Is Elon Musk – the recipient of over five billion government dollars – really the focused workhorse he proclaims to be, or is he nothing more than a taxpayer-subsidized, scatterbrained mess hopelessly trying to make his science fiction dreams into reality?
Wall Street is now largely betting against Tesla, which has consistently missed Model 3 production deadline after Model 3 production deadline. Some believe that the company is nearing its make-or-break moment.
To prove private-sector investment houses like Goldman Sachs wrong, Musk claims he is going through “production hell,” working at all hours to quench Tesla’s backlog bug. According to him, he moves his desk to wherever the most pressing Tesla problems are. Musk also claims to sleep on the Tesla factory floor at night, which prompted his all-believers to start a GoFundMe page to finance a couch for the billionaire.
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Musk wants you to think he is a busy bee laser-focused on the mission at hand. But if Musk is truly so engrossed in meeting his Tesla deadlines, why is he spending time working on party balloons and bouncy houses?
Yes, you read that right. Just days ago on Twitter, Musk – conceding that he recognizes that it may sound crazy – wrote that “SpaceX will try to bring rocket upper stage back from orbital velocity using a giant party balloon … And then land on a bouncy house.”
Who knows? Although sounding outlandish on its face, maybe the idea will actually work in recovering upper-stage rockets one day. But is now really the time for wild theorizing and experiments? Tesla just stopped Model 3 production again to “improve automation.” Its California factory is currently under investigation for safety issues. As of November, Musk’s car company is burning nearly half a million dollars an hour, and the billionaire still hasn’t resolved the laundry list of SpaceX security concerns that the NASA Aerospace Advisory Council and Department of Defense inspector general brought to his attention in December and January, respectively. Party balloons and bouncy houses should be pretty far down on his to-do list right now.
It’s no wonder that Musk gets little accomplished in a timely fashion. The huge disparity between Musk’s tales of his uncompromising attention and what appears to actually occur in reality is entirely laughable. Here is a guy who just days ago sent an all-staff email to Tesla employees advising them to increase productivity by walking out of long meetings and refraining from using “nonsense words,” and yet, at this critical time for his companies’ future, Musk turns around to tweet about party balloons and bouncy houses.
Wow. Unfortunately, this is not the only time that Musk has done something like this – it’s just the most recent example of a recurring pattern in Musk World.
The billionaire is clearly in way over his head in terms of making all his ideas into reality. In October, Musk regularly tweeted about the current happenings of the Boring Company, the company he reportedly created to “build a tunnel boring machine and just start digging” after becoming fed up with traffic. He also kept actively promoting OpenAI, an organization that he co-founded to combat the risks he believes exist with artificial intelligence.
In the opening week of November, SpaceX’s Block 5 Merlin engine, which the company will use in upcoming Falcon 9 rockets, suffered an explosion. One would imagine that this deficiency, as well as explosions like the one in 2015, which NASA wrote occurred due to the company implementing low-quality parts “without adequate screening … without regard to the manufacturer’s recommendations … and without proper modeling or adequate load testing of the part,” could have been prevented had Musk’s head been in one place at one time. Instead, he tried doing everything at once.
Big Promiser Musk also said he believed that Tesla could produce 20,000 Model 3 cars in December; however, he was again very distracted. He continued with his active promotion of the Boring Company, started selling flamethrowers, and began more work on SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy, which was slated to launch in January (spoiler alert: it faced yet another setback before finally launching on a four-plus-year delay). And so he ended up producing just 1,500 vehicles in the entire fourth quarter.
Whether it’s proposing embedding computer chips in our brains for “consensual telepathy”; replacing airplanes with his rocket ship; or creating an underground, vacuum tube-centered transportation system, Musk has proven to the world that he sure can dream. However, he has done little to demonstrate that he can consistently deliver. His complete negligence of SpaceX and Tesla deadlines, particularly in recent months, has been entirely disrespectful to his investors. Few, if any, other entrepreneurs succeed at getting away with what he does on a regular basis.
It’s time for the federal government to phase out the government giveaways to the Musk Empire so that Musk’s biggest investor – the American taxpayer – is no longer stuck financing this big dreamer’s all-talk, no-action mentality.
Never spoil a good story with the facts.
There are positives for EV’s. WUWT has an excellent article:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/04/25/a-positive-perspective-on-electric-vehicles/
That article is complete bullshit.
It takes more energy to generate the electricity (at the power plant), power line transmission loss to deliver it to the home, heat wasted in charging the battery, than it does to power a BMW 535 – no kidding.
Absolutely clueless response.
https://blog.ucsusa.org/dave-reichmuth/new-numbers-are-in-and-evs-are-cleaner-than-ever
Greetings,
You are absolutely correct. The public has no clue as to how electricity is made and the losses that occur in transmission. It make far more sense to burn whatever it is you are going to burn to create motion directly in the engine rather than some far off place where it has to be converted numerous times.
Frankly, there is no bigger waste than an electric car and that is an undeniable fact – deal with it.
So you two and every other smart person have a diesel generator powering your house? Or is it in fact cheaper to pay the local utility to send it to you over wires from a distant power plant?
I’m not sold on electric cars yet either, but at least I’m not being a complete moron about it.
All giant corporations are government subsidized, that’s the whole idea, it’s what fascism is all about.
Musk needs a infusion of $5 – $8 Billion dollars – to survive. His credit rating is something like Caa – that is bankruptcy status. Who would loan him the cash??
Musk says he is going to produce 6,000 Model 3’s a week – yeah – where is he going to store all the parts? How will he order and receive all of them? How will they get to the shop floor? Who will build them? 6,000 cars a week – that’s 24,000 tires. He’s planning to run a ’21’ – 3 shifts / 7 days a week. He don’t know shit about manufacturing.
Soon the $7,500 credit is going to expire. He lost money on every Model S and X. Other high-end companies: Volvo, Jag, Lexus, Audi…. are all planning electric vehicles.
Musk’s idea of ‘save the planet’ is circling the drain.
As I understand it, if the Tesla you’d ordered doesn’t get delivered prior to the expiration of the tax credit that you’d been planning on, you don’t get the credit. Of course, there should be no such credit. I wonder how many orders of the cheaper models will get cancelled by people who’d been counting on the tax credit.
Dutch, quick, drink some coffee or something. You forgot to mention he’s going to need 24,000 wheels a week. And 120,000 lug nuts. Where is he going to store them? How’s he going to get them to the shop floor? You don’t think they got this shit worked out already? They are already making 2000 model 3’s and 2000 of the big models every week, to do that, you’ve got to figure these things out. Car factories are immense. That’s why it takes a little while to get this thing going, every one of these little problems has to be streamlined. You can imagine how it’s going to work but until you start trying to do it, and tweak it, it may not work exactly the way you imagined it
Just a couple of tweaks and Tesla won’t be burning through billions in cash. You are funny.
“Just a couple of tweaks and Tesla won’t be burning through billions in cash.” Fact. “You are funny.” Fact. See, I like facts.
I don’t think he has anything worked out.
If all his suppliers wanted him to be ‘current’ – he would fold. No bank is going to lend him money. Hedge funds are shorting Tesla.
“If all his suppliers wanted him to be ‘current’ – he would fold.” I’m sure they might want that now. But since they’re not going to do anything about it, that’s an irrelevant point. “No bank is going to lend him money.” You’re kidding yourself. If he needed to borrow, he would have no trouble at all getting whatever he needed. “Hedge funds are shorting Tesla.” Big deal. They’ve been shorting Tesla for five years, and all they’ve done is lose money. Tesla is a monster. You can take that to the bank.
I wanted to trash this guy, I really did. I hate people who write dumb articles. But I like this guy. I guess he’s just having a senior moment when he wrote this nonsense.
That’s your classic MO. You immediately attack the messenger rather than address his arguments. Facts don’t interest you.
That was my intention for sure. I always Google people and see what they’re about. Much easier to attack the messenger most of the time then it is to respond to their tripe. I’m not being sarcastic, this guy seems cool. I read some of his other stuff, and it’s pretty good. He gets a pass.
Who’s downvoting me and up voting this other numbskull? Read Kokoda’s article, you can hear the birds SING when you drive. Have you people no humanity? Don’t you want to save the planet?
IMO, I generally approve of EV’s. Yes, there are negatives, as stated. But, there are also positives.
For people like me that drive locally 95% of the time, some form of EV (I don’t know all the types) seems the best course – excluding cost (heck, initial cost and battery pack replacement cost can’t be too bad, can it). OK, I’ll add /sarc on that last bit cuz I think it would have escaped some.
Any positives electrics may have are outweighed by the negatives of the batteries.
SF – NO – I don’t want to “Save the Planet” – whatever the fuck that means this month. Generally just an ongoing excuse for the latest scam in either the “intellectual” or “investment” community. If you want to save something do it on your own dime and time – leave “me” (meaning the taxpayers) out of it.
star….I appreciate your hidden humor.
Forget Teslas. Spend $8,000 for a 84 MPG Eli0 car.
It’s a three wheel motorcycle, not a car.
And not practical for most people as a full time substitute for one.
Looks like a death trap.
If we took all these billions in subsidies to Tesla, maybe we could actually build a decent public transport system.
Anytits, one thing I don’t understand is why tesla seemingly feels the need to reinvent the wheel on car production. I get it, EVs are different, but if Nissan can churn out all those Leafs so fast, why couldn’t Tesla replicate that?
What sort of manufacturing fools does Musk have working for him?
I agree Kelly – others like Nissan are going to be churning out these cars.
” maybe we could actually build a decent public transport system”
You mean 19 th century technology – AMTRACK or Light Rail ? Public transportation is for people who are lucky? enough to live by a transit stop, and lucky? enough to work in a major crowed city (probably a shit-hole city), and for welfare / criminals who can’t afford a car.
The rest of us need to drive. Our time is money, and we value our time.
Better yet I think Musk is working on the tunnel boring machine so we can travel at 760 mph in tunnels.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperloop
All I know for sure is that I bought puts on TSLA and they are up.
A Brief History of Tesla: $19 Billion Raised And $9 Billion Of Negative Cash Flow
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jimcollins/2018/04/25/a-brief-history-of-tesla-19-billion-raised-and-9-billion-of-negative-cash-flow/#62ee67083d65
Not helped by the ‘channel stuffing’ Tesla is doing, registering cars in the Netherlands to improve Q1 sales figures.
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-04-24/tesla-stuffing-registration-channel-netherlands
A number of EU countries have or are going to remove the tax ‘credit’ for buying an EV, so he’s going to struggle to sell into our market, if nowhere else.
Then there’s the lack of infrastructure apart from in the cities. Even if it was in place, currently our national grid could not cope charging all those EV car batteries at once. We have about 25m cars on the road and our Govt reckons we’ll go all electric by 2040. Hmm….with all the trucks, vans, motorbikes, buses and trains too, I’d say in your dreams, it ain’t gonna happen.
The current system can barely cope at the end of football matches when everyone switches their kettles on at the same time. Having just had a colder than usual winter, the U.K. had blackouts when peoples’ central heating overloaded the grid in some areas.
The future is green….on which planet?
Just had a look at some stats. Just over 105k electric cars in U.K. by end of 2017. Tesla in 6th place after a Mitsubishi, a Nissan, two Beamers and a Merc, the latter two manufacturers selling very rapidly here. Only 19k charging connectors/devices. Most in the South and in the cities.
http://www.nextgreencar.com/electric-cars/statistics/
Gonna take a lot to persuade the other 24.9m car drivers to switch over in the next 19 years. Maybe with hybrids but not full EVs.