Elon Musk, the man

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#2925467 12-Jun-2022 06:28

driller2000:

Tesla = $721 BN

Ford = $50 BN

Volkswagen = $109 BN

Be careful with such comparisons. Share prices are bets on the future and that can change overnight. Real assets quickly become decisive in crises.

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driller2000

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#2925508 12-Jun-2022 10:06

Tinkerisk:

driller2000:

Tesla = $721 BN

Ford = $50 BN

Volkswagen = $109 BN

Be careful with such comparisons. Share prices are bets on the future and that can change overnight. Real assets quickly become decisive in crises.

Yep 100%.

However this would require a Tesla share value to drop 80% for V to get close in value - and that seems highly unlikely given the speculative frothing that Tesla has generated for years now.

Does however show that, right now - the traditional car firms simply don't have the $$$ to go after Tesla.

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#2925527 12-Jun-2022 11:53

I think he has become a dick over time, you can't fault his marketing and or product.

1. Reveal product conception

2. Pay now and receive said product in 5 years.

3. People start shouting shut up and take my money.

4. Have shi*t loads of capital for your company to do what ever you want.

At least he is not as bad a Zuckerberg who really has lot the plot in his metaverse or what ever it is.

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Tinkerisk

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#2925834 12-Jun-2022 20:55

driller2000:

Yep 100%.

However this would require a Tesla share value to drop 80% for V to get close in value - and that seems highly unlikely given the speculative frothing that Tesla has generated for years now.

Does however show that, right now - the traditional car firms simply don't have the $$$ to go after Tesla.

Yes agreed, but they have human capital Elon Musk is constantly threatening that employees who don't work the way he wants them to would be wrong for him (which may be true, but who works there if they're not a Musk fan, tech-nut or desperate for the money)? And remember, Musk is a one-man show. If he drops dead tomorrow, there are hardly any replacements and the chances of getting sick at this working rate are not small either. We know the story of Howard Hughes, for example.

Qui nihil scit, omnia credere debet.
Firewalls do NOT stop dragons.
In effect we have everything to hide from someone, and no idea who someone is.

Rikkitic

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#2925835 12-Jun-2022 21:07

I wonder if any of the Musk fanboys are watching the documentary on TV1 right now.

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Eva888

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#2925854 12-Jun-2022 23:17

I didn’t watch tonight, but last night I watched an interview with him from years back on You Tube. He said he worked 100 hours a week and that allowed him to achieve a years work in four months.

At one point he was asked a question about how he felt about a certain period of his life and his face froze and trembled with emotion. He asked if he could stop for a moment. You could see tears running down his face. I found his answers deep and touching. Will search for it and post one day.

I find it sad that people try to dredge up and focus on the worst in others rather than honouring what they do well. It's very discouraging and hurtful and does little more than show a streak of collective malice that has become too common through the help of social media.

Dingbatt

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#2925874 13-Jun-2022 08:02

I did watch it. But I don’t consider myself either a Musk or Tesla fanboi.

I view Musk himself as a flawed genius in the same ilk as Edison, Ford and Hughes. I was not surprised that his first response to any threat was to suggest he would sue. People more familiar with the spectrum may be able to comment on reactions to threatening situations.

What the ‘documentary’* indicated to me was the ability of the Full Self Driving package was exaggerated and Musk put an unrealistic timescale on when it would be available. It was always “in two years” where a more appropriate response to questions would have been “I hope we might see some level of autonomy in the next decade”. Like so many things, weasel words like “would”, “could”, “might”, “possibly” remove the absolutism in statements. When is the last time the fast food you ordered looked anything like what was promised in the advertising?

That people put complete faith in something because it is called an “autopilot” obviously don’t understand that in aircraft that can mean anything that will simply maintain a set heading and attitude, through to something that can autoland in zero visibility. Some boats have autopilot as well, but would you trust it to take you through the Manukau Harbour Entrance? I use the adaptive cruise and lane keeping in my car on the motorway only and I am prepared to take over at any time. Drivers that put so much faith in automation that they sleep, read or play video games are just nominating themselves for a Darwin Award. But how many times have you seen people texting while manually driving a vehicle?

The Tesla owner’s manual is pretty specific how it should be operated with plenty of warnings.

But then again America is the country that needed to put “caution contents may be hot” warnings on takeaway coffee cups to keep the lawyers at bay.

* The program was produced by The New York Times. Which left me asking “What’s in it for them and why now?” Most of the information was 5 to 7 years old. At least they didn’t mention “Russian Disinformation”.

“We’ve arranged a society based on science and technology, in which nobody understands anything about science technology. Carl Sagan 1996

Rikkitic

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#2925875 13-Jun-2022 08:05

Eva888:

I find it sad that people try to dredge up and focus on the worst in others rather than honouring what they do well. It's very discouraging and hurtful and does little more than show a streak of collective malice that has become too common through the help of social media.

What you are saying is he's human. He has a better side and a less good side. Just like everyone else. But his decisions and acts affect a lot of other people. There is nothing wrong with holding them up to scrutiny.

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#2925888 13-Jun-2022 08:36

Eva888: I find it sad that people try to dredge up and focus on the worst in others rather than honouring what they do well.

It's kind-of-a-thing to be defined by the worst things we do. There are a lot of nice people in prison. When people think of Napoleon, usually the metric system doesn't pop to mind. :)

All joking aside, the Japanese have a word "Karoshi"

"Karoshi which can be translated into, literally, 'overwork death', is a Japanese term relating to occupation-related sudden death.

The most common medical causes of karoshi deaths are heart attacks and strokes due to stress and a starvation diet.

Mental stress from the workplace can also cause karoshi through workers taking their own lives.

People who commit suicide due to overwork are called karōjisatsu

The phenomenon of death by overwork is also widespread in other parts of Asia. 745,194 deaths worldwide were attributable to long working hours in 2016"

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#2925946 13-Jun-2022 11:11

Whilst I don't have anything against Elon Musk on a personal level (as I do not know him personally), I do have an issue with the expectation that his employees be invested in his business as much as he is, while not reaping the same rewards.

I understand that he's the "brains of the operation" and he has created the company (or companies) that are the very source of his wealth, but to send out emails stating that he expects a minimum of 40 hrs a week in the office (silently implying that there should be many more hours worked) is not great business practice.

It's generally accepted that the most productive employees are those that are treated with respect, given excellent working conditions and benefits and being treated like adults. I understand factory workers being directed/managed more than executives, but his views of employment relations belong in the 1800's.

I do agree that he's immensely innovative and has done immeasurable good with many of the services that he has provided and the products that he has put into market, but he doesn't do this alone and he needs to understand that if his workforce simply up and quit, so would his innovation, manufacturing, marketing, etc. He's only as good as the people that work for him.

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#2925977 13-Jun-2022 12:05

Handsomedan:

I understand that he's the "brains of the operation" and he has created the company (or companies) that are the very source of his wealth, but to send out emails stating that he expects a minimum of 40 hrs a week in the office (silently implying that there should be many more hours worked) is not great business practice.

He's created none of those companies. Tesla existed for years before he bought it with his PayPal money. SpaceX (Space Exploration Technologies Corp) also existed for years before he bought it. And he didn't found PayPal either, despite claims to the contrary (not by you, in general).

And to the person who said he single handedly kicked off the EV revolution, no, he did not. He produced a car so expensive that noone bought it, then leveraged US Federal Government subsidies to produce a car that would actually sell. By that logic, the US Federal Government single handedly kicked off the EV revolution.

He has a cult of personality, and it's not even a good personality. You don't have to like a person to recognise they do good things (but the amount of credit he gets for the good things like electric vehicles is way overblown. These companies aren't composed of one person).

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#2925995 13-Jun-2022 12:31

While I realise he didn’t found Tesla, what I didn’t realise until Sunday night’s TV program was the original founders of Tesla approached him for backing after most VCs turned them away (I thought he had just bought it outright).

And it was him that insisted on the the Roadster to make the most ‘splash’ marketing wise.

The NYT didn’t mention the other person in the picture when talking about PayPal. I wonder why?

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Kookoo

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#2926046 13-Jun-2022 13:54

Not sure what all the fuss is about. Musk is a brilliant businessman. A money maker out of this world. As such he's greedy, arrogant, morally bankrupt and obscenely rich.

In this he's no different to multiple other billionaires with perhaps the exception of Bill Gates and Warren Buffett, and even there I have to go by their public personas and philanthropy work.

What I take issue with is people admiring his engineering/invention skills, his leadership, vision, or his politics, none of which is anything to be proud of. If you admire Musk, just admit what he is and what you admire him for.

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#2926072 13-Jun-2022 14:20

Eva888: I didn’t watch tonight, but last night I watched an interview with him from years back on You Tube. He said he worked 100 hours a week and that allowed him to achieve a years work in four months.

At one point he was asked a question about how he felt about a certain period of his life and his face froze and trembled with emotion. He asked if he could stop for a moment. You could see tears running down his face. I found his answers deep and touching. Will search for it and post one day.

I find it sad that people try to dredge up and focus on the worst in others rather than honouring what they do well. It's very discouraging and hurtful and does little more than show a streak of collective malice that has become too common through the help of social media.

Just to be clear, I am talking about a journalist asking this no a social media mob.

I haven't seen the interview you're talking about (link?) but in general, if a journalist doesn't ask tough, unexpected and unwelcome questions, they might as well not be there and they should screen a puff piece from the interviewee instead.

A journalist needs a story, they're not there to 'honour' the interviewee and neither is the viewer.

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#2926282 14-Jun-2022 04:26

Dingbatt:

I did watch it. But I don’t consider myself either a Musk or Tesla fanboi.

… was the ability of the Full Self Driving package was exaggerated and Musk put an unrealistic timescale on when it would be available. It was always “in two years” …

He‘s under pressure. And it has the first official road approval in GER since a couple of weeks.

Qui nihil scit, omnia credere debet.
Firewalls do NOT stop dragons.
In effect we have everything to hide from someone, and no idea who someone is.

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