Elon Musk Emails Employees About 'Extensive and Damaging Sabotage' By Employee (cnbc.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNBC: Tesla CEO Elon Musk sent an email to all employees on Monday morning about a factory fire, and seemed to reference possible sabotage. Now, CNBC has learned that Musk also sent an e-mail to all employees at Tesla late on Sunday night alleging that he has discovered a saboteur in the company's ranks. Musk said this person had conducted "quite extensive and damaging sabotage" to the company's operations, including by changing code to an internal product and exporting data to outsiders. In the email, Musk said "the investigation will continue in depth this week" to "figure out if [the saboteur] was acting alone or with others at Tesla and if he was working with any outside organizations [that want Tesla to disappear]." You can read the full email via CNBC's report.

Comments

Management by conspiracy theory

[AlanObject]

Since he apparently has something of a confession by someone I have to assume that something real happened.

But speculating that a big automotive competitor is possibly involved sounds nutty even if true. He should have quit when he was ahead and left that out.

Even if Tesla hits all their numbers and all their sales are directly subtracted from any one of the established competitors the net result is really tiny. I haven't done the calculation but less than %1 tiny I am sure.

So the motive just ain't there. The ROI is just not there to justify the risks involved.

Re:Management by conspiracy theory

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure it is. Just not short term. Companies do actually think 5 and 10 years into the future. Tesla is extremely disruptive. Get rid of them, and electric cars can be stalled for another 10 years. That is more than worth sabotage. As it is, most companies are having to move into electric cars, and all of them are being dragged kicking and screaming.

Re:Management by conspiracy theory

[darkain]

Ford Market Cap: 46.93B
Tesla Market Cap: 62.96B

Does THAT look like motivation to you?

Re:Management by conspiracy theory

[Anonymous Coward]

Since he apparently has something of a confession by someone I have to assume that something real happened.

But speculating that a big automotive competitor is possibly involved sounds nutty even if true. He should have quit when he was ahead and left that out.

Even if Tesla hits all their numbers and all their sales are directly subtracted from any one of the established competitors the net result is really tiny. I haven't done the calculation but less than %1 tiny I am sure.

So the motive just ain't there. The ROI is just not there to justify the risks involved.

If Tesla hits its production quotas in 2019, they should sell about 500,000-750,000 cars. The entire US car market is about 17 million cars. So that's about 3-5% of the US car market. But 30% of buyers have said that they are looking at an EV for their next car. And right now it costs the traditional automakers about $47,000 to make an EV but it only costs Tesla about $28,000 (assuming they are making 10,000 model 3's a week). If the model 3 sales queue just keeps filling up during 2019 the ICE auto makers are in a very tough situation.

That's going to be a hard ramp up for the auto makers. They face at least 5 years before they can make EVs at the same scale for the same price point as Tesla. That gives Tesla 5 years to grow their production and establish their dominance in the EV space. That would be disastrous for pretty much all the companies that sell cars in the US (GM, Ford, Toyota, Daimler, BMW, etc). While some of the companies are in a better position than others if this happens, none of them are in a good place at that point. Their stock prices will take a beating which will raise their price of capital. Most of their factories will have to be overhauled. New competencies will have to be learned. In short, many of them won't make it. Now that's a lot of ifs, but really all it depends on Tesla being able to make cars (not that hard) and people being willing to buy them on-line (which probably has already been proved). What would you do in that situation? Oh, and don't forget the car dealerships, the Oil companies and the auto unions. Elon/Tesla has a long list of enemies. Doesn't mean he isn't also paranoid or that there is a real conspiracy here.

Re:Management by conspiracy theory

[kamapuaa]

Tesla makes a big thing about 5,000 model 3s/week, and it sounds like in the near term they're hoping to ramp up to 7000-8000/week. There's also the S and X selling 2,000/week.

That's a big chuck of the car market. Googling, the Toyota Corolla is tops at 18,000/week. It's a bigger deal because (I imagine) Tesla 3 success will disproportionately effect higher-margin luxury brands like Audi, BMW, etc.

Not saying Musk doesn't sound crazy. Just that dismissing Tesla as an upstart bit player is flat-out wrong.

Re: Management by conspiracy theory

[Bing Tsher E]

You're just dabbling in the same High-finance bullshit as the shorters.

Ford marketplace- big
Tesla marketplace- tiny

Ford goes out of business- hundreds of thousands unemployed.
Tesla goes out of business- Panasonic puts their equipment in shipping containers and hauls it to China.

Re:Betting opportunity

[gl4ss]

the shorters made the mistake of assuming that stock price would be tied to real world performance the company the stock is for.

I don't think they would be in position to do that, if they wanted they could pick any other company as well.

I have to wonder though, on what basis are people buying Tesla stock right now? it's highly valued for what it represents already and the company is likely to need more cash infusion to survive. I am aware of however that the stock can go up even in such a case, because people "like" it or like the guy running the company.

like, look as this news _should_ run the stock down and what is actually going to happen is that it's going to go up, because bizarro(and the people buying it are just buying it as if it were making apple like profits any day now).

Re:Not unlikely.

[Tuidjy]

Sabotage at Tesla? Given that Elon Musk is mentioning a confession, I buy it completely.

Sabotage coordinated by a competitor or a company that feels threatened? Possible, but very hard to prove if engineered by a half-competent person.

Publicly announcing it without hard proof? Probably counter-productive.

Sending an e-mail to the employees before the internal investigation is completed, and the stock holder notified? Puzzling to say the least.

Elon is a huckster

[Anonymous Coward]

He's very intelligently scammed taxpayers and investors out of billions. But that's not a compliment.

Re:Not unlikely.

[whoever57]

At least in the USA, every other manufacturer of EVs has not realized what is Tesla's massive advantage and what it takes for practical long distance EVs.

The Supercharger network.

There is no other charging solution in the USA that is close to the Supercharger network. You can buy a Chevy Bolt today, but driving across country in it: that's going to be slow and difficult.

Re: Not unlikely.

[whoever57]

Most people drive their car to and from work. A small fraction of automotive traffic would require the Supercharger network.

That's true. But most people people want to be able to do those long drives occasionally. $35k is a lot of money for a car that is only a commuter car. A Leaf would be cheaper and just as effective.

Re:Full Email From Elon

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, because having a direct confession is 'no substance'
Did you even read the past that you are responding to?

If you ask me, troll quality has fallen since breitbart started recruiting from 4chan instead of using russians

Where is the police report?

[hsthompson69]

Sounds like a crime was committed.

Sounds like maybe someone should be prosecuted.

Was a police report filed? Has someone been jailed?

I'm calling shenanigans until we git a pic of someone in cuffs.

Re:A common refrain from Musk

[Rei]

it's just damage control explanation to why they weren't even making enough of them before the fire..

FYI, production scaleup has been going really well these past several months, hitting 2k/wk sustained early in the quarter, 3,5k sustained in the middle of the quarter, and well en route to 5k/wk by the end of the quarter.

somehow VAG isn't having these problems? also their megafactories have been more advanced than teslas for like 18 years.

I must have missed where VAG built a factory capable of producing 5k EVs per week in 15 months from the start of tooling, on a brand new line with a newly hired workforce. Literally, the first 467 Kuka robots arrived, were placed, and workers were hired, in April-June 2017.

Teslas "problems" are that they set absurdly aggressive schedules for themselves.

Re:A common refrain from Musk

[pots]

Arson? Arson is a common refrain from Musk? The company has had some problems, to be sure, but this is not a standard excuse.

Re:Full Email From Elon

[PerlPunk]

It's right to call out attention to sabotage. It's wrong to cast abstract aspersions against possible competitors. Keep to the facts, Elon, don't promote conspiracy theories.

Don't forget the trends

[Laxator2]

Ford has a big market share now, but what of the trend for the future? Let's add some more to the list:

- Electric car market share increasing, prices decreasing, range and charging time improving, Ford works in a saturated market.

- Pressure to reduce the use of fossil fuels. Ford cannot just discard their current production lines and go all electric due to many factors, not least of which being internal politics.

- Electric cars and large batteries work well with wind and solar electricity generation and renewable energy has a steep increasing trend.

I can add more, but anyone can get the idea that while Ford dominates now all trends chip away at that domination and Tesla is perfectly positioned to benefit from those trends.

Remember the stages: "First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you ..." Tesla has passed now the first two stages, so the fight is shaping up.

At the police station? Re:Where is the police repo

[Anonymous Coward]

You do realize where we are in the timeline for this event....
I expect your curiosity will be satisfied soon... or maybe you'll be moving the goalposts before then?

Re:A common refrain from Musk

[DrXym]

It should still have been up to 20000 by this point. Tesla's problem was they decided to build a brand new car in a brand new plant in a stupidly ambitious timeframe. It was very clear beforehand that they would hit issues and that some issues like QC would be swept under the carpet to keep the volumes up.

I guess it's good for them that they are overcoming these problems but I don't know why anyone would want to be an early adopter until there were resolved.

Re:A common refrain from Musk

[thegarbz]

but I don't know why anyone would want to be an early adopter until there were resolved

Maybe it's because they are dealing with a company that stands behind their products, repairs and upgrades them, and resolves issues if they are discovered, and are not dealing with a car manufacturer.

Re: A common refrain from Musk

[reanjr]

Which is why I just bought some TSLA. The problems they have are all problems of inexperience, which will slowly disappear. Musk keeps his promises, as long as those promises don't have a date attached. The basic business model (essentially being the Apple of automobiles) is very promising.

No bonus points for doing it from scratch

[sjbe]

I'd love to see their QC stats as well. New line, new workers, new robots, new procedures, new process. I'm pretty sure they're not hitting Six Sigma

You can get general stats for free with just a short search on the internet. You can pay for detailed ones. It's not hard to get that information. NOBODY is hitting six sigma quality in auto assembly. Even the best suppliers don't reach that level of quality except in rare cases. Too many products with too many stacking tolerances for that to be possible. But the big auto makers are all really quite good, even the worse ones. Companies like Toyota and Honda have a well deserved legendary reputation for their quality systems. I've been in their plants myself and can confirm this first hand. They are REALLY good at quality.

But your mistake is thinking that they do it all from scratch. That's the thing is that once you have a part of a production system that works you don't redesign it all from scratch. The big automakers have proven technology and production systems which they just have to reconfigure and reorganize. They make incremental improvements which accumulate over time. Tesla just hasn't had the benefit of years and decades of iteration. In time they'll get there (hopefully) but you can't accelerate the process beyond a certain point. Tesla doesn't get any bonus points for trying to do it all from scratch. That just means they have a lot of places where things can (and will) go wrong.

Disclosure: I'm an industrial engineer (and an accountant) and my day job is running a company that makes auto parts. I literally build assembly lines for a living so I'm actually talking about something I know pretty well here.

Re:Not unlikely.

[drinkypoo]

They lie constantly. They say things that are true, then conclude things that aren't true from those things, and say them too.