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CNN Skeptical of Elon Musk's 'Big Promises' (cnn.com)
An anonymous reader writes:
Tesla's electric semi-truck will be launched three weeks later than planned, CNN reports. It's been bumped to November 16th because Tesla says it's "diverting resources" to address problems with its Model 3 sedan production -- they've produced just 17.3% of the cars they'd planned -- and to make more batteries to send to areas hit by hurricanes. CNN notes Tesla's Model X "didn't start shipping until two years after it was supposed to roll out," and production of its Model S sedan "was also much slower than originally promised." Michelle Krebs, an analyst with Autotrader.com, complains Tesla "may well have far too much on its plate. It should focus and deliver on some key promises."
But Elon Musk "has a history of some pretty pie-in-the-sky promises," complained CNN business anchor Maggie Lake, citing Musk's claim that he had verbal approval for an underground hyperloop connecting New York City to Washington D.C. ("This is news to City Hall," said New York's press secretary at the time, and no actual approval has ever been produced.) Lake also noted Musk's promise to fix South Australia's blackout problems by building the world's largest lithium-ion battery within 100 days back in March. Last Friday Tesla signed a contract to begin the work, so the 100-day countdown has begun.
CNN's report ran under the headline "Elon Musk: Big Dreamer or Monorail Salesman?" -- referencing a satirical 1993 episode of The Simpson's. "Here's a spoiler alert," the segment concludes. "If you haven't seen that episode...the monorail plan doesn't work out too well. Let's put it that way."
But Elon Musk "has a history of some pretty pie-in-the-sky promises," complained CNN business anchor Maggie Lake, citing Musk's claim that he had verbal approval for an underground hyperloop connecting New York City to Washington D.C. ("This is news to City Hall," said New York's press secretary at the time, and no actual approval has ever been produced.) Lake also noted Musk's promise to fix South Australia's blackout problems by building the world's largest lithium-ion battery within 100 days back in March. Last Friday Tesla signed a contract to begin the work, so the 100-day countdown has begun.
CNN's report ran under the headline "Elon Musk: Big Dreamer or Monorail Salesman?" -- referencing a satirical 1993 episode of The Simpson's. "Here's a spoiler alert," the segment concludes. "If you haven't seen that episode...the monorail plan doesn't work out too well. Let's put it that way."
Other wise they might have known - https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2017/sep/30/elon-musks-big-battery-for-south-australia-already-half-complete
Yes. They are husband and wife.
How about a moderation of -1 pedantic.
This is a tricky one. Do I believe the huckster with the reality distortion field that would put Steve Jobs to shame or the "news" channel where the reporters are all still pissed that Donald Trump ruined their awesome "SHE DID IT!" party back in November?
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Musk cheerleaders, Musk naysayers, and the truth.
The way I see it, Musk is a bit of a 'showman' and in that role has a tenuous connection to the truth... but he did deliver a tail-landing rocket and he did deliver electric cars when the naysayers were calling him a liar for even saying it was possible.
So I tend to look at what Musk promises, not when.
If there's one thing that has become very clear it is that Musk is not good at estimating how long something will take. At the same time, when he says it will happen, it does generally happen. The really good example of this is SpaceX. The Falcon 9 took far longer to get off the ground and be really reliable than he predicted, but once it did, it became an absolute monster in the industry. More than a third of all rocket launches worldwide this year are SpaceX launches http://www.popularmechanics.com/space/rockets/a27290/one-chart-spacex-dominate-rocket-launches/ and the projections suggest that will be more than half next year, even without the Falcon Heavy (which is another example of this since it has taken much longer but will eventually go). The real issue with Tesla is that if things go slowly enough then the other car companies will essentially out-compete him; but by his own description he's essentially ok with that, since the primary point of Tesla was help deal with global warming.
To be relevant to this maybe you could compare Musks claims with CNNs news and provide some proof they are less trustworthy in general?
If people followed and but their cash on CNN and its claims prior to the election, they'd have lost big time.
Anyway, I digress....but these are some of the outrageous things they've said in the recent past. Remember, they claim to be, "The most trusted name in News."
1: They on June 6th reported that Comey was going to contradict President Trumpâ(TM)s claim that he wasnâ(TM)t under FBI investigation in his Senate testimony, a report which obviously was going to make Trump look like a liar. They had to retract these claims.
2: CNN.com Headline: From early May, âoeRape and domestic violence could be pre-existing conditions.â CNN argued that the American Health Care Act (AHCA) could make sexual assault a pre-existing condition, preventing women who survive rape from getting health care.
3: Claim reported as something worth listening to, while referring to WikiLeaks: "Remember, itâ(TM)s illegal to possess these stolen documents. Itâ(TM)s different for the media. So everything you learn about this, youâ(TM)re learning from us,â Cuomo said on television.
Need more? I have 11 crazy ones for you...
Boo hoo, infrastructure for electric cars is getting funded with help from the public. In the end we will all benefit from it with cleaner transportation infrastructure.
So Musk promised more Model 3's than he ended up delivering, and bigger SpaceX rockets and spacecraft than he ended up delivering, but I still don't see the competition quite catching up. The rockets that he did deliver still dominate the launch market and manage to land their first stages ass-first, intact. So it's not like Elon is all fake, instead it's all about managing expectations. The guy promises you a city on Mars next year, and delivers only a village on the Moon five years late, while all the others give you a hut in Alaska.
She didn't get a free pass because all of her snakeoil was bullshit. Elon Musk has cut real metal and made real products delivered to real customers. I call bullshit on his pie in the sky, but I give him props for things he's actually done. Elizabeth Holmes never had anything to her name besides the hype and a black turtleneck sweater.
Well it's hard for CNN these days. They spend 99% of their time worrying about Trump and research on real news takes time.
The fact that Slashdot is quoting those ass hats is more worrisome than whether Musk can meet a deadline.
Also, saying he only delivered 17% of the cars they had planned is distorting the truth a bit. They planned to deliver 100 in August and 1500 in September, ramping up to around 5000 a week by the end of the year. So if they only delivered just over 200 cars in September, that's less than a month's delay which is peanuts compared to other Tesla delays in the past.
Beat me to it. Looks like it's going to be done well ahead of schedule. But hey, facts havenever stopped anyone before when trying to find reasons to bash Musk.
Facts like the fact that Musk never said he had approval from New York City - that he actually said, "verbal govt approval". Which he did - the government he was speaking of was the federal government (DOT, asked about it: "We have had promising conversations to date, are committed to transformative infrastructure projects, and believe our greatest solutions have often come from the ingenuity and drive of the private sector,""). But hey, let's leave that part out and pretend that Musk was just making things up.
Facts like, for example, that Model 3's production schedule had been moved forward to July (was originally supposed to start at the end of this year), with Musk stating at the time that the reason for the July deadline was because he knew some suppliers would inevitably fail to meet their deadline and he had to have a way to hold their feet to the fire with real penalties for failing to deliver. Of course, they actually did make the July deadline.
The Wall Street Journal will gripe about the fact that there are missing features in the (over-the-air-upgraded) software stack and that there's some manual labour / part changes in manufacture because automated assembly line isn't yet complete. Really, WSJ? Gee we all thought that the line was fully ready to produce tens of thousands of vehicles per month, but the schedule was only to produce a couple hundred for giggles. And of course, every Tesla short will whine about how there are customers acting as "beta", ignoring the fact that none of the above comes as any surprise to anyone with a deposit, particularly the earliest ones, and that they're thrilled to have the chance to get their vehicles early. I know one who, after having the car for just two weeks, already put down a deposit on a second one.
But hey, I guess someone has to try to recoup some of their losses in their ill-advised short position in TSLA.
"If there was an antonym to 'Elon Musk', it would be 'Richard Branson'."
15 may 2016:
I'll repeat: Tesla accelerated their own schedule. Their original schedule was "something, at some point, in 2017". They changed it to an extremely aggressive S curve starting in July. As for the latter part:
"If there was an antonym to 'Elon Musk', it would be 'Richard Branson'."
I've always wondered how many people would be driving electric cars if it wasn't for the state/Fed subsidies (rebates)
Our tax policy includes rebates and incentives to encourage people to do things. For example, giving to charity.
Policy makers were hoping people would do things like switch to driving electric cars. They set up the tax rebates accordingly.
Tesla customers getting a tax rebate on Tesla electric cars? That's the system working as intended. The government wanted to encourage the switch to electric cars, and it's working.
Note that the incentives are really just accelerating a process that would have happened on its own. If BEVs were significantly less expensive than ICE vehicles, people would choose to buy them even without tax incentives. The tax incentives are intended to jump-start this, and help BEVs get over the initial hump.
Selling lots of cars helps enable economies of scale; economies of scale help cars cost less; cars costing less helps sell more cars. It's hard to get the cycle going when your initial low-quantity sales are expensive cars.
Also note that when government picks winners and losers, government tends to do a stupid job. Consider the Obama administration loans to Solyndra... a total debacle. But if government is going to interfere with the free market, IMHO the BEV tax credit is one of the best things they could do. Customers are still spending their own money, so they won't be buying lousy cars even with the BEV tax credit; it should help good products get established with little risk of Solyndra-style debacles. And in the specific case of Tesla I think it's clear that it worked out well.
or other benefits like Leaf's free charging.
Nissan provided that to encourage customers to buy their brand of BEV. Nothing wrong with that.
I see people driving $100k Teslas, and they're not doing it to be green. It's the new status symbol of wealth (used to be BMW/Benz).
It's true that Tesla has grabbed most of the "large luxury car" sales in markets where they are competing. However I don't think that it is just, or mostly, that rich people want to show off their wealth. Tesla makes cars that are safe, reliable, and fun to drive; and for rich people the cost doesn't seem too high, so why not buy one?
Plus I've read a lot of discussion of Teslas online, and I've repeatedly seen comments like "Well, I think the Tesla interiors are cheap. My BMWs and Mercedes are much nicer, let alone my Bentley. I sold the Tesla and bought a Jaguar." (I just made that up but it's similar to real things I have read.) It sure doesn't seem to me like really rich people think a Tesla is a mark of status.
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
I've always wondered how many people would be driving electric cars if it wasn't for the state/Fed subsidies (rebates) or other benefits like Leaf's free charging.
I've always wondered how many people would be driving ICE cars if they had to pay to remove the CO2 that they are pumping into the atmosphere.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
Right. So let me get this straight: we're supposed to be mad at Muskwhile they're moving the equipment in and installing it well within 100 days from the signing of the contract, it doesn't count, because we're supposed to judge Tesla not by the terms given (100 days from the signing of the contract), but instead a term that was never offered (100 days from the issuance of this tweet). Correct? And that there's something abnormal and unfair about a multi-million dollar power contract not being negotiated overnight?
"If there was an antonym to 'Elon Musk', it would be 'Richard Branson'."