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You are here: Home / Economics / C.R.E.A.M. / Open Thread: The Musk-y Scent of Flop Sweat

Open Thread: The Musk-y Scent of Flop Sweat

by | 105 Comments

This post is in: , ,

(Yes, I usually save EM abuse for late-night threads. One word: CPAC.)

Back in the 80s, a female reporter suggested that a better word for vaporware would be limpware — exaggerated promises, underwhelming performance. Maybe it’s time to revive that phrase for the corporate performance of a certain Apartheid Princeling…

From a livestream:

Elon claims he will make electric rockets & spaceships, implying Tesla will somehow be involved in their production (narrator: these are not possible, with current laws of physics)…

Elon’s business partner is now comparing electric cars to cooking pasta. Elon dismisses his business partners claim, saying “heat is a lot more energy intensive than motion” – his business partner responds “ya, but it’s still impressive (comparing a Model 3 to pasta)”

Elon: Hydrogen should not be used for industrial processes. We should split water. This is not rocket science. We should split the water. No question about it, split the water.

Elon (regarding the resources he’ll need to fulfill his vision): farmland, or forests, or jungle, uh… barren areas, ya… 0.2% of the entire Earth – essentially, no meaningful ecological impact

…
Tesla’s team reassures investors that the Cybertruck is “real” and not vaporware.

NOTE: the disclaimer at the beginning of the presentation says that these statements may not be true.

Tesla executive claims that the drive to cut costs is “never ending”… they announce they are coming up with a proprietary new 48v car battery which will move costs from the manufacturer to their customers

Tesla executive is currently talking about the importance of “monitoring and tracking” their customers in their cars, given the vast amount of data they collect in their vehicles. They claim they used this data to reduce the strength of their seat belts…

[If the body is about to be incinerated, why worry about crush injuries?]

Per the Washington Post, Elon Musk was supposed to boost Tesla. Instead he replayed the hits:

SAN FRANCISCO — Elon Musk unveiled pieces of his “Master Plan” for a more sustainable planet and showed a video of a humanoid robot at a Tesla event Wednesday — but didn’t announce a major product update for the company, disappointing investors.

The company announced it will build a new factory in Mexico and hinted at a new vehicle, although executives said they weren’t yet ready to unveil it. Tesla leaders also revealed some changes to its manufacturing processes, but the presentations failed to break much new ground.

The lack of fresh product updates prompted the company’s stock to fall roughly 6 percent in after-hours trading. Commenters on the YouTube live stream called the roughly three-hour presentation a dud.

Many had been expecting the company to unveil a new vehicle or at least to provide major product updates, like with its long-awaited Cybertruck. Much of what was presented was already public…

The hours-long, highly technical presentation is likely to add to criticism that Musk has been occupied with Twitter — while struggling to generate new excitement at Tesla. Investors have pushed for him to devote more attention to Tesla, the crown jewel of his portfolio and the company that made him the richest person on earth.

Tesla, the electric-car company that is key to Musk’s fortune, shed more than half of its value after he began pursuing ownership of Twitter, which he purchased in October for $44 billion. As Musk has devoted increasing attention to the social media platform, he has faced investor pressure to demonstrate his commitment to the carmaker…

Meanwhile, the company has faced demand and supply chain concerns, an aging lineup of vehicles and broader concerns about production. Tesla has established itself as the market leader in electric vehicles, breaking production and delivery records and putting millions of EVs in the hands of consumers. But it has also faced challenges in recent years, and its latest plans come as mainstream automakers pivot to electric cars, creating more competition in the space…

Reader Interactions

105Comments

  1. 1.

    Baud

    Yes, I usually save EM abuse for late-night threads. One word: CPAC.)

    A hierarchy of dunces?

  5. 5.

    WV Blondie

    I pretty much ignore EM, except when there’s an opportunity to point and laugh.

  6. 6.

    eclare

    Big rule of doing business:  underpromise and overdeliver.  Not the reverse (inverse?).

  7. 7.

    sab

    I just finished reading all of Iain M Banks’ Culture series, and I am still a luddite, mostly because of Elon Musk owning so much AI. Also too Google’s algorithms are pretty useless lately for finding anything not utterly commercial.

  12. 12.

    different-church-lady

    @WV Blondie:

    I pretty much ignore EM, except when there’s an opportunity to point and laugh.

    Where do you find time for anything else?

  13. 13.

    bjacques

    The Cybertruck still looks like a tank from the 1980 video game Battlezone. All I can think of when I see one is how many quarters it’ll cost me to drive it.

  18. 18.

    PaulB

    He still hasn’t learned that there is a reason that automobile steering wheels are round.

  19. 19.

    jackmac

    SInce this is an Open Thread, here’s something to clear the musky scent — a WaPo profile (gift link) of the terrific Rep. Lauren Underwood of Illinois. (Proud to call her my rep!)

    wapo.st/3L0Y5cD

  20. 20.

    laura

    @eclare: Gaah! My eyes! I cannot unsee that wretched bison-shaped “truck-like” “vehicle” all that remains is to await the sweet meteor of death. Or dinner.

  22. 22.

    Amir Khalid

    @different-church-lady:

    From what I’ve read, splitting water to get hydrogen is an old idea, much older than Elon himself. The only problem is that it takes a lot of energy, often more than you’d get out of the hydrogen obtained.

  23. 23.

    RaflW

    On that F-150 lightning v. the Tesla:

    One of those dashboards is viewed daily by over 14,000 actual drivers/owners. The other one (guess which!) is not.

  24. 24.

    eclare

    The windshield wiper only covers the windshield in front of the driver.  Visibility is for suckas!

  27. 27.

    Ruckus

    @different-church-lady:

    It also looks like the mating ritual between that Delorean and El Camino was done by a group of drunk 6th graders while they were getting stoned. So for sure elon was involved.

  28. 28.

    Ihop

    Oh sweet fancy moses.

     

    I had seen that tesla stock was rocketing back up the other day but my initial thought was that the inherent ponzi of of it all was rearing back. Then I thought it was merely my own biases….

     

    Ooh boy, I’m glad I don’t have money in a musk stock. What happens when a cult of personality driven valuation meets the meat?

  30. 30.

    Ruckus

    @eclare:

    Even this elon POS doesn’t deserve that…

    Maybe it looks like this BECAUSE elon helped with the design AND building….

  31. 31.

    CaseyL

    A number of replies to the tweets about Musk’s stuttering, halting, disorganized delivery state that he always talks like that and always has.

    Since I don’t listen to him, I don’t know if that is true.

    But if it is true, then mocking his delivery at the conference isn’t a valid criticism.

    Criticizing the substance of what he says is definitely valid, however.

  32. 32.

    RaflW

    @eclare: I don’t know what the ancient peoples of Mexico did to GM to have deserved such a lingering, terrible slight.

  33. 33.

    Bobby Thomson

    My work used to routinely put me in contact with the uberwealthy, usually to keep them from getting into even bigger trouble than they already had made for themselves.  The assumption that the wealthy and those in charge know what they are doing lacks any real empirical basis.  Wu has to pitch this as a “decline” because otherwise it would call into question not only her earlier reporting on Musk but 90% of her shtick.

  34. 34.

    OzarkHillbilly

    Fuck the apartheid princeling, the mf’er needs to go out and get a real job.

  35. 35.

    Matt McIrvin

    ah, I’m guessing “electric rocket” here is a fanciful term for producing hydrogen by water electrolysis, then fueling a regular liquid hydrogen/LOX rocket with it.

    (Electric ion thrusters are useful for maneuvering in space, but the thrust is far too low to lift off from Earth with them.)

  37. 37.

    JaneE

    Is it just me or does the Cyber truck look like a combination of some of the most criticized aspects of truck/car design all in one vehicle.

    The back seat(?) looks like a very cramped amount of headroom with that slant.  The sides of the bed are mostly too high to allow anyone to put something in the back except from the rear.  And washing that windshield might be OK for LeBron James, but normal people don’t have arms that long.  With that amount of slant, the bug count should be enormous.

    At this point I really wonder how Tesla managed to put out cars people actually wanted to buy.

  38. 38.

    patrick II

    I think people who actually use pickup trucks will ever buy a Tesla Cybertruck. And the people who want to look like people who actually use a pickup truck won’t buy it either.  (It won’t look like the guys they are pretending to be).  Rednecks with giant pickup truck wheels won’t buy them.  And liberals who had been buying Tesla cars won’t buy them.  But then I never thought Donald Trump would be president, so who knows what people will buy into.

  40. 40.

    MattF

    @Amir Khalid: In fact, the whole hydrogen question may be changing. This feature article in Science magazine (probably paywalled) says people have been finding potentially huge stores of hydrogen underground, so there may be lots of hydrogen that can be dug up and mined, much like petroleum. Still very early days on this, but it could be a big deal (first sentence refers to a hydrogen seep found in Mali):

    The Mali discovery was vivid evidence for what a small group of scientists, studying hints from seeps, mines, and abandoned wells, had been saying for years: Contrary to conventional wisdom, large stores of natural hydrogen may exist all over the world, like oil and gas—but not in the same places. These researchers say water-rock reactions deep within the Earth continuously generate hydrogen, which percolates up through the crust and sometimes accumulates in underground traps. There might be enough natural hydrogen to meet burgeoning global demand for thousands of years, according to a U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) model that was presented in October 2022 at a meeting of the Geological Society of America.

  46. 46.

    dmsilev

    @Amir Khalid:

    From what I’ve read, splitting water to get hydrogen is an old idea, much older than Elon himself. The only problem is that it takes a lot of energy, often more than you’d get out of the hydrogen obtained.

    Always costs more energy than what you get back. Don’t fuck with the Second Law of Thermodynamics.
    You do it because there’s a chance you can store more car-range as hydrogen than as charged-up LiIon batteries, or because you think it’s faster to refill the tank than to charge up the cells. That’s hypothetically possible, but requires some serious engineering work to make happen; hydrogen has to be compressed to quite high pressures to get an appreciable amount into a reasonably sized tank, and that brings about a bunch of nasty challenges to deal with. So far, nobody has really made it work well, and Toyota especially has spent years trying.

  49. 49.

    Captain C

    What are the chances Elon smoked a couple blunts and/or ate a few edibles before he went on?

  50. 50.

    Tony G

    @PaulB: Jesus; that thing really has a square steering wheel!  He really seems to be determined to fail in the must humiliating way possible.

  52. 52.

    dmsilev

    @eclare: It is. However, it’s a lot lighter than air, so a leaking tank tends to just vent hydrogen upwards rather than have it sit around and coat things waiting for a spark. That helps from a safety viewpoint.

  53. 53.

    Scout211

    @CaseyL: He has said several times that he is on the autism spectrum (formerly Asperger’s).  Here is an article about his TED Talk from 2022 when he “opened up” about growing up with Asperger’s (now known as an autism spectrum disorder).

    I do have sympathy for people who are on the spectrum because social cues and communication issues are often a struggle.

    But his business decisions and his politics  . . . we can mock.

  55. 55.

    Gemina13

    @Ruckus: ​
     

    My initial thought was that it looked like the bastard child of TRON and the “Money For Nothing” video.

  56. 56.

    tECHIDNA

    Tesla executive is currently talking about the importance of “monitoring and tracking” their customers in their cars, given the vast amount of data they collect in their vehicles. They claim they used this data to reduce the strength of their seat belts…

    Someone at Consumer Reports ought to investigate this, given that Tesla only recently got off their Top 10 “worst/most unreliable car you can buy” lists, which Tesla made the top of almost every year. Anybody know how to send them a tip, as NHTSA is likely gonna be too slow with this?

  57. 57.

    Dan B

    @jackmac: Great article about a very thoughtful, hard working woman.  And radiant!

  58. 58.

    eclare

    @dmsilev:   Gotcha.  Thanks.  My cousin’s Ford Escape caught fire in Bug Guts MS.  He thinks something sparked with an oil leak, the photos are amazing, that car burned at a high temp.  Turns out there is a recall on them, but you know that blinky thing on your dash?  Maybe should have paid attention.

    Luckily no one hurt.  And, as should happen for a boneheaded decision to ignore the Check Engine light, he got the wife’s old car, she got the new one.

  59. 59.

    Robert Sneddon

    @Matt McIrvin: A number of launch vehicle designers are starting to use electrically-powered actuators to gimbal the rocket motors for guidance purposes, a change from the old days of hydraulics or pressurised-gas actuators. This may be what Elon was rambling on about.

  60. 60.

    tECHIDNA

    @dmsilev: Hell, Toyota still is. Lots of people are wondering which Toyota executive here or in Japan is forcing the hydrogen-only Mirai to still exist in the USA (only sold in California, I think?) with little-to-no reliable hydrogen fueling infrastructure when the full-electric Toyota bZ4X / Subaru Solterra / Lexus RZ platform-mates are…not reviewing the best, and had a catastrophic launch for the bZ4X (Toyota had to do buybacks on many of the BusyForks).

    Toyota (and Honda, and Hyundai) have been busy with this for well over a decade-and-a-half. If they with all their resources can’t seem to make this work at scale, what effin’ chance does MuskMelon have?

  62. 62.

    Gemina13

    @Tony G: ​
     

    One of my brothers had a friend whose father bought a brand new car with a square steering wheel in 1968 – probably a Chrysler, although he recalled it as a Chevy. They took it for a joyride up around Waukegan, got into a fight with 3 guys in a Dodge, and drove it through a narrow tunnel that took the paint off the doors to get away from them. They later reminisced how his friend got the shit beat out of him by his father for destroying his new car. (Yeah, that sibling is an asshole and always has been; we haven’t spoken in 12 years). But he recalled how much he hated the square wheel – said it handled like shit and felt clumsy.

  64. 64.

    Another Scott

    @Ihop: What’s that stock flipper rule of thumb?

    “Buy on the rumor, sell on the news.”

    I think a lot of traders pay attention to that, even if they don’t follow it religiously.

    I heard on the news today that there’s a new recall for Model Y boxes because the back seats aren’t bolted in correctly. Presumably Melon has some grand idea to do away with the seat bolts – maybe they’ll cast them in place, or carve them all by hand from one piece of wood…

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  65. 65.

    karen marie

    I can’t believe you kids didn’t post the recent video of Mollusk’s “truck” needing a ramp to get over a curb to park on a slope of grass.

  67. 67.

    Jay

    @eclare:

    over 30 years ago, I had a carb fire* on the #1 out by Chilliwack in a Chevy delivery van. The oil, grease, rubber was all on fire soon after. Never open the hood, (feeds air to the fire).

    4 fire extinguishers, ( the 20lb ones) and 6 5 gallon buckets of ditch water put it out.

    *(a backfire through the carb sets the fuel in the carb on fire).

  68. 68.

    Robert Sneddon

    @eclare: Pretty much anything, including people, are highly flammable in the right conditions. Hydrogen is also explosive in a wide range of oxygen/hydrogen ratios which makes it even more fun.
    Hydrogen is a pain to work with for a lot of reasons — engineers call it the Escape Artist of the Periodic Table, it will leak through the slightest flaw in a joint and it will even percolate through solid metal containers and pipes given time and pressure, and it makes steel brittle and prone to fracturing (hydrogen embrittlement).
    There are a number of synthetic fuels made from air, CO2, water and electrical energy which are better than hydrogen for energy storage purposes, aircraft engine fuels etc. but they have their own issues to overcome. Dimethyl ether is just one example.​

  69. 69.

    eclare

    @karen marie:   Oh a friend sent that to me with a lot of double entendre comments.  Needed a ramp to get up…

    In all honesty, my Honda would have done better.  I took my Accord on back roads, unpaved, in AR.  Did fine.  Spun out a little, but we did that thing where everyone leans forward going uphill, and of course it worked!

  71. 71.

    eclare

    @Jay:   Obvs no carb here, but the first third of the Escape was melted to the ground.  Back seat, etc, not burned at all.  Luckily the Sheriff and fire dept got there quickly.

    And of course my cousin opened the hood to confirm:  Yeah, that’s a fire.

  73. 73.

    tECHIDNA

    @eclare: Exactly. EV fans (and having a Kia EV6, I’m one of them) are wondering if Toyota is deliberately screwing with the launch of their full EVs, declare “welp, full EVs don’t work, we’ve proved it! … how about some ICE-based hybrids or fuel cells instead?”

    Seriously, the same car company that has made the Camry and the Corolla the gold standard for “reliable, simple transportation you don’t have to think about” almost as long as I’ve been alive couldn’t figure out how to get their launch of their first full EVs right? Come on…

  75. 75.

    geg6

    I don’t think that “truck” can actually haul anything.  The bed is basically just a trunk with no lid and very short sides.  Who would buy this idiotic looking thing?

  76. 76.

    PaulB

    @Scout211:  I do have sympathy for people who are on the spectrum because social cues and communication issues are often a struggle.

    Speaking as someone who is neurologically atypical, aka autistic, aka on the spectrum, I’m not prepared to cut him any slack for these events. I’ve done some public speaking at events like this, where I was demonstrating or talking about something new. I’ve also done tutoring session and training sessions, where I was lecturing, facilitating, and moderating for over four hours in some cases.

    You prepare, you practice, you run mock sessions, you get people to throw questions at you, you work with others to prepare answers to questions that you think are most likely to be asked. If necessary, you use PowerPoint, even index cards, to help you stay focused.

    In some respects, events like this are *easier* for people like me, because they are limited in scope and are usually fairly tightly controlled and scripted. In such an environment, an autistic individual is often better off.

    Based on reports from people who have heard him at other such events, this wasn’t a case of Elon being on the spectrum, as he was demonstrably worse than he has been in the past. Now, whether that’s drugs, fatigue, lack of preparation, lack of focus (because he’s thinking about his next shit-post on Twitter), or something else altogether, is not something I can answer. I can, however, be pretty sure that it’s not his autism that is at fault.

  78. 78.

    eclare

    @tECHIDNA:   Hmmm.  Well, I’m in Memphis, so not an EV hotspot, but I have seen a few Teslas.  But yeah, not to have heard of any of those Toyotas makes you wonder.

  79. 79.

    PaulB

    @Tony G:  Jesus; that thing really has a square steering wheel!

    And it’s still a wee bit better than the “yoke” you’ll find on some of his other cars.

    Tesla had to give in and provide an option for a round steering wheel for the Model S and Model X vehicles. So why are they starting their truck with a design they already know is flawed and that customers don’t want?

  80. 80.

    Another Scott

    @MattF: No paywall on that Science article.  One can even download the PDF.

    Thanks for the pointer.

    I’m reminded of some guy singing the praises of methane clathrates a decade or two ago.  Vast supplies!  Cheap to harvest! Burns clean!!

    Of course, methane is a powerful greenhouse gas and some blame it for rapid warming of the planet in Earth’s past…

    In general, I’m of the opinion that burning trillions of tons of anything that has been locked up in rocks in a short time period (decades) is a bad idea.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  83. 83.

    Keith P.

    @tECHIDNA: Toyota has a major investment in solid-state batteries, but they won’t be showing up until 2025.  Until then, they’re probably all-in on the Prius (which looks great in the latest revision)

  85. 85.

    Another Scott

    @PaulB: The rounded-square steering wheel is retro (Google tells me that square steering wheels go back to 1922).  The single windshield wiper is too (M-B had one decades ago – the arm extended to cover the corners better), but it looks like they’re doing it all wrong – M-B’s was in the center, not on the driver’s A-pillar.

    “Two wipers are stupid and redundant.  Get rid of one!” – Melon, probably.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  86. 86.

    Ethics Gradient

    Delurking to offer this assignation for our favorite Apartheid Prince: PT Botha

    I know(?) PT Barnum didn’t necessarily coin the Sucker Born Every Minute thing, but Elmo has certainly long taken it as his creed.

  87. 87.

    Marc

    @tECHIDNA:Hell, Toyota still is. Lots of people are wondering which Toyota executive here or in Japan is forcing the hydrogen-only Mirai to still exist in the USA (only sold in California, I think?) with little-to-no reliable hydrogen fueling infrastructure

    The Mirai is sold in California as there actually is a hydrogen fueling infrastructure in many major cities for the fuel cell transit buses purchased prior to the availability of practical battery electric buses.  There are two hydrogen fueling stations within a few miles of my home in Oakland.  One of them blew up a few years back, no one hurt.  The Japanese government has been pushing domestic hydrogen vehicles and infrastructure for years, which is the real reason Mirai exists.

  89. 89.

    NotMax

    I usually save EM abuse for late-night threads.

    And those sentient at those hours suffer all the more of it.

  94. 94.

    dm

    @Matt McIrvin: there are various schemes that use ground-based lasers to launch rockets — vaporizing reaction mass in various ways, plus some other schemes.  See en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser_propulsion

    Once in space, as you note, ions can be put to work.  In orbit, can you use the Earth’s magnetic field and a coil?  I seem to recall an experiment along those lines.  Ah, here we go: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrodynamic_tether

    I tend to doubt that Musk meant anything like this, however.  Not in the near future.

  95. 95.

    Ruckus

    @Amir Khalid:

    There is a reason there are scientists and they usually are somewhat smarter than edong. Of course that doesn’t seem to take a lot more some days. I had a dog who at least seemed smarter. He knew how to sleep, and his bark didn’t sound like someone was doing something unspeakable to him, I think that put him a lot of steps above current day edong.

  96. 96.

    Ruckus

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    Fuck the apartheid princeling, the mf’er needs to go out and get a real job.

    He’s going to start now? This duffus was born into money, he’s likely never actually worked what you or I would call a real job and has zero clue about what or how to do that. And I’ve listened to a couple of minutes (which I will NEVER get back) of him doing a Tesla presentation. He sounds like a 8th grader (the dork of the class) doing a report on bats in front of the class and he’s not read one book on bats, the flying things or the wood things baseball uses.

  98. 98.

    Ruckus

    @dmsilev:

    It would be easier if humans didn’t seem to like to run into each other while driving. I used to work next door to a huge auto body shop here in SoCal and the number of cars they put through there in a month is staggering. When the pandemic started and a lot of people stopped driving they cleaned out the lot in 2 weeks. And now, it’s back to fixing something like 40-50 cars a week. Or more. And that’s just one of the two nearly same size shops on the same street.

  100. 100.

    Mai Naem mobile

    I just think the truck is butt ugly. Who would want to be seen driving that thing? It looks like a grade school science project put together with super glue, paper clips and rubber bands.

  101. 101.

    Anne Laurie

    @schrodingers_cat: English is probably not his first language.

    Elon’s father was raised in England, and his mother in Canada.  People assume he must be Afrikaner, but he’s pure-V(ictorian)  soutpiel.

    (P.S.  From what little I’ve read, the Afrikaners aren’t exactly eager to claim him, either.)

  102. 102.

    Matt McIrvin

    The weird-ass science-fiction novelist Rudy Rucker used “limpware” in some of his novels to describe machines made out of an electrically activated “erectile” memory plastic, an idea he got from Thomas Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow with the sexual allusions very much intended. But I wonder if the term came from that reporter.

  103. 103.

    Matt McIrvin

    @dm: He does have a habit of throwing out fanciful science-fiction/futurist ideas that had been knocking around in the subculture for a while as if they were viable near-term plans.

    Hyperloop was one of those–there his actual goal seems to have been to produce FUD about California high-speed rail by implying that a better alternative was emerging, an aim it accomplished to some degree. It was derived from a lot of wild talk about supersonic electromagnetic vacuum trains that I remember from the 1970s and 1980s. And there, Musk didn’t even bother to pretend that he was actually going to do the development; it was just “somebody do this, it’s a free idea”.

    There are a lot of other wild ideas for electric space launch–space elevators, rotavator tethers, Lofstrom loops–but they seem to be about as out-there as laser propulsion.

  104. 104.

    Matt

    I assume that Elon’s hopped up out of his mind on whatever high-grade stimulants being the second-richest man in the world can buy.

    Like all fascists, once he’s made his mistakes the only way forward is a haze of sycophantic admirers and amphetamines.

  105. 105.

    Paul in KY

    Some great comments in this thread. I was LOLing!!  Musk is lucky sperm craptoid con artist.

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