Cont: Musk, SpaceX and future of Tesla II

[Roger Ramjets]

I suspect Musk was the kid who always smelled like pee.

...and was regularly picked on by other kids, perhaps even once being thrown down concrete steps and beaten severely, resulting in being hospitalized for his injuries.

Maybe that is why he became an enthusiastic reader of books, developed an interest in computing and video games, and at age 12 wrote a game which he sold to PC and Office Technology magazine for ~$500 - thus starting him on the path towards becoming the Richest Man in the World.

Those kids are still picking on him today. Yes, we are older today, but few of us have grown up mentally (see exhibit A above). The only thing that's changed is he is now rich and powerful, and we aren't.

How could this have happened? I mean, any of us could have written that crappy BASIC program and received a cool $500 for it. All of us could have developed and marketed an Internet city guide for the newspaper publishing industry, with maps, directions, and yellow pages - which we coded at night, seven days a week, all the time.

Except we didn't. Which is why we didn't get $22 million for our 7% share after selling the business to Compaq, and then we didn't use that money to start up one of the first registered online banks that later became PayPal and netted us a cool $175.8 million for our 11.7% share. And finally we didn't pour almost all of that money into developing space rockets, electric cars, autonomous taxis and robots.

There's something fundamentally wrong with the Universe when the smart people in the room lose out to a kid who smells of pee. Musk's so obviously a huge fruad, yet somehow he managed to con top Democrats into giving him billions of our tax dollars just to help keep NASA going and reduce CO2 emissions. Wouldn't have happened if we were in charge, that's for sure. We'd have done what we always do, nothing except gloat about how superior we are to that dumbass.

 

[Darat]

Robotaxi, generic term, already exist so I know a new Tesla built one is nothing new but given his version is to launch in just a few weeks I'm surprised I've not seen photos of disguised ones in the press already. Has anyone seen such images ?

 

[a_unique_person]

Wasn't that it at the We Are Robot day? The best that no-one would want too use as a taxi. Only two seats, very low to the ground, swing up doors.

 

[a_unique_person]

The chair of Tesla’s board, Robyn Denholm, has not heeded his advice. Denholm has made $US198 million ($306 million) in the past six months selling Tesla stock that she earned for serving on the board, according to a New York Times analysis of securities filings.

Easy money.

Tesla’s Australian chair made $306 million as profits fell

In March, after a steep decline in Tesla’s share price, Elon Musk told employees, “Hang on to your stock.” The chair of Tesla’s board, Robyn Denholm, has not heeded his advice.

www.theage.com.au

 

[The Don]

The Tesla share price has been stupid for years. The underlying problems of Tesla still remain as does Musk's terrible reputation.

In the same way that I don't understand the price of bitcoin, I don't understand the Tesla stock price.

If the trading volume was very low then I'd put it down to a few Musk fanbois doing small trades in a market with very low liquidity (and hence artificially high prices and a big bid/offer spread) but trading volumes are high which means that professional investors and institutions are involved. I suppose that index funds are obliged to hold Tesla but I simply don't understand a well informed professional investor looking at Tesla, its future plans, its current model portfolio and its board and saying "Yes, that's a growth stock if ever I've seen one".

I guess this is one of the many reasons why I rely on professionals to do my investing for me.

 

[dirtywick]

imo there’s quite a bit of market manipulation happening here and elsewhere on the market.

 

[jeremyp]

For years people have said the share prices are stupid and the reasons they are high are stupid.

I'm starting to think it's the people who think they're stupid who are actually stupid.

For example: 'Sell your shares now at $179 before you lose money.' 6 months later they are at $479 per share.

Tesla's share price has born no relation to the actual value of the company. Given its current trajectory, no reasonable person would expect it to ever make the kind of profits that such a price would normally indicate.

The price is buoyed up by Elon Musk's fanciful promises about robots and autonomous taxis and he well known for lying quite a lot. As things stand, this is the greater fool scam.

 

[The Great Zaganza]

Tesla has no chance to survive the end of its carbon offset scam.

 

[jeremyp]

...and was regularly picked on by other kids, perhaps even once being thrown down concrete steps and beaten severely, resulting in being hospitalized for his injuries.

Yes I'm wondering how much truth there is in that story too.

Maybe that is why he became an enthusiastic reader of books, developed an interest in computing and video games, and at age 12 wrote a game which he sold to PC and Office Technology magazine for ~$500 - thus starting him on the path towards becoming the Richest Man in the World.

Those kids are still picking on him today. Yes, we are older today, but few of us have grown up mentally (see exhibit A above). The only thing that's changed is he is now rich and powerful, and we aren't.

How could this have happened? I mean, any of us could have written that crappy BASIC program and received a cool $500 for it. All of us could have developed and marketed an Internet city guide for the newspaper publishing industry, with maps, directions, and yellow pages - which we coded at night, seven days a week, all the time.

I knew several people who wrote crappy knock offs of Space Invaders. In fact I did. The difference between Musk and the rest of us is that he has the nerve to sell the crap he produces.

And yes, he is good at selling crap - well he was before he outed himself as a MAGA Nazi. Now he seems to be having some trouble.

 

[The Great Zaganza]

The Media will always build up people to tear them down: no question everyone has a ton of material that shows Musk in the worst light - it just didn't fit the narrative until now to air it.

 

[dirtywick]

if you haven’t realized musk is a total con man and fraud by now idk what to tell you. you’re gassing this guy up like he hasn’t been caught red handed lying about a hundred things by this point

 

[Fast Eddie B]

Tesla's share price has born no relation to the actual value of the company. Given its current trajectory, no reasonable person would expect it to ever make the kind of profits that such a price would normally indicate.

The price is buoyed up by Elon Musk's fanciful promises about robots and autonomous taxis and he well known for lying quite a lot. As things stand, this is the greater fool scam.

I think two conflicting maxims are in play here:

“The past is prologue.” and “Past performance is no guarantee of future results."

If the past is prologue, Musk has a track record of home runs. Some investors are betting that there’s some “special sauce” that will allow for his venturing into robotics, A.I. and Robotaxi’s to also be home runs. And they may be proven right.

But I sold my TSLA shares on the basis of the latter maxim. I think the competition in each of these fields is formidable, and that Musk may be overreaching. I think relying on “vision only” for autonomous driving and disparaging the need for LIDAR and/or RADAR will potentially cripple reaching true autonomous driving. And there’s a LOT of thrashing around and lack of focus on Tesla’s core business, making and selling cars*. But I still hold that markets are efficient, if not always rational, and that all of these factors result in today’s stock price. In short, it’s where it “should be”, all things considered, and its future value is unknowable.


*An example: The CyberTruck was originally planned to have up to 500 miles of range. It barely has 300 miles, rendering it a poor choice for towing, where range is roughly cut in half. As a band-aid, they took deposits on a $16,000 “Range Extender”, which had to be permanently installed and would eat up about 1/3 of the bed while cutting down on useful load and still didn’t get to the promised 500 mile range. An obviously horrible compromise. And just last week Tesla axed the whole idea. I expect a class action suit from folks who only bought their CyberTrucks based on this expected future product. Buyers of the truck also had “Autopilot” included, but now they’ve been told it will not be forthcoming and they’ll need to purchase “Full Self Driving” just to get auto-steer capability. What a fiasco.

 

[Darat]

if you haven’t realized musk is a total con man and fraud by now idk what to tell you. you’re gassing this guy up like he hasn’t been caught red handed
lying about a hundred things by this point

For me the astonishing thing is that he had to lie about utterly trivial things like how good a player he is at Diablo IV or POE2. If he lies so much about trivia how much does he lie about the important stuff?

 

[plague311]

If the past is prologue, Musk has a track record of home runs. Some investors are betting that there’s some “special sauce” that will allow for his venturing into robotics, A.I. and Robotaxi’s to also be home runs. And they may be proven right.

As you pointed out, Musk's companies aren't the leader in any of those fields. SpaceX is currently the best of all of his companies and even that has a lot of competition. Musk would probably have made a ton of money off of Starlink if he'd just shut up but now countries are opting to make their own satellite internet rather than do any business with Musk. A large majority of EV drivers in all of Europe and a decent portion of the US are going with other EVs instead of Tesla. Musk's Grok AI is absolute garbage and probably the least used generative AI on the market today. His Robotaxi is going nowhere fast and usually runs over a few people on the way. His "robotics" are years behind the competition, at best.

I do disagree with the "future is unknowable" part. Musk was a bit of an unknown factor a decade ago. Sure people knew his name, and who he was, but he wasn't in your face all the time. Now there's a magnifying glass on his day-to-day life and it's not painting a very pretty picture. I think he'll go the way of Mr. MyPillow. When you ruin peoples' lives, they aren't going to buy your product.

 

[Fast Eddie B]

In spite of Musk's shenanigans, we still love our 2022 Model 3 Long Range. On a road trip right now.

Left Sunday to drive from near Knoxville to Pompano Beach to help a friend move, then yesterday to visit my daughter near Tampa. Charge history:

Supercharging has been seamless, as usual.

As an aside, charging even at 120V at my daughter's is nothing to sneeze at. So far have picked up almost 90 miles overnight.

As an aside, we're traveling with two dogs. Often while charging we'll Google "Dog Parks Near Me" and there's usually one within a few miles so everyone has a chance to stretch their little legs!

The rest of the trip is back to Pompano Beach, then Tallahassee to visit a friend, then back home. Stipulated that this mode of travel is not for everyone, but works out fabulously for us.

 

[jeremyp]

I think two conflicting maxims are in play here:

“The past is prologue.” and “Past performance is no guarantee of future results."

If the past is prologue, Musk has a track record of home runs. Some investors are betting that there’s some “special sauce” that will allow for his venturing into robotics, A.I. and Robotaxi’s to also be home runs. And they may be proven right.

This is the thing. Actually he does not have a track record of home runs. Tesla wasn't his idea and since he took over the company it's been a litany of missed deadlines and broken promises.

SpaceX looks good superficially, but we don't know if it is really profitable - or would be without the constant pumping in of external capital and lucrative government contracts.

Everything else looks like a disaster area at this point.

But I sold my TSLA shares on the basis of the latter maxim. I think the competition in each of these fields is formidable, and that Musk may be overreaching. I think relying on “vision only” for autonomous driving and disparaging the need for LIDAR and/or RADAR will potentially cripple reaching true autonomous driving. And there’s a LOT of thrashing around and lack of focus on Tesla’s core business, making and selling cars*. But I still hold that markets are efficient, if not always rational, and that all of these factors result in today’s stock price. In short, it’s where it “should be”, all things considered, and its future value is unknowable.

No, it should be much lower. Tesla is a car company with old models and sales that are cratering. These are the fundamentals. It's not even clear that they can make a car at a profit without the carbon credits. Musk's pronouncements on robots and autonomous taxis and FSD are worth nothing, but, for some reason, otherwise quite sensible people believe him.

*An example: The CyberTruck was originally planned to have up to 500 miles of range. It barely has 300 miles, rendering it a poor choice for towing, where range is roughly cut in half. As a band-aid, they took deposits on a $16,000 “Range Extender”, which had to be permanently installed and would eat up about 1/3 of the bed while cutting down on useful load and still didn’t get to the promised 500 mile range. An obviously horrible compromise. And just last week Tesla axed the whole idea. I expect a class action suit from folks who only bought their CyberTrucks based on this expected future product. Buyers of the truck also had “Autopilot” included, but now they’ve been told it will not be forthcoming and they’ll need to purchase “Full Self Driving” just to get auto-steer capability. What a fiasco.

Quite.

 

[The Great Zaganza]

Tesla Reportedly Has $800 Million Worth of Cybertrucks That Nobody Wants

Tesla is overstocked with Cybertrucks, the PS1 graphics-looking mobile monument to Elon’s deep lack of creativity.

www.vice.com

Musk can't sell Cybertrucks at any price.
And it doesn't really have another car in the pipeline to make up for this colossal waste of money and time.

 

[The Don]

Tesla Reportedly Has $800 Million Worth of Cybertrucks That Nobody Wants

Tesla is overstocked with Cybertrucks, the PS1 graphics-looking mobile monument to Elon’s deep lack of creativity.

www.vice.com

Musk can't sell Cybertrucks at any price.
And it doesn't really have another car in the pipeline to make up for this colossal waste of money and time.

It's OK I'm sure the resounding success of FSD, self drive taxis and the millions of robots he's sure to sell will more than make up for any small blips in Cybertruck sales.

 

[Fast Eddie B]

No, it should be much lower.

This is a perfect case of "it is what it is".

I remember when Apple was at $20 pundits saying it was "overvalued" and predicting its demise. Similarly Tesla early on selling in the teens with the same pundits saying much the same things.

The market is the only thing that determines what price a stock "should be" at, at any given moment. If you are confident its overpriced, short it and make a LOT of money. Or not.

 

[acbytesla]

Tesla Reportedly Has $800 Million Worth of Cybertrucks That Nobody Wants

Tesla is overstocked with Cybertrucks, the PS1 graphics-looking mobile monument to Elon’s deep lack of creativity.

www.vice.com

Musk can't sell Cybertrucks at any price.
And it doesn't really have another car in the pipeline to make up for this colossal waste of money and time.

What is it about people like Musk who think they can force their vision on others. Long before Musk made me hate him with a passion I saw this vehicle as a disaster. That at most, should be a prototype for publicity. He ignored history, I'm sure he either ignored his own staff when they might have advised him not to build it.

I say history, because car history is filled with half truck half car vehicles that weren't good cars or good trucks. That fell short at both. The El Camino and Ford Ranchero come to mind. But at least neither were overpriced luxury vehicles. I use to own a 67 El Camino. It was cool looking. But It had neither enough truck bed space or enough passenger space. Poor utility and uncomfortable.