— Karl Bode (@KarlBode) April 18, 2023
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…
?? From @Breakingviews: Tesla’s key margin gauge tumbled as it slashed prices to boost sales. Sagging growth leaves much riding on the promise of new models to fend off rising technological and competitive threats, says @JMAGuilford. https://t.co/96llIw18hY $TSLA pic.twitter.com/rV3CHVtUut
— Reuters (@Reuters) April 20, 2023
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…
Elon Musk pins hopes on full self-exploding cars, mirroring new line of rockets https://t.co/TiukM7EIuh
— Eric Garland (@ericgarland) April 21, 2023
one funny thing about this firm trying to fleece retail investors is that even *they* won’t pretend they think the cybertruck is coming out any time soon https://t.co/QnB1fDyfzo pic.twitter.com/VKawwLh5yO
— GOLIKEHELLMACHINE (@golikehellmachi) April 20, 2023
Tesla disclosed to US regulators another fatal crash involving automated driver-assist systems, bringing its total to 17 since June 2021 https://t.co/D8rJZrMObo
— Bloomberg Markets (@markets) April 17, 2023
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!
tesla can keep slashing prices all they want, but if they lose that tax credit, they’re completely hosed, and he’s out here tweeting at the white house as if the white house are the problem, because all of his big boosters and followers are reactionary dolts.
— GOLIKEHELLMACHINE (@golikehellmachi) April 19, 2023
RepubAnon
Elon is pushing propaganda on Twitter from people who HATE electric cars. As Wlie E Coyote would say: “Suuuuper Genius.”
Frankensteinbeck
HEY! Elon is ALSO a reactionary dolt! He’s not just sucking up to them!
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.
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
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.
RSA
OT: Jennifer Rubin has a great answer to a question in the Post:
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Elizabelle:
A van got annihilated by debris even though it was parked a 1/4 mile away from the launch site
Baud
It’s a shame Tesla is associated with Musk. Same with SpaceX.
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!
japa21
@RSA:
Rubin sounds more like a Democrat every day.
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.
Elizabelle
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Wow. So far they are lucky that no one is reporting head injuries.
@RSA: Saw that. Great ideas. A lot to campaign on.
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.
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.
RSA
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.
Raoul Paste
If my financial advisor was projecting the price of Tesla stock for 2027, I would be getting a new financial advisor
Odie Hugh Manatee
@Adam L Silverman:
I saw it posted on Mastodon by Rob Hilton.
Another Scott
@Adam L Silverman:
Here ya go.
That has an image.
https://mastodon.social/@rodhilton is his site – dunno how to easily get to December 24 without a bunch of scrolling.
HTH!
Cheers,
Scott.
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.
Adam L Silverman
@Another Scott: Thanks!
NotMax
As it’s Musk time again, from downstairs –
Hoocuddanode*?
Twitter once muzzled Russian and Chinese state propaganda. That’s over now.
*Trick question; answer is everybody who has been paying the least attention.
Jay C
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….
Timill
@Sure Lurkalot: He’s not going to care. $1.5bn sounds a lot, but it’s about 0.25% of Tesla stock. The other 99.75% doesn’t seem to care.
eversor
we bought the BMW electric, don’t regret it.
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”.
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.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: I never liked the styling of the Tesla. Even the logo is weird. It looks like a IUD.
Gin & Tonic
Open thread? It’s ramp season here in New England. Happy hunting.
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.
A Streeter
@RSA:
We already have all these things. They’re called “railroads”.
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.
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.
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.
karen marie
@Elizabelle: I hope they had all their equipment insured for replacement value. I can’t imagine any of it is still functional.
kalakal
@karen marie: There’s been fully automated monorails running at Tampa Airport for over 50 years. Musk’s not exactly breaking new ground here with his idiotic tunnels
Automated People Movers
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.
TriassicSands
@schrodingers_cat:
You posed a question about fascism in an earlier thread. I answered, but the thread was dead. If you are interested, you can go back and read it
TriassicSands
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.
TriassicSands
@Baud:
The bigger shame is that Musk is associated with the human race. it was bad enough when he came along…
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.