Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

In my day, never was longer.

Roe isn’t about choice, it’s about freedom.

You can’t love your country only when you win.

Republicans seem to think life begins at the candlelight dinner the night before.

The party of Reagan has become the party of Putin.

Schmidt just says fuck it, opens a tea shop.

Let’s not be the monsters we hate.

The truth is, these are not very bright guys, and things got out of hand.

Everybody saw this coming.

Republicans don’t trust women.

Perhaps you mistook them for somebody who gives a damn.

Putin must be throwing ketchup at the walls.

Let there be snark.

fuckem (in honor of the late great efgoldman)

Optimism opens the door to great things.

Republican obstruction dressed up as bipartisanship. Again.

People are complicated. Love is not.

So it was an October Surprise A Day, like an Advent calendar but for crime.

Republicans are radicals, not conservatives.

Let’s finish the job.

Second rate reporter says what?

“Squeaker” McCarthy

We cannot abandon the truth and remain a free nation.

Following reporting rules is only for the little people, apparently.

You are here: Home / Economics / C.R.E.A.M. / Friday Evening Open Thread: Tesla-rated, Or Maybe Fractured

Friday Evening Open Thread: Tesla-rated, Or Maybe Fractured

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An easy target to start the weekend. Those who have been favored by the Trickster God too often come to believe that their luck is earned, that they are entitled, only to discover that Murphy is a capricious benefactor…

His funders are getting cranky, according to Bloomberg:

A group of Tesla Inc. investors has accused the company of mismanagement and is seeking a meeting with its board to discuss the performance of Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk.

The 17 shareholders, who hold more than $1.5 billion of Tesla stock, said Musk is distracted by his commitments to other companies and must be reined in, according to an open letter they sent to Chairwoman Robyn Denholm and Director Ira Ehrenpreis Friday. They want the board to come up with a plan to do so and seek to remove directors too closely tied to the CEO…

While governance complaints are nothing new for Tesla, they only add to the list of challenges facing the EV maker. Earlier this week, the company reported lackluster first-quarter earnings after aggressive price cuts it undertook to fend off competitors squeezed profits. Musk said he plans to slash prices further, even if it hurts margins, sending the stock plunging more than 10% on Thursday.

Amalgamated Bank, New York City pension funds and other signatories to the letter want Musk to focus so he can navigate the increasingly competitive EV market and regulatory scrutiny. The company is facing probes by the US Department of Justice, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and California’s Department of Motor Vehicles over its autopilot system.

While Tesla’s stock plummeted Thursday, the billionaire CEO was watching a rocket from another company he founded and runs — SpaceX — explode above Boca Chica, Texas, shortly after liftoff.

The Austin, Texas-based carmaker is now worth half its $1.2 trillion market cap on April 4, 2022, when Musk first disclosed his stake in Twitter Inc., the investors pointed out. He ultimately bought the social media company and has run it since October…


On the other hand, Tesla *did* just score a win on one of the resulting lawsuits — as far as I can tell, on the grounds that LOL, you believed Musk’s sales pitch, loser!

Reader Interactions

40Comments

  1. 1.

    RepubAnon

    Elon is pushing propaganda on Twitter from people who HATE electric cars.  As Wlie E Coyote would say: “Suuuuper Genius.”

  3. 3.

    Jeffro

    We’ll be replacing one of the Fro-mobiles in 2026, 2027 or so with an electric car.

    It won’t be a Tesla.

    Hint to Elon: my RWNJ relatives are never, ever going to buy an electric car.

    So…kind of a double hint there.

  4. 4.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    Wasn’t full self-driving supposed to be a thing in 2020? It’s always been five years away. Based on what people far smarter than I have said, I can’t see it every really happening, at least not for another half-century at least. So truck drivers on the job today, probably have nothing to worry about

  5. 5.

    Elizabelle

    Also, WaPost reporting that yesterday’s activities culminating in the rapid unscheduled  disassembly might have torn up the launch site a bit.  Photographers not allowed in to retrieve their still equipment yet.

  6. 6.

    RSA

    OT: Jennifer Rubin has a great answer to a question in the Post:

    Steve: What structural changes do you have in mind for our democracy? We all know that our Constitution contains the results of a bunch of unfortunate compromises needed to bring the slave states on board. Lincoln thought it sold out the principles in our Declaration of Independence. You mention rather need for structural change. What do you have in mind Thanks.

    Jennifer Rubin: We can try to reach a threshold of states agreeing to the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, which would essentially convert U.S. presidential elections to a popular voting system; do away with the Senate filibuster; expand the House of Representatives; give Washington D.C. representation in the House and Senate; and set Supreme Court term limits or expand the court to match the number of circuits (13, currently). In addition, we can end legislative gerrymandering; repair the Voting Rights Act to “fix” the Supreme Court rulings that gutted Sections 2 and 5 of the law; end single-judge divisions (which allows judge shopping); expand lower federal courts (to increase diversity); and expand voting access (e.g., regularize early voting, make election day a holiday). Finally, we need a constitutional amendment or a Supreme Court reversal of Citizens United. Each reform would put more democracy back into our system.

  9. 9.

    Adam L Silverman

    Now that the Starlink Snowflake has broken the built in search function for Twitter if you don’t have an account or aren’t logged in, if someone knows of the tweet/thread by an actual software engineer about the software engineer not speaking up when Musk talked about electric cars or rockets because he didn’t know anything about them, but being exceedingly concerned when Musk talks about coding because the software engineer knows how to code and nothing Musk says makes sense and can post the link here that would be great!

  11. 11.

    trollhattan

    We can’t convert our fleet over to electric soon enough, but having the leading maker led by a mook like Musk tarnishes the whole effort, not just his brand.

    Lowering the # of EVs eligible for federal tax credit–a lot of models–also not helpful.

    Self-driving cars are the fusion power of Mars tourism. Many Friedman Units away.

  13. 13.

    Adam L Silverman

    @RSA: What is also needed is a singly paragraph piece of legislation that removes the Supreme Court’s ability to determine the constitutionality or lack thereof of legislation passed and signed into law. Part of the paragraph would need to include a sentence that states that the legislation is, itself, not subject to review by the Supreme Court.

  14. 14.

    Llelldorin

    @japa21: I suspect the steps to take if you want a sane Republican Party are the same as those you’d take if you want fair elections in the first place.

  15. 15.

    RSA

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):  Wasn’t full self-driving supposed to be a thing in 2020? It’s always been five years away. Based on what people far smarter than I have said, I can’t see it every really happening, at least not for another half-century at least. So truck drivers on the job today, probably have nothing to worry about

    Autonomous vehicles are robots, and there have been practical industrial robots in the U.S. going back to the 1950s. Here are a couple of intuitions that may be useful in thinking about them:

    Engineers of every stripe love predictability. We have a huge body of knowledge about building machines that do the same thing, over and over again, within specific tolerances. In robotics, one of the implications is that the more we can control the environment, the better. In a robot factory, for example, some robotic devices on an assembly line might not even need sensors to detect that another widget has become available for an operation, because it’s so predictable. (There’s a sort of continuum from robots to more “ordinary” machines.) For an autonomous vehicle, it might mean having dedicated lanes on a highway, to eliminate the variability of dealing with human drivers.

    Another thing that’s appreciated in robotics is the value of instrumentation. Imagine a building a computer vision system for a vehicle that can detect highway markings, exits, changes in the number of lanes, other vehicles, and so forth. It’s doable, though it can be hard to get it exactly right. Now imagine an alternative: highways that have beacons or other such devices that announce all the information that’s relevant to an autonomous vehicle going by. Every vehicle also announces its presence, even its planned actions. Instead of making each vehicle more capable, we make the environment more accommodating.

    All this is to say that while the so-called “last mile” problem is still unresolved, autonomous trucks or truck convoys on highways seem plausible with today’s technology, though it would be expensive in terms of infrastructure additions and political capital.

  16. 16.

    Raoul Paste

    If my financial advisor was projecting  the price of Tesla stock for 2027, I would be getting a new financial advisor

  19. 19.

    Sure Lurkalot

    I’m sure those Tesla investors love seeing the juvenile 4-20 and 69 tweets while their billion and a half blows away.

  22. 22.

    Jay C

    …”because all of his big boosters and followers are reactionary dolts”

    Yeah, probably right, but how much actual money do said dolts have invested in Elon Of Mars’s various “projects”? (“Verified Checkmark” fees or whatever notwithstanding)

    I mean, Twitter is losing value at Alpine-avalanche rates, the markets are finally (if glacially reluctantly) realizing that Tesla isn’t actually The Wave Of The Future, and the gloss is most definitely off Musk’s “genius” reputation.

    I read somewhere today the speculation that Elon is somehow trying to line up the Saudis as a  financial backup: I’m not sure that that is going to be quite the Golden Lifeline he might imagine….

  25. 25.

    divF

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Watching that brings back memories of my salad days, when I was doing computer simulations of explosions. We would try to match pressure data inferred from films of how far a vehicle was knocked about by the shock wave.

    Also, the simulation that provided the starting data for my  simulation required more detailed physics that my codes didn’t do. The codes that generated that were referred to as “weapon disassembly calculations”.

  26. 26.

    Tony G

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): My understanding (for what it’s worth) is that true self-driving vehicles would require General Artificial Intelligence — given that fact that driving consists of 99% routine behavior plus 1% situations in which decisions must be made quickly on the basis of incomplete information.  If those 1% of situations require human intervention, then the vehicle is not truly self-driving — and the vehicle would actually require a higher level of human alertness than a traditional vehicle would.  The problem there is that General Artificial Intelligence (fortunately) exists only in science fiction, so far at least.  The fact that tens of thousands of people choose to believe Musk’s lies about this does not speak well of human intelligence.

  29. 29.

    RaflW

    @trollhattan: Somewhere around Q2 2022, Tesla was no longer the leading seller of EVs. And as massive global players like VW ramp up their conversion to electric, I do not believe that Tesla will keep up. Slashed prices and all.

  30. 30.

    A Streeter

    @RSA:

    …For an autonomous vehicle, it might mean having dedicated lanes on a highway, to eliminate the variability of dealing with human drivers….

    … highways that have beacons or other such devices that announce all the information that’s relevant to an autonomous vehicle going by. Every vehicle also announces its presence, even its planned actions…

    We already have all these things. They’re called “railroads”.

  31. 31.

    AlaskaReader

    Republicans in Alaska want you to know they are the same as Republicans everywhere.

    (Deserving of absolutely nothing but scorn and derision.)

    Yet another reminder that Republican voters are every bit as corrupt and depraved as are the people they elect.

  32. 32.

    frosty

    @RSA: This sounds very much like containerized freight on trains, taking the place of autonomous vehicles. The last mile problem is already solved: non-autonomous trucks driven by humans.

    More energy-efficient, too, and more easily converted to electric power.

    @A Streeter: Ha! I’m not the only one who noticed that.

  33. 33.

    karen marie

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):   We already have “self-driving cars.”  They’re called “buses” and “subways” and “trains.”

    The only good thing about Musk is he makes me look like a fucking genius.

  36. 36.

    TriassicSands

    @RSA:

    And repeal of the 2nd Amendment. Impossible yes, but as a long term goal it is essential. Were we able to expand the Court (the ideal time to do that has already passed), sane justices could reverse Shelby County v. Holder and eradicate Scalia’s fabricated personal right to own firearms. Restrictive enough decisions by a legitimate court (though rejected by Republicans and our millions of gun nuts) could make the repeal of the 2nd Amendment unnecessary.

  38. 38.

    TriassicSands

    @schrodingers_cat: It looks like a IUD

    Too bad it didn’t keep Musk from reproducing. There are lots of things the world doesn’t need and more Musk genes is high on the list.

  39. 39.

    TriassicSands

    @Baud:

    The bigger shame is that Musk is associated with the human race. it was bad enough when he came along…

  40. 40.

    Eduardo

    @Baud: Agree — I am hoping he has a mega meltdown and is disassociated from them both.  I cannot root against either because there is nothing even remotely close to SpaceX in space exploration and the only real Tesla rivals are BYD and other Chinese companies.

    The Chinese regime is way worse than our worst MAGAs because they have close to absolute power.

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