Slashdot Mirror
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.
"Not our fault!" There must be some bad news coming out later this week, and he wants to get ahead of it with some sort of excuse to blame...
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
I remember the flat-out lies newspaper testreports told about the range of Tesla cars and that were uncovered by the logs the car had recorded about how it actually had been driven. To me there is no doubt that behind the scenes specialised agencies and perhaps even darker machinations are at work to throw monkey wrenches into Teslas attempt to build an market feasilbe electric car.
Systematic sabotage at Tesla? Really way more likely than most people would think, IMHO.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
About 25% of the stock is shorted (varies day-to-day, but it's a single-digit fraction of the total).
When you short a stock on margin and the price goes up, you have to add money to your margin account to cover the potential loss.
Tesla stock is up almost 100 points over the last month, roughly 35% ($370 up from $275).
Tesla short sellers are taking a bath right now, to the tune of $2 billion in the last month.
A fair number of those short sellers would be interested in throwing a pile of cash (say $100,000) at a disgruntled employee to damage the production line.
Anyone care to bet against that prediction?
(The next step will probably be to get the FBI involved.)
From: Elon Musk
To: Everybody
Subject: Some concerning news
June 17, 2018 11:57 p.m.
I was dismayed to learn this weekend about a Tesla employee who had conducted quite extensive and damaging sabotage to our operations. This included making direct code changes to the Tesla Manufacturing Operating System under false usernames and exporting large amounts of highly sensitive Tesla data to unknown third parties.
The full extent of his actions are not yet clear, but what he has admitted to so far is pretty bad. His stated motivation is that he wanted a promotion that he did not receive. In light of these actions, not promoting him was definitely the right move.
However, there may be considerably more to this situation than meets the eye, so the investigation will continue in depth this week. We need to figure out if he was acting alone or with others at Tesla and if he was working with any outside organizations.
As you know, there are a long list of organizations that want Tesla to die. These include Wall Street short-sellers, who have already lost billions of dollars and stand to lose a lot more. Then there are the oil & gas companies, the wealthiest industry in the world — they don't love the idea of Tesla advancing the progress of solar power & electric cars. Don't want to blow your mind, but rumor has it that those companies are sometimes not super nice. Then there are the multitude of big gas/diesel car company competitors. If they're willing to cheat so much about emissions, maybe they're willing to cheat in other ways?
Most of the time, when there is theft of goods, leaking of confidential information, dereliction of duty or outright sabotage, the reason really is something simple like wanting to get back at someone within the company or at the company as a whole. Occasionally, it is much more serious.
Please be extremely vigilant, particularly over the next few weeks as we ramp up the production rate to 5k/week. This is when outside forces have the strongest motivation to stop us.
If you know of, see or suspect anything suspicious, please send a note to [email address removed for privacy] with as much info as possible. This can be done in your name, which will be kept confidential, or completely anonymously.
Looking forward to having a great week with you as we charge up the super exciting ramp to 5000 Model 3 cars per week!
Will follow this up with emails every few days describing the progress and challenges of the Model 3 ramp.
Thanks for working so hard to make Tesla successful,
Elon
(copied from https://www.cnbc.com/2018/06/18/elon-musk-email-employee-conducted-extensive-and-damaging-sabotage.html)
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.
Ford Market Cap: 46.93B
Tesla Market Cap: 62.96B
Does THAT look like motivation to you?
Tucker 48
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tucker_48
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.
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.
Slashdot: providing anti-social weirdos a soapbox, since 1997.
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.
But speculating that a big automotive competitor is possibly involved sounds nutty even if true.
No way. When the most shorted company in the world finds saboteurs it's nutty not to speculate.
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.
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.
The EV market is just as large as ICE car market. The writing is on the wall and ICE is on the way out. It could be worth billions or even trillions to delay Tesla months or years by any number of parties. When you rock a multitrillion dollar boat, you better believe that there is plenty of incentive for sabotage.
However, the shortsighted shortsellers seem to be especially spurned by Tesla, so I would suspect one of them trying to make a big payday for themselves.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
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.
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?
This is a perfectly normal looking company email from Musk. One can argue that he writes them knowing that they'll leak, but there's nothing about the style in this one that's different from any of the numerous others over the years. They're generally a mix of "here's the problems/issues we currently need to address ASAP" and a pep talk.
I was watching this thing on TV about some guy named Hitler. Someone should stop him!
The EV market is just as large as ICE car market. The writing is on the wall and ICE is on the way out.
Right now? Not at all. This may be applicable a few more years in the future, but I still see way way way more ICE vehicles and tons of people that react to electric like: "I DON'T WANT A GOLF CART. THAT'S A GLORIFIED GOLF CART." Etc.
Should make good progress in a few more years though.
It doesn't. Besides, the biggest EV maker is Nissan and they sell their leaf for $30k. These Tesla guys are delusional.
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.
Hate to break it to you but the big auto makers build assembly lines with FAR larger production rates in shorter time periods than that routinely. It's normal for companies like Toyota to go from start of DESIGN to production in 20-30 months. Not start of tooling, start of design. They do tooling in far less than 15 months. And the process of assembling an EV isn't wildly different from a car with an internal combustion engine. A chassis is still a chassis. A suspension is still a suspension. I've seen them tool up an entire factory in under 10 months. (I work in the industry)
What makes Tesla struggle is that they don't have the institutional knowledge of a company like VW or Toyota and they are still building their production system procedures. They're having to learn it as they go and develop their production system from scratch which is genuinely hard to do. What Tesla has done is very impressive but let's not pretend they have mastered assembly better than companies that have been doing it for decades. Tesla is bringing a lot of awesome innovation to the party on the design and product engineering but to date they are still behind the curve when it comes to manufacturing prowess. If they survive I think they'll be fine in the long run but they have a bumpy road ahead of them for a little while. People tend to think manufacturing assembly is easy and it's actually one of the hardest things to do well you can imagine. I think Musk gets it and his job is just to keep the cash flowing until Tesla can get their production system scaled up and stable.
Tesla can't meet demand at the moment, where as Ford is cutting models due to lack of it.
Wow is that a false equivalency if I've ever heard one. Tesla sells a few tens of thousands of cars each year. Ford sells millions. These are not equivalent situations. It's easy to exceed production capacity when you barely have any capacity and you only sell to a niche segment. Ford makes and sells nearly as many F150s every month (50-80K) as all of Tesla's models combined per year. That's with just one vehicle model.
It's hard to say how big Tesla's market share will end up being once they can get production up to speed and fulfil all the pre-orders.
In the short run it isn't hard at all. Their market share will be slightly bigger than it currently is which is to say tiny. In the long run (talking 10+ years) it's hard to predict because it's not even clear yet if Tesla will survive. If they do their future looks bright but they aren't going to overtake GM anytime soon if that is what you are implying. But I could see them being a steadily growing and influential automaker over the next decade if they can survive the next 2 years.
But it seems certain that Tesla will become a major player in the market now.
"Certain"? No. The odds are good they will become a significant automaker by marketshare IF they can survive the next 24 months and come to profitability. That is anything but certain right now. There is reason for optimism but to pretend they are out of danger is to ignore reality. Tesla needs to become profitable soon or their financing is going to dry up. If that happens they are screwed.
Actually the 17 million figure includes commercial vechicles, the number for passenger vechicles seems to be around 6-6.5 million and a competitor approaching 5-10% from being basically at 0% a few years back should scare any company in any market.
See https://countryeconomy.com/bus...
Musk isn't stupid and knows well that any company-wide email like this is going to leak so you can't exactly blame him for using the opportunity to hype the idea that Tesla is finally going to reach the goal of making 5k Model 3's per week. Particularly not when he's in the middle of fighting short sellers who would like to see Tesla floundering as hard as possible rather than reaching production milestones.
Still, the talk about short sellers I can understand as Tesla's not the only company short sellers have tried to mess with recently, but the unsubstantiated talk about fossil fuel companies and competitors still mostly making petrol and diesel cars being behind this does make him look like a bit of a loon in my eyes. If anyone wants to spy on Tesla, it's their Chinese rivals in the electric car market, not Ford or General Motors. Sure, General Motors has a history of being assholes, but mostly to the environment and their own factory workers.
"Why should I want to make anything up? Life's bad enough as it is without wanting to invent any more of it."
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.
Standard Operating Procedures for Unions that are shut out.
What makes Tesla struggle is they thought they could design a much more automated assembly line.
That's an institutional knowledge problem. They just don't have the collective experience to know what won't work yet or where the boundaries of the technology lie. You can do a lot with automation but there are limits which a more seasoned company would understand. Experience can be a double edged sword because it can keep you from trying something new but it also can keep you from making mistakes.
The idea was to apply software agility to the assembly line, iterating rapidly and developing something better than everyone else.
That's not a new concept. You think nobody at Ford or Toyota or GM has ever had that thought? The difference is that they've already tried and figured out where it works and where it doesn't. Tesla is just reinventing the wheel here and learning lessons the hard way. To be honest they got a bit cocky and it bit them in the ass.
But like many agile projects, the end is hard to see and harder to get to by simply tweaking and tweaking. At least in a short time frame.
The software mentality can get you into trouble when you are making hardware. The economic and technical constrains are different as is the pace of iteration. It's relatively inexpensive to iterate in software and you can do it quickly. This is a MUCH harder trick to pull off when you are making physical goods.
Well, as the saying goes if you pay peanuts you will get monkeys..
The EV market will one day be as large as the ICE car market. By 2020 there will be 1 million electric cars out of the 230 million cars on the road in the US, an estimated 17.3 light vehicle sales will occur in 2020 about 5 to 10% will be EVs. It's going to take a generation or two before EV's make up 50% of the market, 35% is predicted market share for 2040.
Knowledge = Power
P= W/t
t=Money
Money = Work/Knowledge so the less you know the more you make
Check the financials. Tesla loses money on every car it sells. Look at gross profit and subtract sales, administration, and general. You're already at a loss. BEFORE R&D, capex, interest, etc. Tesla isn't eating anyone's lunch, it is eating its own tail. Ford, GM, VW, Toyota - they make profit on every vehicle, enough that they also pay dividends. There is no worry there...
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Who controls the British crown?
Who keeps the metric system down?
We do, we do!
Who keeps Atlantis off the maps?
Who keeps the Martians under wraps?
We do, we do!
Who holds back the electric car?
Who makes Steve Guttenberg a star?
We do, we do!
Who robs cavefish of their sight? Who rigs every Oscar night? We do! We do!
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
That's not really relevant, if anything it's an advantage for Tesla. Ford has to keep delivering profits or its share price will tank, they don't have the luxury of spending that money. They're locked into their business model, that makes them vulnerable.