"Government in the US takes as much as they can and offers little in return (for anyone who works). Government loots and interferes and bullies"
Corporations aren't covering themselves with honor & glory. Whenever Big Bad Government has given them a tax break to repatriate money hoarded overseas, they've pretty much just pocketed all of it.
I'd be more concerned about global cooling, as in solar cycles.
Every maunder and other minimum is associated with a low sun spot activity, and the next one is on its way, if it hasn't started already.
Agriculture thrives and is less water consuming with more CO2 in the atmosphere.
It suffers, and with it human populations, when it's cold.
Solar output has been declining since 1950 yet the globe as a whole has been warming considerably. I think it was James Hansen who said that solar insolation at Maunder Minimum levels would erase less than a decade of CO2 emissions. One big uncertainty are large volcanic eruptions of which there would quite a few in the 18th and 19th centuries such as Mayon 1814 and Tambora 1815 which caused the "Year without a Summer" of 1816
Portland cement liberates CO2 being produced and locks it up again when it sets.
It's another thing that's blown out of proportion by only looking at half the picture. It's not 100% but nothing is, treating it like 0% is intellectually dishonest.
Implying that it's significant with attributing even an approximation is also "intellectually dishonest". So be honest and tell us where on the vast gulf between 0% and 100% the reabsorption falls.
As I announced last Tuesday, I’m considering taking Tesla private because I believe it could be good for our shareholders, enable Tesla to operate at its best, and advance our mission of accelerating the transition to sustainable energy. As I continue to consider this, I want to answer some of the questions that have been asked since last Tuesday.
What has happened so far? On August 2nd, I notified the Tesla board that, in my personal capacity, I wanted to take Tesla private at $420 per share. This was a 20% premium over the ~$350 then current share price (which already reflected a ~16% increase in the price since just prior to announcing Q2 earnings on August 1st). My proposal was based on using a structure where any existing shareholder who wished to remain as a shareholder in a private Tesla could do so, with the $420 per share buyout used only for shareholders that preferred that option.
After an initial meeting of the board’s outside directors to discuss my proposal (I did not participate, nor did Kimbal), a full board meeting was held. During that meeting, I told the board about the funding discussions that had taken place (more on that below) and I explained why this could be in Tesla’s long-term interest.
At the end of that meeting, it was agreed that as a next step, I would reach out to some of Tesla’s largest shareholders. Our largest investors have been extremely supportive of Tesla over the years, and understanding whether they had the ability and desire to remain as shareholders in a private Tesla is of critical importance to me. They are the ones who believed in Tesla when no one else did and they are the ones who most believe in our future. I told the board that I would report back after I had these discussions.
Why did I make a public announcement? The only way I could have meaningful discussions with our largest shareholders was to be completely forthcoming with them about my desire to take the company private. However, it wouldn’t be right to share information about going private with just our largest investors without sharing the same information with all investors at the same time. As a result, it was clear to me that the right thing to do was announce my intentions publicly. To be clear, when I made the public announcement, just as with this blog post and all other discussions I have had on this topic, I am speaking for myself as a potential bidder for Tesla.
Why did I say “funding secured”? Going back almost two years, the Saudi Arabian sovereign wealth fund has approached me multiple times about taking Tesla private. They first met with me at the beginning of 2017 to express this interest because of the important need to diversify away from oil. They then held several additional meetings with me over the next year to reiterate this interest and to try to move forward with a going private transaction. Obviously, the Saudi sovereign fund has more than enough capital needed to execute on such a transaction.
Recently, after the Saudi fund bought almost 5% of Tesla stock through the public markets, they reached out to ask for another meeting. That meeting took place on July 31st. During the meeting, the Managing Director of the fund expressed regret that I had not moved forward previously on a going private transaction with them, and he strongly expressed his support for funding a going private transaction for Tesla at this time. I understood from him that no other decision makers were needed and that they were eager to proceed.
I left the July 31st meeting with no question that a
Musk specifically stated "Investor support is confirmed. Only reason why this is not certain is that it’s contingent on a shareholder vote" https://twitter.com/elonmusk/s...
Based on that, the initial market reaction and the numerous tweets and videos in support to taknig Tesla private, a vote could be held Monday and the wheels set in motion.
"Tesla is stalling deliveries/refunds" I do think they are but it's all about the Fed tax credit and cash hoarding until they can open up the delivery floodgates to the end of the year.
If they can average 4500 / wk over H2 2018, that's 117k Model 3s plus whatever number of S & X they can hawk, let's say 40k combined.
With an ASP of $55k for Model 3 and $90k for S/X, that $10 Billion in gross automotive revenue for 6 months compared to $11.8B total revenue for all 2017.
I know Tesla is claiming over 5k per week Model 3 and 2k S&X but I don't consider the latter number sustainable throughout the rest of the year and their Model 3 guidance for Q3 was 50-55k which is only 3.8-4.2k per week
Apparently you need to keep up, the board was only told that it was an idea and was not given any of the details either
From the statement of the board:
Last week, Elon opened a discussion with the board about taking the company private. This included discussion as to how being private could better serve Tesla’s long-term interests, and also addressed the funding for this to occur. The board has met several times over the last week and is taking the appropriate next steps to evaluate this.
Elon's tweet clearly blindsided the board and now they're going to have to scramble to find something plausible to show the SEC. What should have been done was to file an 8K prior to dropping any hints on social media. If he / Tesla had done this and tweeted 1 second later, I would say that the shorts can go eat a dick for all i care - not that there's anything wrong with that - but this shoot from the hip behavior has gone too far. And if it turns out he does NOT truly have secured funding, that's a really big frickin' deal
GM's was a huge deception over more than a decade with 124 attributed deaths despite GM refusing to acknowledge 90% of claims and forcing a recall of THIRTY MILLION cars. All this over a change in a part where the price difference was less than $1.
A better aphorism would involve an eye, a speck and a log
"How does someone who was "VP of Mac hardware" at Apple, become the head of "vehicle production and engineering" at Tesla? How in the fucking fuck is that even possible? Maybe I am extremely naive, but I would expect Tesla to hire someone with, you know, extensive automotive experience"
He worked for 6 yrs at Ford as a Dev Eng right after after getting his Mech Eng degree from Purdue
"Cramming children into one of those inflatables would not be a good idea; panic is the absolutely largest risk in this kind of rescue. And even the dive instructor testing it found it hard to remain calm inside of it"
Musk wasn't the only one working on a plan using some kind of inflatable although the person testing it said they were at best a Plan C or Plan D
And the story describing the actual rescue not only mentions plastic cocoons and flexible plastic stretchers with the boys wrapped in a space blanket and that the kids were given anti-anxiety medication and submerged up to 40 minutes at a time. So "Cramming children into one of those inflatables" is basically what they did; they were wrapped like mummies for a good part of the trip.
"Unsurprisingly Tesla doesn't seem to agree [tesla.com] with you on this point. They seem to be working on a pickup which I'm personally quite curious about" I'm curious about it too. I did note they haven't talked about a price range for such a beast whereas the Model 3 base prices was floated to be $25k-40k back when it was still called the BlueStar. Tesla was talking 8500 lbs towing capacity less than a year before Model X was launched but that quickly get cut to 5000 lbs on 18 inch wheels and 3500 lbs on 20 inch. "Towing doesn't do wonders for the range of ICE powered vehicles either. And frankly I'm not convinced this is a serious issue" It becomes a tradeoff of money vs time. The EV cost less to charge that the typical ICE costs to fill but it takes much, much longer. So a long distance heavy towing use ICE means more stops of 10-15 min to fill up while doing it by EV means more cheap or free charging stops of 45-90 min
That said some ICE trucks have pretty big tanks so stops to fill up may be not so frequent, Or they may be carrying supplemental fuel which won't cause much loss to payload capacity even if it could be dangerous in a collision.
The Edmunds review of a 500 mile tow inside California at a max of 55 mph needed 14.69 HOURS charging out of a total travel time of 40 hrs
"Sadly this shows how far battery powered vehicles have to go. I can drive 450 miles towing an 8000lb trailer in my truck before getting gas, and a Tesla takes 2 days to do this, with a fair amount of anxiety. The 36 gallon tank in a towing vehicle is hard to beat"
You're not aware that the sub wasn't Musk's only plan and not even his 1st one. He had a company called Wing Inflatables ship 5 rescue devices to Thailand as well and these were ready and on route days before the e-mail exchange with Stanton. The inflatable solution was tested by a dive instructor before being shipped
"You've never managed a project" I can speak for "you" but "I" have managed a couple dozen
"Stanton was busy doing his job, which was following the primary plan, and when Elon offered a backup plan, he wisely and correctly said "sure, keep at it","
Oh come off it. If Stanton was even 1/2-way competent he would never tell someone to "keep at it" for a backup plan that he thought would fail. And as an experienced cave diver, he would know that Musk would have no idea of the difficulties involved. So either he should have told Musk to bugger off or to send a team to accurately assess the situation and that would be the minimum required to get involved.
In the image that Musk posted of some of the exchange between him and Stanton, he specifically states "if it isn't needed or will not help, it would be good to know".
At that point Stanton could easily have found out if whatever SpaceX was cooking up was impractical
"or for an alternative technology like lithium rechargeable to become economical
Or for a bunch of corporate crooks to get caught. From 2000 - 2011 there was price fixing collusion between Sanyo, LG, Hitachi, Panasonic, Samsung SDI and Sony that kept Li-on battery prices artificially high. Since then, prices have fallen from ~$1000 / kWh to about $150 / kWh at the cell level.
The Prius had a 1.3 kilowatt battery from its early years on. What about that is not "large format"? How exactly could Chevron justify allowing packs of that size to be made and sold in ever greater numbers but not larger packs made by combining them? That's like having the patents on a AA battery and allowing devices that use ONE of them to be made but not any that use 2 or more.
If Toyota had any balls they could easily have taken Chevron to court and won. Elon Musk may be a long way from a saint or even a nice guy but he would have fought this and not bent and greased up like Toyota did.
Slashdot Mirror
"Government in the US takes as much as they can and offers little in return (for anyone who works). Government loots and interferes and bullies"
Corporations aren't covering themselves with honor & glory. Whenever Big Bad Government has given them a tax break to repatriate money hoarded overseas, they've pretty much just pocketed all of it.
Oh God. apple makes a few tech gadgets. Hardly anything very important. Lets see apple pave the streets and run the schools.
I'd bet they could do a better job of it than the Cupertino Town Council.
The Cupertino Town Council would likely do a better job if Apple paid its fucking taxes based on a realistic valuation of its properties
I'd be more concerned about global cooling, as in solar cycles.
Every maunder and other minimum is associated with a low sun spot activity, and the next one is on its way, if it hasn't started already.
Agriculture thrives and is less water consuming with more CO2 in the atmosphere.
It suffers, and with it human populations, when it's cold.
Solar output has been declining since 1950 yet the globe as a whole has been warming considerably.
I think it was James Hansen who said that solar insolation at Maunder Minimum levels would erase less than a decade of CO2 emissions.
One big uncertainty are large volcanic eruptions of which there would quite a few in the 18th and 19th centuries such as Mayon 1814 and Tambora 1815 which caused the "Year without a Summer" of 1816
Portland cement liberates CO2 being produced and locks it up again when it sets.
It's another thing that's blown out of proportion by only looking at half the picture. It's not 100% but nothing is, treating it like 0% is intellectually dishonest.
Implying that it's significant with attributing even an approximation is also "intellectually dishonest".
So be honest and tell us where on the vast gulf between 0% and 100% the reabsorption falls.
And then turn it into a commercial work life experience building
I'd go there and smash the front door then throw a penny and say, "that should more than cover the damages and you can keep the change"
Only the most optimistic Tesla supporter would equate an investor "exploring how it can be involved in a potential deal" with "something concrete".
More info has now been released by Tesla and it looks like this has been in the works for some time
https://electrek.co/2018/08/13...
Musk specifically stated "Investor support is confirmed. Only reason why this is not certain is that it’s contingent on a shareholder vote"
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/s...
Based on that, the initial market reaction and the numerous tweets and videos in support to taknig Tesla private, a vote could be held Monday and the wheels set in motion.
Because as he said "funding secured", right?
If they were sedated then the argument about "cramming children" was completely invalid
"Tesla is stalling deliveries/refunds"
I do think they are but it's all about the Fed tax credit and cash hoarding until they can open up the delivery floodgates to the end of the year.
If they can average 4500 / wk over H2 2018, that's 117k Model 3s plus whatever number of S & X they can hawk, let's say 40k combined.
With an ASP of $55k for Model 3 and $90k for S/X, that $10 Billion in gross automotive revenue for 6 months compared to $11.8B total revenue for all 2017.
I know Tesla is claiming over 5k per week Model 3 and 2k S&X but I don't consider the latter number sustainable throughout the rest of the year and their Model 3 guidance for Q3 was 50-55k which is only 3.8-4.2k per week
From the statement of the board:
Elon's tweet clearly blindsided the board and now they're going to have to scramble to find something plausible to show the SEC.
What should have been done was to file an 8K prior to dropping any hints on social media.
If he / Tesla had done this and tweeted 1 second later, I would say that the shorts can go eat a dick for all i care - not that there's anything wrong with that - but this shoot from the hip behavior has gone too far.
And if it turns out he does NOT truly have secured funding, that's a really big frickin' deal
Time for some entertainment: Link to Hitler Spoof .
That's an old one. Here's a newer and better one - https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
GM's was a huge deception over more than a decade with 124 attributed deaths despite GM refusing to acknowledge 90% of claims and forcing a recall of THIRTY MILLION cars. All this over a change in a part where the price difference was less than $1.
A better aphorism would involve an eye, a speck and a log
Considering he worked at Tesla for 4 years, that retardation must be contagious if he needed that long to figure it out.
"How does someone who was "VP of Mac hardware" at Apple, become the head of "vehicle production and engineering" at Tesla? How in the fucking fuck is that even possible? Maybe I am extremely naive, but I would expect Tesla to hire someone with, you know, extensive automotive experience"
He worked for 6 yrs at Ford as a Dev Eng right after after getting his Mech Eng degree from Purdue
"Cramming children into one of those inflatables would not be a good idea; panic is the absolutely largest risk in this kind of rescue. And even the dive instructor testing it found it hard to remain calm inside of it"
Musk wasn't the only one working on a plan using some kind of inflatable although the person testing it said they were at best a Plan C or Plan D
https://www.independent.co.uk/...
And the story describing the actual rescue not only mentions plastic cocoons and flexible plastic stretchers with the boys wrapped in a space blanket and that the kids were given anti-anxiety medication and submerged up to 40 minutes at a time.
So "Cramming children into one of those inflatables" is basically what they did; they were wrapped like mummies for a good part of the trip.
"Unsurprisingly Tesla doesn't seem to agree [tesla.com] with you on this point. They seem to be working on a pickup which I'm personally quite curious about"
I'm curious about it too. I did note they haven't talked about a price range for such a beast whereas the Model 3 base prices was floated to be $25k-40k back when it was still called the BlueStar.
Tesla was talking 8500 lbs towing capacity less than a year before Model X was launched but that quickly get cut to 5000 lbs on 18 inch wheels and 3500 lbs on 20 inch.
"Towing doesn't do wonders for the range of ICE powered vehicles either. And frankly I'm not convinced this is a serious issue"
It becomes a tradeoff of money vs time. The EV cost less to charge that the typical ICE costs to fill but it takes much, much longer.
So a long distance heavy towing use ICE means more stops of 10-15 min to fill up while doing it by EV means more cheap or free charging stops of 45-90 min
That said some ICE trucks have pretty big tanks so stops to fill up may be not so frequent, Or they may be carrying supplemental fuel which won't cause much loss to payload capacity even if it could be dangerous in a collision.
The Edmunds review of a 500 mile tow inside California at a max of 55 mph needed 14.69 HOURS charging out of a total travel time of 40 hrs
https://www.edmunds.com/tesla/...
A comment from 500rwhp made the following claim:
"Sadly this shows how far battery powered vehicles have to go. I can drive 450 miles towing an 8000lb trailer in my truck before getting gas, and a Tesla takes 2 days to do this, with a fair amount of anxiety. The 36 gallon tank in a towing vehicle is hard to beat"
Why is it Stanton's job to placate?
Either he says "this is what we need" or "fuck off and let us do our job"
You're not aware that the sub wasn't Musk's only plan and not even his 1st one.
He had a company called Wing Inflatables ship 5 rescue devices to Thailand as well and these were ready and on route days before the e-mail exchange with Stanton.
The inflatable solution was tested by a dive instructor before being shipped
http://www.times-standard.com/...
"You've never managed a project"
I can speak for "you" but "I" have managed a couple dozen
"Stanton was busy doing his job, which was following the primary plan, and when Elon offered a backup plan, he wisely and correctly said "sure, keep at it","
Oh come off it. If Stanton was even 1/2-way competent he would never tell someone to "keep at it" for a backup plan that he thought would fail.
And as an experienced cave diver, he would know that Musk would have no idea of the difficulties involved. So either he should have told Musk to bugger off or to send a team to accurately assess the situation and that would be the minimum required to get involved.
"a litany of snake-oil projects"
how many is a litany?
He's made the cars, the reusable rockets, the battery packs and the solar panels
In the image that Musk posted of some of the exchange between him and Stanton, he specifically states "if it isn't needed or will not help, it would be good to know".
At that point Stanton could easily have found out if whatever SpaceX was cooking up was impractical
"or for an alternative technology like lithium rechargeable to become economical
Or for a bunch of corporate crooks to get caught.
From 2000 - 2011 there was price fixing collusion between Sanyo, LG, Hitachi, Panasonic, Samsung SDI and Sony that kept Li-on battery prices artificially high.
Since then, prices have fallen from ~$1000 / kWh to about $150 / kWh at the cell level.
The Prius had a 1.3 kilowatt battery from its early years on.
What about that is not "large format"? How exactly could Chevron justify allowing packs of that size to be made and sold in ever greater numbers but not larger packs made by combining them?
That's like having the patents on a AA battery and allowing devices that use ONE of them to be made but not any that use 2 or more.
If Toyota had any balls they could easily have taken Chevron to court and won.
Elon Musk may be a long way from a saint or even a nice guy but he would have fought this and not bent and greased up like Toyota did.
"Anyway, who the hell commits to a twitter request? Seriously?
Bullshit."
Check Musk's Twitter history to see just how that giant fucking battery his company built for that Aussie windfarm got requested.
Then he'll pardon himself and have a rally right then and there.
Nobody can pardon Trump like I can. You think Obama could do this? Crooked Hillary.
Nobody, believe me.