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Tesla Motors Shaken Up, Laying Off
tjstork writes "Tesla Motors, the darling of technorati for its high performance electric car, may be about to go belly up. Venture capital is cut off, layoffs are under way, and construction plans are being stretched out. Elon Musk has ousted the CEO and taken the reins, blaming the global credit crunch."
If your product works, or at least appears to, and you have a sound plan for getting it to market, where it will be purchased, then SOMEONE will loan you the money. If you're a slick dot-com shop with a foosball table and free soda for everyone, and your product consists of a slick name and spiffy presentations, then not so much.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
Are we really going to freak out every time a company is having financial trouble? So many companies are effected that we'll just be flooded by them.
There is limited desire for the first generation of a car that costs $110,000.
Tesla isn't going belly up. They are waiting with further developing their Sedan until they can get a cheaper loan. next year or so.
People who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do.
Maybe, like Nickolai Tesla, they were just destined to have a great beginning but go nuts toward mid life.
GM losing billions and getting loans to retool for
Greener, more efficient vehicles like hybrids and while the real innovators go under.
Truth: If it's not one thing, it's another
if it were the electro car for the masses.
But the reality is this car is a novelty or luxury item for rich people.
On top of that, there is no real ground breaking technology used / developed for this car, so goodbye!
By my reckoning, ever since "Five Man Acoustical Jam".
Tesla Motors consistently overpromised and underdelivered on their product. Their ambitions far outweighed their ability to execute their business plan, and their product roadmap was beyond with their engineering talent.
Au revoir, Tesla. Looks like the first really useful production electric cars will come from a real car company (like Renault/Nissan), not a bunch of Internet egoists.
They make a very interesting product, but the price, combined with the low production numbers and quality control issues, meant the roadster at least would never be anything but a niche product.
Now that the money is drying up, any chance to transition from a dreamy eyed startup to a real manufacturer may be drying up with it.
"The government grants you rights, not the other way around."-- beav007. Yes, these people really exist...
I think what we can learn from this is that we gotta read the signs of financial trouble.
Can't you read the signs?
Correction: The car Tesla Motors has for sale now costs $109,000.
The L.A. Times article has more detail: Tesla Motors hits the brakes amid credit crisis.
Wil Shipley of Delicious Monster test drove a Tesla and wrote about it in his blog.
Here is part of what he had to say about:
It's crazy-fast. It handles like a jet fighter. It gets the equivalent of about 140 mpg. It has no gears. It requires almost no maintenance.e It's gorgeous. It's whisper-quiet. And, in Seattle, runs off hydro power.
Ceci n'est pas une signature.
Tesla was building something amazing. It is unfortunate to see a company making something so cutting edge have to scale back or even fold. Especially when it isn't because of their own fault (or is it, and they are using this as an excuse?) These types of companies are the future, and the world loses a lot when these types of companies don't make it.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Their battery pack design is pretty unique, all liquid cooled per cell, to make LiIon batteries safe to use in cars when you need thousands of them to make up a pack.
Detroit big three and bailouts
Elon Musk has ousted the CEO and taken the reins, blaming the global credit crunch.
That's odd. Usually when a CEO totally fscks up a company, they give him huge bonuses and lay off more technical workers. In this case, they are admitting that it is due to the global credit crunch, which I am pretty sure is not the CEOs fault, and yet they are firing him anyway.
Bizarre.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
During the 1950s for sure, and I think during the 1930s as well, "continuous performances" were the norm. You could stay as long as you liked. And the full program lasted more than three hours.
One of the reasons movies contained so many redundancies in their scripts and plotting was that it was assumed that people would arrive in the middle of the movie, stay through the rest of the movie, the second feature, the coming attractions, the newsreel, the short subjects, the cartoon, and the first part of the movie.
Hence the expression "this is where we came in."
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
Overpriced car on electric batteries. Batteries = not good if mass produced. They do a lot more harm to environment than your regular engines. Good riddance
They just need to get the price point of electric cars in line with what the average consumer can afford. Until that happens they will be a luxary item and won't be selling in the numbers that we need to get off our hydrocarbon addiction.
The largest tech VC firm estimated over a quarter of startups will die due to capital problems in a recent Wired story.
I thought we (America) were going to invest in new "green" automobile technology, energy and whatnot... Is Tesla motors exempt from this new influx of cash?? If so, what a shame - they seem to really be breaking new ground here.
What shock and a jolt to the green car movement. Although, with current economic events; it's not surprising they lack the juice to continue.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
http://www.autoexpress.co.uk/news/autoexpressnews/202144/electric_elise_is_a_socket_rocket.html
Much cheaper (in a couple of years), better performance, better range.
No sig today...
The failure of our financial system in language anybody can understand. This comment is worth the price of admission. Well done sir!
RETURN without GOSUB in line 1050
What would die would be the GM/Ford brand names along with the pension plans and other UAW union benefits. Which frankly is a good thing for the US auto industry in the long run.
Yes, because the wage declines experienced in America due to competition for low paying jobs with no benefits leads to more low paying jobs with no benefits.
Germany still manages to have strong unions, competitive products, and they actually pay their pensions, because they're required to by law. The only people that benefit from union busting are the CEOs that make 300 times their average worker's salary, versus European CEOs who make about 35 times more than their average worker.
If you want to know which policy is more valuable, take a look at the Euro and the Pound versus the Dollar. This anti-Socialism nonsense is based in a fantasy world where facts are non-existent, and anecdotes trump reality.
There are economies of scale in the auto industry, but the price of an individual model still doesn't drop much.
The choice of car body material is illustrative. Fiberglass is cheaper than sheet metal for small production runs, since you don't have the up front cost of tooling up expensive sheet metal stamping machines. Sheet metal is cheaper than fiberglass for large production runs, since you can amortize the cost of the stamping machine over many units and there is less labor cost per unit. Once you have gone into production with a fiberglass body, it is not feasible to re-tool your assembly line to use sheet metal instead of fiberglass, so as to achieve an economy of scale. Such a change would a) totally disrupt the assembly line, and b) force you to redo all of your safety tests, etc.
Generally speaking, in the auto manufacturing business, you decide how many vehicles you are going to make and what economies of scale you will see years before the first vehicle is made. If you guess wrong, you don't get a chance to change your mind.
So, in the case of Tesla, if the current model is wildly successful, its price is still unlikely to come down. Instead, they will introduce a follow-on model with more planned units and a lower price from day one.
http://xkcd.com/756//
Never trust a company run by someone who's name sounds like a cheap perfume.
Instead of investing in the top of the company infusing it with cash, how about we let the company fail and spend money on training the workers to find new jobs? It takes care of the jobs problem and gets rid of a company that's big and bulky and clumsy, and it gives absolutely no benefits to the CEO who, even though the company had mediocre performance, was still making millions of dollars.
If Tesla goes under, the same philosophy should apply, but someone could buy Tesla's technology and try to be profitable with it.
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
... said company founder Elon Musk, who also announced that he will assume the role of chief executive officer. He replaces Ze'ev Drori, who becomes vice chairman and continues as a board member.
Looks like the old CEO is still there...
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
Tesla isn't going belly up. They are waiting with further developing their Sedan until they can get a cheaper loan. next year or so.
Ha ha ha. And the economy is basically sound. Elvis and Hoffa are alive. Oswald just came up with the idea to kill Kennedy out of the blue. Bush's advisers are competent. The Taliban are going to realize the error of their ways. Iraq as a muslim state is going to be so much more friendly and peaceful than the secular dictatorship was. The billionaire's bailout will make everything all better. Sending all of our industry overseas will improve our economy. Obama is the Messiah. Things are really going to change now. Duke Nukem Forever is almost ready. Vista was a great achievement and everybody loves it.
Au revoir, Tesla. Looks like the first really useful production electric cars will come from a real car company (like Renault/Nissan), not a bunch of Internet egoists.
You misspelled General Motors. Renault/Nissan has yet to make anything in car form beyond an I4 that wasn't under $20000(or even over it, either). Never mind that what does come from that pair is influenced heavily by (overzealous) European environmental policy - compacts or $80000+ exotics as the only options.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
You have your answer: Because it is freaking hard to do, not a guaranteed hit by a long shot, and you may lose all your money. Good luck to Tesla, I applaud their innovation and wish them the best, but it is brutal out there right now in the auto industry. Is is unfortunate that their first shot had to be an exotic sports car, but there is no way to build an all-electric family truckster with today's tech. They can build a sports car, so they did, in a conscious decision to try to figure out how to develop the tech into a family truckster vehicle, but the rough economy may have sealed their fate. If they fail, I hope that another innovator can buy their IP and carry on their work.
VC's don't have a mixed pool of assets from which to operate, nor do they operate on loans in any traditional sense. If you're at a Venture backed company right now, like Tesla, it may be useful to know how the Venture Capital system works:
First, the people we call "VC's" are really the "General Partners" (GP's). They're the people the companies meet with and the ones who ultimately decide how much to invest in which companies. They'll have a variety of "Associates" or "Venture Partners" around helping out, but the "General Partners" are the ones who decide where the money goes.
The money itself doesn't come from loans, per say, nor is the money sitting around in some kind of mixed asset class. VC's don't have money laying around in a bank somewhere, at least not a lot of it. The money comes from "Limited Partners" (LP's). The LP's could be very high net worth individuals, they could be pension funds, they could be insurance groups, they could even be "funds of funds" (funds created just to figure out which VC's to put money into). A typical VC will have a mix of all of the above in their LP pool.
So, if a VC has a "$250 million dollar fund" that doesn't mean that everyone wired over a total of $250MM when the fund was created and that the VC's draw he money down. What it means is that the VC's have $250MM to call on when they make an investment. So, VC-Guys decide "hey let's put $10MM in this startup", they make a "capital call". That's when they tell their LP's to put in their pro-rata share of the $10MM they decided to invest. The LP's move the money into a single account, that account makes the investment on behalf of the Venture Capital group. When they've spent the whole $250MM (or whatever) they have hopefully already raised another fund to start investing from.
It's that last part that should be scary to any of us dependent upon the Venture Capital market doing its thing. Guess what all those pension fund and insurance groups are doing right now? I'll tell you what they're NOT doing, they're NOT showering VC's with new commitments for new funds. Even worse, some of them are so upside down that some LP's can't make their capital calls. This mean that the VC calls and says "your pro-rata share of the $10MM is $$684k" and the LP says "...er, I don't got it. Sorry". So the VC's suddenly have less money to invest than they thought.
This results in a lot of VC's sitting on their hands and not investing in big rounds of later stage companies like Tesla (or maybe the company you're at now). This isn't a bad idea for them either, the latter stage financing that they counted on their companies getting (debt based instead of equity based) is largely gone too. So they build a company up to the stage they used to build it up to and there's no one there to take it to the next level. The right thing to do is to get a company to cash-flow positive ASAP, and then worry about growth later when there is outside money available to help you do that. TFA says "the company's goal is to become cash-flow positive in six to nine months", presumably (hopefully?) they have access to enough cash to pull that off.
My favorite quote doesn't fit into 120 characters. Now no one will like me.
Tesla is an interesting company and could probably do well, but right off the bat, as they are first starting out, they need to get the heck out of expensive California, maybe just maintain a sales office there. They could drop their costs as regards their buildings and what they need to pay for salaries, etc, just by moving to a *much* cheaper state. I think there's a sound reason the Japanese automakers, when they setup shop in the US, choose "flyover" country. There's little physical need to be in $illycon valley when we have the internet now, they can maintain all the contacts they need there electronically for the most part.
Sure, theoretically, the government could have issued bonds, drafted every able-bodied male into the Army, and compelled women to work in factories without WWII. Theoretically, they could have produced tanks and planes and dumped them into the ocean (or just as easily, vacuum cleaners or lightbulbs or copies of the Declaration of Independence.)
Theoretically.
But in the non-theoretical world, people are willing to buy bonds and produce like crazy and join the military only when there is an emergency.
Ever read 1984? A state of total war allows government to take steps that would be politically impossible in peacetime, including overwhelming deficit spending and (in this case, coincidental) economic stimulus.
If your product works, or at least appears to, and you have a sound plan for getting it to market, where it will be purchased, then SOMEONE will loan you the money.
That is not even remotely true. I've tried to raise money and fairly often work with bankers and VCs. Having a good product and a good plan are rarely enough by themselves. A very significant part of getting capital is what the lender thinks of you, the borrower, personally. Your character, how you present yourself and your track record of creating successful ventures usually matter more than the particulars of your product and plan.
Lending is a relationship business and anyone who has tried to raise money (like me) or lent money will tell you so. Lenders don't really invest in business plans - though business plans are important; what they really invest in is you, the borrower. If you are some random person who is not known the the lender and you don't have a track record of successful ventures, you are going to have a MUCH harder time raising money.
Furthermore in a market like right now formal lending institutions sometimes simply won't lend to anyone - regardless of their credit worthiness. The banks and investment houses are afraid of losing their capital because they can't predict who is safe to lend to. They don't know who they can reliably lend to because there is so little transparency in these exotic securities we've all become far to familiar with recently. Credit markets work on confidence. In 1999 it was extremely easy to raise money, in 2002 and right now not so much. There is always money being lent but that doesn't mean everyone with a decent plan can get adequate funding.
Everything you said in your post is correct except for one glaring oversight.
If you want to know which policy is more valuable, take a look at the Euro and the Pound versus the Dollar. This anti-Socialism nonsense is based in a fantasy world where facts are non-existent, and anecdotes trump reality.
You sir, haven't the slightest clue what you are talking about. Currency exchange rates are set by a whole variety of different criteria. It has nothing to do with socialism, success, or any other such personal trait you ascribe to nations. Talk about anecdotes! The relative value of a nation's currency has NO relation with which policy is more "valuable". (whatever that means)
Why don't you try comparing GNP's, GDP's, M1, M2, and M3 money rates, interest rates, trade balances, etc? I'll give you a hint....those are the things that matter when we are talking about exchange rates.
Comparing the whole of Germany isn't quite the same. West Germany has comparable, and even lower unemployment rates than the United States, but the leftovers of East German policies are still affecting the economy as a whole. Government subsidies are still flowing East, just as the Northeast and West coast pay for the infrastructure of the rest of our country.
Even with a former communist bloc attached to it, Germany has lower poverty levels, better education, and equal access to health care. Oh, and when polled, the Germans are far more satisfied with their health care than Americans are with their own, despite paying less than half of what we pay.
Elon has outsted the CEO and taken the reigns, blaming the global credit crunch?
Could it be that people really don't WANT to drive an electric high performance car?
I mean, don't people understand? Nobody REALLY wants an electric car (underdeveloped technology, unproven, etc) when they can go get something from Toyota or Honda that gets excellent mileage, has a track record, isn't going to "go belly up"
because of insert_buzzword_here, etc., etc., etc.
The venture cap people that gave them the money in the first place should be tarred, feathered and shot from the lowest balcony in the first place.
I'm all for innovation, let's at least innovate where people are fucking interested, rather than try to blame a vaporware problem because your company had a product that was too expensive for the masses, was underdeveloped, undermarketed and basically, wasn't worthy of being produced.
Free market economy at it's finest. Unfortunately, the idiot at the company just
doesn't understand supply and demand.
Too many y2k / post y2k startups believe they are supposed to MAKE MONEY off venture cap. WRONG. Your supposed to damn near go broke, have a working 'device', and someone else believes in you enough. This bullshitting your way into millions has got to stop at some point.
--Toll_Free
Maybe, like Nickolai Tesla, they were just destined to have a great beginning but go nuts toward mid life.
Nikola Tesla had a uniquely staggering natural insight. He was almost single handedly responsible for AC and polyphase power systems, and the AC motor; and made great contributions to ballistics, radio, radar, robotics, remote control, nuclear physics.
Tesla was a millionaire at 40 (when a million dollars was an astounding amount of wealth), and would have been the world's first billionaire had he not torn up his contract with Westinghouse because of his social conscience.
I hardly think Tesla Motors can be compared with Nikola Tesla, but at least they recognize his greatness, and the fact that he invented a key part of the technology that enabled their dream.
This just goes to prove that all those bailouts are simply socialism for the rich. The companies that are 'too big to fail' and have too many friends in Washington get their billions, which makes the credit contraction all that worse - since there is a limited pool of savings, as small or nonexistant as it is - and the regular Elons competing in the free market get the shaft.
So, if you are big, irresponsible, reckless and have a strong lobby, you're safe.
Corporatism at its finest.
Send your spendthrift head of state this
Don't sit down at the table unless you can afford the stakes.
Cheaper electric cars that *will* sell mass market will be coming from where all the other cheaper electronic devices come from, China. [ shameless plug for illustration purposes ;) ] As long as they are good enough for commuting purposes, range of around 50 to 60 miles, and they can keep up with normal traffic, they'll sell. And that will fund interest and more R&D and so on and they'll get better. And project better place is moving right along as well, with nissan/renault as the manufacturer. The electric car industry has passed critical mass when it comes to global interest, and is now in the early development and deployment stages. There's enough interest out there now and the tech is "good enough" to get going with it. You have to start someplace.
Parable of the Broken Window
The parable describes a shopkeeper whose window is broken by a little boy. Everyone sympathizes with the man whose window was broken, but pretty soon they start to suggest that the broken window makes work for the glazier, who will then buy bread, benefiting the baker, who will then buy shoes, benefiting the cobbler, etc. Finally, the onlookers conclude that the little boy was not guilty of vandalism; instead he was a public benefactor, creating economic benefits for everyone in town.
Bastiat's original parable of the broken window went like this:
The fallacy of the onlookers' argument is that they considered only the benefits of purchasing a new window, but they ignored the cost to the shopkeeper. As the shopkeeper was forced to spend his money on a new window, he could not spend it on something else. For example, the shopkeeper might have preferred to spend the money on bread and shoes for himself, but now cannot so enrich the baker and cobbler because he must fix his window.
Thus, the child did not bring any net benefit to the town. Instead, he made the town poorer by at least the value of one window, if not more. His actions benefited the glazier, but at the expense not only of the shopkeeper, but the baker and cobbler as well.
Woopty Doo Basil, what does it all mean?!
If you actually read the article, it's not the roadster that's supposedly dying - it's their mass-production luxury sedan. So, yeah. As always, RTFA.
When you sell an electric car, no matter how sporty or fast, for $109k USD, you enter a very niche market. Niche markets dry up first and fastest, especially during a "credit crunch".
Half of the cause for the depression was people buying stocks at inflated values that the market couldn't support with money they didn't have. Holding that as the true state of our pre-depression economy is ridiculous.
I love the idea of electric taxis! Most taxis are only used to ferry one or two passengers, so there is no need for the huge six cylinder sedans currently in use.
I have noticed more Prius taxis getting about, and can't help thinking this is something governments should be encouraging. A lot of taxis run basically 24hrs a day, so a full electric would be impractical until super-capacitors are a reality, but hybrids are a great fit for the purpose.
In case you missed it, the entire article is about them having problems with money and expenses. We wouldn't even be reading this now if that wasn't happening, and they are in silicon valley, so that blows that argument that just being there is some automagical guarantee of success and immediate profitability. And that is partially because of their location, it is just way expensive there. The whole state is grossly expensive, they are bankrupt at the governmental level and are having a lot of "problems" at the private level, and are having to go hat in hand for a federal government bailout now. And to say VC money is only available in sillyconvalley is ludicrous, projects go in and get funded all over the planet Earth, and to say there only exists "talent" in siliconvalley is again, ludicrous, in fact that is beyond ludicrous. And for that matter, they could say to their current employees "two choices, we stay as a company, but we are moving to a place with a lot lower cost of living and cost of operations, so you can keep your jobs if you agree to move and take a paycut that will still be quite snazzy for the new area, OR, *not*, here's todays newspaper with the help wanted ads, have fun with your million dollar mortgage you still have 29 more years to go on and this unemployment check".
And I honestly don't think Tesla, with what they have so developed far, would have any problem whatsoever hiring "talent", no matter where they are located.
Tesla had an amazing opportunity to capitalize on an emerging market yet, like most rich-prick driven, Valley companies, chose to ignore the masses at their own peril.
Tesla will no doubt become the Deloren of our time!
Bravo fucktards!
This company is one of the few that the US Govt. SHOULD be helping. The Tesla is an AWESOME car, done right. They just need to add super-capacitors to the design, but even without them, we need this car. If they can stay in business and ramp up production, economies of scale will bring the price down.
The dollar has been gaining strength recently, in direct response to the financial crisis. What does that do to your "theories"?
I would suggest you take a few finance courses and learn how things work. The world doesn't view economies or currency like a person's bank statement. It doesn't work like that. As you would imagine, it's more complex with many more variables.
You don't think PhD economists write dissertations for fun do you? No, they write them because it is a complex subject. Reducing it down to personal checking accounts will lead you to incorrect conclusions.
And yea, I do have some proof: see the GDP rates here.
While there is an exception here and there, you can plainly see the US tops almost all of the charts. Of course, it doesn't say anything about which is more "successful" because you haven't defined what success is. In worldview, global economic terms, success is measured by a) a country's current wealth and b) the level of output it achieves
Again, the US tops the charts in these areas too.
Sadly, there is probably a kernel of insight into the the part where a few hundered thousand are shoved in to the ocean and lost. It seems like every once in a while, something catastrophic happens (e.g. Black plague, 1918 influenza epidemic, WWII, etc) that kills off a whole bunch of people and causes a rebound effect which stimulates the economy.
I'm not sure this kind of extreme stuff is such a good idea, but it's talked about in the parable of the broken window. In a similar vein the stone soup style mechanism to stimulate the economy seems to also work. Ironically, these are both tricks that seem to take advantage of the fact that the economy is really not a zero sum game (despite what all the anti-fiat-currency folks would want you to believe).
If you can accept that these type of tricks can stimulate economic growth, it's not a small step to think that just about anything could be the accidental trigger for a macro-economic effect and we are just currently living though a "butterfly-effect" of some chain of events and we need a shock-stimulus to reset a normal rhythm. Certainly this kind of stuff seems very unscientific, but I'm guessing it'll be something like a shock which will probably get us out of our current mess and not some "smart" person figuring deep truth about the overly complicated global economic system. Hopefully whatever the shock is won't kill us, but will make us stronger ;^)
Wow, with all this talk of layoffs, Tesla is really starting to look like a REAL American car company. Detroit would be proud!
Flexible bare-metal recovery for Linux/UNIX
Slashdot seems to have more and more people spouting off on issues they not only know nothing about, but have no excuse for knowing nothing about. If you'd followed the news at all (and reading rant-blogs does not count) you'd know that thousands of companies are hurting because of the credit crunch, with a lot of projects being canceled and postponed. Even government entities (usually considered no-risk debtors) are finding it hard to sell the bonds they need to do things like build sewers. Tesla is just one data point in a huge trend.
And the economic crisis effects Tesla in another way: their products will be expensive. The Roadster will go for $100K, the Model S for $60K. These are luxury items, and creditors must be painfully aware that the pool of people who can afford to spend that kind of money is dwindling by the moment.
OMG, I just got where InnoTech came from!
Here is my geek card. You may tear it up at your leisure.
The Tesla is a great idea, but they tried too hard to make it really fast. The original idea was to have an air-cooled electric motor and a one-speed transmission. But they couldn't quite get the top speed they wanted, which was somewhere above 125. So they went to a two-speed transmission, and the first transmissions wore out rapidly. Then they went back to a one-speed transmission, and tried water-cooling the motor so they could pour more current into it. This ran up their costs, delayed shipping of the product, and made the thing more complex. If they'd settle for a top speed of 110 MPH, the thing would be much easier. It would still have the acceleration.
More fundamentally, "bling" is dead. It died about two weeks ago. The luxury industry is terrified right now. It's very clear that we're in for a long, worldwide recession. Expensive status symbols are so over.
I see Tesla cars on the road regularly. But that's because I live near the Silicon Valley dealership. I think they demo the thing by driving past my house and out to Canada Road near Crystal Springs Reservoir, which has a nice scenic route with little traffic where they can speed. I just hope they don't wipe out a bicyclist out there.
They do "woosh" by without engine noise, as advertised.
So, where did you get your data for that conclusion? Old essays by William F. Buckley and George Bush, Sr.?
Speaking as somebody who *has* tried to line up funding and as a former workflow and operations consultant to startups, you're talking out your ass, especially in the current market. I've seen dozens of companies awash with money who had no working product nor credible plan to make one, an executive team who couldn't even spell the names of any of the engineering societies, and very expensive offices filled with a mix of suckers who had thought they were getting into something credible, short-term players like me making a quick buck and getting back out, and dozens of pretty, smiley ex-frat boys and sorority sisters who were happily burning through OPM, Other People's Money, as fast as the development people could get it, which was sometimes pretty damn fast.
I've also watched one cash-starved company after another struggle year in and year out despite excellent products, honest, talented executive teams, and customers who were eager to buy more if the capital could just be found to let the production ramp up.
Less than a month ago I watched a promising bike company self-destruct. I'm currently watching the place where I rent my space, an 26,000 square foot tech center run by a hard working, insightful team with plenty of tenants who want to stay, go down in flames due largely to lack of cash. I watched a multinational run by brilliant people doing amazing work AND that was meeting its earning targets and other milestones get left to fall into Chapter 7 bankruptcy because the VCs who had promised third round funding backed out when, to be honest, the fads shifted and they lost interest in the company's kind of business.
I don't know what libertarian/corporatist fantasy you're living in but out here among those of us who live and breathe real entrepreneurship, your Horatio Alger chuckleheadedness isn't just contemptible, it hurts to even read.
It's all about the information. And what we do with it.
I discounted any significant sales of Tesla less than a year ago and was modded down.
So much for Slashdot business sense.
Cordially,
Kilgore Trout
we all know that the oil industry and the US auto industry are in bed with each other. We've also seen many articles on how the US auto industries future is in Silicon Valley and Tesla has been the poster child of all this.
So it is obvious that the oil industry, with all its billions and billions in profits have used that to tighten the credit markets so that start-ups like Tesla can't continue growing. And they are even lowering fuel prices too so that all the alternate energy businesses also lose backing and support.
Those bastards. ;-)
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
Can we all agree now that maybe a little wealth distribution isn't necessarily a bad thing 100% of the time?
Wealth distribution?! Aren't you forgetting about poor Joe the Plumber?
Their new pink slip is a damned blog post.
Pissed my cousin off to find out he had lost his job TWO DAYS PRIOR and had to log online to find out 90+% of the employees were laid off.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
If I had mod points I would give some to you. Thanks for far and away the most informative and possibly most insightful post in the whole thread.
All of that having been said, I'm curious, are you familiar with the Twike and what do you think of it? Any thoughts on the Aptera or the various Zap vehicles?
It's all about the information. And what we do with it.
You are correct that an exchange rate, in and of itself, doesn't mean anything. It's the trend that matters.
The GP I originally responded to was, incorrectly, concluding that exchange rates "show" who has the better system. He went on to infer that socialism works better and used the US Dollar as evidence to back up that claim.
My only point in this thread is to correct that oversight. Exchange rates do not prove anything other than the fact that currency value is relative to a whole set of criteria.
You don't think that if you were building 200 million cars you could get the price down to nothing? Have you ever looked at the price of a hundred thousand of anything? How about a million?
The reason why big-box companies make hundreds of millions of dollars a year is because when you're manufacturing a million of something, the price is anywhere between a half and a third of what it would cost if you were buying one. There are caveats, but the rule generally remains solid.
Lastly, there is absolutely no reason to spend $25 billion to build even 500,000 luxury cars. a) You can't replace that many cars all at once, we'd simply have no way to get rid of the old ones that quickly. b) The market couldn't absorb that many luxury cars; we need an electric minivan and/or an electric SUV more than we need an electric sports car or even an electric townscar like the Civic. Electric truck would probably be a hit too, if you could sell them to the people who actually use trucks like they are intended and not as town cars.
Lastly, I don't think the former post was actually saying that we should give the money to some random company and pray they'll turn around and do something good with it. Especially not companies who've already taken tons of our money and have not done anything good with it. We should destroy those companies who destroyed our economy, and we should put the people responsible for doing so behind bars, as an example of what happens when you fuck with people's livelihoods. They may not have killed anyone, but they're perfectly guilty for throwing hundreds of thousands of people out on the streets with nothing but the clothes on their back.
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Which would you rather own, 5% of Hyundai Motors, or 50% of Rolls Royce. I've confronted this model in software startups too. Early stage, people love to do "4 legged sales for six figures". I think maybe it's easier to sell to VCs. I've never been with a company that had a good plan to move downscale and increase volume, where MOST OF THE MONEY IS.
The smarter money is on Aptera. It's got roughly a $30,000 price tag. That's still a bit more than a low-end economy car; but the Apteras are sleek and different looking. At least a few people will want to have their "space ship" looking car in the driveway, and when the neighbors find out it gets 150mpg, the looks won't matter. Of course, a lot of this depends on how gas prices move. I hate to say this, but if we have just one year of sub $2 gas, people will forget about mileage until the next crisis.
I was tempted to put down my $500 and reserve an Aptera; but given the track record of these companies I decided not to do that.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
I am sure some are ... "re-coiling", and some are saying, "I'm SHOCKED! SHOCKED I tell ya..." by Tesla's sudden dissipation/discharge.
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
try over two million jobs when you add in all the work involved with really building and selling and maintaining cars. It's a lot more than just the assembly line workers.
Batteries are, and will remain for a long time, the weak link for any "mass market" EV that wants more than 50-mile range.
That dude looks like Heidi Flise.
Change it, this sucks.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Happen.
At LEAST give this guy a billion dollars. This is the 21st century private NASA. Guts and balls.
Howd my karma get to be excellent. Have to tarnish my rep somehow.