software mentality can get you into trouble when you are making hardware. The economic and technical constrains are different as is the pace of iteration. It's relatively inexpensive to iterate in software and you can do it quickly. This is a MUCH harder trick to pull off when you are making physical goods.
No bonus points for doing it from scratch (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd love to see their QC stats as well. New line, new workers, new robots, new procedures, new process. I'm pretty sure they're not hitting Six Sigma
You can get general stats for free with just a short search on the internet. You can pay for detailed ones. It's not hard to get that information. NOBODY is hitting six sigma quality in auto assembly. Even the best suppliers don't reach that level of quality except in rare cases. Too many products with too many stacking tolerances for that to be possible. But the big auto makers are all really quite good, even the worse ones. Companies like Toyota and Honda have a well deserved legendary reputation for their quality systems. I've been in their plants myself and can confirm this first hand. They are REALLY good at quality.
But your mistake is thinking that they do it all from scratch. That's the thing is that once you have a part of a production system that works you don't redesign it all from scratch. The big automakers have proven technology and production systems which they just have to reconfigure and reorganize. They make incremental improvements which accumulate over time. Tesla just hasn't had the benefit of years and decades of iteration. In time they'll get there (hopefully) but you can't accelerate the process beyond a certain point. Tesla doesn't get any bonus points for trying to do it all from scratch. That just means they have a lot of places where things can (and will) go wrong.
Disclosure: I'm an industrial engineer (and an accountant) and my day job is running a company that makes auto parts. I literally build assembly lines for a living so I'm actually talking about something I know pretty well here.
Re:No bonus points for doing it from scratch (Score:5, Funny)
Disclosure: I'm an industrial engineer (and an accountant) and my day job is running a company that makes auto parts. I literally build assembly lines for a living so I'm actually talking about something I know pretty well here.
Knowledgeable about the subject? I'll bet you even RTFA. You obviously don't belong in this thread!
Not unlikely. (Score:5, Interesting)
I remember the flat-out lies newspaper testreports told about the range of Tesla cars and that were uncovered by the logs the car had recorded about how it actually had been driven. To me there is no doubt that behind the scenes specialised agencies and perhaps even darker machinations are at work to throw monkey wrenches into Teslas attempt to build an market feasilbe electric car.
Systematic sabotage at Tesla? Really way more likely than most people would think, IMHO.
Not unlikely;Tucker (Score:2, Interesting)
Tucker 48
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tucker_48
Re:Not unlikely. (Score:4, Insightful)
Sabotage at Tesla? Given that Elon Musk is mentioning a confession, I buy it completely.
Sabotage coordinated by a competitor or a company that feels threatened? Possible, but very hard to prove if engineered by a half-competent person.
Publicly announcing it without hard proof? Probably counter-productive.
Sending an e-mail to the employees before the internal investigation is completed, and the stock holder notified? Puzzling to say the least.
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It's not that puzzling. He has a confession, possibility of an organized group, doesn't have time to roll em up with honeypots and whatnot. The best move is to tell all employees to keep eyes open, and let would be actors know all eyes are on them. It's right to alert the public too, the difference between dismissing sh*t talking about burning Teslas and noting it is knowing that someone is actually burning Teslas.
Re:Not unlikely. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Not unlikely. (Score:5, Informative)
The 1st Amendment disagrees. There are no cases where you must be truthful except one: under legal oath. I'll be the first to tell anyone, liars suck shit. But the 1st protects them from answering for their lies, at least while they're on this plane of existence. It does not, however, protect them from karma.
British court, British judge. US First Amendment not in play. Requirements for truth notably more stringent.
Re:Not unlikely. (Score:4, Insightful)
They lie constantly. They say things that are true, then conclude things that aren't true from those things, and say them too.
Re:Not unlikely. (Score:5, Insightful)
At least in the USA, every other manufacturer of EVs has not realized what is Tesla's massive advantage and what it takes for practical long distance EVs.
The Supercharger network.
There is no other charging solution in the USA that is close to the Supercharger network. You can buy a Chevy Bolt today, but driving across country in it: that's going to be slow and difficult.
Re: Not unlikely. (Score:2)
Most people drive their car to and from work. A small fraction of automotive traffic would require the Supercharger network.
Re: Not unlikely. (Score:4, Insightful)
That's true. But most people people want to be able to do those long drives occasionally. $35k is a lot of money for a car that is only a commuter car. A Leaf would be cheaper and just as effective.
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$35k is a lot of money for a car that is only a commuter car.
Perhaps not if you're saving $0.15 every mile like with gas and electricity prices in many parts of Europe.
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But a Nissan Leaf is also electric, just does not have the range of a Tesla. It however has enough for commuting and is a cheaper. So if you are buying an electric vehicle for commuting to work and nothing else a Tesla does not make economic sense.
Re: Not unlikely. (Score:4, Informative)
That's true. But most people people want to be able to do those long drives occasionally. $35k is a lot of money for a car that is only a commuter car. A Leaf would be cheaper and just as effective.
I've had a BEV and now a Volt for my daughters. I'm buying a M3 for myself. There are things I don't like about the car (over-reliance on the center screen, door handles, etc.). But, the two things that helped me decide: the long range battery and the Supercharger network.
The thing is, even with the Supercharger network, a BEV is barely practical when you want to do anything other than your daily commute. Without the Supercharger network, you're definitely going to want to rent an ICE... Sure, some people do road trips in a Bolt, but I think it's more a thing to try than an experience you would want to repeat often. There simply isn't a robust enough DC recharging network available yet.
The competition (GM, Nissan, Porsche) keep wanting to put chargers at dealerships, but I've read too many people's negative experiences with that (charging station is blocked, only available when the dealership is open, too far from the highway)... Tesla seems to be the only company that understands what's required to be able to use the car for inter-city travel and they've stepped up to the plate and built a descent charging network.
I think the other manufacturers are happy to have poor charging options because it's another way to keep people buying ICE cars for a little while longer. When they start building out networks equivalent to the Supercharger network, or partner with Tesla on the existing Supercharger network, you'll know that they've finally decided to stop dragging their feet and are seriously trying to market BEVs.
There is no doubt in my mind that an electric vehicle with ~200 miles of range is sufficient for a large percentage of commuting which is probably the majority of miles driven by most people. And it's certainly true that renting an ICE is a reasonable alternative a few times a year. But the only way the BEV was practical for me was because I also still had my ICE car. To actually be able to have the BEV as your only vehicle you either need a very long range battery, or a robust charging network. Eventually the public charging network will improve but right now it's not set up to allow inter-city travel.
Example: right now I live outside Boston. I have a friend with a place in Newport RI... it's almost exactly 100 miles. That's a little too far for comfort with a car that has 200 miles of range. In the winter here in New England we lose about 50% of the range, so the car could barely get there on one charge.
Assume I have a Nissan with DC Fast Charging. Along the route there are 4 public DC Fast Charging sites showing on PlugShare. One is close to home, so that might be useful on the way back, but on the way down isn't useful. There's one at a Nissan dealership about a third of the way there. It's open 24/7 so that might work, except there's only 1 CHAdeMo charger, so if someone else is using it I might have to wait a while or try to find an alternative. There's a CCS charger at a Whole Foods 2/3 of the way there... but... Nissan wants a CHAdeMo, not a CCS (are there adapters?). And, again, only a single station so if someone is using it I'm screwed. Finally there's a BMW dealership just a little further down the road, but again CCS, and I'm not sure what the BMW dealership is going to say about me trying to charge a Nissan there. And again.. only 1 charger so if someone else is using it, and I can find an adapter, and the BMW guys are nice and will let me charge... I might still have to wait quite a while.
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I think that the M3 won't be so affected by temperature as the Leaf. Teslas have active battery temperature management, while the Leaf only has passive management.
Regarding the M3: I have one and it's a blast. Unfortunately, it makes me realize how sluggish my Leaf is.
One thing that surprises me in your post: I don't think I have ever seen a public CCS charger that did not also have Chademo. I am sure Chevy and other dealerships install CCS only chargers, but outside of that, any new level 3 charger support
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Because a plug-in hybrid has all the disadvantages of a small-range EV combined with all the disadvantages of an ICE, with the exception of range.
A plug-in isn't going to be efficient as a pure EV (less regeneration because the battery is smaller), it's going to need maintenance of the ICE, and it's not as much fun to drive (small electric motor and small ICE).
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I'm not sure I buy your argument.
Regular hybrids aren't maintenance traps like you imply, and a plug in hybrid would be lower maintenance (much more time using the electric vs the gas compared to a regular hybrid).
Additionally in practice the plug in hybrids seem to be about the same efficiency as regular hybrids, so I'm not convinced battery size is a huge deal.
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Why would they? Every other automotive company is already working on electric cars, and cars such as the Nissan Leaf (with its 172km/107 mile rage and $28,550 price) are already very close to being feasible for the mass market. Derailing Tesla's hype train would in no way stop the development of electric cars.
Because every little part works? If their mentality is "either buy a car from us or don't buy at all", it's not inconsistent with trying to delay Tesla's progress as much as possible regardless of circumstances. Also, Leaf is currently a bad choice [pushevs.com] due to excessive battery degradation (I guess you get what you pay for!), so for a rational consumer, it's probably not nearly as attractive. Hell, from a TCO point of view, a Model S can be cheaper than a Leaf after a sufficiently long distance driven (if you're
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Hell, from a TCO point of view, a Model S can be cheaper than a Leaf after a sufficiently long distance driven (if you're, say, a professional driver), if the difference between gasoline price and electricity price is large enough since the Model S will pay for itself completely ($6/gal vs. $0.1/kWh in case of my country).
I don't really see how a Model S could be cheaper than a Leaf, or how a Model S could possibly pay for itself completely.
Even at $6 per gallon for gas, that means a sedan that gets 30 mpg costs $20k in gas per 100k miles. So even if electricity was free, you'd still need to drive a half a million miles just to pay for the Tesla, not including any electric infrastructure you need, like a charging station or electric box upgrades, and not accounting for interest on your $100k up front, as opposed to over a
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I also doubt that politicians would have declared the EV to be sufficiently mature to set a timeline for phasing out IC vehicles, if it wasn’t for Tesla. That may sti
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Betting opportunity (Score:5, Interesting)
About 25% of the stock is shorted (varies day-to-day, but it's a single-digit fraction of the total).
When you short a stock on margin and the price goes up, you have to add money to your margin account to cover the potential loss.
Tesla stock is up almost 100 points over the last month, roughly 35% ($370 up from $275).
Tesla short sellers are taking a bath [reuters.com] right now, to the tune of $2 billion in the last month.
A fair number of those short sellers would be interested in throwing a pile of cash (say $100,000) at a disgruntled employee to damage the production line.
Anyone care to bet against that prediction?
(The next step will probably be to get the FBI involved.)
Re:Betting opportunity (Score:5, Insightful)
the shorters made the mistake of assuming that stock price would be tied to real world performance the company the stock is for.
I don't think they would be in position to do that, if they wanted they could pick any other company as well.
I have to wonder though, on what basis are people buying Tesla stock right now? it's highly valued for what it represents already and the company is likely to need more cash infusion to survive. I am aware of however that the stock can go up even in such a case, because people "like" it or like the guy running the company.
like, look as this news _should_ run the stock down and what is actually going to happen is that it's going to go up, because bizarro(and the people buying it are just buying it as if it were making apple like profits any day now).
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it's highly valued for what it represents already and the company is likely to need more cash infusion to survive.
Folks such as the GP like to quote that “25% are short sellers” in a vacuum - as if that, in itself, is evidence of nefarious activity. But the thing is... Tesla’s financial position puts it *exactly* in the category of stocks where the gamble known as short selling makes sense (if it ever does).
If Elon fanboys want to convince the rest of us that hanky panky is going on, they need to point out several other companies in similar financial straits where there *isn’t* a high degree of
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Insanity? Being dedicated Faithful of the Cult of Elon? There's certainly no rational reason, and even the more usual forms of irrationality in the market don't explain it. Tesla stock is vastly overpriced, with no clear path to profitability on the levels that would justify the price (which would be profits in the tens of billions of dollars range). And that's setting aside the massive amounts of debt they're loaded with.
Re:Betting opportunity (Score:4, Informative)
People who buy Tesla stock now buy it on the expectation that others will continue to find it valuable.
All this nonsense about "highly valued" and "represents" are red herrings. Stock value is not in any way dependent on the state of the company they are labeled with (with the exception of if it goes out of business). All they are dependent on his what people will pay for them.
All this armchair analysis about how the company is doing, and market cap, and profits, and other such nonsense is entirely irrelevant. All that matters is what people are prepared to pay.
Nothing else. Literally nothing else, what so ever.
So no, the stock will not go down. People love the idea of the underdog too much.
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Stocks very closely follow a valuation based on their fundamentals. Those are different across different industries, but the people that really make money on the markets track the fundamentals.
Warren Buffett is rich because he invests prudently based on fundamentals, not emotionally based on 'Tesla are so cool'.
Right now Tesla are viciously overvalued. They've managed to avoid a market correction and may continue to be an outlier. But they are an outlier, and you'd be a fucking idiot to pretend otherwise.
Re: Betting opportunity (Score:3)
And people like me buying stock on the assumption that the short squeeze will send the price higher, and lending it out to short sellers at profit to keep the squeeze going.
Next Week's Headlines (Score:2)
Saboteur was shorting TSLA, now shorting a Supercharger.
Saboteur at fault for fire, now on fire due to electrical fault.
Saboteur meant to retire to Sun City, went way of SolarCity.
Saboteur trying to halt Model 3 production gets overrun by Model 3.
Just sayin', lots of people hate him about now.
Where is the police report? (Score:5, Insightful)
Sounds like a crime was committed.
Sounds like maybe someone should be prosecuted.
Was a police report filed? Has someone been jailed?
I'm calling shenanigans until we git a pic of someone in cuffs.
At the police station? Re:Where is the police repo (Score:2, Insightful)
You do realize where we are in the timeline for this event....
I expect your curiosity will be satisfied soon... or maybe you'll be moving the goalposts before then?
Re:Where is the police report? (Score:4, Interesting)
The thing most people don't realize is that Tesla is not the reason the industry is pushing towards electric cars. The California Air Resources Board is. CARB has a zero emissions vehicle mandate [ucsusa.org] - every year a certain percentage of vehicles each manufacturer sells has to be a ZEV. The formula is a bit complicated, but for 2018 it's a little over 2%. For 2025 it's supposed to be 8%. If an automaker fails to hit the target percentage, they have to buy ZEV credits from someone who surpassed the target (e.g. Tesla). If they fail to do that, they are banned from selling cars in California and about a dozen other states which automatically adopt CARB's guidelines [wikipedia.org] . These states comprise about a third of the U.S. by population, and no auto manufacturer wants to be cut off from a third of the U.S. market. So they are all rolling out EVs to comply with the ZEV mandate.
Tesla has nothing to do with it. Because of the ZEV mandate, all the other automakers would be working hard to make EVs even if Tesla didn't exist. If anything, Tesla allows manufacturers to delay rolling out their own EV, since they can just buy ZEV credits from Tesla instead (many low-volume high-end exotic car makers are choosing to do this). So it would actually be against the other automakers' self interest to sabotage Tesla since that would raise the market price of ZEV credits, and they'd have to pay more (mostly to Tesla) if they should fail to hit their CARB-mandated ZEV percentage. The only time sabotage would make sense is if they're selling enough of their own EVs that they don't need to buy Tesla ZEV credits (and feel they won't need to in the future), in which case there's no need to sabotage Tesla since they'd already be beating Tesla in the market. Musk didn't start Tesla because he thought EVs were the future and wanted to get in on it early (he may believe that, but that's not the reason he started Tesla). He started it because he realized that CARB's ZEV mandate would give an automaker who made only EVs an economic advantage in the market (other automakers would have to pay him for every EV he sold).
So there's no incentive for the rest of the auto industry to sabotage Tesla, or EVs in general. That's a self-victimization delusion created by EV advocates who can't comprehend why regular people don't want to buy EVs. Because they can't understand the motivations of regular people, they come up with a conspiracy theory about how the industry is responsible for holding EVs back. Believe me, the industry wants to sell EVs so they can comply with CARB's ZEV mandate, since California is in absolutely no danger of switching from a blue state to a red state. This is also the reason I'm not shorting Tesla stock. 8% ZEVs by 2025 is an extremely aggressive target. I'm not sure the other automakers can hit it. If they can't, and Tesla can survive that long, its current stock valuation may in fact be justified.
Moonraker (Score:2)
Oh no, I can see it now. The falcon heavy about to launch. 007 is looking for a way out without getting too singed.
Maybe it's the same person. (Score:2)
Whom he claims shot his rocket to make it explode. /s
New instructions for Boring flamethrowers (Score:2)
- Do not use inside Tesla factories.
Change Control? (Score:2)
changing code to an internal product
This makes me wonder about their change control procedures. How was somebody able to push bogus code to production for as long as they did without getting caught? He was either very sneaky or they have lax controls.
Paying peanuts (Score:3)
Full Email From Elon (Score:5, Informative)
To: Everybody
Subject: Some concerning news
June 17, 2018 11:57 p.m.
I was dismayed to learn this weekend about a Tesla employee who had conducted quite extensive and damaging sabotage to our operations. This included making direct code changes to the Tesla Manufacturing Operating System under false usernames and exporting large amounts of highly sensitive Tesla data to unknown third parties.
The full extent of his actions are not yet clear, but what he has admitted to so far is pretty bad. His stated motivation is that he wanted a promotion that he did not receive. In light of these actions, not promoting him was definitely the right move.
However, there may be considerably more to this situation than meets the eye, so the investigation will continue in depth this week. We need to figure out if he was acting alone or with others at Tesla and if he was working with any outside organizations.
As you know, there are a long list of organizations that want Tesla to die. These include Wall Street short-sellers, who have already lost billions of dollars and stand to lose a lot more. Then there are the oil & gas companies, the wealthiest industry in the world — they don't love the idea of Tesla advancing the progress of solar power & electric cars. Don't want to blow your mind, but rumor has it that those companies are sometimes not super nice. Then there are the multitude of big gas/diesel car company competitors. If they're willing to cheat so much about emissions, maybe they're willing to cheat in other ways?
Most of the time, when there is theft of goods, leaking of confidential information, dereliction of duty or outright sabotage, the reason really is something simple like wanting to get back at someone within the company or at the company as a whole. Occasionally, it is much more serious.
Please be extremely vigilant, particularly over the next few weeks as we ramp up the production rate to 5k/week. This is when outside forces have the strongest motivation to stop us.
If you know of, see or suspect anything suspicious, please send a note to [email address removed for privacy] with as much info as possible. This can be done in your name, which will be kept confidential, or completely anonymously.
Looking forward to having a great week with you as we charge up the super exciting ramp to 5000 Model 3 cars per week!
Will follow this up with emails every few days describing the progress and challenges of the Model 3 ramp.
Thanks for working so hard to make Tesla successful,
Elon
(copied from https://www.cnbc.com/2018/06/18/elon-musk-email-employee-conducted-extensive-and-damaging-sabotage.html)
Re:Full Email From Elon (Score:4, Insightful)
It's right to call out attention to sabotage. It's wrong to cast abstract aspersions against possible competitors. Keep to the facts, Elon, don't promote conspiracy theories.
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Re:Full Email From Elon (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah, because having a direct confession is 'no substance'
Did you even read the past that you are responding to?
If you ask me, troll quality has fallen since breitbart started recruiting from 4chan instead of using russians
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It'd be easier to doubt his story if employee sabotage and industrial espionage weren't becoming more common in other places.
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Well, except the part where he says they caught the guy and he admitted to it. I mean, that's commonly referred to as "substance"
Re:This Email reads like marketing fluff. (Score:5, Informative)
This is a perfectly normal looking company email from Musk. One can argue that he writes them knowing that they'll leak, but there's nothing about the style in this one that's different from any of the numerous others over the years. They're generally a mix of "here's the problems/issues we currently need to address ASAP" and a pep talk.
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Still, the talk about short sellers I can understand as Tesla's not the only company short sellers
Re:Management by conspiracy theory (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure it is. Just not short term. Companies do actually think 5 and 10 years into the future. Tesla is extremely disruptive. Get rid of them, and electric cars can be stalled for another 10 years. That is more than worth sabotage. As it is, most companies are having to move into electric cars, and all of them are being dragged kicking and screaming.
Re:Management by conspiracy theory (Score:5, Insightful)
Ford Market Cap: 46.93B
Tesla Market Cap: 62.96B
Does THAT look like motivation to you?
Re: Management by conspiracy theory (Score:5, Insightful)
You're just dabbling in the same High-finance bullshit as the shorters.
Ford marketplace- big
Tesla marketplace- tiny
Ford goes out of business- hundreds of thousands unemployed.
Tesla goes out of business- Panasonic puts their equipment in shipping containers and hauls it to China.
Re: Management by conspiracy theory (Score:5, Interesting)
Ford marketplace- big
Tesla marketplace- tiny
Ford goes out of business- hundreds of thousands unemployed.
Tesla goes out of business- Panasonic puts their equipment in shipping containers and hauls it to China.
The EV market is just as large as ICE car market. The writing is on the wall and ICE is on the way out. It could be worth billions or even trillions to delay Tesla months or years by any number of parties. When you rock a multitrillion dollar boat, you better believe that there is plenty of incentive for sabotage.
However, the shortsighted shortsellers seem to be especially spurned by Tesla, so I would suspect one of them trying to make a big payday for themselves.
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The EV market is just as large as ICE car market. The writing is on the wall and ICE is on the way out.
Right now? Not at all. This may be applicable a few more years in the future, but I still see way way way more ICE vehicles and tons of people that react to electric like: "I DON'T WANT A GOLF CART. THAT'S A GLORIFIED GOLF CART." Etc.
Should make good progress in a few more years though.
Re: Management by conspiracy theory (Score:4, Informative)
The EV market will one day be as large as the ICE car market. By 2020 there will be 1 million electric cars out of the 230 million cars on the road in the US, an estimated 17.3 light vehicle sales will occur in 2020 about 5 to 10% will be EVs. It's going to take a generation or two before EV's make up 50% of the market, 35% is predicted market share for 2040.
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Tesla can't meet demand at the moment, where as Ford is cutting models due to lack of it.
It's hard to say how big Tesla's market share will end up being once they can get production up to speed and fulfil all the pre-orders. Other manufacturers are beating them to market on affordable 200+ mile range EVs now, e.g. Hyundai's new 64kWh Kona. But it seems certain that Tesla will become a major player in the market now.
False equivalency (Score:3)
Tesla can't meet demand at the moment, where as Ford is cutting models due to lack of it.
Wow is that a false equivalency if I've ever heard one. Tesla sells a few tens of thousands of cars each year. Ford sells millions. These are not equivalent situations. It's easy to exceed production capacity when you barely have any capacity and you only sell to a niche segment. Ford makes and sells nearly as many F150s every month (50-80K) as all of Tesla's models combined per year. That's with just one vehicle model.
It's hard to say how big Tesla's market share will end up being once they can get production up to speed and fulfil all the pre-orders.
In the short run it isn't hard at all. Their market share will be slightly bigger
Don't forget the trends (Score:5, Insightful)
Ford has a big market share now, but what of the trend for the future? Let's add some more to the list:
- Electric car market share increasing, prices decreasing, range and charging time improving, Ford works in a saturated market.
- Pressure to reduce the use of fossil fuels. Ford cannot just discard their current production lines and go all electric due to many factors, not least of which being internal politics.
- Electric cars and large batteries work well with wind and solar electricity generation and renewable energy has a steep increasing trend.
I can add more, but anyone can get the idea that while Ford dominates now all trends chip away at that domination and Tesla is perfectly positioned to benefit from those trends.
Remember the stages: "First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you ..." Tesla has passed now the first two stages, so the fight is shaping up.
You KNOW the Stonecutters are behind this! (Score:3)
Who controls the British crown?
Who keeps the metric system down?
We do, we do!
Who keeps Atlantis off the maps?
Who keeps the Martians under wraps?
We do, we do!
Who holds back the electric car?
Who makes Steve Guttenberg a star?
We do, we do!
Who robs cavefish of their sight? Who rigs every Oscar night? We do! We do!
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That's not really relevant, if anything it's an advantage for Tesla. Ford has to keep delivering profits or its share price will tank, they don't have the luxury of spending that money. They're locked into their business model, that makes them vulnerable.
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You would think it would be news and something that he would be required to inform stock holders of, before sending it to all employees and letting the stock holders find out about it in the papers after doing that.
Re:Management by conspiracy theory (Score:5, Insightful)
Since he apparently has something of a confession by someone I have to assume that something real happened.
But speculating that a big automotive competitor is possibly involved sounds nutty even if true. He should have quit when he was ahead and left that out.
Even if Tesla hits all their numbers and all their sales are directly subtracted from any one of the established competitors the net result is really tiny. I haven't done the calculation but less than %1 tiny I am sure.
So the motive just ain't there. The ROI is just not there to justify the risks involved.
If Tesla hits its production quotas in 2019, they should sell about 500,000-750,000 cars. The entire US car market is about 17 million cars. So that's about 3-5% of the US car market. But 30% of buyers have said that they are looking at an EV for their next car. And right now it costs the traditional automakers about $47,000 to make an EV but it only costs Tesla about $28,000 (assuming they are making 10,000 model 3's a week). If the model 3 sales queue just keeps filling up during 2019 the ICE auto makers are in a very tough situation.
That's going to be a hard ramp up for the auto makers. They face at least 5 years before they can make EVs at the same scale for the same price point as Tesla. That gives Tesla 5 years to grow their production and establish their dominance in the EV space. That would be disastrous for pretty much all the companies that sell cars in the US (GM, Ford, Toyota, Daimler, BMW, etc). While some of the companies are in a better position than others if this happens, none of them are in a good place at that point. Their stock prices will take a beating which will raise their price of capital. Most of their factories will have to be overhauled. New competencies will have to be learned. In short, many of them won't make it. Now that's a lot of ifs, but really all it depends on Tesla being able to make cars (not that hard) and people being willing to buy them on-line (which probably has already been proved). What would you do in that situation? Oh, and don't forget the car dealerships, the Oil companies and the auto unions. Elon/Tesla has a long list of enemies. Doesn't mean he isn't also paranoid or that there is a real conspiracy here.
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it seems like you don't sound too confident about a 100,000 car company ramping up to 500,000-750,000 in less than two years
from 0 to 100000 is a lot harder. I think they did about 100000 last year, and currently they already are at a 250000/year(3000 M3 per week+100000 X+S) rate.
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3500 M3 steady state. Went down at the end of last month for upgrades to bring them up to 5k by the end of the month, and are in the process of ramping back up. Was surprised to find out BTW that their pack production numbers from giga are *without* the Grohmann line - they're just now spooling it up. That's going to make a massive difference for them.
And yes, S+X is 100k per year. By design - they only can get enough 18650s from Panasonic for ~100k per year, and neither Tesla nor Panasonic want to sink mo
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into building more of their old cell format, for obvious reason
I am guessing they'll have to switch S and X to the new format some day(guessing this will be in 2020 or so); will they have any other use for the old 18650?
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18650 is a common format. There might be a market for, for example, laptop batteries and other medium-sized consumer electronics. Still, that's a pretty large volume of 18650s.
I imagine Tesla won't invest the capital in switching until they feel they can't actually sell 100k/year S+X. The Model Y platform (aka, a stretched 3 platform with updates) should make a nice platform for both an updated S and X. The larger battery vs. the 3 should allow for some very impressive ranges and power outputs. In the m
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The problem is Tesla are building cars in a completely new way, and those machines have to be tuned and revised before they hum. In the long run, they will be simpler to build.
Is that why they can't get remotely close to the manufacturing output of their competitors?
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UBS estimates the total cost to sell a Chevy Bolt is $44,200. That includes direct and indirect costs as well as dealer margin.
See graph on page 17 here: https://www.cargroup.org/wp-co... [cargroup.org]
This paper (by Argonne National Lab) goes into some detail on indirect costs for vehicle manufacturers: http://www.ipd.anl.gov/anlpubs... [anl.gov]
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Re:Management by conspiracy theory (Score:5, Insightful)
Tesla makes a big thing about 5,000 model 3s/week, and it sounds like in the near term they're hoping to ramp up to 7000-8000/week. There's also the S and X selling 2,000/week.
That's a big chuck of the car market. Googling, the Toyota Corolla is tops at 18,000/week. It's a bigger deal because (I imagine) Tesla 3 success will disproportionately effect higher-margin luxury brands like Audi, BMW, etc.
Not saying Musk doesn't sound crazy. Just that dismissing Tesla as an upstart bit player is flat-out wrong.
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10,000 cars a week is 520,000 cars a year. The US market is 17 million cars a year. I leave it to you to do the math.
With a hair under 3% of the total market, Tesla is very, very much an upstart bit player.
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See https://countryeconomy.com/bus... [countryeconomy.com]
Re:Management by conspiracy theory (Score:5, Interesting)
But speculating that a big automotive competitor is possibly involved sounds nutty even if true.
No way. When the most shorted company in the world finds saboteurs it's nutty not to speculate.
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So they have the hardware needed to identify and avoid trucks crossing the carriageway, to identify and avoid concrete barriers at junctions, to identify and avoid pedestrians pushing bikes?
Just that automated cars haven't been doing too well on those fronts.
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Not sure why sabotage is any more unlikely than the corporate espionage that is alleged to have already happened in the self-driving car space.
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Not sure why sabotage is any more unlikely than the corporate espionage that is alleged to have already happened in the self-driving car space.
Do you have a link to those allegations?
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No kidding. It was on the front page of Slashdot like once a week for many months on end.
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At this point, he's one Presidential run away from being Ross Perot.
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It's in their interest to spook others who may be thinking of pulling the same stunt. And to make an example of this person by seeking a conviction.
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Quite.
git blame.
And, sorry, but if your data got out, do you not have some kind of data control and audit?
These things are supposed to be life-critical systems. If you can't immediately point the finger at the author of every line of code, but send public emails about it, I'm calling bullshit.
Gosh, if only you also ran, say, a space company with thousands of tons of liquid fuel strapped to a rocket, which would give you the necessary protocols and procedures to ensure that code is managed properly and secr