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.
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?
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.
Also, if there is any substance to this, the last thing he should do is communicate it in this fashion.
If you read the email, he's actually caught the guy and had a confession. Getting this guy, likely with the police arresting him (given the accusation) likely blew the cover of the investigation. There is no benefit from secrecy any more.
At this point he firstly deters any other conspirators by letting them know he knows. They are less likely to do damage during this crucial time. Secondly he warns other loyal Tesla employees to look out, and that's a real reason to give accurate information so that they are more likely to spot the problem.
Open communication is probably the right thing at this stage.
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.
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.
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.
I was watching this thing on TV about some guy named Hitler. Someone should stop him!
Arson? Arson is a common refrain from Musk? The company has had some problems, to be sure, but this is not a standard excuse.
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.
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!
BEV cars go together pretty much like PHEV and HEV cars do. The drivetrain comes in as components. You put them together. Assembling a Tesla's not all that different from assembling a VW, and companies like VAG routinely go from Kuka/Comau/Kawasaki/Fanuc arriving on the floor to full mass production at design rate in a matter of months, because, unlike Tesla, they're experts are what they're doing. Even workforce training isn't as important as you think, because they're experts at that, too.
This isn't meant to be a Tesla slam, because if Tesla keeps at it, they'll eventually become experts, too.
--Jim (me)
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.
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.
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.
And also opens himself up to libel action, comments on a legal case (if there even is one!) outside the scope of his legal department, insinuates that his competitors have access to his supposedly secure network (trade secrets, et al presumably).
Honestly, there's a reason that people shut their mouths in certain situations and let the lawyers / HR people talk rather than themselves. Every employee who works near this guy will know who he is. Certainly if anything in this email is factually wrong, he would have basis to sue. Hell, if there's anything in this email that CAN'T BE PROVEN, he would have basis to sue (i.e. the supposed "confession").
This could prejudice a trial too... now a judge might need to find a jury who hasn't heard of Elon Musk and hasn't heard such a statement.
There's also - and this is critical - no need for it. You can send out a message about finding a potential saboteur, stating your suspicions that they aren't alone, reminding people of the need for security and confidentiality, and providing the line to allow whistleblowing, without mentioning half the details Musk has.
Like Trump, Musk "reacts" rather than acts. He just codifies his internal emotion towards something and sends that out to the world as a quotable company statement, rather than thinks or checks or moderates.
Anyone with a brain is just thinking "Well, you must have really poor source control, then".
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.
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.
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
Yes how foolish that those early adopters bought things that work just fine.
There are not many vehicle manufacturers with as bad a reputation for QC as Tesla.
Now let's talk about reputation shall we?
Telsa has a QC reputation mostly built up based on incredibly stupid nit-picking with only one real major flaw to date: The doors on the Model X. Most of their quality control issues were along the lines of "OMG the gap in this pannel is 1mm wider than that other panel, oh woes me!" In the mean time customers are like "LOL this door has panel gaps? I didn't hear you over the sound of how fast this thing accellerates and how sweet the ride is!" Hell most early reviews about fit and finish which grilled the few minor nitpicks reluctantly then proceeded to say how absolutely awesome of a car was produced. Oh but the stitching on the leather wasn't perfect, so horrible, much upsetness!
But all in all QC isn't the issue here. We're talking about company responses. So what kind of a reputation does Tesla have there?
- They caught the world by surprise when they offered free feature upgrades over the air.
- They borderline no questions asked repair shit most companies need to get dragged to court over (my own experience with GM was having the ignition switch fail 3 days before the warranty expired on my Astra and them then waiting 3 days to get back to me so they could try and tell me it was out of warranty and charge me $400 for the repair, and towing as well. Fortunately I lived in a country where the regulator had teeth and they forced GM to not only tow and fix the car but also re-imburse me for the rental costs for delaying me as long as they did).
- Tesla invested in a mobile repair fleet sending people out to customer's houses for this kind of stuff.
- A consumer reports came out with a sub par rating for the Model 3 brakes. Tesla stepped up and fixed it.
- Telsa recalling cars with actual faults quickly and voluntarily. In the meantime what did an NHTSA rep say in a public hearing about Chyrisler? "In every one of the 23 recalls, we have identified ways in which Fiat Chrysler failed to do its job."
Yeah you're right. Fools and their money are easily parted. One day maybe the fools will wake up and actually buy from Tesla instead of risking their lives.