Elon Musk Clearly Doesn’t Want To Be CEO Of A ‘Car Company’ Anymore

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I was in the car listening to Elon Musk’s lethargic answers to investor questions yesterday and a long-simmering theory felt like it was being confirmed: Elon Musk doesn’t want to be CEO of a car company. He’s bored! I’m saying this not as a critique of Musk, because if I’m right and he’s right then he’s creating a company many times more valuable than it is right now.

Is he right? I’m less sure. Musk’s whole life has been a constant doubling-down on every bet and, thus far, it’s worked out for him. There are signs it’s not working out as well and that’s important.

If you can get through a Musk-heavy Morning Dump I shall reward you with a discussion of Volvo’s financials, an update on Stellantis and its idiotic quest to alienate all of its suppliers, and a video of me trying to convince GM to build a PHEV Aztek.

Because Elon Musk Doesn’t See Tesla As A Car Company

Reuters had a story that Tesla was abandoning its $25,000 car, which seemed like a wild assertion and one that Elon Musk said was wrong. Yesterday, Tesla released its Q1 financials and they were bad. Whereas GM saw improving financials and more revenue, Tesla experienced exactly the opposite. The most interesting part of the day, though, was the investor call where CEO Elon Musk answered a bunch of questions.

Musk didn’t confirm the Reuters story, but he clarified it, and it makes a lot of sense. Here’s the full transcript, by the way, that I’m quoting from. Here’s the key bit:

We’ve updated our future vehicle lineup to accelerate the launch of new models ahead, previously mentioned start of production in the second half of 2025. So, we expect it to be more like the early 2025, if not late this year. These new vehicles, including more affordable models, will use aspects of the next-generation platform as well as aspects of our current platforms, and we’ll be able to produce on the same manufacturing lines as our current vehicle lineup.

If you’re not a close watcher of Tesla this doesn’t mean that much to you, but I’ll try to do a quick version of explaining it. Basically, Tesla has been working on an “unboxed” platform that will allow the automaker to build cars cheaper than anyone else can build cars, including Tesla itself. What I think happened is Tesla moved a lot of people off that team, which is what tipped off Reuters. 

What does that mean? Tesla has decided (the timing is unclear and it could have been decided after a negative response to the story) that it is going to build the newer models on a more traditional Tesla platform, which will allow the company to introduce much-needed models much faster by using more of its existing manufacturing footprint.

The big question about this is… can Tesla make a $25k car without the new platform? Fred Lambert, who pays more attention to this than anyone, doesn’t think so:

Without the unboxed system, it’s likely that we can kiss goodbye to the previously mentioned $25,000 price point.

I will have to defer to his judgment on that, though one would think that saving money on re-tooling would help.

This becomes extremely important when considering the company’s financial results. Which were bad.

Tesla reported a 9% drop in Q1 revenue, which is the biggest drop in more than a decade and below Wall Street’s already lowered expectations. And, yet, shares jumped after the call.

From CNBC:

The stock jumped in extended trading after CEO Elon Musk told investors that production of new affordable EV models could begin sooner than expected.

Here’s the thing, Tesla spent a lot of time working on robots, self-driving, AI, and Cybertrucks instead of focusing on expanding its model line, which is what a normal CEO of a car company likely would have done. This meant that when the EV market slowed down Tesla was forced to heavily discount its inventory because instead of a mix of models it mostly had the same old cars build on the same old platforms to offer.

Ok, back to my premise. When the death of the $25,000 car was reported, I wrote this as my theory for why:

What if Tesla’s business isn’t really cars? I know this is a wild statement since that’s a big chunk of the company’s value, but Musk is out there working on AI and robots and flamethrowers and tunnels. There are fundamental limitations to the amount of money to be made in the car business and it’s possible that Musk would rather pivot to the next thing rather than focus on the arduous, slow, and kind of boring work of making cars now that he’s got to compete with BYD, and. Xiaomi and a bunch of other companies.

This call confirmed this theory.  There was way more talk of everything that wasn’t cars than actual cars. And Musk explicitly said the following on the call:

If you value Tesla as just like an auto company, you just have to — fundamentally, it’s just the wrong framework and if you ask the wrong question, then the right answer is impossible. So, I mean, if somebody doesn’t believe Tesla is going to solve autonomy, I think they should not be an investor in the company. Like that is, but we will and we are and then you have a car that goes from 10 hours of use a week, like an hour and a half a day to probably 50%, but it costs the same.

That’s it. If you think Tesla can make humanoid robots, autonomy, AI, et cetera work then it is so much more valuable than the company is today and the share cost is way low and you should buy shares in Tesla. If you think that’s all a shell game you should run like hell.

I’ve got my sense of what reality is, but that sense has to contend with a universe in which betting against Elon Musk has almost never worked out for anyone.

Volvo Is Doing Just Fine

Volvo Ex30 Vapourgrey 87 Large

Volvo definitely is a car company, and its Q1 financials reflect that. Sales were up in Q1 2024 by about 12% compared to Q1 2023 and EBIT margins hit 7.2%, compared to the same period in 2023 when margins were 6.6%.

The company is actually well-positioned in the marketplace with a strong mix of EVs and PHEVs. Total revenue for the company did fall, and the company blamed contract manufacturing (ahem, Polestar):

Volvo financial slide
Screenshot: Volvo

That and foreign exchange rates have been a bit of a drag. Volvo has a solution to the Polestar issue, though, and that’s giving back Polestar to its investors (and Geely).

Judge Smacks Down Stellantis Parts Dispute

Carlos Tavares Lovits
Source: The Wedding Singer

Stellantis, under CEO Carlos Tavares (pictured above), is playing a dangerous game with its suppliers, which is what the company does when it’s not antagonizing governments.

As previously reported, Stellantis is trying to keep parts costs low and has told suppliers they can no longer submit claims related to price increases.

On the Stellantis side, the company is essentially saying that it has contracts and it’s tried to help out as much as possible to offset inflation/supply chain-related pressures on its suppliers but it also has to worry about its own margins.

On the supplier side, these companies are pointing out that during the pandemic Stellantis made humongous profits while they got the squeeze and haven’t been made whole yet.

Suppliers have threatened to stop delivering parts and Stellantis has decided to stop paying certain suppliers. This has led to a flurry of court cases, and the most recent has come down against Stellantis. Here’s the key bit from Automotive News:

Two of the cases are being handled by Judge Victoria Valentine, who granted court orders this year forcing Yanfeng and Kamax to continue supplying parts while the cases work through the court.

But Judge Michael Warren, the circuit court’s other business judge, departed from those decisions by denying a preliminary injunction against MacLean-Fogg Component Solutions LLC. “Despite FCA’s oral argument that such circumstances will cause other suppliers to similarly threaten to stop shipping parts when they want a price increase, causing disruption of the entire United States auto industry, FCA’s argument is speculation and conjecture,” Warren said in the order.

Hold on, it gets better:

In the April 9 lawsuit filed against the supplier, lawyers for Stellantis argued “the financial impact on FCA will be catastrophic and will cause tens, if not hundreds, of millions of dollars in shutdown damages, in addition to the incalculable losses from being shut out of future supply work with its suppliers and losing various employees due to forced layoffs.”

In Tuesday’s order, Judge Warren shot down the automaker’s claim of a risk of irreparable harm. “This cascade will only occur if FCA refused to pay under protest,” the judge said in the opinion. “Akin to a civil contemnor, who holds the key to her own jail cell, FCA can avoid this impending economic disaster by paying under protest.”

Looooooool. It’s not fun to pay under protest, but them’s the breaks (unless, of course, Stellantis tries to short its brakes supplier).

GM Should Build A Hybrid GMC Aztek

I had a great chat yesterday, above, with ABC 12 and a familiar voice around here (spartanjohn113). Mostly we talked about GM’s Q1 results, and it did give me an opening to float my pet theory of what GM should do next.

Specifically, I challenged GM, Mark Reuss, and Mary Barra to build a cool, affordable crossover PHEV with a tent and call it Aztek. I also said, specifically “it’ll sell.” However, I did add: “You have my word… which is not trustworthy at all in this case.”

It’s not! Never build a car an automotive journalist asks for, it only ends in heartache.

Mark (who, in addition to being a car dude is also President of GM) found it funny, at least:

Maybe not confirmation of a GMC Aztek, but at least I’m getting a sweet lapel pin! That’s a consolation.

What I’m Listening To While Writing TMD

I love Chromeo. I got to see them perform in Houston at a Basquiat exhibit (the most Millennial sentence ever written) and met Dave 1 and P-Thugg and they were delightful. Not only is their music smooth and funky as hell, all their videos seem to feature great cars, including the white Camaro in this video.

Fast forward a few years and I’m living in Brooklyn and I’m in search of a parking garage to ditch press cars. There are a few to choose from, but the best choice seems to be the one run by a guy with an Infiniti M30 convertible. He gets me.

One day while I’m down there I go exploring the cars in the garage and there’s a white Camaro convertible. I blurt out “very Chromeo” and he goes “Oh yeah, that’s P-Thugg’s cars, he keeps some of his rides here.” So, for a few years, I shared a parking garage with Chromeo. I will never get cooler.

The Big Question

Is Elon Musk running a shell game or is Tesla the future of everything? Or some other answer?

Top photo: NBC Universal/SNL Screenshot

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168 thoughts on “Elon Musk Clearly Doesn’t Want To Be CEO Of A ‘Car Company’ Anymore”

  1. I used to want a Tesla if I could afford it. I don’t anymore. 75% of that is because of Musk’s bullshit and the rest of it is their shit interiors and ergonomics.

    1. I never wanted one but I was always impressed by their drivetrains so I could see why someone would want one. Now I look down on anyone who buys one now…

    2. The Superchargers were the only thing that still made them appealing to me. Now that you can pull up to a Supercharger in anything, there is no need to get a Tesla.

    1. I wanna know more about their car collection! Killer Mike is quite a connoisseur of cars, as well. Celebrities with cool car collections would be a neat column!

  3. “Musk’s whole life has been a constant doubling-down on every bet and, thus far, it’s worked out for him.”

    Ahem – Twitter – $44 Billion Dollars.

    1. That’s still relatively new, I think it’s the stupidest stupid to ever be stupided before too but I’m going to wait a few years before calling that a win or a loss. Tesla and SpaceX took several years to turn into successes too.

      I admit I’m biased though, EVs and space rockets are things I find cool and I’ve always thought twitter was stupid and little more than internet pollution long before it got X’d so I thought it would fail anyways, but I’m still going to wait.

      2. If he bought it, and just deleted it, that would have been the coolest move in recent history.

        Instead he’s just allowing hate speech and trolling because controversy, which is the opposite of cool.

        1. Anybody who watched the downfall of 4chan knows the consequences of unlimited free speech and yet he thought somehow this would be different.

          I agree, buying Twitter and just unplugging it would put him in the history books. Now I know what to do if I win the lottery.

          1. Meh. Only if it stands up in court, Tik Tok is sold to new owners, and the new owners screw it up.

            But whatsapp and instagram both survived being acquired, so there’s no guarantee people will leave Tik Tok if it gets sold.

  5. So, I mean, if somebody doesn’t believe Tesla is going to solve autonomy, I think they should not be an investor in the company.

    Welp, it’s a good thing I can’t invest in companies I cover, then. I’m already one step ahead of you when it comes to not investing in that unlikely pipe dream, man.

    Like that is, but we will and we are and then you have a car that goes from 10 hours of use a week, like an hour and a half a day to probably 50%, but it costs the same.

    Yeah, because everyone wants to pay tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars for a car that some random can hop into and puke in. There’s a reason why a lot of privately owned cars stay parked, and why it’s a far better idea to — heaven forbid — add more public transit options in cities if we want to solve traffic. I can walk around the barf on a train. A summoned Tesla, not so much.

    Oh, and…

    white Camaro

    MATT. As the expert talking head on GM, you should know that it’s camero.

    1. My car died right before I moved to Houston so I got to experience the Metro bus system. It was only for a few months but I was surprised at how many people I saw barfing in that time period. There was also a guy that hauled 2 large, full, stinking, and dripping garbage bags on the bus. He dropped them down on a seat at the front then he went and sat in the back but it didn’t matter, the whole bus smelled so bad in a matter of minutes. We were all pulling on the stop cable just to get off. Why would anyone need to haul their garbage bags across town? Who knows, but that’s who’s going to be jumping in your car while it’s in robotaxi mode.

  6. Sounds like Elon wants to leave the business of “being a business”, and entering the burgeoning enterprise of becoming a Faith. If you don’t believe in Elon and his band of merry techno-priests, you can get out. And you, believer, do not value the stock for what it is. Value the stock as He alone can speak to the great beyond and bestow upon on us sentience for the machine. He must be rewarded with roughly 56 billion dollars, or you will suffer an eternity of monotonous tasks!

    2. He’s also bonking anything with a pulse to spread his superior genes (that’s a Musk family thing, his dad does the same). The cult leader parallels are strong.

  7. Shell game. No question. Always something just over the horizon that’s going to change the world.

    And some of them only SEEM like they would change the world. Humanoid robots? They’re likely to be worse at any task than a purpose-built robot, more expensive, and require more maintenance.

    Admittedly, a one-stop banking, social media, shopping, whatever else site could change the world if people bought in. The change would be for the worse, since there is no real benefit to combining those things, but it would be a change. Instead of social media harassment campaigns driving you off of social media, they could ruin you financially. Instead of rolling the dice if you order off Temu (which is like Wish if you bought it from Wish), you could roll the dice on all sorts of purchases through a conglomerated shop with a mix of scams, real products, and quality knock-offs.

    And that isn’t even accounting for Musk’s propensity to find new ventures to dive into. Online payments, electric cars, privatizing space travel, digging big tunnels, high-speed rail (but with a fancy name and no intention of building it), social media, etc.

    I suspect we are months away from Musk announcing he’s going to “solve” housing shortages by selling incredibly cheap pre-fab housing. After significant delays, he will start selling small pre-fab homes run by tech he buys from Tesla (or some other company he has a stake in), and they’ll maybe be cost-competitive with manufactured homes twice their size. At best.

    1. Everyone has a friend or family member who drifts. They are constantly picking up new hobbies (and sometimes jobs), never sticking with them long enough to get good, and convinced they simply haven’t yet found the right one. That is Musk.

      You know the shady used car salesman who tries to distract you from obvious flaws? The one who, when you point out it’s clearly been in an accident, briefly mentions the clean Carfax and then tells you the car was always dealer-maintained (but no, you can’t have the service records) and has a rare paint color? That is also Musk. The financial results were terrible, but he totally promises that a long-promised product that has no known prototypes in testing will DEFINITELY be released early next year. And also, there’s more to the company that the products it sells.

      1. Sure, Tesla revolutionized electric cars and SpaceX revolutionized rockets, but those are super easy. Other than that he’s pretty much totally a scam.

      2. Initially read this as asserting that obviously we all have a friend or family member who drift races regularly.
        Which seems like a stretch but would be fun.

      1. The 3D-printed homes? I guess Musk could try to buy them, but the end result will be the same–he’ll try to load them with tech from other ventures of his, sell them as a solution to problems he doesn’t bother to understand, and then insist no one else can understand his big brain thinking.
        I also suspect that he would decide he should try to compete with them instead of buying them. Some sort of insistence that he can do it better and cheaper.
        If you mean some other ICON, I’m probably not familiar.

          1. Maybe it’s just my disdain for Elon Musk, but I can’t see him going for what (at least on the surface) seems like a simple and efficient solution.
            I also think it irritates him when people recognize he did not found Tesla, so he’d be unlikely to buy a company with good solutions. He wants everyone to praise him for coming up with the solutions.
            If he starts criticizing them and saying he could improve upon their designs, then I’ll suspect he’d want to buy them.

            1. I brought that up because the founder of ICON has a tad bit of Elon about him. He is easily the biggest player in the 3d printed house scene, and I think one of the first. They have been aggressively been seeking funding to grow. Said differently, their approach to 3d printing houses is not just the printer itself, but the whole ecosystem.

              I know other players in the scene that kinda laugh at what ICON is doing. But, then, a month or so ago, they reveal their “whole system” approach, which I found to be kinda cool. (Plus, the new printer is really, finally, the right approach to building houses, and pretty sweet).

              But, it’s a bit of a distraction from “just building printers”. It’s ALSO what someone in the scene should be doing, kinda like what Elon did with Tesla (rewrote the book on cars).

              Gosh I hope he doesn’t enter that scene, because it’s one a adore and want to desperately be part of.

              1. That’s good info. Thank you for the additional context. I don’t know anything about the ICON founder, just a bit about their printer. But you are right that building and selling their printers would probably help expand access faster than expanding their business.

                I hope they succeed and, more than that, I hope they do so by making housing more accessible, not by joining hands with the people peddling luxury housing or selling to the highest bidder.

  8. All Tesla had to do was make a pickup version of the Model 3 instead of that stupid Cybertruck. A Model 3- with a pickup bed would’ve cost much less to make, and it would just print money.

    Let Stellantis go belly up. Nothing of value will be lost. They treat their suppliers the same way they treat their customers LOL

    1. Agreed! I think a butch’d up Model X pickup would’ve been great, just lop off the falcon doors and slap a bed in it, instantly increase reliability by 100% and give a reason to keep that platform going!

  9. Musk has a habit of promising to make the “everything company.” Xdotcom Paypal was going to be the “everything” payment, banking, and shopping website. Tesla is going to be the “everything” mobility, energy, and automation company. Twitter, currently known as X, is supposed to be the “everything” entertainment, social media, and payment app. I think it’s some combination of his own inability to focus, his own lack of expertise in the topics he claims expertise in, and that he recognizes he needs to have a constantly shifting repertoire of offerings to distract from poor execution and juice the infinite growth factor.

    1. To me, it’s as if the sphere around him says “theoretically, that’s possible”, and he then goes on to claim that he will do that thing, when in reality, it’s not (possible) because he didn’t listen to the follow up that started at the coma after “possible”.

    2. None of those things benefit from being combined, and TMK nobody wants then to be. If he has a cogent vision for why those agglomerates would provide added benefits to their users and thence be successful in the marketplace, he hasn’t articulated it well.

      (Payments and banking don’t count as separate things)

      1. If he has a cogent vision

        He doesn’t, but Musk is used to the halcyon days of unlimited venture capital for tech startups. It didn’t matter what you wanted your company to do, as long as there was a promise of infinite growth, investors were willing to pump money into anything (note: Ed Zitron has a lot of good writing about how/why this happened).

  10. That’s it. If you think Tesla can make humanoid robots, autonomy, AI, et cetera 

    The words here really aren’t that far fetched. Do I think Tesla specifically is the company for this? I have no idea, but I wouldn’t say “definitely not”. Lots of automakers have experimented with robots, AI, and autonomy. Just look at the back catalog of all the strange non-automotive shit GM has done in the past.

    3. General Motors owned DirectTV in the early days because Hughes was purchased by GM and folded into Delco. Of course, it’s worth noting GM and the other automakers have largely divested from those non-automotive sectors for good reason.

  12. Tesla isn’t going anywhere, but I’d bet on them slowly making the transition to being a battery and charging company. Those are the two things they’re objectively really good at. They’re not all that good at making actual cars and in the face of competition heating up significantly they do appear to be standing in the middle of a busy road rambling with their pants down right now.

    It would be wise of them to try to oust Musk at this point, but I don’t think it’ll happen. He’s in cahoots with too many people on the board and the persistent rumor I encounter is that he’s done a fuck load of drugs with most of them and could damage their images significantly if they were to organize a coup. He’s also run the company with an iron fist and turned it into one giant vanity project/vehicle for trolling.

    Imagine if they’d refreshed their aging lineup with the ludicrous amount of resources they incinerated on the Cybertruck instead. Anyway, I think they’re too big to just outright fail at this point…but I do think they’ll have to refocus in the future and stick to what they’re actually good at…because now that actual car manufacturers have figured out EVs out Tesla’s are growing less appealing by the day….and once the superchargers are opened up/NACS is a thing, what will be appealing about their cars?

  13. Why does Polestar exist? At the beginning it made sense: “Volvo, but electric”. But now that Volvo is going electric too, based on Polestar’s sales it seems like the general public is kind of wondering the same thing.

    I’ll bet if you asked 100 random people on the street what Polestar was, 95 wouldn’t answer correctly.

    2. They are a direct to consumer brand so there’s that but given how Volvo dealers operate (at least in my area), that is a pretty marginal difference.

      1. But you still have to go to Volvo dealerships for Parts and Service, and at least with my local dealer, they dont like to work on Polestars at all.

    4. At the beginning, it was a separate performance company that souped up Volvos. Then it became a division of Volvo (like AMG to Mercedes). Only recently did it become an electric car manufacturer.

      1. I’m aware of the history. It is however completely redundant now with Volvo’s EV switch and just a waste of resources to maintain a separate brand.

  14. Remember when Ford tried the whole “We’re a mobility/tech company NOT a Car company” Shtick? Yeah that didn’t go so well, but they DID take the throne of “Car company with the most recalls” and ironically, many of them are software related.

    1. “We’re a mobility company” is such a fatuous vapid crock of marketese. You know they had a large team internally + expensive consultants working on “positioning” and “vision statements” and post it notes on the walls and focus groups and mood boards for months to come up with that, and their boss (prob VP Marketing with an ambition to be CMO) has been on a massive campaign to get the new vision and language embedded into the whole company’s internal and external communications. Half of the C levels roll their eyes but go with it because they have actually meaningful work to do and no brain power to waste fighting that bullshit (and also they know that not toeing the line is bad for their career pro$pect$). So mediocrity and stupid shit like “we’re a mobility company” permeates the company culture like metastatic diarrhea, and the whole world’s average IQ drops a little more as a result of it.

      Corporate marketers are poo-flinging monkeys without the cuteness.

  15. So Stellantis has a contract with a supplier that specifies a certain price. Stellantis doesn’t like the price and says, “We’re not going to pay.”

    Supplier says, “You don’t pay, we don’t supply”.

    Stellantis sues supplier and judge tells Stellantis, “If you want parts, pay.”

    How did they think this would turn out?

    1. OEM purchasing terms say that the supplier will sell whatever volume of parts the OEM needs for whatever length of time the OEM deems fit, with no price adjustments ever. They don’t sign contracts. They just say, “Our purchasing terms apply.” The problem with that (for suppliers) is that automotive programs last for several years and inflation is a real, actual thing.

      The reason Stellantis didn’t get its order here, is because the supplier offered to ship parts at the higher prices, and allow Stellantis to reserve the right to sue to get back the difference later. In that case, there’s no reason for a judge to force the supplier to do anything.

        1. Yeah, they definitely have contracts. Question is, what documents make up those contracts? No big deal, just a >$100B industry operating with everyone just sending each other dozens of documents and loudly proclamaining that their documents are the contracts, not the other party’s documents.

      2. I used to work for a supplier with OEMs as customers and that’s not how it worked. Typically you would have a certain price for a certain amount of products, with a yearly discount. Additional clauses could be added but normal material price fluctuations would be factored in, whereas extraordinary ones would be negotiated separately (e.g., steel price increase).

      3. Years ago, I sold software to GM – like 5 licenses of Project Management Risk Analysis software. They sent me a 100 page agreement and then buried me under follow-up paperwork for months before I finally walked away. The users really wanted the software, so they finally purchased it on their company credit cards.

  16. It really would be best for Tesla for Musk to NOT be the CEO. Let him run an Ai/self driving spinoff, but leave the car making biz to people who actually want to make cars. Also distancing the man from the company would be pretty helpful politically.

    1. “Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.”
      I’m in the half that are stupider than that, but I would like to be in the other side.

      Would someone please explain how someone not Elon Musk would do better? I mean, if why are the people in the car making biz copying Tesla? center screen (no button sugar), NACS, gigacasting…

      I really really really want an EV that’s better than a Tesla (not just in one category, but all. In fact, I’ll settle for 75% better.

      1. These things aren’t from the CEO. The CEO bets on technology, but doesn’t produce it. If you had a CEO that bullish on tech like musk but knew how to not spout off like an idiot, you would still have the good parts of Tesla.

  17. “So, I mean, if somebody doesn’t believe Tesla is going to solve autonomy, I think they should not be an investor in the company.”

    Done.

    “Like that is, but we will and we are and then you have a car that goes from 10 hours of use a week, like an hour and a half a day to probably 50%, but it costs the same.”

    What? Does? This? Mean?

    1. Well… what I think it means is “You still pay $XX,XXX to “own” your (now highly-autonomous) car but NOW it goes and pimps itself out as a self-driving Uber when you’re not using it. Don’t expect to get reimbursed for mileage or seat puke.”

    2. He’s trying sell the robo taxi side of things, that when not in use the car can create income. The major issue IMO is he is trying to sell software that is nowhere close to being ready in the lifespan of the cars currently being sold

        2. When he first started talking about this years ago, part of the deal was that Tesla would extract revenue from you renting your car out.

  18. I’ve been enjoying the peeks behind the veil about the engineering on the CT from Sandy & associates, but the world is a complex arena and I am doubtful that real full self-driving is coming anytime soon. Not saying I’m smarter than Musk, but our brains are quite complex, and we do things sometimes we cannot explain why—and then that car that you didn’t even see blows the light & would have totaled your ass if you hadn’t paused that extra second for no reason. I don’t think we are yet at the level that we can build or program anything with our brain’s pattern recognition plus what we call intuition.

    Am I betting against him? Well, I’m not buying Tesla stock.

      1. Good point. And, given other human attributes, if enough money & care is spent setting certain roads up for it, it will certainly save lives. I’m not opposed to that at all. What I’m saying as only a driver not at all in any industry involved, is that I don’t think we are near full scale free-range self-driving such that I can climb in my work van & tell it to take me by the shop on the way home while I do my paperwork.

        We’ll need more processing power in each vehicle, some sore of virtual neural network setup (and connectivity will be an issue in many parts of my area) with both top-down and V2V information sharing (I’m sort of visualizing an always-connected automatic Waze), laws to deal with this (does your insurance provider have access to your trip logs?), and, to begin with, some common agreed-upon protocol for this all. I idly wonder if that’s not where Elon is going because whoever comes up with the platform will be a big player. Couch it as this RoboTaxi, build out a large network, then license it out. Most manufacturers are going to the Supercharger network…

  19. You said:

    Never build a car an automotive journalist asks for, it only ends in heartache.

    Mazda would like to have a word with you regarding the Miata 🙂

  20. I thought Musk was going to have ultra-rich people travel between capitals using rockets, while destroying entire rain forests?
    What about the Boring Project, is that still on? He’s already done crypto, now its on to the next scam (AI).

  21. That assclown cost me over 20k because of his incessant need for trolling people online. I watched my portfolio, which was almost all TSLA, sink everytime he tweeted something idiotic and offensive. I pulled the plug early last year, when it was about double the price of what it is today.

    Now I no longer invest in stocks, I invest in shitbox project cars 😛

      1. Everytime I tried, the stock went down. Eventually sold everything else and went full in on TSLA, it’s all gambling and it did pay off pretty great.

    4. > I watched my portfolio, which was almost all TSLA

      Unless you’re young and got most of your investments as stock options working at Tesla, that one’s on you :p

  22. It’s a car company who builds cars. They should be valued like a car company. Just like all the other car companies who build cars.
    The whole shtick they’ve been spouting forever of “It’s super dumb to value us like a car company because we’re actually a tech company,” is just insane especially now as he’s starting up his robotaxi nonsense again. It was dumb in 2018 when he said your Tesla would be an appreciating asset and it’s still dumb.

      1. I recently explained to my 7-year-old daughter why flying cars were implausible. She was able to grasp the concepts. Not sure why grownass adults would fail to do so.

        (I mean I am sure– it’s because half of people are below average intelligence.)

      2. I’m chiming in here on the flying car thing only because I’m a nerd about weird cars, but Terrafugia Transition was so close. It still would have been catastrophically expensive and in the end pointless with a hilariously small potential market, but I actually saw the thing fly and drive at Oshkosh. It had a VIN and the NHTSA and FAA exemptions it needed to come to market. They were founded by MIT folk who were serious, and all they really needed was more money to finish the validation and certification. So they sold to Geely, all the MIT founders left and Geely… as far as I can tell just paid to close it down. I don’t know what they wanted it for.

        In any case, I still have my Terrafugia t-shirt that I bought at that Oshkosh show, I keep it only because I’ve always been a dreamer, I guess.

    3. It absolutley blows my mind that stock prices rose over the investor call because Musk said Tesla was going to make more affordable EVs. Musk says things. It’s what he does. I cannot understand why anyone would believe was he says at this point. It’s been like 20 years of this nonsense and people still fall for it!

      3. You are thinking about this like a long term investor and not a day trader. Musk says things that are a clear signal to close out short positions and ride the wave up for a short time. It does not matter if anyone believes what he says as long as it causes short term price movement, because short term price movement is what matters to day traders.

          1. How exactly is Starlink bullshit when even the Pentagon uses it?
            Also, you can’t actually believe that SpaceX exists primarily for Starlink, can you? All those manned trips to the ISS were just for funsies?

            Get real, Jeff.

      5. Totally. And I’m absolutely going to buy SAAB back from whoever owns it this week, start building the pre-GM merger lineup with electrics and technology and impressive buzzwords. That’s my plan. Send me money.

  23. After years of observing Musk, I think he believes that if he comes up with ideas, they must be possible to implement in an imaginary world where everything works in the way he thinks is optimal. A perfect world with perfect systems that never break or misbehave or act unexpectedly.

    The reality is, the world is a messy place and you can’t control all variables. Which is where the downfall comes in, and where the real challenges exist. I don’t believe these can be solved without AGI. They can be adapted to, anticipated, adjusted for, and programmed to fail gracefully. Most companies understand this, but Musk seems to be hung up on just solving for everything.

    So really, it comes down to “do you think Musk can achieve AGI?”, because that is what he has bet everything on. I tend to think we are so far from this goal its like shoveling money into microchip wafers when all you have for tools are a hammer and chisel. I believe this because we still have very little understanding of what consciousness is, and no clue how to imbue a computer with it. Until we understand consciousnesses, how can we possibly create it? Long way to go.

    1. It’s like he finished the first year of engineering school where they taught you all the “theoretical” stuff, and skipped the other 3 years where they teach you reality.

      1. He suffers from

        Wait no

        We suffer from his severe Dunning-Kruger problems about technology. What he did and said about twitter tech when he took over was CRINGE if you actually know software and infrastructure. I suspect he has the same peripheral, shallow understanding of EE and mechE, and his staff at Tesla, SpaceX, Neuralink, Boring, and his internet thing roll their eyes all day.

        1. Just wanna tell you that you just caused me to realize all of my current problems in both my personal and professional life. Not sure if I should thank you or curse you. This is me, exactly. I have a feeling it’s not going to be a good day for me, LOL.

      2. They only teach you maybe half of what you need to know to do product engineering- where you really learn is working for good (ideally great) engineers and making a ton of screw ups that you (hopefully) find in prototyping and then hopefully don’t repeat.

  24. My translation of Mr. Krab’s nonsense:

    If you value Tesla as just like an auto company, you just have to — fundamentally, it’s just the wrong framework and if you ask the wrong question, then the right answer is impossible.

    I just, you know, was told about Hitchhiker’s Guide to The Galaxy and clearly I am the smartest guy in here, so yeah

    So, I mean, if somebody doesn’t believe Tesla is going to solve autonomy, I think they should not be an investor in the company.

    I’m doubling down that it will be naysayers who will be the downfall of the company, not me, just like X.

    Like that is, but we will and we are and then you have a car that goes from 10 hours of use a week, like an hour and a half a day to probably 50%, but it costs the same.

    The cars will pay for themselves when you’re not using them, because robotaxis are the thing that I want.

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