Popular Mechanics Defends Elon Musk -- While He Tweets About Fortnite (popularmechanics.com)

The November issue of Popular Mechanics includes a message from its editors that Elon Musk is "under attack," arguing that while some criticisms have merit, "much of it is myopic and small-brained, from sideline observers gleefully salivating at the opportunity to take him down a peg." But what have these stock analysts and pontificators done for humanity? Elon Musk is an engineer at heart, a tinkerer, a problem-solver -- the kind of person Popular Mechanics has always championed -- and the problems he's trying to solve are hard. Really hard. He could find better ways to spend his money, that's for sure. And yet there he is, trying to build gasless cars and build reusable rockets and build tunnels that make traffic go away. For all his faults and unpredictability, we need him out there doing that. We need people who have ideas. We need people who take risks.

We need people who try.
The magazine includes statements from 12 high-profile supporters, including investor Mark Cuban, who writes "When you invest in a company run by an entrepreneur like Elon, you are investing in the mindset and approach that an entrepreneur brings to the table as much as you are valuing the net present value of future cash flows. That is not typical for public companies that are overwhelmingly run by hired CEOs. My advice for Elon is simple: Be yourself. Be true to your mission. Respect your investors. Ignore your critics."

Meanwhile, in a Friday post on Twitter, Musk jokingly claimed that he'd purchased and then deleted the game of Fortnite, posting a doctored Marketwatch article quoting him as saying "I had to save these kids from eternal virginity."

"Had to been done," tweeted Musk, adding "ur welcome".

Comments

Re:I fully agree

[Anonymous Coward]

And it's not like he's wrong about Fortnite.

Re:Taxpayer funded

[JaredOfEuropa]

He seems to be getting there. SpaceX is doing reasonably well, arguably on government money but coming from government contracts rather than subsidies, and offering a real value: Uncle Sam is saving money on those contracts. As for EV's... I don't think that market - meaning all auto makers, not just Tesla - would be where it is today if it wasn't for those tax breaks. Perhaps tax breaks are necessary to kick-start certain markets... I'm all for that, as long as those subsidies are doled out equally, and end at some point.

Here's hoping that Tesla can get over the financial hump, they've pulled out all the stops to meet important targets, but next 2 quarters are going to be make or break, and Musk will have to show that they can not only reach the current production (and distribution) levels, but sustain them as well, while turning to a positive cash flow.

Re:I fully agree

[JaredOfEuropa]

If he makes good, innovative products for which there is a clear demand, and at some point manages to turn a profit, then I should be happy to invest in his companies and let him call other people whatever he wants. I'm not one of those douchebags who thinks just because someone is a public figure they are not allowed to have a temper, or a bad day. I'll take authenticity over carefully groomed but deeply fake media personae any time, even if the person in question is sometimes behaving like an authentic douche.

With that said, all my money is in real estate...

They call me a fanboi.

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

It is an American car company giving run for their money to the Germans. Audi and BMW and MB are beaten in their performance car game.

He failed to deliver on his promises. True. The goal was so over the top, what he did deliver is way above other car companies delivered.

He showed what a no compromise electric car can do, how it will drive, how it would feel and how great it would be. That genie is out of the bottle. No body can put it back in. No ICEV can compete with a EV.

And the party is just starting. The batteries are getting cheaper, energy density is getting higher. While ICE is fully optimized and there is nothing more you could squeeze out of an internal combustion engine.

In an EV, you can have two or four motors mechanically decoupled and electronically controlled. What such a car can do, no way an ICE can do.

Re:They call me a fanboi.

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

He is making a profit. The first German tear down put the cost of Model 3 to be 28K in parts and labor at 10K/week production rate. That shocked the industry.

The Monroe teardown is pricing it at 33,500$ for the 49K car. Monroe is very critical, it says any other car company making the body using traditional methods would make it 2000$ cheaper. He says, despite squandering 2000$ on inefficient body design, Tesla is so far ahead on the electronics part, and the battery part, it is enjoying a positive gross margin of nearly 30%. He says the 35K version also will be profitable.

Tesla is also paying down enormous R&D cost, factory depreciation and loan payments. So the net margin is negative and the company is making loss because of that. But people casually say, "Tesla is losing money on every sale" indicating a negative gross margin. That is not true. All the cars, S, X and the 3 have positive gross margins.

I got mine for 50K. It is not a toy for the rich. It is a nice car for the moderately affluent. The median new car price is 35K. 50K is probably 80th percentile. 20% of all new car buyers can afford a Tesla model 3. He may not make too many 35 K model 3s. He will deliver enough for the original reservation holders. But the car being so hot, as long as people are willing to pay a premium he will, and he should sell the higher end versions.

Re:They call me a fanboi.

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

The big automakers were waiting for Tesla to die so that can continue business as usual. They terribly underestimated the potential of the electric car.

Re:I fully agree

[hey!]

My wife asked me the other day whether I thought Kanye West might not be right in his head. This is what I said to her: West is a talented, intelligent, driven individual who rose from comfortable but modest beginnings to astonishing levels of professional success. Life experience has not taught him to be humble, hasn't even shown him the need for it.

There's a word for that, it's called "arrogance", but a lot of people who have it are really extremely capable people. Until fate gets around to humbling them, if it ever does, what reason would they ever have to doubt themselves? Naturally people like that sound a little unhinged; they're living in a different reality than you or me.

I think Musk fits this mold. If a bus were to hit him tomorrow he'd go down in the history books as the most significant tech entrepreneur of our age; where as Bill Gates made a fortune catching the PC wave, Musk actually drove change in a way that Gates never did. Why wouldn't Musk believe he can do anything just through sheer force of will? If he weren't a bit of an egotist he'd never have tried any of the things he's known for.

But his overblown reaction to the Thai cave rescue operation not needing him, personally, exposed Musk as, well, kind of a dick. But be honest: you'd probably be a dick too.

Legacy car maker vs Cell phone makers.

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

The traditional car making is a very stable business. All major efficiency breakthroughs have been achieved already. All the manufacturing improvements are mostly done. Prices are stable. Metrics are stable. Power/weight ratio of ICE, MPG vs curb weight, ... all are stable and the improvemens are coming at the rate of a percent of two per year. They are used to 4 years cycles of design. One year of tooling. 5 years from drawing board to production. No unexpected breakthroughs expected in the five years.

Cell phones, laptops, Tesla are operating where you cant design for today's metrics. You need to predict the processor speed 18 months from now and design the phone. You need to anticipate the bandwidth increase expected in 12 months.

An EV's most critical metrics are energy density Kg/kWh of the battery and price $/kWh of the battery. Elon, in his famour 2006 "secret" master plan calculated a 7 year half life for these two critical metrics. The energy density will double, and the price wil halve every seven years. Sort of like Moore's law of batteries. Tesla is designing, building and pricing the cars based on that model. In 2012 for the Tesla Roadster, the battery cost was 270 $/kWh. Model 3, battery is 130 $/kWh (Tesla's claim) 140$/kWh Monroe's tear down. It is following the expected path. Tesla says it is going to hit 100 $/kWh sometime in 2019. That is the figure when the EV and ICEV will cost the same off the dealer's lot. Battery + motor cost = engine+transmission+emission control+fuel tank cost.

The legacy car makers are not used to engine manufacturing cost going down by 50% in 7 years. Nor the weight of the power train falling by 50% between drawing board and production.