Tesla and Uber Unlikely to Survive...

[LG9k]

ZesPak said:

You and I have very different perspectives on VW's market position.

They can release relatively OK car with minimal to no innovation year after year and still ask more money without losing out on massive profits as far as I know.

This argument reminds me of my early years on the internet as a Honda fanboy.

Hondas were better than VWs in every metric (performance, handling, reliability, actual build quality) and yet VW has most definitely won in the European market where Honda has been reduced to a bit-part player. In the rest of the world, especially the USA, it's a very different story.
It's why all the US sales comparisons of the Model 3 to Audi A4, BMW 3 and C-Class are pretty irrelevant as the USA is a relatively small market for those cars.

Tesla's biggest problem with regards to selling cars in Europe is that the cars are "American".

[Tuna]

squirdan said:

I couldnt care less. Musk is an oddball and does all sorts of weird stuff. But it makes no difference whatsoever to my like or dislike of my Model 3, there is zero association.

the people who should / will care are Tesla shareholders

this cant be far off being a Wework or Uber situation where Musk gets booted out despite being the CEO and front man. Just too many avoidable F ups in my view...in fact amazed he survived the fake takeover situation and SEC disputes

so often the case that the visionary isnt the best person to execute

Tesla just needs a boring low profile industry veteran to run it properly

The problem is the moment Tesla start to be run like a "normal" car company, all of the investment that was put into it on the basis it would disrupt the industry will collapse. Tesla is valued like Ford, but produces a fraction of a percent of the cars, and zero of the profit. The moment Tesla is compared one to one with a 'boring' car company, it will be finished, at least at the moment when it is completely reliant on debt.

For now, Musk has to sell the vision of the next model, and the model after that, and FSD and all the other pipe-dreams to keep the company alive long enough to sort its financials out. It's still an open question to me whether they can reach that point.

[DonkeyApple]

In such an event it would just be the current shareholders who would lose as the debt holders became the new shareholders, hence why the last fund raising round involved debt as that was a hedge as much as anything. The business and brand would continue. That’s happened nearly twice now and arguably what stopped it each time was the belief that without a guru there is no cult and at the moment without the cult there are no customers and no business.

[DonkeyApple]

Heres Johnny said:

JPJPJP said:

Vernon unsworth’s opposition to musk’s motion for summary judgment

Ryan Mac of buzzfeed initial look

https://twitter.com/rmac18/status/1181393068701802...

I don’t know where this ends, but if it ends with musk writing a cheque, I’mbaffled Why he didn’t write it sooner to avoid this distraction from the rest of his life

Edited by JPJPJP on Tuesday 8th October 04:13

This has the potential to be way more than a distraction. Depending on the demographics of those buying teslas this could be a Gerald Ratner moment if the final verdict is particularly harsh and the courts finds him not just of defamation but also of an attempted smear campaign of a ‘cave rescue hero’.

This element of the case is pretty grim: ‘Additionally, Musk directed his team to pressure foreign officials in Thailand to say nice things about him and his mini-sub, even as they were grappling with what would prove to be a deadly rescue mission.’

We obviously were pretty confident Musk was using the children’s plight for his own gain but to have this pretty much confirmed as a PR stunt is pretty grim reading.

But just like the attacking of Unsworth, I don’t think that any of this would register as a negative in the minds of the early adopters or apex consumers. In fact do you not think it plausible that there are more consumers in the West who want to be associated to such behaviour than those who are repulsed by it in 2019?

[Heres Johnny]

DonkeyApple said:

This element of the case is pretty grim: ‘Additionally, Musk directed his team to pressure foreign officials in Thailand to say nice things about him and his mini-sub, even as they were grappling with what would prove to be a deadly rescue mission.’

We obviously were pretty confident Musk was using the children’s plight for his own gain but to have this pretty much confirmed as a PR stunt is pretty grim reading.

But just like the attacking of Unsworth, I don’t think that any of this would register as a negative in the minds of the early adopters or apex consumers. In fact do you not think it plausible that there are more consumers in the West who want to be associated to such behaviour than those who are repulsed by it in 2019?

There will certainly be a number who applaud the anti establishment behaviour of Musk but there’s always the potential for a line to be crossed.
People are still dropping 45k+ of their money (or committing to finance) so it’s one thing celebrating his maverick behaviour but that might not translate into sales. To a point it’s how the opposition play it . It reminds me of the Audi advert a few years ago with the Yuppy (which dates it), living it large, look at me, work hard play hard... driving around in the Audi and at the end he chucked the keys back to the sales man saying not my style. I’m sure there’s still a broad segment of society that aren’t bothered about wooppie cushions in the car And may we not want to be associated with him. Its a question of numbers

Also be interesting if fleet companies refuse to allow the cars on company car books because of chronic service and lack of special arrangements etc. And I still think the tax man will raid BIK removing them exemption just for luxury cars and they’ll get taxed fully on salary sacrifice

[DonkeyApple]

Yup. BIK at the top end will have to be removed. It’ll happen once there is a credible supply of affordable EVs.

Firms like John Lewis will be key bell weathers on the fleet side. These are firms where the fleet manager has an obligation not just to ensure the products they have on the list are reliable but also that the image they promote is as well. Will these firms want staff promoting the Tesla image or an affordable EV image? Is the head buyer going to want the possible hassle of the brand suddenly becoming associated with some negative attribute?

In China they have mostly been used to promote an image of conspicuous consumption and when fleets have tried to use them as actual transport they’ve seemingly hit big issues. You can imagine that the chap at Toyota and his counterpart at VW who hold the relationships with the fleet buyers in the UK will make those buyers fully aware of the pitfalls of not going with a reliable supplier who can keep staff moving etc.

[Chester35]

Vernon Unsworth was wrong to call out Elon Musk and his small sub on twitter in hindsight. It would never have worked and Vernon should have just said that.

However, if you go back to the actual days during that rescue there was an awful lot of stress as it seemed a hopeless task, the caves were horrible and it took multiple countries an awful lot of thought to work out how to get them out of there, which they did successfully.

Given that pressure I excuse Walt Unsworth for saying the madcap idea of a Tesla Sub was madcap. It was just stupid, but during the pressure moment he went all PIstonheads with his comment saying stick it up your arse...

Eventually they did get them all out, with one loss of life from a rescuer sadly. It was a fecking hard task.

My summary

Elon Musk butted in with a stupid idea, thinking of Tesla first.

He then made it worse by name calling. Then got a private detectives in to try and win.

Is that Sad and Fail or Fail and Sad? His twitter account is just like Donalds to be honest. Both are up against it at the moment.

Both have their die hard supporters. Elon supporters now saying "Old news, lets move on"

Tesla might be better served with Tim Cook in charge, or Ren Zhengfei

[dmsims]

Which of the 2 people involved had actually been into the caves ?

[Gandahar]

jjwilde said:

hyphen said:

If Apple were struggling financially and so dropping their r&d spend, and only had a tiny percentage of the phone market, then YES!

But Tesla have a huge percentage of the EV market. What percentage did the E-Tron get Audi?

Apparently the anagram of Elon Musk in arabic is

King Canute



King Elon "Bring me my pedalo "

4 rabid twitter followers " We can't afford that due to the amount of debt "

King Elon "Bring me my lilo"

3 rabid twitter followers " We can't afford that due to the amount of debt "

King Elon "Bring me my armbands"

2 rabid twitter followers " Er, will one suffice my Lord?"

King Elon "Oh, very well, as long as it is not from Poundsavers"

1 slightly sad twitter follower " Er, I'm out of here, the Mercedes needs recharginging ...."

[ZesPak]

hyphen said:

Someone posted a top sales in Norway, e-tron outselling X and S.

People who want a large EV seem to be going for Audi or even a Jag, and those wanting a Tesla Badge/smaller ev, a 3

These are brand new cars compared to cars available for half a decade in case of the model S, so no real surprise there.
I can also imagine people cross shopping between a Q7 and an E-Tron.
In fact, I owned a Jaguar so I went to look at the I-Pace, which I then shortlisted against the Model S.

Tbh, I admired Musk at what he did with the car market and spaceX, but his twitter account is a complete turn off.
That said, aside from Ian Callum for design I have no idea nor do I care who's at the helm at the company I buy my stuff off and history shows that most people don't care.
Jobs was close to the biggest asshole on the planet, but Apple made good stuff. The VW Beetle was literally commissioned by AH himself, yet it became a symbol for the hippie movement.

I think the only defense (if any) that can be made here is that Jobs needed to be a perfectionist like he was, and Musk has to be a bit crazy to do what he does.

A good point is market value, TSLA is valued that high because of their FSD promises. Investors believe in Musk because, although in his own time, he usually delivers.

I'm a Tesla owner, but I don't own any stock.

Edit: I do believe that the company that can deliver on FSD is going to be the biggest thing ever. There have also been takeovers of much smaller companies for ridiculous amounts, just because of brand name and/or talent, of which Tesla has both in spades as well.

Edited by ZesPak on Wednesday 9th October 13:59

[Heres Johnny]

Johnny Ive developed the products that made Apple great second time around - he’s left although I imagine on a healthy retainer but Apple are running out of ideas for the next big thing

Strudel (sp?) is stepping down from Tesla and he was the real brains behind the cars, think he’s on a retainer but that’s nowhere near the same as being at the helm. Musk isn’t the brains behind the engineering

I thought Tesla’s AP team had a high degree of churn too and had recently lost their leader and they’ve bought someone recently to give them some fresh blood?

Tesla and Musk used to be inextricably linked. I wonder if that’s starting to change.

[ZesPak]

Heres Johnny said:

Johnny Ive developed the products that made Apple great second time around - he’s left although I imagine on a healthy retainer but Apple are running out of ideas for the next big thing

As far as I know he's a designer, nothing more? Didn't think he was that involved in other development.
I think Tesla is mainstream enough and half the owners I know don't really know who Musk is.

Edited by ZesPak on Wednesday 9th October 20:00

[Heres Johnny]

ZesPak said:

Heres Johnny said:

Johnny Ive developed the products that made Apple great second time around - he’s left although I imagine on a healthy retainer but Apple are running out of ideas for the next big thing

As far as I know he's a designer, nothing more? Didn't think he was that involved in other development.
I think Tesla is mainstream enough and half the owners I know don't really know who Musk is.

Edited by ZesPak on Wednesday 9th October 20:00

The man who designed the iMac, iPod, iPhone, iPad and MacBook is “just a designer” as if it was unimportant?

[gangzoom]

ZesPak said:

Edit: I do believe that the company that can deliver on FSD is going to be the biggest thing ever.

Disappointingly v10 has bought limited AP advances, though I see in the US cars with AP2.0 hardware also have 'advanced summon', which seems to work just as badly as the AP3.0 cars.

If Tesla is still using code that AP2.0 hardware can cope with than when the AP3.0 hardware is fully leveraged we *should* see a change.

Personally am surprised they are still working on AP code for AP 2/2.5 cars, I wonder if Tesla is trying to get all the features on the old Extended AP option to work on AP 2/2.5 cars so they can than avoid having to upgrade any ones whos not paid for FSD to AP 3.0 hardware.

AP now does seem to brake for corners which it didn't before, hopefully next 6-12montha some more developments will come.

[Tuna]

gangzoom said:

Disappointingly v10 has bought limited AP advances, though I see in the US cars with AP2.0 hardware also have 'advanced summon', which seems to work just as badly as the AP3.0 cars.

If Tesla is still using code that AP2.0 hardware can cope with than when the AP3.0 hardware is fully leveraged we *should* see a change.
.

I don't believe it works that way - the advanced hardware doesn't unlock any secret sauce here, it just makes processing a bit more efficient and cuts their manufacturing costs a little. AP3.0 hardware doesn't make it possible to sense the surroundings that it's clear AP2.0 cannot sense - that's a limitation of the sensors on the car, not the processor that handles them.

[Toaster]

https://mg.co.uk/mg-zs-electric/

The MG looks interesting starting at around £21K

[jjwilde]

Heres Johnny said:

The man who designed the iMac, iPod, iPhone, iPad and MacBook is “just a designer” as if it was unimportant?

In this thread anything is possible.

[dobly]

there is a difference between the designer and the stylist...

[gangzoom]

Tuna said:

that's a limitation of the sensors on the car, not the processor that handles them.

The sensors are fine, the cameras and USS sensors can easily 'see' a garage wall, its the dumb software that cannot make sense of the data thats been provided.

The in car display now shows traffic coming the other way, but its 1 second slow and misses 50% of the traffic. That's not a problem with the camera thats a problem with the processing.

[DonkeyApple]

gangzoom said:

Tuna said:

that's a limitation of the sensors on the car, not the processor that handles them.

The sensors are fine, the cameras and USS sensors can easily 'see' a garage wall, its the dumb software that cannot make sense of the data thats been provided.

The in car display now shows traffic coming the other way, but its 1 second slow and misses 50% of the traffic. That's not a problem with the camera thats a problem with the processing.

That’s very hard to believe, almost inconceivable as that very clearly means the product is manifestly not fit for purpose and is going to kill people. If in 40 years of massive expenditure and technological advancement we still cannot work out what every object in the immediate vicinity is then we’ve barely moved forward at all and the whole current pitch regarding self driving is valueless.

If we don’t allow disabled people whose eyes and ears work fine but they are unable to process the data they are gathering quickly enough or accurately enough why do we allow computers that are no different to drive?