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Tesla, TSLA & the Investment World: the Perpetual Investors' Roundtable

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Entertaining that the world's largest auto manufacturing and consuming country was not even on the list at all in 1988. Japan was really dominating then.
World leaders invariably let hubris catch hold. Sooner or later they lose their way.
Missed watching the whole movie.
What car brand were Thelma&Louise driving again?
And can't quite recall The End.
 
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Regarding emplacing the seats atop the battery pack as shown :

can it likewise not also be so fundamentally easier/quicker/more efficient to pre-attach the entire dashboard, obviously also including the steering wheel or yoke - even down the steering shaft to some appropriate point - to the (inverted on assembly line, perhaps?) cabin/shell/superstructure?
The IP (dash and such) is installed as a unit now. A nose down attitude would let it rest in place, but current fixturing makes this a non issue. Normal orientation allows the rest of the car to be worked on simultaneously.
Slow version of the Model 3 build:
 
Regarding emplacing the seats atop the battery pack as shown :

can it likewise not also be so fundamentally easier/quicker/more efficient to pre-attach the entire dashboard, obviously also including the steering wheel or yoke - even down the steering shaft to some appropriate point - to the (inverted on assembly line, perhaps?) cabin/shell/superstructure?
Next step: eliminate the steering shaft. No reason for a physical connection anyway, other than tradition. If 'fly by wire' works for Airbus and Boeing without controversy (it did have some with the first FBW, the A320. Now zero issues.

Automotive steering is really easy. The yoke is obviously intended to be used with that, so variable sensitivity can be easily done. Why so slow? After all Steer by Wire would be cheaper by ~$200 per vehicle, provide better steering control and allow faster and more accurate accident avoidance.
 
Regarding emplacing the seats atop the battery pack as shown :

can it likewise not also be so fundamentally easier/quicker/more efficient to pre-attach the entire dashboard, obviously also including the steering wheel or yoke - even down the steering shaft to some appropriate point - to the (inverted on assembly line, perhaps?) cabin/shell/superstructure?
Aaannnnddd....if you look at the 24-minute mark or so of @GOVA's excellent videolink, you will see that that is exactly what Tesla also now is doing.

They must have used their forward time machine to read my thoughts.
 
Next step: eliminate the steering shaft. No reason for a physical connection anyway, other than tradition. If 'fly by wire' works for Airbus and Boeing without controversy (it did have some with the first FBW, the A320. Now zero issues.

Automotive steering is really easy. The yoke is obviously intended to be used with that, so variable sensitivity can be easily done. Why so slow? After all Steer by Wire would be cheaper by ~$200 per vehicle, provide better steering control and allow faster and more accurate accident avoidance.
I was hoping someone would bring this up. From the world of sailing, I can say that the three main ways of connecting the helm (wheel) and the rudder are rod, cable or hydraulic (with +/- steering by electric wire perhaps available on superyachts - I don't know). The best "feel" comes from rod; the worst - i.e., the helmsman feels disconnected - is from hydraulic (unless supremely tweaked...a difficult task). So I wonder whether the "easy" (ha!) task of flying an airplane through +/- limitless 3D space may be fine for fly-by-wire, but when one has the 1D-to-2D task of handling an automobile, with a slight third dimension in the bumps etc of the road, drive-by-wire might, it seems to me, be an insipind, uncomfortable experience. Thoughts?
 
Elon has no interest in letting SpaceX be publicly traded and let it go through what Tesla went through. Do we really need SpaceXQ? No. We don't. I would rather SpaceX remain privately held so Elon and company can do their work in peace. Tesla was only taken public because at the time Elon had no other choice, he needed the funding and the stock market is the largest capital market.

Elon has plenty of resources now, so there is no reason to take anything public unless he thinks it's auxiliary to the mission. So Starlink can go public because it's not needed specifically to transition the world to sustainable energy or establish humanity as a multi-planetary species. Maybe one day Neuralink and Boring Company could as well. But I don't expect SpaceX to go public until the Mars colony is established, just as Elon has already previously stated.
At some point it would be to the benefit of all SpaceX employees to go public. Selling shares in a secondary market is expensive, opaque, and slow. Just think how many employee millionaires have been minted and have liquid capital to spend and stimulate the economy. If anything the SpaceX IPO will be one enormous liquidity event for a lot of people.
 
At some point it would be to the benefit of all SpaceX employees to go public. Selling shares in a secondary market is expensive, opaque, and slow. Just think how many employee millionaires have been minted and have liquid capital to spend and stimulate the economy. If anything the SpaceX IPO will be one enormous liquidity event for a lot of people.
Those employees would be far, far, far better off holding on to their shares and making use of an equity line of credit to obtain liquidity. The rate of appreciation of a SpaceX share will far exceed any LOC interest rate for...well, approximately the age of the universe, my crystal ball tells me. AND they do not end up sharing a massive fraction of the realized gain from a sold share with the IRS. Now, that is what HODL means.

And, yes: the right investment bank will provide an ELOC against an unlisted stock.
 
At some point it would be to the benefit of all SpaceX employees to go public. Selling shares in a secondary market is expensive, opaque, and slow. Just think how many employee millionaires have been minted and have liquid capital to spend and stimulate the economy. If anything the SpaceX IPO will be one enormous liquidity event for a lot of people.
I would buy.
But is it be a possibility that perhaps they may decide to merge SpaceX with Tesla in some way that current TSLA shareholders may also hold a piece of SpaceX within their current TSLA holdings?
 
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At some point it would be to the benefit of all SpaceX employees to go public. Selling shares in a secondary market is expensive, opaque, and slow. Just think how many employee millionaires have been minted and have liquid capital to spend and stimulate the economy. If anything the SpaceX IPO will be one enormous liquidity event for a lot of people.
I think the Starlink IPO is going to let employees liquidate some of their SpaceX equity and cash out.

I’m not exactly sure how this works legally, but it would be the simplest avenue to let existing owners to benefit from public markets without exposing SpaceX to the pressures and problems of being a publicly traded company. Since SpaceX will own a huge portion of Starlink, they could probably give employees the option to trade SpaceX shares for Starlink shares.
 
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Website update for Berlin/Brandenburg

When I look at all the loading/unloading docks at Berlin I wonder if that factory might be able to breathe better than Austin.

Does anyone know the material flow plans/patterns at Austin?
 
Website update for Berlin/Brandenburg
That's an impressive list. It shows exactly 200 entries and even with a filter on, for instance, manufacturing / full time that count doesn't change. In other words: the actual number of open positions for Grünheide is unknown and could be several multiplies of those first 200 entries shown. One of the reasons why Elon estimates one year to fully ramp: Staffing is far from complete.