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bhtooefr
Active Member
Going over to General with this, out of Market Action:
So honestly, having read that? ...I could believe that.
It is also worth noting that while the ex-employee is negative about Tesla's code, they're also even more negative about the other automakers' code (specifically calling out FCA).
Silicon Valley has a "move fast and break things" mindset that leads to poorly designed systems getting slapped together quickly and thrown into production, but it also means that things can get changed quickly. (And, Tesla is very much part of that culture, so hearing about ugly solutions that then get replaced with better ones as they fail, as the ex-employee is claiming, makes perfect sense.)
Contrast with the traditional automakers, who seem to simply be bad at software, and have ridiculously slow (or sometimes nonexistent) change processes to actually fix problems.
Upshot: Tesla can be below ideal on the software front, but still be vastly better than everyone else.
So honestly, having read that? ...I could believe that.
It is also worth noting that while the ex-employee is negative about Tesla's code, they're also even more negative about the other automakers' code (specifically calling out FCA).
Silicon Valley has a "move fast and break things" mindset that leads to poorly designed systems getting slapped together quickly and thrown into production, but it also means that things can get changed quickly. (And, Tesla is very much part of that culture, so hearing about ugly solutions that then get replaced with better ones as they fail, as the ex-employee is claiming, makes perfect sense.)
Contrast with the traditional automakers, who seem to simply be bad at software, and have ridiculously slow (or sometimes nonexistent) change processes to actually fix problems.
Upshot: Tesla can be below ideal on the software front, but still be vastly better than everyone else.
Don't read too much into that so called employee statement. That kid's arrogant and I don't think he knows what he was talking about.
As former employee of Apple and Microsoft I can tell lots of horrible stories from both companies. I am now mature enough to know nobody is perfect and many times cutting corners are actually necessary. So I keep my mouth shut.
I can believe Elon's arrogant. So are Jobs and Bezos. When Elon said he wanted to land rockets everyone thought he was crazy, everyone including space x engineers. If that didn't come through as boneheaded and arrogant, I don't know what will.
As former employee of Apple and Microsoft I can tell lots of horrible stories from both companies. I am now mature enough to know nobody is perfect and many times cutting corners are actually necessary. So I keep my mouth shut.
I can believe Elon's arrogant. So are Jobs and Bezos. When Elon said he wanted to land rockets everyone thought he was crazy, everyone including space x engineers. If that didn't come through as boneheaded and arrogant, I don't know what will.
Dan Detweiler
Active Member
My big concern now is that this opens the floodgates for litigation. I hope it doesn't but I think it will raise more concerns and ammo for the shorts and we all know how Tesla stock responds to concerns. Short term, I see the stock taking a hit on Monday.
Dan
At loss for words with the whole public/private charade. Because you’d have to be quite hopelessly naive to actually believe that the official blog posts tell the full story.
I have been an investing fan of TESLA for a long time. I sat in a Beta model S that I recall had mercedes seats. Within a year of the IPO I followed the company, slept well owning through turmoil, was handsomely rewarded. I even owned LEAPS. When the model S came out, did well, price jacked up, I sold out thinking that the model 3 would be needed before price moved so much again. I got back in last year and have slept well through lots of this volatility. I have been swinging for the fences, with price targets 10x current price. I have been singing the bull story to any that would here.
All of that has now changed. Here is why:
1. The take private discussion has me no longer trusting ELON.
2. My hope has clouded my thinking. TSLA is slower to execute than they broadcast. Future value might still be true but this alone is not reason to hold.
3. We have enough money and have already won the game. Sticking with low cost index funds we still might die with 5-10 X our money.
4. Retirement is on the horizon. Time to no longer be bold.
5. As a former stay at home retail trader, the wild price swings scare me! I think this is a mature position not recognized by new traders.
6. Tesla sales calls suggest they are really pushing for short term profits. They even called again when I said to not call again.
7. I would rather TSLA not push for profits, I want growth!
8. 5% decrease in mutual fund ownership...Are they distributing to retail?
9. I saw a well to do large gentleman in a model 3. He looked uncomfortable.
10. Computer screen time following everything was affecting quality of life.
I am no longer drinking this Koolaid. Sold out a week ago.
All of that has now changed. Here is why:
1. The take private discussion has me no longer trusting ELON.
2. My hope has clouded my thinking. TSLA is slower to execute than they broadcast. Future value might still be true but this alone is not reason to hold.
3. We have enough money and have already won the game. Sticking with low cost index funds we still might die with 5-10 X our money.
4. Retirement is on the horizon. Time to no longer be bold.
5. As a former stay at home retail trader, the wild price swings scare me! I think this is a mature position not recognized by new traders.
6. Tesla sales calls suggest they are really pushing for short term profits. They even called again when I said to not call again.
7. I would rather TSLA not push for profits, I want growth!
8. 5% decrease in mutual fund ownership...Are they distributing to retail?
9. I saw a well to do large gentleman in a model 3. He looked uncomfortable.
10. Computer screen time following everything was affecting quality of life.
I am no longer drinking this Koolaid. Sold out a week ago.
I think these two are the most important.
Not sure about litigation. I mean they can try, but he had the brains to say "considering taking Tesla private". He also tweeted a bit later, that this is all subject to shareholder approval... and now the biggest shareholders told him they are not so sure this is a good idea. The one thing anyone (SEC, shorts, even longs) may take exception at is "funding secured". He did explain a bit later in a log post what he meant by that, but there is still sum risk of that explanation not being sufficient. May come down to the individual judge, but i still think it's a reach to expect significant fines because of that.
still leaves problems
1) getting rid of shorts
2) getting rid of volatility and options traders
3) getting rid of traders
4) increasing number of _long_ term investors
5) decreasing number of _short_ term traders (see 1-3)
he didn't say they wouldn't "delist"
Shorts still need a "hammer of Ghod"/Mjolnir, Thors hammer, and an electric flyswatter
I am not sure I agree with this. I think the explanation is valid. The real issue is that all this could have been done in the background. I mean the past 3 weeks. I can respect the reasons of being transparent, but in this case he should not have come out with something so half baked.
Anyway, i guess it's a matter of perspective. If you normally see Elon being shady and dishonest, this whole thing just reassured you in that belief. If you trust the guy, you'll put this in the corner of him being impulsive and going by his own rules. Not necessarily a good thing for a CEO, but it's not like it has ever been any other way. I think all the longs are aware of this being part of the package. We don't have to be happy about "incidents" like this though and I certainly hope Elon learns from this.
Dan Detweiler
Active Member
Let's face it, 1-3 are not going to go away any time soon as long as the company is public. Along with that goes all the misinformation and FUD that unfortunately accompanies these factors. As I see it, Tesla has agreed to accept those factors in exchange for much more potential upside in the future. I think the investors large and small have spoken and the company has listened. For the most part current investors what to ride this out and reap the long term benefits and are willing to stomach the volatility and attacks by short term traders and others that want to see the company slip. I have to look at this as a demonstration that Tesla listens to, and wants to please their investors and are willing to take the short term hit in order to do so.
This may actually hurt me personally with my situation of needing to cash out fairly soon to use the money for my down payment on my 3, but I think it is probably the best thing to do for the company long term. Monday is going to be very interesting to see how the market reacts in the short term.
Dan
Well, we now know she convinced him.
This is an extremely interesting letter. Lots of good stuff.
I hope so...
She's writing about stuff I've talked about in the past here, and she has a good point.
I know little about the private markets. She may be right...
FWIW, I think her bear case (no fully autonomous cars) is probably in the ballpark.
I couldn't find the Boring Company thread or I would take this over there. Pointer?
Mod: it's in a very counter-intuitive place, in the SpaceX forum. I wouldn't mind having a "Boring Co investment thread" in this section. Anyway: Boring Company --ggr
At the *peak time when people are travelling* (off-peak is irrelevant for mass transportation capacity), subway tunnels have utilization which is as high as *safety distances will allow*. Safety distances between non-coupled vehicles *aren't going away*, no matter how much fans of platooning want to pretend they can handwave them away. They've been pretending they can handwave them away since the 1950s, and it's getting ridiculous.
In a regulated system, every vehicle is required to be able to stop clear of the vehicle ahead of it in the case where the vehicle ahead has a sudden mechanical failure and stops dead (which does occasionally happen).
The highway laws actually say the same thing for car drivers on the road. At least 2/3 of drivers tailgate, violating these laws, and creating an extremely unsafe situation, which is why we have 40-car pileups. This is for some reason tolerated; apparently if lots of individual untrained drivers decide to operate in an unsafe fashion, people think that's OK. For some reason.
But in any sort of regulated system -- anything where you have professional operation, whether by professional drivers or fully automated -- they are *never going to allow tailgating*. Even coupled vehicles (trains) are required to have anti-telescoping features; I suppose there might be some way to put anti-telescoping hardware into "virtually coupled" vehicles, so that they're designed to "safely" crash into the leading car if it stops dead, but it hasn't even been *looked at* yet.
This applies to the automated truck platooning fantasies as well, by the way. I'm going to keep throwing cold water on these fever dreams, because I've been following these fever dreams since I was a kid, and the promoters have never once grappled with the actual issues.
Bottom line:
If you have a tunnel, no matter how cheap Musk makes the tunnel, it's still going to be a pretty expensive piece of hardware. In the general case (the exception would be crossing a mountain or a river) a tunnel will be more expensive than a surface route, and this isn't going to change. Therefore you only build tunnels under flat ground if you have a capacity problem; a problem with too many people/goods moving at the peak rush hour to stuff on the surface streets.
Given that the tunnel is too expensive to dig frivolously (otherwise I'd have a personal subway just for funsies), it makes sense to *maximize the usage of the tunnel*.
The maximum usage comes from being able to carry the maximum number of people per tunnel *at rush hour*, which is the high-volume peak which drove you to build the tunnel in the first place.
Using small individual vehicles has lower rush hour capacity than using large individual vehicles or hard-coupled vehicles, because they *must have more spacing*. None of these things are avoidable by "technology" or "automation" or "genius" or any other sort of handwaving; they are characteristics of the problem specification.
There is a small window where the needed capacity is higher than the surface street but can still be met by an underutilized tunnel (because the capacity of a two-track train line is monumental) -- but locking yourself into a low-capacity system simply limits your ability to handle higher volumes when rush hour grows.
The cost of using large vehicles (even if articulated, like trains) is essentially the same as the cost of using smaller vehicles, so it is financially unsound to design a system around undersized vehicles.
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anticitizen13.7
Not posting at TMC after 9/17/2018
Although you are getting a lot of 'disagrees', I think that as a general investment matter, your move makes sense.
Anyone who already has enough money, and is nearing retirement, should be lowering their risk exposure.
I do 'disagree' with some of your reasons though. Tesla has always been slower to execute, but they eventually made and exceeded their goals. Model S was supposed to be delivered in 2010 and sell 20k units/year. It was actually delivered in 2012, but made it to volumes of about 50k/year. With respect to the "large gentleman in a model 3" looking uncomfortable, I will point out that he would probably be equally uncomfortable in a BMW 3-series, Mercedes Benz C-class, Honda Civic, or other similarly sized automobile. Bigger people are going to be buying a car that is at least 1 size class up.
Some estimates by ARK Invest:
“SAV” stands for shared autonomous vehicle. 5 cents of that 35 cents per mile figure is human remote operators monitoring SAVs and taking over if necessary. That expense could be eliminated, and the cost of SAV transport could be brought down in other ways — cheaper EVs, more durable EVs with less need for maintenance, cheaper electricity, and so on. Autonomous electric buses could of course also be cheaper than today’s buses.
Their numbers seem realistic based on what I've looked at before. Big caveat -- this is essentially looking at longer-distance trips, which is why it's a price-per-mile chart; this is why it only includes "commuter rail". "Commuter rail" is one of the more expensive types of rail in operation in the US for rather stupid regulatory reasons (it has what are essentially featherbedding laws dating from the 19th century), and it is also going on routes with lower peak demand than urban rail.
For urban trips, the similar chart looks somewhat different; planes are not an option because the trip's too short, and when the trips are all under 4 miles, price-per-trip usually becomes the metric rather than price-per-mile.
It is behavior... but not the way you think....
This has been a common claim of pie-in-the-sky promoters since the 1950s. At this point, it's clearly untrue.
What's actually going on is that humans drive like maniacs, unsafely tailgating and drafting and speeding, and manage to push more passenger miles through the roads than they actually could if they were driving in a remotely safe fashion. Self-driving cars are required to actually be safe, unlike humans, who are allowed to just recklessly run over people on the sidewalk without so much as a slap on the wrist -- that's two real examples from New York City -- so they end up having lower throughput than the maniacs.
I'd still prefer self-driving cars because I don't like reckless tailgating speeders running over people on the sidewalk.
I suspect he looked uncomfortable because he had eaten a gas station burrito an hour ago
As for the reasons listed, as you said, some are completely valid.
Some are big stretches.
Can anybody comment on the effect of Tesla earning the bulk of the ZEV credits due to their sales dominance? IIRC Tesla hasn’t sold any ZEV credits in Q2, and they will earn lots of ZEV credits going forward. Elon has complained in the past about the low value of a ZEV credit on the market (I don’t remember the exact amount).
With Tesla earning the bulk of the ZEV credits, aren’t they in a quasi monopoly position to ask what they want for the ZEV credits? Or is the demand so low that a large part of the ZEV credits remain unsold?
Note that with Tesla turning cash flow positive, they don’t need to sell the credits, and can just keep them untill they can get an acceptable price.
With Tesla earning the bulk of the ZEV credits, aren’t they in a quasi monopoly position to ask what they want for the ZEV credits? Or is the demand so low that a large part of the ZEV credits remain unsold?
Note that with Tesla turning cash flow positive, they don’t need to sell the credits, and can just keep them untill they can get an acceptable price.
(Moved from Market Action)
Based on my experience in programming projects and my time following Tesla, I believe everything he's saying. This is the worst problem:
ato̧̕m̀͡i̴̷̛c̨͝t͝҉͡h̷҉u̵̶m͜͞b͏͝s̀́ on Twitter
I've been warning for a while that Tesla's been letting their corporate culture go toxic. You don't have to deliberately do it, it happens automatically if you don't select against it, because power-hungry jerks will always push their way to the top. It's certainly not the most toxic corporate culture in Silicon Valley -- evidence says that's Uber, where the culture had gotten to the point of actually having groups tasked to write software to hide from the cops and conceal crimes -- but Tesla's let the management problems fester for long enough that there are a lot of very bad people entrenched in management positions now.
This is a problem. To be clear, it's a pretty common corporate problem; you're going to find this sort of rot in Exxon or GM or Disney. However, it's still a problem.
Frankly, this is what I expected to hear.
Another interesting tidbit:
ato̧̕m̀͡i̴̷̛c̨͝t͝҉͡h̷҉u̵̶m͜͞b͏͝s̀́ on Twitter
(APT == "Advanced Persistent Threat")
For those not in the IT industry, I should emphasize that this sort of bodged-together systems, poor internal security, single points of failure, and scaling problems are best described as "totally normal".
i make bad photos on Twitter
Another interesting tidbit:
ato̧̕m̀͡i̴̷̛c̨͝t͝҉͡h̷҉u̵̶m͜͞b͏͝s̀́ on Twitter
(APT == "Advanced Persistent Threat")
For those not in the IT industry, I should emphasize that this sort of bodged-together systems, poor internal security, single points of failure, and scaling problems are best described as "totally normal".
i make bad photos on Twitter
On the up side, this person worked there 3 years ago. Since the, they have done the 3 and also the big UI refresh.
Why is that surprising? Would you rather a ranger needs to visit every one when something changes (like a new current profile for a pack type (not sure if that is a thing, but I'd include it))?
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