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Elon Musk Calls Boss of Tesla Troll Who's Heavily Invested In Oil Industry (electrek.co)
Okian Warrior shares a report from Electrek, written by Fred Lambert: One of Tesla's biggest anonymous trolls/shorts has been doxxed as an investment manager heavily invested in the oil industry. He has now deleted his Twitter account, which he used to promote his blog posts about Tesla and attack anyone saying anything that could be perceived as positive on Tesla, after Tesla CEO Elon Musk reportedly called his boss to complain about his behavior.
We are talking about "Montana Skeptic" who has been using Seeking Alpha, a financial blog aggregator, and Twitter to push the bear case on Tesla for the past 3 years. Hiding behind his anonymous persona on social media, Montana Skeptic went beyond just pushing the bear case. He also used the platforms to send insults and attacks to Tesla bulls, bloggers, YouTubers, and reporters discussing anything that he saw as potentially being positive for Tesla, including [this author] on numerous occasions to the point where I had to block him. But now that his real identity has been revealed to be Larry Fossi, a managing director at Rahr Enterprise, which is reportedly heavily invested in oil, we learn that his motivations could have originated from other reasons.
We are talking about "Montana Skeptic" who has been using Seeking Alpha, a financial blog aggregator, and Twitter to push the bear case on Tesla for the past 3 years. Hiding behind his anonymous persona on social media, Montana Skeptic went beyond just pushing the bear case. He also used the platforms to send insults and attacks to Tesla bulls, bloggers, YouTubers, and reporters discussing anything that he saw as potentially being positive for Tesla, including [this author] on numerous occasions to the point where I had to block him. But now that his real identity has been revealed to be Larry Fossi, a managing director at Rahr Enterprise, which is reportedly heavily invested in oil, we learn that his motivations could have originated from other reasons.
1) Montana Skeptic has (via intermediaries) presented two entirely different scenarios for why he left Twitter. One was that he was just leaving to spend more time focused on his investments, and it had nothing to do with outside pressure. The other is that Musk called his boss and his boss made him quit. Given his penchant for spinning conspiracy theories... take whichever one you want with a grain of salt.
2) There's a heavy dose of irony, in that just a few days ago Montana Skeptic was part of the troll attacks against Pulitzer-prize winning auto journalist Dan Neil (mad that he wrote a glowing review of the Model 3 in the Wall Street Journal) which ultimately led to Dan deleting his twitter account. He wrote a gloating post after they succeeded, which is kind of funny in light of recent events.
3) Fun Fact: Fossi (aka Montana Skeptic)'s employer is Stewart Rahl - a guy often described as Trump's only true friend, inflappably loyal. His office is in Trump Tower, two floors below Trump's.
"Lock and load, Brides of Christ!"
Be aware that Montana Skeptic - famous for spinning conspiracy theories about Tesla and Musk that turn out not to be true - has given two conflicting explanations for why he deleted his Twitter account. In one of them, it had nothing to do with Musk, and in the other, it's all evil Elon's fault.
"Lock and load, Brides of Christ!"
I own 3 BMWs (oldest being a 2006 Z4) and they all lower the window when opening the doors. It's a common feature. I agree that making everything touchscreen is stupid though.
The Model 3's approach is to put all of the most common functions on the steering wheel controls. The next most common functions - and most common things to see - are on the far left of the screen, right beside the wheel, so right next to your right hand, or right along the bottom rim. Note that it's a 16:9 15" screen (aka 33cm width) with 11 square buttons across. Meaning that each button is 3x3cm. These are not small controls by any stretch, and they're immediately adjacent to a rim, acting as a guideline.
(Note: to anyone who's never driven a car with a central speedometer: you're predominantly looking "down" either way. The only difference is that with a central speedometer - not even that Model 3's is all that central - you're also looking somewhat to the right. The advantage is that it's never blocked by the steering wheel or your hands, and that the dash can be lowered in front of the driver).
As for the specific case of air conditioning: it's a control larger than a credit card, right next to your right hand, so if you can't see that and hit in your peripheral vision, something's wrong with you.
As I've written elsewhere, there’s actually some very good reasons for the way the air vents are. First off, the big one: you have to be able to reach any controls in the car as a driver. So if your controls for your air vents are on the air vents, that means that they must be within reach of a comfortable driving position. Which means that the dash has to be so far forward that you can reach them. By having electronic controls for the vents, they can move the dash back and down, which improves ingress/egress and forward visibility.
Having electronically controlled vents means that they can make the outflow for the vent much larger. The larger the outflow, the quieter the airflow for a given flow volume, and the higher the peak flow volume you can achieve.
Electronically controlled vents means that vents can be autoadjusted to driver profiles. So whatever the current driver likes can be automatically set when said driver sits down. And there’s the potential for other features in the future — for example, someone pointed out to Musk (the idea seemed well received, so we may see it ~6 months from now) that when one turns on the air conditioning remotely, the vents should autoaim at the seats to cool them down.
Lastly, you have the fact that you can adjust multiple vents at the same time, with the vent-ganging functionality.
"Lock and load, Brides of Christ!"
And that's how the cycle goes. Someone posts a hit piece, everyone sees it, the fact come out later, and almost nobody sees them.
The reality (which one might have guessed from the original article in that some of the suppliers contacted by WSJ had never heard of the request) turned out to be that:
1) There were fewer than 10 suppliers that were contacted by Tesla.
2) They were not concerning past contracts; they were concerning ongoing contracts. While it may not seem fair, automakers using their bully pulpit to renegotiate with suppliers for ongoing contracts is standard industry practice.
3) These were not concerning parts suppliers; these were suppliers contracted with Tesla on capex projects.
4) None of these things will affect the Q3 profits picture.
"Lock and load, Brides of Christ!"
Tesla has no dealers, so yeah, it is a lie.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
You forgot something: an argument to support your point.
Let me guess: it goes something like "look at how many cars they made in the past year vs. their valuation"?
Great, except that's not how you evaluate a company's value. A company's value is based on where they're going, relative to the risk in them getting there and the timeframes involved. In the case of Tesla, they're in the middle of a scaleup that no "competitors" are even close to matching. We're talking an order of magnitude difference in production rates. Other automakers have big longer term plans, but in the next couple years, Tesla stands alone. So at the very least one should be evaluating relative to that timeframe, accounting for the risk.
What Tesla is working towards in the next couple years isn't the hundred-thousand-ish cars per year of last year. It's the half million to 1-million ish, depending on how their schedule and capital flows go with Model Y timing and how much "Tesla Time Distortion Factor" you account for. Plus Semis. Plus a grid battery market growing at an order of magnitude per year. Plus a solar roofing product market, only just now going to its very first paying customers, that could become massive. They're simultaneously attacking multiple markets each in the hundreds of billions to trillions of dollars.
Now, if you're a Tesla bear, obviously you think they'll never get there. And that's fine, that's your view - you don't need to reiterate your talking points as to why you think they won't, we've heard them all a million times, just like you've heard our opposing ones. You surely likewise understand that bulls believe it's likely that they will get there. But regardless of whether one thinks they will or won't get there, they should have an appropriate sense of what the values of these markets are, in the case that Tesla does get there. They're massive. Which is why bulls feel that, even accounting for the risk, Tesla is well valued or undervalued.
It's the same situation with Amazon. Stupid Amazon bears looked at past revenues relative to spending. Smart Amazon bears looked at future revenue potential, but just didn't believe they'd get there. Amazon bulls looked at future revenue potential, and did believe they'd get there. Amazon got there, the bulls profited, and both the stupid and smart bears lost. But at least the smart bears had a plausible argument.
"Lock and load, Brides of Christ!"
People calling Montana Skeptic a troll don't know the definition of a troll. Educate yourself. Skeptic's analysis has been far more objective and fact-filled than anything the bulls have had to offer. One should question why all some can do is label him a troll instead of arguing his points.
History has shown that the conman of the business world have attempted to scapegoat short sellers for the destruction caused by their frauds. See Enron.
Manipulating stock market through spreading FUD is entirely legal. It's only illegal if you have privileged internal information.
The big "Ace in the hole" Tesla has over everyone else is their extensive Supercharging network. You can drive a Tesla on a road trip, even if you're going into parts of Mexico or Canada from the U.S., and the GPS automatically routes you to the Supercharging stations along the route, as needed, to keep you going.
With everyone else, you're relying on a hodge-podge network of mostly slower charging stations that make you sign up for accounts with each of them, in order to activate the charger and pay for it. I don't think the traditional auto-makers can really compete, even IF they build a superior EV to Tesla's offerings, unless they solve that problem -- building out their own fast charging networks that allow free charging (at least up to a certain amount per year).