Just sold my Ferrari to buy more TSLA

Ugggh. I hate coming around to supporting Elon. But dude be aight.

 

I have to admit I am becoming a fan of ELON .. now I think he has flirted with lots of security issues but he seems to come out alright.. I also think he has some great ideas with Space X ... and I find myself agreeing with Elon on many topics .. I would never thought I would say that.. and this is on topics not involving Tesla.....

 

I was used to an America where the likes of Buffet, Hughes, Rockerfeller, Gates, Jobs, Edison were celebrated, not hated.

I've asked folks why the hatred toward Musk?

It came down to one thing: Government Subsidies.

Let me give an analogy to show why the hate misdirected.

***
Say my uncle, let's call him Sam is a thief. He robbed you by gunpoint. Stole your watch. Sam then went to a pawn shop and sold the watch.
Elon was walking down the street, sees your watch in the shop buys it with a HUGE DISCOUNT. After a week, he got sick of it - sold it, took the money, and bought lottery tickets.

He won - big time; in fact, he won the biggest jackpot in history. (Half of which goes to taxes btw)
***
Now let me ask you, should you be mad at Sam or Elon?

 

The supposition is false. Be happy I’ve said he’s not that bad and declare victory.

 

I didn't compare him to Madoff. All I meant was, Madoff at one time was not spoken off despite his fraud, because he made people a ****-ton of money. SEC had plenty of warnings.

Lets go through your list:

Hewlett Packard: Besides buying Musks' first company...what does it have to do with him?

Paypal: Musk had X.com and they merged with confinity (paypal), which was superior and did it to prevent unnecessary competition. He was quickly ousted as CEO.

Space X: I like the working part of it: The actual ''day-to-day'' taking payloads into space. The taking credit for re-inventing the wheel with self landing rockets is something that annoys me. It's not a new Tech. Nasa did it 40+ years ago but abandoned the project due to sheer cost. They proved it could be done. As far as I can tell, Musk is only proving Nasa right so far. The Mars fantasies and computerized images reimagined from 50 year old comic books is a pipe dream that he tries to sell as reality. 1 hour flights across the planet? Did you see that lunacy? All things promised on Moon, Mars and 1 hour flights across the planets will never happen.

SolarCity was a bailout for his cousins. Did you follow any of it at all? A billion dollar investment from tax payers, all vaporized. And what does Solarcity actually do different than normal Solar companies? The vast majority of it's business comes from...traditional solar panels, does it not? I do actually like the idea of the solar roof, but it doesn't look anywhere near to what people where presented by Musk all those years ago.

Boring Company: Again, what was invented here...he promised 155mph tunnels for Vegas. Not happening. The construction of the tunnels is no different nor any cheaper than any other tunnel in the world. Funnily enough, the tunnel even needs a chauffeur in the cars because self driving isn't safe enough...he can't even let his own cars drive through a single lane tunnel (by definition only 1 route is drivable). Promised was 4000 passengers per hour. Accomplished was 1200 per hour. If anything, the Vegas tunnel is mass transport made less efficient. He's actually devolved!
Then we have the complete and utter fantasy of tunneling under LA and building elevators all around the city where you can park on and it'll lower into the tunnels to beat traffic. A child can prove it wrong ffs. Ps where is the Chicago tunnel?

Hyperloop wasn't brought up in this discussion. I'll include it under Boring Company. Vacuum tunnels is an idea thought up about 200 years ago. Elon brought the idea back, gives it a new, modern name, and takes sole credit for the idea that is not working (because it can't efficiently work).

What was promised:
760 mph
Sealed tunnel in a vacuum
Pods riding on a thin layer of air (think airhockey table puck)
7.5 billion dollar cost between LA and SF

What have we got so far:

280 mph (*in a pod that can't house a dwarf let alone an averaged sized human being)
No vacuum to speak off
Maglev
1km long chamber in a desert outside vegas.
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Lets not forget that about 2 years ago Tesla was a few days (weeks?) away from going bankrupt. Something that Musk himself didn't mention at the time and allegedly money was shuffled from Boring, Space X accounts to cover for Tesla. Transparent???



Musk is simply the Monorail guy from the Simpsons. He has a huge cult following (=reason for the Tesla stock price for what it is). Question anything and be ready for a barrage of being called a ''non-believer''.

 

Solarcity has probably the worst reputation among the big solar companies.

 

Say your 100% right.

Poor service is very different from Fraud. Either solar works or it doesn't Solars usability in homes is not a controversial subject. Either it will save you money in the long run or it won't.

 

say what?

Huh?

You, not me, brought up Madoff. YOU, NOT ME.

You do realize the internet doesn't disappear? haha

Then, you move the goalposts.

In your list, I saw a laundry list of consternation, but I didn't see any mention of fraud or illegal activity (i.e. Ponzi Scheme)

Wow.

I'm happy to respond to your list of Musk hatred, but before I expend time and effort, I have to make sure you I'm at least talking to a person that doesn't revise history.

 

Never mentioned fraud....
But the companys reputation among those who know isn't good.

 

hmmm
strange.

Did I list the solar city as an example of a company that had the best service in the industry or not having fraud?


Let's take a look:

 

It’s Friday man relax... look this is a thread about a guy who sold his Fcar to buy TSLA....
So my point stands....

 

I'm not saying Elon Musk is running a ponzi, so perhaps Madoff is a poor comparison in that regard.

Jerry said that Musk made his investors billions without committing fraud. All I did was point out that Musk DID commit fraud, and just like Bernie Madoff, he also made his investors billions. Who in his right mind would run to the SEC and complain about the guy making you billions? That's all.

Regarding fraudulent activity, taking consumers' money on non existing products such as ''full self driving'' at 10K a pop is what I would call ''fraudulent''. At the same time, promising that by end of 2020 there would be 1 million self driving Tesla taxi's, to then sell additional stock solving it's cash problem. I ask you, how many self driving Taxi's are there around today? Nowhere near a million. Not even 10. Not even 1. So yes I would consider that ''fraud''. Tesla's ''full self driving'' is level 2. So quite far away from ''full self driving''.

Regarding my ''list of consternation'' and you not seeing any fraud....that wasn't the question, was it? YOU asked what I thought about said companies, all I did was do exactly as you asked, and gave you my thoughts.

Elon can seemingly do as he likes. His investors/cultist fans excuse anything he does or says, simply waving it off as ''that's just Elon being Elon'' or that he's doing it ''for the greater good''.

 

Forgot to mention, the starlink internet: That's a wonderful invention and I've signed up for it a while ago. Right now my internet I'm paying 10x as much as Starlink will charge, and get 1/10th the speed on a good day.

 

Starlink is meant for rural areas with no to poor broadband. Such as these Fchat folks.

If you already have say Fiber like me, you're not the target customer. Your post rhetorically sinks itself.

 

Elon's cars are pretty autonomous; if you're referring to California 'mea culpa,' it's due to regulatory underselling (think when Mclaren underrates their HP)

For the sake of argument, let's say you're 100% right that Tesla cars are not autonomous.

Okay, no worries.

Honda, Mercedes are, though. Levels 3 and 4. Again, just waiting for the lawmakers to catch up.

So if you're saying Tesla is forever stuck in level 2, that they'll never catch up to Honda and Mercedes.

uh...

What can I say? Some folks believe computers will stop advancing from here on end I guess.

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Fraud is different from market manipulation, which is what Elon's tweet would be classified ($420 private buyout.)

I agree with you, and the SEC should punish and fine Musk (which he was.)

However, that's still not a fraud. Also given Tesla is now worth 10X multiple post-split of Musk's original $420 price, it's would be akin to calling out Tim Cook saying he plans to take Apple private at $20. So Cook's tweet made me buy Apple for $20? I hate you, Tim Cook? haha more Like Thank you so much!

***

As for Paypal, Jobs was kicked out of Apple, too, so what? That doesn't mean he wasn't the co-founder of Apple. I love Paypal. Just because AltaVista lost out to Google doesn't mean AltaVista was a fraud. SpaceX is on its way to being the main conduit for the Space Station and multiple military contracts. If it's cheaper for my government to use Nasa...then why don't they?

Finally, for Boring company, notice it's not called the "Autonomous" company. It's called the Boring company - because its central value premise is cheap tunneling, not autonomous trains. The achievement is not the trams but the tunnel itself.

Autonomous trams have been around ever since I was a kid, at every major airport, Disneyland, or Tokyo.

It's not earth-shattering tech to have autonomous trams in closed circuit tracks/tunnels. That's why I chuckle when folks complain about the late autonomous on the Boring company, what's is earth-shattering (quite literally) is to build tunnels for only 30M per mile, *not* high-tech robot trains.

Which guess what? Musk's done.

 

The problem is that Tesla started charging for FSD before it was even available in 'beta' form. They started selling it for $5k (and have been steadily raising the price since) in 2016. FSD beta regardless of how autonomous or not you believe it is, didn't come for 4 more years. Years after Elon said it would be coming. That means that a fair number of people paid for a feature they never even got to use. I don't know if this is fraud or not, but it sure is a ****ty way to treat your customers.

This isn't the first time either. Tesla advertised the P85D as having 691hp and sold lots of cars based on that, when it couldn't ever put out that much power. (They were sued and lost in Norway for this).

Tesla also went and cut people's fast charging when they used it to much, a limitation that was never communicated and was expressly denied for a long time.

Tesla used an OTA update to reduce the battery capacity of some cars because of some manufacturing defects that could result in warranty claims (Not due to safety issues as some Tesla fans have claimed).

Tesla used an OTA update to reduce the supercharging speed of its early cars to also reduce warranty claims (also not due to safety issues as some Tesla fans have claimed).

Not only is this a terrible way to treat any of your customers, but it mostly effected the early adopters that made Tesla successful. The only excuse that could be given is that they needed to do these things to generate enough buzz and reduce costs enough to stay in buisness. However they are still doing **** like this today! They took orders for new Model S's giving delivery estimates of a few weeks knowing that they weren't ever going to deliver those cars because they were going to update the model. Then after that they increased the price on those orders and have said nothing about what is happening with the production of them for months!

The only reason they are still selling so many cars is because their cars and technology are just that much better than everything else. Despite it being almost a decade since the Model S launched, the other automakers still just don't get EVs or why Tesla is successful.

 

I'm pretty pleased with the autonomous capabilities. I certainly have no complaints.

I'm not saying others don't, but that's the beautiful thing about Tesla. If you have any issue of false advertising or problems - you can file a class-action lawsuit.

Cha-Ching $$$$

I don't doubt the early adopters got burned; I've been mainly shielded by it because it took me a long time to get involved with Tesla. I guess I just have a higher replacement philosophy. I change my car every 4-5 years. Say like lamenting the limitations of the very first Apple phone compared to, say, even an iPhone 4, but even if bothers me that much that my early Model S had 500 hp instead of the advertised 600, I'll just move on to the 1,000 HP Model S.

For the first 15 years, I thought Tesla was going to go out of business. If you told me they would make over a million cars back in 2003 (which some folks did) - I would have laughed (which I did.)

Just happy for the folks like @JERRYZ and the army of "Teslanaires" that didn't listen to me and instead made millions.

I wish I listened to them.

 

What? In what way does it sink itself? A) I love the idea of starlink B) the entire country I live in is rural. The starlink website claims they have a satellite that covers my area. I pay 1000 USD a month for my internet which on a good day is around 5mb/s, but mostly around 3mb/s. Starlink promises 50mb/s for 100 usd. What's not to like?

"Forever stuck on level 2". Your words not mine. Tesla is currently charging for a service it doesn't provide. Charging for a service he promised would be there ''by end of 2017", claiming it could do coast-to-coast by then. Still waiting.

"Market manipulation is still not fraud". SEC disagrees with you. Tesla is still not taken private. The fraud was done so Musk could burn the shorts, who lost billions in minutes, all on fraudulent claims.

Paypal, Musk is often credited as having founded paypal but as already pointed out to you, he is not a founder of paypal. Paypal already existed, X is what Musk started and the companies then merged, and soon after Musk was ousted.

Boring tunnel. Musk claimed he would do tunneling for ''under 10 million per mile" The vegas tunnel cost 50m for a very narrow tunnel that barely fits 1 car (14ft outside diameter). On the website, musk claims that he can reduce tunneling cost by doing 2 things: reduce the diameter of tunnels and using more efficient machines. Tunnels are the width that they are precisely because it needs to accommodate sizable public transport vehicles (trains/trams) and have service access. The machines he's using are exactly the same as normal tunnel machines. All he's doing is charging less (to get the contract?). I'm all for lower cost so that greedy people won't take the piss with government funded (read: Tax payer funded) endeavors, mind you, but again Musk is being heralded as being an inventor of erm....a tunnel.

Regarding the autonomous tunnel, Musk himself claimed the autonomous bit, I'm just pointing out the fact that it isn't, and since he's using Tesla vehicles that's a pretty significant feature for it not to have. Since the vehicles used are Tesla's, immediately 1 seat less is available because it needs a driver there at all times.

Still, if he can deliver comparable tunnels (with the same features as the more expensive ones, so service roads, same width, quality etc) for less than what ''established'' companies charge the tax payer, I'm all for it. But the whole fanfare around the Vegas tunnel, no thanks...it's a tunnel with some LED lights stuck on it that's far less efficient than promised.

 

Plaid S is very impressive. I like it alot. However, racing is more than just a lap time. Endurance is part of it and that has always been the big question with batteries.

 

Come on...one cherry picked metric. Fastest lap at Laguna Seca is not something to hang ones hat on. Teslas are great but racecars they are not.

 

Why settle if absolutely not guilty?

Yeah. On slicks, in a fully stripped out car.

About as impressive as their Nürburgring ''record''. Done in sections and cooled down in between these sections as it won't complete a full lap at speed. BeCaUsE RaCeCaR

 

While I do think Musk was guilty, plenty of people who arent guilty settle to avoid massive legal expenses, bad optics and stress.

I know i would.