Slashdot Mirror
Elon Musk: Tesla 'Would Be Interested' in Taking Over GM's Closed Factories (cnn.com)
An anonymous reader quotes CNN:
Elon Musk wants electric vehicles to be successful -- even if Tesla goes under trying. In an interview for CBS' "60 Minutes," the Tesla CEO and Silicon Valley billionaire was asked about competition from General Motors (GM), which announced last month it's laying off thousands of workers as the century-old company shifts focus to self-driving and electric vehicles. Musk appeared unconcerned. "If somebody comes and makes a better electric car than Tesla, and it's so much better than ours that we can't sell our cars and we go bankrupt, I still think that's a good thing for the world," Musk told Leslie Stahl during the interview.... "The whole point of Tesla is to accelerate the advent of electric vehicles and sustainable transport," he said. "We're trying to help the environment, we think it's the most serious problem that humanity faces...."
In his 60 Minutes interview, Musk also floated the possibility that Tesla may expand its footprint in the United States. He said Tesla "would be interested" in taking over some of the factory space GM said it will abandon during its restructuring.
The article also cites estimates from Navigant Research that Teslas now account for 20% of all fully-electric vehicles on the road today.
In his 60 Minutes interview, Musk also floated the possibility that Tesla may expand its footprint in the United States. He said Tesla "would be interested" in taking over some of the factory space GM said it will abandon during its restructuring.
The article also cites estimates from Navigant Research that Teslas now account for 20% of all fully-electric vehicles on the road today.
what federal subsidies did he get? None that I know of. He DID get a low-cost loan under King Bush II, but paid that off.
Tesla is not able to access capital markets according to the shorts, or does not want to access capital markets according to Tesla. It needs serious capex to do model Y, the Tesla Semi and to expand to 10K model 3 a week to make 35 K model 3 possible. Still it paid down 240 million in Q3 and is going to pay half of 2019 note in cash, another 480 million.
Any normal company would have raised and rolled the bonds, keeping the cash. Next Tesla factory would be in Europe. The one after that would most likely be an ex Boeing facility near Seattle WA, or near Austin TX. (Devils bargain to situate the factory there in return for direct access to Texas auto market.)
But Tesla is not a normal company. It does things, that appears to be quite irrational at the first glance.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Apparently you consider 20% margins "barely succeeds at selling Teslas at a loss".
Apparently you think nearly a billion dollars in free cash flow, when they're still far from having finished optimizing their production processes, and beating NASDAQ by 30% in the past several months, is a giant "Meh".
How are your investments looking these past couple months, AC? ;)
Seen on a Japanese food processor: "Not to be used for the other use."
Elon did not float the idea. The interviewer asked if Tesla would be interested in buying some of the GM plants that are being closed down. Elon responded with basically a maybe. Exact quote:
“It’s possible that we would be interested if [GM] are going to sell a plant or not use it that we would take it over.”
Worth noting that GM is not planning to actually close or sell those plants as of yet. They've only committed to idling them. And because of contracts with the UAW, I don't think GM can actually close those plants. At least not until they negotiate a new contract next year.
which a recently shutdown car assembly plant will have.
I take it that stupid is yourself?
Maybe they'd end up doing some of the development that they had planned for GF1 at a former GM facility instead - who knows. If they do buy a Michigan plant, however, UAW will surely step up their campaign - and most of the local workers would probably be pro-UAW, unlike in California where UAW had basically backstabbed them during the negotiations that led to NUMMI's closing.
There is much more to it than just the empty shell of a factory plant. There are literally thousands of people within commuting distance, who are eagerly seeking jobs and have lots of experience in the car industry.
"We're trying to help the environment, we think it's the most serious problem that humanity faces...."
Actually, Elon wants to initiate a system crash so that the User will reboot the system.
That's right, Elon Musk is actually Megabyte.
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
Musk tried to insinuate that the fact that he wasn't being sued by Unsworth was evidence of guilt. So naturally Unsworth is suing him. If there were evidence Musk would have already shown it and blown the case out.
So there's evidence you either aren't great at reading, or are a liar intentionally. Unless you have actual evidence of Unsworth being a pedo, of course? Do you, Pedo pusher?
You know, one for each EV delivered.
Quit lying.
rockets
Maybe he can pick up some old Boeing plants.
Have gnu, will travel.
Tesla stock, 5 years. (The bottom of the graph is not zero.)
TSLA keeps getting the stick end of the short.
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
investing 100s of million to build EVs is dirt cheap.
If trump was smart, he would push to get either Mi or Ohio plants to Tesla, even if they give their first subsidy.
Note that while Mi has blocked Tesla, I suspect that Mi's gov is rethinking things right now. So, should the uaw. They really need to leave Tesla alone.
Gotta love having a CEO who doesn't care whether he tanks the stock by saying things like it wouldn't bother him if his company went bankrupt if someone else made a better product ;)
The casual remarks have no effect on the insiders. The fanbois wont sell, though the fanbois shout a lot and show very great support, but usually they are not rich enough to own significant amount of stock. Despite all the shorts painting the picture of fanbois popping up the stock, institutions own 85% of the float. These institutions rely on automated loss limiting programmed sale robots who just scan the head lines and trade. They are the ones who sell on these news. And these robots are being gamed. You are also getting a piece of the action. Lot more are piling on too. I don't trade at all, so I will just watch.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
There are also regulatory credits (California and US)
Copyright (c) 1990 - 2014 Dice. All rights reserved. Use of this comment is subject to certain Terms and Conditions.
That subsidy goes to the buyer of the car, not the seller of the car.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
And the buyer subsidy means the seller can sell for a higher dollar...
Any qualified seller, though.
Ezekiel 23:20
So why aren't Ford GM and Toyota not selling at a higher price? They are eligible too?
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Short selling in itself isn't the problem. Stores do this all the time. Take your typical furniture store. You see a couch you like that they price at X, they take your money and promise delivery in 60 to 90 days. Meanwhile they keep selling that same model hoping to get enough orders that they can get a discount price or the manufacture lowers the price. Then just before the deadline they get the best deal they can and pocket the difference, or they take a loss if the model costs more or is delayed.
No, the problem with short selling stock is the stigma that it puts the company under. You don't want to invest in that company because a large share of their stock is held by people who are betting it will loose. I would actually like to see the full list of short sellers, the amount invested, and the terms of those deals. I have a suspicion that quite a bit of that money could be traced back to other auto manufactures, oil companies, car dealerships, repair shops, and anyone else who stand to loose their whole business because of electric cars.
Back to the story though, it would be serendipitous if Tesla took over a GM factory. Ie, Tesla did something GM couldn't do, build cars people want to drive.
You see a couch you like that they price at X, they take your money and promise delivery in 60 to 90 days.
Wtf kind of stores are you shopping at? Last time I bought a couch it was delivered the next day.
Short selling is incredibly risky. Only professionals who can afford the risk and total fools engage in shorting. I would bet my life, soul and every penny I have there is not a single auto body shop (lolololol) shorting Tesla. You are just showing your complete ignorance.
Shorting does absolutely no harm to a healthy well run company. Shorting a healthy company it utterly moronic.
Shorting a stupidly run company is smart.
The above AC morons who think it should be illegal (omg, you are stupid af), should also logically believe that buying and then selling a stock should also be illegal. After all, by putting in a sell order, the seller is saying to the market they think the stock will go down. Shorting is the same. By putting in a short sell order the seller is saying it will go down and is deadly serious about it because if they are wrong they have to cover the difference in the rising stock price. The potential loss is essentially infinity.
Stupid ignorant people should stop blathering on the ineternet about the evils of shorting. It is a legal, logical, ethical, and perfectly sensible way for smart investors to make money on poorly run companies and is very healthy for the market by applying pressure against bubbles.
Really, seriously, none of you have a fucking clue what shorting even is and should stfu about it. Go actually read something before looking like morons again.
Many years ago when I was in grad school, I went to Oak Ridge National Labs to use the Small Angle Neutron Scattering line. When I arrived, the staff scientist had the instrument open (think of a large stainless steel pipe in sections that are bolted together). We made some adjustments to the detector and we needed to bolt everything back together and pump down the system.
The staff scientist said, "let's go for coffee". I had done a lot of electron microscopy and knew it took a while to pump down a such a vacuum system, so I said, "shouldn't we get this pumping first?" and picked up a wrench to get started bolting sections together.
He smiled and said you must not have worked in a union shop. He said we had to call a pipe-fitter or we would create a union incident.
I had never encountered this in college or at the non-union company where I had worked in a lab before graduate school nor did I encounter this in the non-union company I worked at for 36 years afterward. We had skilled trades people to help us when needed (especially for large jobs and tasks beyond most scientists), but we could do the easy things for ourselves and get our work done effectively.
The "union system" in the USA must be very strange ... I wonder how much written about it here on /. is pure nonsense and what is true.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
"Shorting does absolutely no harm to a healthy well run company." I think the case can be made that shorting can do harm. That's a bullshit assertion as written.
I maybe agree with some of what you said but that thrust is false. If there are companies that game the system with PR linked to short sales as we've seen, explicitly for the purpose but diffuse enough to get away with it for the 6 months to a year after which investors have moved on and forgotten about it, you can move the market whichever way you want if you've got people in positions to do that. Sometimes it backfires, of course it's risky, but to say there's "no" power to hurt an otherwise vanilla company there is just insanely naive shit. Proven false.
at getting into the press, usually for good stuff.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
GM never said it was closing the plants. It said it was idling production and pulling programs. It might not seem like it, but those are two *very* different things in the automotive world.
My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
Would be awesome to help out those workers in Oshawa.
People- like the people who were working there until GM shut it down, already building cars? That might go a long way towards fixing their production problems.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
Who said anything about making cars. Tesla makes more than cars, for example home power systems, you know, solar panels and batteries as a complete system. A much bigger market, than high end cars, in fact no comparison between the two, at a guess home power system should be worth about ten times as much as high end electric vehicles and probably require ten times as much floor space, being a far more average consumer product, regardless of how much that terrifies the fossil fuellers.
Consider all the ways, us nobodies can earn an income without paying tax, practically none but with solar panel and batteries added to your house you can earn you electric bill, tax free and considering how shite bank interest rates are, that investment becomes extremely worth while. Tesla should start publishing numbers on income generated by their home energy systems. How much it costs, how income it can generate in terms of electrical charges saved and how that income is entirely tax free and what return that would have against borrowed money to install the system, can your electricity bill pay the loan interest charges, on installing a Tesla home power system and if you are not borrowing is that return higher than bank interest, especially taking into account tax free status (if you sell the electricity you generate, you would of course be paying taxes).
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
My first encounter with "union shop" rules was at a trade show in California. We had a local company contracted to bring in a rock-climbing wall for our booth at the event. He was being paid about $8 grand, IIR. When he arrived at the show, the teamsters union told him that the freight elevator was controlled by the union and using the freight elevator was a union job. They said they charged by the pound - so his rock wall would cost $7,500 to move using the elevator.
Now, the thing was completely self-contained and on wheels - so the contractor was moving it by himself. And they were demanding almost 100% of his contracted price - so he called us. We spoke with the teamsters guys. No, they weren't actually going to touch his rock wall - being specialized equipment they were not allowed to actually move it, fearing damage. And no, they didn't actually own the elevator - that belonged to the Hilton hotel. But they had a contract that said they got to control the elevator. In the end we negotiated down to $1,750 to make them go away. My vote was to spend the money to hire a bunch of goons from the local Gold's Gym, but practicality won the day.
At the same convention, the electricians union had to do your electrical connections. So we needed to plug in a computer ($350), a video projector ($250) and some display lights ($25). We had to wait around for the union electrician to show up and do our connections and collect his checks - which took quite a while. I told him about the video and lights and left it at that - and he pointed at the round brass floor-mounted electrical receptacle and said "there's your connection" and left with $275.
It was an extortion racket, plain and simple. The teamsters got the contract for the elevator by threatening to blockade the hotel. The electricians coordinated with the teamsters to get the convention center electrical contracts. Neither union added anything to the event - but they walked away with hundreds of thousands of dollars.
So no, not all union activity is "protecting worker rights". If your job is to sit around and write code, you aren't likely to encounter any of this stuff. But if your job is to build apartment buildings, you live in that world all day.... unions are extorting the project, local governments are extorting the project - everyone sees a pile of cash being made and if they own a piece of the turf, they have their hand out. It is just human nature. If you give a group leverage, they will eventually use it.
That doesn't mean unions or local governments have no value for other reasons - but if you've never encountered those situations, don't think that means they don't exist or are rare.
The Enron guys HATED short sellers. The exposed their BS. Without shortsellers there would be no one looking critically at a company: only cheerleaders. You guys should watch the movie "The Big Short". Then come tell me shorts are bad.
There are companies that game the system with PR linked to hype the stock as we've seen. What reality are YOU living in? Short sellers are crucial. Otherwise it is just fanboys and cheerleaders.
You could also call them "a bundle of wood sticks".
#DeleteFacebook
Note that the factory Tesla is using right now, is in fact an old GM/Toyota plant. So it was neither an idle question, nor an idle answer.
GM is also building electric cars and the demand also outstrips supply. For that matter, *every* major car manufacturer has an electric car for sale and every one of them has a waiting list. So the writing is on the wall. Petrol cars are doomed.
The people want electric cars and the supply is at present only limited by the availability of batteries.
He can start producing a lower cost version of his car (let's call it the Model T) that shave a zero off those pricetags as a car "for the masses".
This is what Henry Ford did with HIS Model T; this is what Musk could do.
Ferret
Sic gorgiamus allos subjectatos nunc
Thanks. I didn't see how to do that.
Short selling isn't the problem, it's the motive of those doing the short selling that is the problem. With money by law being equated with speech, short selling should be given nearly the same regard as libel. An "investment" that is meant to lessen one's own losses by burdening a company that one expects to take a loss is more likely than not made in bad faith.
Inheritance is the sincerest form of nepotism.
Opportunity is invisible to the timid.
Sometimes, you have to take the jump to succeed. Or as they say, 'You miss 100% of the shots you don't take'.
~ People that think they are better than anyone else for any reason are the cause of all the strife in the world.
Tesla makes more than cars, but they do not make more than what is necessary to become a MaaS fleet provider. They are putting together what it takes to provide the vehicles, power for the vehicles, storage for that power, software to guide the vehicles, etc.
Just as they hit the multiple millions of vehicles mark in a few years, they will flip the script and start trying to put themselves and others out of the business of selling vehicles by providing on-demand mileage at a substantially lower cost than the cost of providing it for yourself.
If you're looking for related business opportunities, I suspect converting unused garages to new rooms will be a great one - though I could imagine Tesla going through a period of providing free Powerwalls and power to homes in exchange for using their garages as remote staging / top-off locations.
This sounds like an insurance issue. The risk of having someone who's end of career salary is well in the mid six digits USD getting disabled in reasonably young age will make any insurance premium jump significantly. That payout would be well in seven-eight digits.
Whereas paying base wage to electrician you already have on the roll costs you next to nothing. And if the dumbass scientist decides to do it anyway and gets hurt that's now the problem with the scientist not following the rules, and so he doesn't get the money.
Blaming it on "union" just gets you a propaganda win on top of lower insurance premiums.