Strange. I get DMs here regularly. I've not touched these settings in years. I'd be quite curious if something has been done to mess up my DMs. I don't control this site.
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I did change twitter to "Verified" some time ago because the amount of spam I get on Twitter is immense.
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My email is on
my old personal site still.
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Re: BMS_w035 ... looked back through my notes. Turns out I was wrong. It's not "
almost never a battery pack issue" ... looks like it's actually never been a battery pack issue. BMS_w035/BMS_f035 are an
external isolation issue. If Tesla said it was the battery pack at fault, they've lied or misdiagnosed.
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Anyway. I guess I'm really going to just stay out of this. All I seem to get for trying to do what little I can at this point is grief, so not sure why I bothered. No one seems to care anyway, so, I'll just stop.
I take back my offer to see what I can do. Please don't contact me, just deal with 057. Out of my hands.
To be blunt, though, I made the decision to leave 057 some time after the sale because I thought it was the right thing to do for both myself, the company, and customers. And I did so at great personal expense. It's going to take me probably half a decade, if I'm lucky, to pick up the pieces of the disaster and fallout of my leaving 057 after the sale. Nothing I can do about it now, and I stand by the decision.
Overall I've really just got to stop reading into the trolling here and letting it get to me.
Back in the real world, I've been reminded that anyone and everyone who's ever
actually dealt with me, either business wise or personally, knows that I do
everything I can to help the people I'm dealing with and always clearly earn the trust and respect of those I deal with, even when that's not in my own best interest to do so. There's fewer people in this world than can be counted on one hand where I can honestly say I'd given up and burned a bridge... and only
after that person has wronged me beyond something forgivable through no fault of my own.
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Maybe a little bit of relevant history is helpful, as I doubt there's many people who even know why 057 exists at all.
Back in 2015-2016, I started working on my 3000GT->3000EV project (still unfinished... in fact, I'll probably need to try and sell it, sadly). I wanted to use Tesla drive units, since they were clearly the most powerful production EV motors out there.
(The 3000GT itself has a story behind it, too. Not relevant, but interesting nonetheless. When I was in high school, a friend had a red '95 3000GT. He was selling it, and I low-ball offered to buy it. He said he found someone to pay his asking price, so I was like, alright.. I kind of still want one. Ended up buying myself a red '99 3000GT. Afterwards, turns out his buyer fell through, and my friend and I were both driving red 3000GTs for a while. A couple of years later, he wrecked in his. Couldn't really afford to repair it, so his mother ended up with the car, full fixing it, and driving it herself for quite some time. Later on, I moved on and sold my 3000GT. At some point my friend's old car ended up parked in a shed and left untouched for a long time when his mother stopped driving it and got something newer. Tons of life stuff happened in the intervening time, including some seriously hard times, but years later I'd always pester his mother to just give me the car or let me buy it because I
hated it just sitting there, but she never would let it go. Sadly, she passed away (almost 10 years ago now)... and to my surprise, I found out she'd left me that '95 3000 GT.... so I just had to do something cool with it... so the 3000EV dream was born.)
Sadly, the only people who had managed to get these motors working at all outside of a Model S were a small EU based youtuber who replaced the inverter (unsafe, IMO, for vehicle use), and Jack Rickard (RIP) who'd just spoofed some CAN data to get it spinning, but couldn't get past power limitations of not having proper authentication... despite advice from me on how to accomplish that.
So I hacked it myself. In my basement.
With a Chevy Volt battery and subclip in the middle of the room.
The person in the video above is the person I'd been sourcing the Tesla parts from. He figured the knowledge I was building on Tesla hardware/software was ultra valuable, and talked me into forming "HSR Motors" with him. The idea would be that I'd made Tesla hardware usable outside of a vehicle, he'd source the parts from salvage vehicles, and I'd make the modifications and control hardware. Win win.
Quickly became obvious more could be done, like battery upgrades, motor upgrades, and other 3rd party repairs that
no one else could do at the time.
By mid 2017 things were going pretty well with HSR! We'd even bought a brand new Model X to hack and upgrade as a test case. The intention was to upgrade it, and export it for a nice profit.
We were doing upgrades, selling motors and controllers, and even had a small service and sales backlog.
Well, turns out my business partner was a con man. I went to the shop to do some work after returning from a brief trip to visit family, and the place was trashed and cleaned out. The brand new Model X was gone. Several other cars were gone. Battery packs, modules, mostly gone. Some motors, gone. Bank cash, gone.
Turns out my partner had loaded everything up of value, shipped it over seas, and fled the country back to his home country.
The kicker? Before he left he hired a local attorney to sue
me, and claim that I had somehow stolen all of these items and more. He even filed a police report and reported that I'd stolen 9 Tesla vehicles from him! (That was an interesting police knocking on my door visit...) I had to countersue in a lawsuit that eventually ended, years and tens of thousands in costs later, because he was unable to return to the country and stopped communicating with his local attorney. (My attorney was too nice in filings, IMO... "difficulties related to communication with Plaintiff".) Never recovered a dime from him.
Anyway, back to when I found out I was robbed, basically, we had a customer car on the lift who'd paid for a battery replacement, two others in transit to the shop for service, and another ~$50,000 or so in orders that still needed to be filled where parts no longer were there to fill.
Overall, the company was about $200-300k short at this point to be able to fill customer obligations, not even counting general expenses and such.
What to do?
My attorney told me I could walk away, let the lawsuit run its course, and customers would be made whole in the end one way or another....
hopefully.
No, being the idiot that I am, I couldn't just screw over a bunch of people who had paid for things that they now just weren't going to get because my business partner decided to screw everyone over.
But I had no idea how to even pull it off. I'd never handled my partner's side of things before. Never bought a salvage car. Never dealt with transport of one, didn't even know where to begin.
So I decided to form 057 Tech. Leased a new, large space (old space was too much of a headache to keep due to the lawsuit). I'd already invested a lot into HSR.... but ended up dumping over 90% of my personal cash reserves into starting 057 Tech from scratch, including fully taking care of everyone outstanding at HSR and just eating that. In fact, most of those people had no idea this had even occurred... as it should be, IMO. Not their fault my business partner decided it was time to screw over everyone.
I actually considered just calling it quits on Tesla stuff at that point. Everyone had been taken care of, I was still OK financially, despite nearly completely depleting my cash reserves, and had reasonable prospects on the horizon for continued income from my unrelated existing contract work (software/hardware dev). No real reason to keep a company like this going... except, it seemed to fit a need and I seemed to be one of the only capable people who could do it. Was actually doing real good for Tesla owners.
So, nope! Let's keep this thing going. No one's doing it, and no one's anywhere close to the level of expertise I'd already accumulated on the tech. Fill the need.
That was 6 years ago.
Went reasonably well. Then COVID hit, and things got a bit slow, and I actually ended up selling my home to rebuild and bolster my cash reserves and ensure the storm could be weathered. Turns out I sold at the very wrong time, too, right before prices skyrocketed, of course. My wife and I actually lived in our travel trailer,
parked at a dock bay at the 057 shop, for over 6 months while we worked out a plan to downsize into something permeant (that's a whole different long story in itself).
But, kept the company going. Staff was always paid. Customers always taken care of. And turns out the company made enough to stay alive through the pandemic era with minimal financial buffering from me. Eventually things fully calmed and work steadied out again on its own.
Heck, our unique motor control setup for the drive units even got the attention of the DoD, who placed some orders for some... interesting projects.
I considered 057 a successful company. Definitely the most complicated one I'd personally managed up to this point. I'd definitely been quite aggressive in reinvesting, though, and probably should have been more restrained on ambitions for the company. I reinvested so much that I rarely even paid myself a salary and instead would purchase more parts and supplies for working towards internal projects.
By early 2023 I'd invested pretty much everything I could into upcoming projects, processes for streamlining refurbishments/upgrades/etc, and as a result we were doing nearly a high-value vehicle service per day (battery related, usually), on top of drive unit and battery module sales. We were buying so many salvage vehicles that we had made direct arrangements with several companies to skip auctions and buy cars directly. Things were working, and working just fine. 057 had nearly 20,000 Tesla parts in inventory in the beginning of 2023.
The whole time was also generally helping where I can here and elsewhere online, even when it wasn't benefitting me or 057. I'd get people in situations where 057 clearly could help them, but in my opinion wouldn't be the best option for them and I'd tell them to use someone else (Tesla, ReCell, etc) because it'd work out better for them. People have always been quite shocked when I make such suggestions. I always tell people I'm the worst sales person ever. I can't even begin to try and sell someone else something that I personally don't see value in and wouldn't buy, let alone try and upsell someone on nonsense they don't need. I'm a pretty open person, sometimes a bit too open (heck, I'm here in a thread where people seem to hate me writing a mini-autobiography... hah...)
But progress on new paths was just not fast enough for my liking. These things just needed to hit the market and get rolling. I'd even taken on some personal and business debt specifically to try and accelerate some key projects (still NDA'd). I'm only one person, and was wearing a few too many hats. And that brings us to the sale of 057, where the intention was to make this all a reality ASAP. Suffice it to say, that sadly did not work out as planned.
Because of the way that deal was structured, and because I left early, I did not land in a great position from all of it. Even if I thought I could solve all the issues, I don't have the means to do anything anymore. Can't just start another company this time and start over. I'm not in a position to do much of anything like that. My net worth pre-HSR Motors was a hard earned million+. After losses dealing with HSR, starting 057, and investing in 057 projects that will now never see the light of day..... Today? I've got an average of a couple grand in my bank account, and the bulk of my income goes straight to paying off debts, mostly related to money previously dumped into R&D for 057 projects. My net worth is around $0, probably a bit lower. I have little hope of ever getting back to where I was in ~2016 financially. But I'm ok with that, and I'm fortunate to have work that's keeping me out of a worse situation. Also grateful for my wife, and her picking up more financial slack than I'd ever have asked her to do.
I know I've done everything I could do, and have always made decisions that fit with what I believed resulted in the most good possible. Everyone I know keeps telling me this, and I'm glad I have some validation from folks that actually matter most to me.
Hindsight being 20/20 and all, should I have sold it? Probably not. But not much I can do about it now.
Anyway, not sure why I'm still here writing all of this, but maybe someone will find it interesting. I also don't want nor need anyone's sympathy here. Heck, I'm not even sure why I wrote all of the above. Just figured it was worth the history note, since history shows I've always done what's right for folks, even when it's not the best thing for me to do.
I need to just move on from Tesla-related everything I think. It's pretty clear that at some point I ended up no longer being welcome anyway.
Best wishes to all.
electrek.co
www.salon.com
How's Russ doing? He's a great worker, very helpful and friendly.
