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?
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.
Also their entire lineup of actual cars is now outdated.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.
> 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?
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.
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).
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.
Except Elon seems to have confused this with "driving innovation." The two __can__ correlate, but do not need to. Like I think it is fair to say that Tesla did push the other manufacturers to start pushing electric cars, but it is hard for me to argue that Tesla led the way through innovation. Not that they didn't do innovative stuff, but that the contribution here wasn't all that large.
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.
> Musk made clear in a call with analysts earlier this month that he is focused on opportunities in artificial intelligence, robotics and autonomous robotaxis.
> 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.
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).
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.
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.
“ 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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
Possibility is that Tesla won't get billions in US tax dollars to build out their network for free (and reap all profits), i.e. Elon's M.O. for all his companies. Hence the childish decision to throw the whole thing away then.
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.
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
> 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?
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.
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.
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.
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"?
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.
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.
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.
[+] [-] paxys|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] foobarian|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] m_fayer|1 year ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] UncleOxidant|1 year ago|reply
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?
[+] [-] hehdhdjehehegwv|1 year ago|reply
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|1 year ago|reply
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).
[+] [-] buildbot|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] godelski|1 year ago|reply
Except Elon seems to have confused this with "driving innovation." The two __can__ correlate, but do not need to. Like I think it is fair to say that Tesla did push the other manufacturers to start pushing electric cars, but it is hard for me to argue that Tesla led the way through innovation. Not that they didn't do innovative stuff, but that the contribution here wasn't all that large.
[+] [-] ranger_danger|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] api_or_ipa|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] Maxious|1 year ago|reply
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
[+] [-] akira2501|1 year ago|reply
His signature move.
[+] [-] throw310822|1 year ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] boringg|1 year ago|reply
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).
[+] [-] ra7|1 year ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] Topfi|1 year ago|reply
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...
[+] [-] mint2|1 year ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] rpmisms|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] ethagknight|1 year ago|reply
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|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] 93po|1 year ago|reply
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[+] [-] RaftPeople|1 year ago|reply
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[+] [-] kjksf|1 year ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] ulfw|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] foobarian|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] oxqbldpxo|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] babypuncher|1 year ago|reply
I told him this Musk fellow doesn't inspire much confidence in me with his increasingly bizarre antics.
Seems like I dodged a bullet.
[+] [-] Havoc|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] hankchinaski|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] quantified|1 year ago|reply
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?
[+] [-] mig39|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] sp332|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] tialaramex|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] jefftk|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] simonbarker87|1 year ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] paxys|1 year ago|reply
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"?
[+] [-] mdgrech23|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] lamontcg|1 year ago|reply
zorg_fire_one_million_meme.gif
[+] [-] unknown|1 year ago|reply
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[+] [-] rpmisms|1 year ago|reply
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