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

[SO16]

I should clarify the location - SF Bay Area Peninsula, but close to Monterey but without the water. Naturally in software dev, management, and tech startups most my life, but spending more time surfing in SoCal now. Except when I have a nasty cold this week, which is why TMC is suffering through my posts recently

Anyway, getting to the points:

Data: Waymo has only .4 injury accidents per million miles, which is 7x better than humans. Tesla may need that data, but Waymo doesn't. It's necessary for Tesla, but not necessary for Waymo.

Sensors: If it's $6k today, it will be less every year. That's not a barrier. Energy consumption is similar - new GPUs use less power. It's not fixed, especially by the time it scales.

Maps: Waymo doesn't *need* HD maps even today, but they provide additional safety.

Although I don't *know* that they can completely eliminate HD maps (or whether they'd want to), but it would be silly to assume they can't when other companies already have. Just like saying you don't *know* Tesla can reduce errors by 4 orders of magnitude when companies like Waymo already have.

Tesla's accomplishment in E2E AI is amazing, but I think most people are underestimating the difficulty of taking it to production. Right now, Tesla has an FSD level 4/5 prototype, not even a robotaxi prototype.

However, I'm not arguing that Waymo or Tesla has the edge. The person I addressed said he felt Waymo was a dumb idea and thought what they were doing was crazy. My point was that a lot of his objections weren't true or that big a factor. Waymo is running a production service, expanding it to more cities this year, and presumably more the next. A few thousand dollars of sensor costs annually (or much less in future years) is not an "insane" burden.

NBC nightly news with Lester Holt just had a story tonight about Waymo stating that there have been several close calls with pedestrians in crosswalks and crossing guards that often goes unreported. So, fortunately not deadly. Stated that dept of transportation will need to push for better reporting of these types of occurrences.

Hopefully people realize that this can and will improve vs push to remove all driverless taxis from the roads.

 

[Leftlane22]

I admit Im in awe of the steel balls this man have in completely contradicting himself multiple times in the span of months. Elon and EVs were his enemy not long ago.

Like Patrick Ewing said long ago - “ Once you give up your integrity, the rest is easy”.

 

[Mengy]

Well, let’s see if I can get you to reverse your downvote, or simply amass more such.

Yes, I most certainly am serious. I cannot abide someone who is a weasel with his words. Who dissembles. Who tergiversates (look those up if you have to).

I parsed out what is irresponsible in that statement; I can do it again:


We are starting to get to the point where, once known bugs are fixed, it will take over a year of driving to get even one intervention

So: what does the statement say of where we are?

• We’re not AT the point.
  • We’re not even getting to the point.
    • We’re STARTING.

What point? The point that,

• IF bugs are fixed, we’ll have a good product.

This is some 7 1/2 years after proclaiming reaching by year’s end (end 2017) US coast-to-coast self-driving without interventions.
In retrospect, that was a mistake. A rather large one, yet that I and many - most, I am sure, accepted and forgave.

But a man who does not learn from his mistakes, but repeats and repeats and repeats what is effectively the same mistake is someone whose word means nothing. Who cannot be trusted.

Someone who did not get my vote for an enormous incentive - by far the largest in nominal terms in the history of the world, and very likely in real terms as well, and who will not get it again this month.

Someone who does not belong at the helm of this critical company.

I long ago proclaimed myself as a long-term investor; I have tried to make this thread focused on same rather than one for traders or for those who make use of derivative products.

I will today clarify that. I do not consider TSLA a “long term” holding, rather, I have set it up in our investment trust to be a multi-generational one. Just as one side of my family, those who over two centuries ago created the glass industry in Pittsburgh “always” had PPG in the family, and another side held Std. Oil and its progeny as multigenerational ones.
As such, that Elon Musk presently is the company’s CEO is of fleeting consequence. There WILL be a time when he no longer is CEO, nor retired , nor even alive. He WILL be followed by others.

This misstatement - this series of misstatements - is serious but it is not the gravest he has made concerning Tesla. For me, that was his announcement that he needed to be ==given== enough shares for him to own 25% of the outstanding. Not that he would have clearance to purchase them to achieve the same goal, but that, in the purest distillation, to be gifted them.

To have made this statement after he not only earlier - 2015? - proclaimed “I will be the last one out”; after on Jan 4 2017 at the Gigafactory told a group of Wall St. professionals, including me, “You have nothing to worry about my selling any shares, at least not until I need to fund Mars colonization“; and then after selling shares - chasing the market downward as he funded his TWTR purchase - boggles any investor’s imagination.

Having voted “No” for his 2018 incentive package - for reasons I have laid out in an earlier, recent, post - makes it that much easier to overcome my distaste for the Delaware court’s ruling and its overreach of (other) investors - other shareholders!, and once again vote No.

Summarizing:
Mr Musk will not head this company for the entire time I - with my descendants- expect to be owning the handsome position I have built in what I consider to be the ascendant corporation of our time. He no longer has my vote of confidence and I would be happy to see his replacement at the helm, sooner rather than later.

I voted "yes" for the compensation plan, both in 2018 and again last month, but there is a part of me which agrees with you as well. For the past year or two Elon has not impressed me much with some of his decisions:

- I don't like that he bought Twitter nor how he bought it.
- I don't agree with his slowing Tesla auto production down to focus resources on Robotaxis before FSD is ready.
- I certainly don't agree with some of the more controversial things he says, and I do believe his antics have hurt the Tesla brand.
- I don't like how he fired the SC team and is now slowing down SC deployments.

That said, I also believe he's better at running Tesla than I am or could be, and I think (for now) Tesla is better with him than without him. I also believe he earned the 2018 compensation plan and should be allowed to keep it. Even though I don't feel he's deserved it for the past few years, a deal is a deal and he earned it before then so I voted yes.

But I can certainly see why so many are voting "no" as well. It's hard to argue against many of their reasons, Elon has made the arguments for them.

Next week is going to be a roller coaster. No matter which way this vote plays out we are in for a rough ride in its aftermath.

 

[elasalle]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1799272436132614343

FSD 12.4.1

 

[Linkmeup]

Congratulations to Elon Musk, Tesla team, customers, and all the investors that supported them into this moment.

 

[alexxs88]

It's not at all true that each Waymo car replaces a normal car plus its driver. Each Waymo car requires remote monitoring, remote intervention, and sometimes a relief driver. Those all require a lot of people with relatively higher salaries than an Uber driver.

You're looking at this wrong from a "how does it scale" perspective. If you want to know the true ratio of how it will operate at scale, it's more logical to check the number of interventions, assign a time cost per intervention (some will be a click on a computer, others would be physical recoveries), factor in a safety margin and that would be your time cost for the fleet. Ballpark, given the number of interventions and miles driven, it's much much much lower than an Uber driver cost.

By your logic, Tesla is in a much worse position because it can't move a meter without driver supervision, which is a ratio that's orders of magnitude worse than Waymo's today.

 

[aubreymcfato]

I would like to see Tesla take powerwalls more seriously. We hear a lot about megapacks, and sure, to a company obsessed with reducing bureaucracy, selling 100MW of megapacks is quicker and easier than selling 10,000 powerwalls, but its a huge market, and there are clearly enough customers to keep dozens of other companies afloat in this space.
I do think Tesla should cross-sell more. Anybody buying a vehicle from Tesla should be asked about if they had considered a powerwall installation, and told how seamless the integration of powerwall and Tesla vehicle is.
As someone with a model Y, but a 9.5kwh givenergy battery, who has to constantly juggle charge times to make the most of my solar, I am well aware of the appeal of an all-in-one solution. I don't see Tesla push it much though.

Tesla profoundly dislike installation jobs. Megapack is different because you need a crew for half-a-billion projects, so it's definitely worth it.
But Tesla solar and Powerwalls you always have tailored solution, especially solar.
I still don't understand why they can't work better and more with third-party professionals and just send the product around.

 

[kelly]

Well, let’s see if I can get you to reverse your downvote, or simply amass more such.

Yes, I most certainly am serious. I cannot abide someone who is a weasel with his words. Who dissembles. Who tergiversates (look those up if you have to).

I parsed out what is irresponsible in that statement; I can do it again:


We are starting to get to the point where, once known bugs are fixed, it will take over a year of driving to get even one intervention

So: what does the statement say of where we are?

• We’re not AT the point.
  • We’re not even getting to the point.
    • We’re STARTING.

What point? The point that,

• IF bugs are fixed, we’ll have a good product.

This is some 7 1/2 years after proclaiming reaching by year’s end (end 2017) US coast-to-coast self-driving without interventions.
In retrospect, that was a mistake. A rather large one, yet one that I and many - most, I am sure - accepted and forgave.

But a man who does not learn from his mistakes, but repeats and repeats and repeats what is effectively the same mistake is someone whose word means nothing. Who cannot be trusted.

A man who did not get my vote for an enormous incentive - by far the largest in nominal terms in the history of the world, and very likely in real terms as well - and who will not get my vote again this month.

Someone who does not belong at the helm of this critical company.

I long ago proclaimed myself as a long-term investor; I have tried to make this thread focused on same, rather than one for traders or for those who make use of derivative products.

I will today clarify that. I do not consider TSLA a “long term” holding, rather, I have set it up in our investment trust to be a multi-generational one. Just as one side of my family, those who over two centuries ago created the glass industry in Pittsburgh “always” had PPG in the family, and another side held Std. Oil and its progeny as multigenerational investments.
As such, that Elon Musk presently is the company’s CEO is of fleeting consequence. There WILL be a time when he no longer is CEO, nor retired, nor even alive. He WILL be followed by others.

This misstatement - this series of misstatements - is serious but it is not the gravest he has made concerning Tesla. For me, that was his announcement that he needed to be ==given== enough shares for him to own 25% of the outstanding. Not that he would have clearance to purchase them to achieve the same goal, but that, in the purest distillation, to be gifted them.

To have made this statement after he not only earlier - 2015? - proclaimed “I will be the last one out”; after on Jan 4 2017 at the Gigafactory told a group of Wall St. professionals, including me, “You have nothing to worry about my selling any shares, at least not until I need to fund Mars colonization“; and then after selling shares - chasing the market downward as he funded his TWTR purchase - boggles any investor’s imagination.

Having voted “No” for his 2018 incentive package - for reasons I have laid out in an earlier, recent, post - makes it that much easier to overcome my distaste for the Delaware court’s ruling and its overreach of (other) investors - other shareholders!, and once again vote No.

Summarizing:
Mr Musk will not head this company for the entire time I - with my descendants - expect to be owning the handsome position I have built in what I consider to be the ascendant corporation of our time. He no longer has my vote of confidence and I would be happy to see his replacement at the helm, sooner rather than later.

I would be interested in hearing your opinion of this statement by Robyn Denholm in her recent CNBC interview:

Denholm: "So, the actual return for shareholders, $2.3 billion stock-based comp charge that was taken for the 2018 plan has already happened. The share count […] in the options is already in the diluted share count. That's already happened. If […] that plan is overturned and we have to put in a new plan, for example, if it was exactly the same type of plan as the other, it would cost $25 billion worth of stock-based comp.

So the Delaware judge will actually cost shareholders $22.7 Billion if the old comp plan approval doesn't pass and they have to do a new one today."

If what she says is true, and you do believe the Delaware court overreached (it seems that you do), wouldn't it make more sense to vote "yes" this time around as a statement against the Delaware court and then save your "no" vote for the next compensation package when it comes around?

 

[nativewolf]

You think Uber is comparable to what Tesla is planning to do with Robotaxis?

I think it is good proxy for TAM. Besides which I maintain that Waymo is going to get to the potentially profitable cities first, at scale, and so we'll have a better idea before Tesla launches.

 

[nativewolf]

I would be interested in hearing your opinion of this statement by Robyn Denholm in her recent CNBC interview:

Denholm: "So, the actual return for shareholders, $2.3 billion stock-based comp charge that was taken for the 2018 plan has already happened. The share count […] in the options is already in the diluted share count. That's already happened. If […] that plan is overturned and we have to put in a new plan, for example, if it was exactly the same type of plan as the other, it would cost $25 billion worth of stock-based comp.

So the Delaware judge will actually cost shareholders $22.7 Billion if the old comp plan approval doesn't pass and they have to do a new one today."

If what she says is true, and you do believe the Delaware court overreached (it seems that you do), wouldn't it make more sense to vote "yes" this time around as a statement against the Delaware court and then save your "no" vote for the next compensation package when it comes around?

He voted no the first time, people were not paying attention then. It is a terrible BOD, it was a ridiculous comp plan. It is bad for shareholders then and now.

 

[SO16]

For me, that was his announcement that he needed to be ==given== enough shares for him to own 25% of the outstanding.

He wants 25% of voting power using different share class. But unfortunately this can’t happen post IPO. His concern with AI has been there for years. So developing it with a great chance of black rock and vanguard choosing to militarize it or control the direction of it, is a valid concern of his. This really shouldn’t be surprising.

Now the fact that he bought twitter and now wants this , is definitely not a good look. But he also felt a major issue was brewing with the media and direction of this country. Wether one chooses to believe that or not, is up to them. But he believes it.

From Reuters:

“In a separate post on X, he said he would be fine with a dual-class share structure to achieve his goal of getting 25% voting control, but was told it was impossible after Tesla's initial public offering.

"It's weird that a crazy multi-class share structure like Meta has, which gives the next 20+ generations of Zuckerbergs control, is fine pre-IPO, but even a reasonable dual-class is not allowed post-IPO," he said, referring to the Facebook parent's founder Mark Zuckerberg.“

 

[mongo]

He voted no the first time, people were not paying attention then. It is a terrible BOD, it was a ridiculous comp plan. It is bad for shareholders then and now.

Reread the post you replied to. They stated the underlined...

wouldn't it make more sense to vote "yes" this time around as a statement against the Delaware court and then save your "no" vote for the next compensation package when it comes around?

At the ratio given by the BOD, a plan 1/10 the size (less than the fees the lawyers seek) would cost Tesla the same amount at the original one. Thus their question.

 

[CorneliusXX]

Disagree, not because Musk is perfect, but because he is the best option for now.

I think there will probably be a time when the negatives outweigh the positives. but that will be when all of the major engineering a design problems have been solved.

For now I think there are still critical engineering and design issues to be solved in areas where Elon can make a difference.

And we need to view the performance of the company for the entire time he has been CEO, he still has net credits in the bank on that score.

And taking a slightly longer term view, I think some major credits will land in the next 2-3 years, (FSD, Optimus, Gen3) which will partially justify some of his current decisions.

As for how he spends his money and his public commentary outside of Tesla, I'm not a fan of that, but I also know we need to take the bad with the good,

For FSD it is a march of 9's, it will never be perfect, but then human drivers are far from perfect. The key criteria is X times better than the average human, and Y times better than the best human drivers, we don't need to worry about perfect human drivers. The only alternative to progress updates is, "no comment".

I'm in a similar boat. I agree with each of @AudubonB's arguments in isolation but most definitely want Elon at the helm - preferably spending more time at Tesla than he does now. My key reasons for it are:

• Non autonomous EVs will never be a consistently huge profit and margin centre again - The Chinese are too competitive. Same for BESS. Both will be a solid earners for a long time but wide margins can't be protected so huge scale is needed at modest margins.
• Tesla has to bring new technology to market to drive the multi trillion valuation we all want to see. Elon is unparalleled in bringing new technology to market.
  • Elon attracts the best and brightest to Tesla - I have no doubt this would be diminished if Elon wasn't CEO. Those he does attract will kill themselves to reach the objective via 100hr weeks.
  • If we get a more conservative CEO its far less likely that appropriate investment is made at the right time to lead autonomy, optimus, etc. (see Apple and Tim Cooke - they make a lot of money but only by extracting incremental value from existing innovations and creating a walled garden - neither of which would work on Tesla's existing technology). It's not just about the science/engineering itself but having the conviction and vision to see it through.
  • Elon has a reality distortion field as strong as anyone which drives innovation and unlocks opportunities that others don't have (China factory as a prime example) - that is likely to become even more important as the AI / robotics regulation debate hots up.

He says things that turn out to be horribly wrong, but they are in service to the above IMO - motivating his team, getting people to start changing their mindset on what the future looks like, what is possible and acceptable, etc.

I'll add a short video from Andrej Karpathy on what Elon brings to the table which probably say more clearly what Elon offers than I can.

 

[mongo]

What I don't understand is why someone who voted against Elon getting that number of shares if TSLA reached $650M market cap along with 12 other metrics would stay invested in TSLA after that was achieved.

Their investment had already hit at least 12x and the perceived downsides of the plan lie ahead so why hold? Must especially be annoying in retrospect since the drop from ATH is/was more than the taxes would have been had they closed their position (assuming it was even in a taxable account).

 

[elasalle]

Good one.
Appreciate boomer mamas efforts. Likely Elons package will pass, harder for Texas move. But If Texas move fails , Tesla will have more opportunities to vote on this in future
#votetesla24 on twitter for voting options

 

[AudubonB]

What I don't understand is why someone who voted against Elon getting that number of shares if TSLA reached $650M market cap along with 12 other metrics would stay invested in TSLA after that was achieved.

Their investment had already hit at least 12x and the perceived downsides of the plan lie ahead so why hold? Must especially be annoying in retrospect since the drop from ATH is/was more than the taxes would have been had they closed their position (assuming it was even in a taxable account).

A comment worth a response; thank you.

Two reasons:

First, as I wrote yesterday, I consider Tesla to be the ascendant corporation of our time. Second, but intertwined: if I sold - and paid many, many millions in taxes - to where would the moneys next go?

 

[cheqsgravity]

Well, let’s see if I can get you to reverse your downvote, or simply amass more such.

Yes, I most certainly am serious. I cannot abide someone who is a weasel with his words. Who dissembles. Who tergiversates (look those up if you have to).

I parsed out what is irresponsible in that statement; I can do it again:


We are starting to get to the point where, once known bugs are fixed, it will take over a year of driving to get even one intervention

So: what does the statement say of where we are?

• We’re not AT the point.
  • We’re not even getting to the point.
    • We’re STARTING.

What point? The point that,

• IF bugs are fixed, we’ll have a good product.

This is some 7 1/2 years after proclaiming reaching by year’s end (end 2017) US coast-to-coast self-driving without interventions.
In retrospect, that was a mistake. A rather large one, yet one that I and many - most, I am sure - accepted and forgave.

But a man who does not learn from his mistakes, but repeats and repeats and repeats what is effectively the same mistake is someone whose word means nothing. Who cannot be trusted.

A man who did not get my vote for an enormous incentive - by far the largest in nominal terms in the history of the world, and very likely in real terms as well - and who will not get my vote again this month.

Someone who does not belong at the helm of this critical company.

I long ago proclaimed myself as a long-term investor; I have tried to make this thread focused on same, rather than one for traders or for those who make use of derivative products.

I will today clarify that. I do not consider TSLA a “long term” holding, rather, I have set it up in our investment trust to be a multi-generational one. Just as one side of my family, those who over two centuries ago created the glass industry in Pittsburgh “always” had PPG in the family, and another side held Std. Oil and its progeny as multigenerational investments.
As such, that Elon Musk presently is the company’s CEO is of fleeting consequence. There WILL be a time when he no longer is CEO, nor retired, nor even alive. He WILL be followed by others.

This misstatement - this series of misstatements - is serious but it is not the gravest he has made concerning Tesla. For me, that was his announcement that he needed to be ==given== enough shares for him to own 25% of the outstanding. Not that he would have clearance to purchase them to achieve the same goal, but that, in the purest distillation, to be gifted them.

To have made this statement after he not only earlier - 2015? - proclaimed “I will be the last one out”; after on Jan 4 2017 at the Gigafactory told a group of Wall St. professionals, including me, “You have nothing to worry about my selling any shares, at least not until I need to fund Mars colonization“; and then after selling shares - chasing the market downward as he funded his TWTR purchase - boggles any investor’s imagination.

Having voted “No” for his 2018 incentive package - for reasons I have laid out in an earlier, recent, post - makes it that much easier to overcome my distaste for the Delaware court’s ruling and its overreach of (other) investors - other shareholders!, and once again vote No.

Summarizing:
Mr Musk will not head this company for the entire time I - with my descendants - expect to be owning the handsome position I have built in what I consider to be the ascendant corporation of our time. He no longer has my vote of confidence and I would be happy to see his replacement at the helm, sooner rather than later.

I disagree with this take and most definitely want Musk at the lead for the foreseeable future. Some points:

Tesla started at a time when EVs were shunned upon and were the laughing stock of the auto world. Musk was everything that an EV company needed: engineer that understood the tech, shrewd economist that knew the cost advantages of EVs and how that would shape the market as cost curves of batteries, motors and other EV supplies came down. The advantages that he has bestowed in tesla are staggering and too numerous to mention. Here are some: vertical integration and next level manufacturing all with engineering prowess, pulled in superior talent into tesla, foresight to design cars starting in 2017 to handle autonomous tech today, OTA updates that set the stage to make existing cars new over time (moat that even to today no other oem can replicate).

This is all well and good to get Tesla manufacturing superior cars to compete with ICE, b/c that is what you need to get people to switch - not apples to apples but apples to applies with cherries, strawberries and oranges.

But lets take a step back and figure out what the end goal is ? to accelerate the world to a sustainable future. specifically for cars that is switch from using fossil fuels to energy source that is green. Lets talk about how that is achieved.

Plan 1: car for car replacement. 1 EV for 1 ICE. how long will that take ? very long. but when tesla started out this was the most likely choice with the tech that was present at the time. So how to accomplish goal w/ plan 1. Build gigas to make insane amount of cars. Make sure these insane number of cars have batteries. So ramp up the battery industry and fill gaps whereever there were gaps. Enter 4680 tech to fill a gap of insane amount of batteries. Again this tech nudging the battery complex to ramp up to Tesla speed. Tesla doesn't want to do this stuff. Tesla wants to make cars but they will enter fields when the tech/supply is lacking. Again plan 1 is very demanding just because a 1:1 replacement was the goal

Plan 2: Autonomous cars (AEVs). With AEVs, utilization of cars goes up from 4% to ~60%. that means a single car can do about 100K miles a year or more. So with this strategy, 1 doesn't need to make 1:1 replacement of ICE. just 3m cars a year instead of 20m cars a year can replace most miles driven by ICE. But plan 2 didn't have the tech mature to pursue this. What does Tesla do under Elon? Pursue this route in parallel, design cars now (2016) that can handle the software when it comes out later (hopefully soon) so that we can engage plan 2. This/Plan2 is the MAIN plan all the time. plan 1 is pie in the sky but needed since that is what most of the world understands.

So while progress was being made in FSDv8, 9, 10, 11 all these heuristics based solves. All the while GPU costs were still high and compute was extemely hard to come by. But tesla kept pushing the FSD/Plan2 approach. If the AP team didn't pursue FSD, they would never had stumbled upon the v12 approach. So EM lead the company from 2018: insane ramp up, giga china, model y, giga berlin, giga atx, ct all the while pushing and operating plan 2. I don't know many CEOs that could have pulled this off. IMO 0 CEOs. Maybe a team of 3 CEOs could but you get the idea.
So i hear a lot of EM lied about FSD. vaporware SW. EMs timelines are off. From my POV, this is tech that no one has ever written before. in Rumsfields words: the unknown unknown. So not only did we not know how it would work we didnt know what tech would get us there. But it was absolutely critical that dollars and investors supported the funding of the FSD or we would not be here at v12. So what does EM do to convince people this is viable tech ? He puts timelines out. EM: Hey I think we think (with my best info I have on this tech atm) that we can achieve this by 2020/coast to coast. I completely understand him saying these things to get people behind the tech. But some people call these out as lies and trust breaks.

What happens in late 2023 is truly monumental. As tesla accumulates more compute, they start using it more for video training and figure out 'this is the way'. Plan 2 is not just possible but increasingly more probable than plan 1 !!! Then the direction of the company pivots. Its Elon's leadership that pivots the company. When designing the new 20K car, he insists no steering wheel or pedals. Its his visionary thinking that keep pushing the company in a direction that most people don't see: taking the world to a sustainable future in the most accelerated speed.

This is the lens that I see EMs actions by. These are completely justified. And yes I voted all my shares for not reneging on the deal to pay EM for his tremendous and irreplacable work that has got Tesla here where it can truly impact the world in the quickest possible time.

We are at a point that most people don't even see plan 2 as existent or viable. They still think we are on plan 1. 1:1 replacement of cars. IMO, we are not. Tesla needs around 3m cars/year to get US/EU and most of CN out of 85% of miles driven (ref: Tony Seba) . And EM is the most qualified person to get Tesla/us there.

Summarize: Tesla needed musk when it started, Tesla thrived with Musk till now giving shareholders tremendous value and Tesla most definitely needs Elon for a world that will be sustainable in the shortest possible time.

 

[Snerruc]

Ok, I would like to ask the many experts here a question related to part of the current discussion. How do you define AI? To a doofus who read way too much Asimov in the 40s and 50s, I think of AI as being sentient. When Mr Musk said that he had realized that when Tesla had solved FSD, they would have solved AI, I thought that was what he meant. When I try FSD on my car and it works, I sometimes get the feeling it is human like. When Tessie drives like a human in the future, will she pass the Turing test? And other tests?sorry to interrupt the flow of the thread, but I would like a definition.

 

[The Accountant]

Well, let’s see if I can get you to reverse your downvote, or simply amass more such.

Yes, I most certainly am serious. I cannot abide someone who is a weasel with his words. Who dissembles. Who tergiversates (look those up if you have to).

I parsed out what is irresponsible in that statement; I can do it again:


We are starting to get to the point where, once known bugs are fixed, it will take over a year of driving to get even one intervention

So: what does the statement say of where we are?

• We’re not AT the point.
  • We’re not even getting to the point.
    • We’re STARTING.

What point? The point that,

• IF bugs are fixed, we’ll have a good product.

This is some 7 1/2 years after proclaiming reaching by year’s end (end 2017) US coast-to-coast self-driving without interventions.
In retrospect, that was a mistake. A rather large one, yet one that I and many - most, I am sure - accepted and forgave.

But a man who does not learn from his mistakes, but repeats and repeats and repeats what is effectively the same mistake is someone whose word means nothing. Who cannot be trusted.

A man who did not get my vote for an enormous incentive - by far the largest in nominal terms in the history of the world, and very likely in real terms as well - and who will not get my vote again this month.

Someone who does not belong at the helm of this critical company.

I long ago proclaimed myself as a long-term investor; I have tried to make this thread focused on same, rather than one for traders or for those who make use of derivative products.

I will today clarify that. I do not consider TSLA a “long term” holding, rather, I have set it up in our investment trust to be a multi-generational one. Just as one side of my family, those who over two centuries ago created the glass industry in Pittsburgh “always” had PPG in the family, and another side held Std. Oil and its progeny as multigenerational investments.
As such, that Elon Musk presently is the company’s CEO is of fleeting consequence. There WILL be a time when he no longer is CEO, nor retired, nor even alive. He WILL be followed by others.

This misstatement - this series of misstatements - is serious but it is not the gravest he has made concerning Tesla. For me, that was his announcement that he needed to be ==given== enough shares for him to own 25% of the outstanding. Not that he would have clearance to purchase them to achieve the same goal, but that, in the purest distillation, to be gifted them.

To have made this statement after he not only earlier - 2015? - proclaimed “I will be the last one out”; after on Jan 4 2017 at the Gigafactory told a group of Wall St. professionals, including me, “You have nothing to worry about my selling any shares, at least not until I need to fund Mars colonization“; and then after selling shares - chasing the market downward as he funded his TWTR purchase - boggles any investor’s imagination.

Having voted “No” for his 2018 incentive package - for reasons I have laid out in an earlier, recent, post - makes it that much easier to overcome my distaste for the Delaware court’s ruling and its overreach of (other) investors - other shareholders!, and once again vote No.

Summarizing:
Mr Musk will not head this company for the entire time I - with my descendants - expect to be owning the handsome position I have built in what I consider to be the ascendant corporation of our time. He no longer has my vote of confidence and I would be happy to see his replacement at the helm, sooner rather than later.

I have no qualms about your opinion of Musk as CEO. People have different opinions and I respect that.
I have not been following this entire discussion but I want to share something that may provide an alternate perspective to Musk's words.

When Musk made the very specific proclamation 7 and 1/2 years ago of US coast to coast driving - you called that a mistake.
Now he is being vague (when all known bugs . . ); you seem upset about this vagueness .
You go on to say, "a man who does not learn from his mistakes" . . . but perhaps he has learned.

 

[ggies07]

If he wants his package, he should probably quit posting stuff like this. He looks like an ass and a crazy MAGA person.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1799417761539805431