The Truth Is Catching Up With Tesla (WSJ)

Model 3’s will be a success, Tesla will be fine, and all this will be forgotten in the near future. How many times will we hear this about a Musk project and he pulls it off? Enough times that I’m not doubting him on this one.
 
what if all those employees they recently fired were plants from the ICE industry to sabotage the Model 3 launch and god Musk caught wind of the plan and iced them from his company?
 
WSJ just looking to get clicks. #FakeNews

Manufacturing at this scale is really really friggin' hard. Deadlines are always subject to change. Musk takes so many high risk projects not all of them are gonna succeed spectacularly.

A lot of deadlines are somewhat arbitrary. But setting deadlines and goals are useful for kicking your work into high productivity mode.

Journalists gonna write like they know a lick about engineering or business. Lol.

Hell, I joined a kickstarter for the Das Keyboard 5Q. I think they're like a year behind schedule or something. ITS JUST A KEYBOARD too. (Also from a well known producer of high quality keyboards)
 
btgorman said:
WSJ just looking to get clicks. #FakeNews

Manufacturing at this scale is really really friggin' hard. Deadlines are always subject to change. Musk takes so many high risk projects not all of them are gonna succeed spectacularly.

A lot of deadlines are somewhat arbitrary. But setting deadlines and goals are useful for kicking your work into high productivity mode.

Journalists gonna write like they know a lick about engineering or business. Lol.

Hell, I joined a kickstarter for the Das Keyboard 5Q. I think they're like a year behind schedule or something. ITS JUST A KEYBOARD too. (Also from a well known producer of high quality keyboards)
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I don't think you understand how publicly traded companies work, why this is a story, or why Tesla's manufacturing targets aren't the same as the stretch goals on your favorite Kickstarter campaign.
 
East Lake said:
Generally no because that's what they believe the date to be. Like I said before, the stock is still high because on the whole Tesla is fulfilling the goals of investors and production issues happen even among manufacturers with a lot of production experience.

Search "carmaker production disruption" and you'll find hits for every major manufacturer.
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They're building cars by hand. They haven't even achieved automation yet. Which, you know, fine, but maybe it's morally dubious to promise the people giving you money figures that you can't possibly hope to achieve.

Unless Elon Musk is a dolt or his underlings are lying to him, there's no way to spin this. There's no possible way he looked at their production last months and said "Yeah, we can hit 1500."

You're being deliberately obtuse if you think other manufacturers regularly (key word) miss their publicly-announced production goals by 80%.
 
btgorman said:
WSJ just looking to get clicks. #FakeNews

Manufacturing at this scale is really really friggin' hard. Deadlines are always subject to change. Musk takes so many high risk projects not all of them are gonna succeed spectacularly.

A lot of deadlines are somewhat arbitrary. But setting deadlines and goals are useful for kicking your work into high productivity mode.

Journalists gonna write like they know a lick about engineering or business. Lol.

Hell, I joined a kickstarter for the Das Keyboard 5Q. I think they're like a year behind schedule or something. ITS JUST A KEYBOARD too. (Also from a well known producer of high quality keyboards)
Click to expand...

They aren't really questioning the business, they are questioning Musk's public statements about his publicly traded company.
 
I feel like Elon Musk is going to have to eventually focus on other areas and make automobiles a second thought. As soon as the other major automakers that have been doing it for decades refine their electric car technology it's going to make Tesla cars look like tier b vehicles in the electric car business.
 
robochimp said:
They aren't really questioning the business, they are questioning Musk's public statements about his publicly traded company.
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This. Straight up lying to investors is skirting close to criminal behavior. The Model 3 has not been released, yet....






https://www.caranddriver.com/news/2020-polestar-p1-photos-and-info-news


Volvo's are probably the only brand more popular in my city than Tesla. Look at the numbers they're pushing on their upcoming electric sports car.

Tesla about to get it's lunch eaten.
 
This thread is making my head hurt. Somehow a cult of personality is making this a subjective issue?

Intentionally misrepresenting production levels of a massively hyped car that hasn't technically been released is extremely alarming behavior.
 
Tylercrat said:
Why would you want electric vehicles to fail? I'm always amazed at people's cynicism. Yeah, I guess other companies can produce them too. But I want Tesla to succeed for environmental reasons at the very least.
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People should stop sounding like Tesla is the only way for EV vehicles to succeed (or fail).

Giving credit where it is due, Musk's did manage to do what others deemed impossible and demonstrated that luxury electric vehicles are viable here and today.

At the moment it is hard to find even small car manufacturer that doesn't have a bunch of electric vehicles in the pipeline. VW just days ago promised it would have EV version of every model available (in about a decade :)). Most are cautions, but for good reasons: inherent EV problems re still not solved.Let me name them:

1) It still takes loooong time to charge, battery swapping tech didn't fly, fast charging infrastructure is very scarce and even in areas, where available, it wouldn't be able to cover demand once EV become mass products (stop being cool gadgets you can drive)
2) Existing power plants do not have enough capacity to essentially double production (at least) and it isn't something you can do over couple of years either
3) Battery production... there would be need for dozens of more "gigafactories"

Solution to #1 is conceivable only if car manufacturers cooperate, which I don't see happening at the moment, at least not with Tesla, or if government gets involved, which hasn't happened yet.
There do not seem to be plans to solve #2, at the moment, either.
 
The truth is that they got hundreds of thousands of people to drop money on a reservation for a car that hadn't even been revealed yet. The wind is till very much at their backs. All of these FUD articles read like pieces commissioned by competitors.
 
elrechazado said:
I don't think you understand how publicly traded companies work, why this is a story, or why Tesla's manufacturing targets aren't the same as the stretch goals on your favorite Kickstarter campaign.
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Nintendo is a publicly traded company and their games get delayed all the time. Blizzard is publicly traded with Activision, their games get delayed all the time. Apple is publicly traded and the white iPhone 4 came out months late. Making things is hard. Delays happen. It temporarily effects the stock price or it doesn't, but lets not pretend Tesla is committing fraud because there is a manufacturing delay.
 
mcfrank said:
Nintendo is a publicly traded company and their games get delayed all the time. Blizzard is publicly traded with Activision, their games get delayed all the time. Apple is publicly traded and the white iPhone 4 came out months late. Making things is hard. Delays happen. It temporarily effects the stock price or it doesn't, but lets not pretend Tesla is committing fraud because there is a manufacturing delay.
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its actually impressive how badly you both missed that posters point and the articles point.
 
TheRedSnifit said:
They're building cars by hand. They haven't even achieved automation yet. Which, you know, fine, but maybe it's morally dubious to promise the people giving you money figures that you can't possibly hope to achieve.

Unless Elon Musk is a dolt or his underlings are lying to him, there's no way to spin this. There's no possible way he looked at their production last months and said "Yeah, we can hit 1500."

You're being deliberately obtuse if you think other manufacturers regularly (key word) miss their publicly-announced production goals by 80%.
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1500 is not a lot of cars for an automated line. Missing by a whopping 80%! can easily happen if a supplier has problems like was linked before. That's why they start low. Delays can happen and they aren't criminal.

The money people literally don't care as long as it's dealt with. The same holds for other automakers.

Are established automakers also criminals for delaying production?

HONDA is pushing back the mass-market introduction of its fuel-cell car as it deals with the fallout from a series of safety recalls, its chief executive Takanobu Ito says.

Honda now planned to start selling its first mass-market fuel-cell car, which runs on hydrogen and emits only water vapour and heat, in Japan by the end of March 2016 instead of during 2015, Mr Ito said. After Japan, Honda plans to begin selling the car to the US and Europe.

The company said the delay was because of rigorous technical checks rather than any issues related to the development of the fuel-cell car.

“We’ve been going through some issues and we want to ask for some time so that we can be extra careful in the development of this car,” Mr Ito told a news conference in Tokyo, where Honda showed the concept version of its fuel-cell sedan.

The delay is a setback for Honda, which has been in a race with rival Toyota for more than a decade to develop and market an environmentally friendly car that could help cut greenhouse-gas emissions.
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http://www.theaustralian.com.au/bus...s/news-story/86732b2ebc7681432f798a05b945dafc

Toyota Motor Corp., off to a slow start selling its car of the future on one U.S. coast, is struggling even to get started on the other.

Hangups getting enough hydrogen fueling stations opened in California have undercut early sales of Toyota’s fuel cell vehicle called Mirai, the Japanese word for “future.” But states on the East Coast, including New York, Connecticut and Massachusetts, are still waiting for their first stations to open at all. The automaker and partner Air Liquide SA had hoped to have a dozen ready on the East Coast this summer. Now, they’re aiming for just three or four to be finished by year-end.

The timeline “changes all the time,” said Bob Oesterreich, director of the U.S. hydrogen-energy business at Air Liquide, which Toyota recruited to help build the stations that need to be in place before it can start selling Mirai. “We’re dealing with government officials and planning boards and everyone’s got their own priorities, and sometimes hydrogen refueling stations aren’t at the top of their list.”
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https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti...holdup-means-new-englanders-miss-out-on-mirai

TOKYO (Reuters) - Toyota Motor Corp will push back the start of operations at its scheduled new plant in Mexico, to the first half of 2020 from the initial plan of 2019, the company said on Thursday.

Toyota said the delay was necessary to adjust its supply chain in Mexico to produce the truck-based Tacoma pickup model instead of the Corolla compact car. That factory could also build sport utility vehicles, a Toyota spokesman in Mexico said last week.
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https://www.reuters.com/article/us-...t-of-mexico-plant-to-early-2020-idUSKBN1AQ06N

They should have known about these issues ahead of time correct?
 
cwmartin said:
This thread is making my head hurt. Somehow a cult of personality is making this a subjective issue?

Intentionally misrepresenting production levels of a massively hyped car that hasn't technically been released is extremely alarming behavior.
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But elons super cool cause hes gonna take us to Mars and give us satellite internet oh and that hyperloop thing
 
btgorman said:
WSJ just looking to get clicks. #FakeNews

Manufacturing at this scale is really really friggin' hard. Deadlines are always subject to change. Musk takes so many high risk projects not all of them are gonna succeed spectacularly.

A lot of deadlines are somewhat arbitrary. But setting deadlines and goals are useful for kicking your work into high productivity mode.

Journalists gonna write like they know a lick about engineering or business. Lol.

Hell, I joined a kickstarter for the Das Keyboard 5Q. I think they're like a year behind schedule or something. ITS JUST A KEYBOARD too. (Also from a well known producer of high quality keyboards)
Click to expand...

Did you actually just use "fake news" with a straight face? Good way to completely invalidate anything coming out of your mouth.
 
I'm still planning on getting a model 3, but recent production problems have given me pause. Within the next few years there will be many more options in the EV market.

Right now the supercharger network (and good style) is what really differentiates Tesla to me. If VW can create a similar or larger network then they will become a serious player in the market. Their electric crossover concept looks nice.
 
Today, in Tesla news:

Tesla is trying to disguise layoffs by calling the widespread terminations performance related, allege several current and former employees.

On Friday, the San Jose Mercury News first reported that Tesla had dismissed an estimated 400 to 700 employees. That number represents between 1 and 2 percent of its entire workforce.

But one former employee, citing internal information shared by a manager, said the total number fired is higher than 700 at this point.

...

"Seems like performance has nothing to do with it," one Tesla employee told CNBC under the condition of anonymity. "Those terminated were generally the highest paid in their position," this person said, suggesting that the firings were driven by cost-cutting.​


https://www.cnbc.com/2017/10/17/tesla-firings-former-and-current-employees-allege-layoffs.html
 
ITT: Missing a production deadline is lying to investors.

If that's your metric for "borderline crime" then you should lock up literally every manager of a software company that ever existed. Production deadlines are missed CONSTANTLY and anyone that knows anything about business OR investment realizes that.
 
AbortedWalrusFetus said:
ITT: Missing a production deadline is lying to investors.

If that's your metric for "borderline crime" then you should lock up literally every manager of a software company that ever existed. Production deadlines are missed CONSTANTLY and anyone that knows anything about business OR investment realizes that.
Click to expand...
Things become a bit different when it is the CEO of the company making those claims in public though. When your goal is 1500 next month and you are actually doing about 100 now, that is not missing a deadline. That is painting a better picture then you should towards investors.
 
AbortedWalrusFetus said:
ITT: Missing a production deadline is lying to investors.

If that's your metric for "borderline crime" then you should lock up literally every manager of a software company that ever existed. Production deadlines are missed CONSTANTLY and anyone that knows anything about business OR investment realizes that.
Click to expand...

I wish I could phone it in and only do 6.7% of my work and call it good. And lie to investors about it and make money off of them.
 
ClosingADoor said:
Things become a bit different when it is the CEO of the company making those claims in public though. When your goal is 1500 next month and you are actually doing about 100 now, that is not missing a deadline. That is painting a better picture then you should towards investors.
Click to expand...

A CEO is not a clairvoyant. If they have a production plan that when executed with minimal trouble hits their production target they say they'll hit their production target. In this case the production timeline hit snags due to suppliers missing their production goals. It happens in many industries.

Hell, it happened to Apple just this summer.
 
Tesla faces lawsuit for racial harassment in its factories

A new lawsuit brought by three former Tesla employees alleges that they were subject to constant racial discrimination and harassment in the electric car company's factories. The case, first reported by the Mercury News, was filed yesterday in the Alameda County Superior Court in California.

The three plaintiffs in the suit are African American. The men describe the repeated use of racial slurs and use of racist drawings by coworkers and superiors. They claim they reported the multiple and repeated incidents to both the staffing agency that hired them and their supervisors at Tesla. One man, Demetric Diaz, believes that his reporting of this treatment to his supervisor led to his eventual firing. Owen Diaz, another plaintiff, left the company after his supervisor neglected to address this treatment.

However, the Tesla spokesman told Mercury News that they had received no communications in regard to racism from these workers. They found one email from Owen Diaz to his supervisor that reported a coworker's aggressive behavior. "That email made no mention of the use of any racist language or epithets," the spokesman said. Additionally, Tesla underlines the fact that these workers were employed by the staffing agency, not the company directly.
Click to expand...
 
AbortedWalrusFetus said:
A CEO is not a clairvoyant. If they have a production plan that when executed with minimal trouble hits their production target they say they'll hit their production target. In this case the production timeline hit snags due to suppliers missing their production goals. It happens in many industries.

Hell, it happened to Apple just this summer.
Click to expand...
Might be, but there is a fine line between aggressive goals and misleading investors, as the article says. And in this case, you could seriously argue that Musk should have known a bit better how difficult it would be to make that deadline he set.
 
ClosingADoor said:
Might be, but there is a fine line between aggressive goals and misleading investors, as the article says. And in this case, you could seriously argue that Musk should have known a bit better how difficult it would be to make that deadline he set.
Click to expand...

And at the same time they might get their production on line and at capacity next week. I would certainly complain as an investor about the delay, but I certainly wouldn't claim I was intentionally mislead. There's a difference between being wrong about something and lying about something. A pretty damn clear difference.
 
AbortedWalrusFetus said:
And at the same time they might get their production on line and at capacity next week. I would certainly complain as an investor about the delay, but I certainly wouldn't claim I was intentionally mislead. There's a difference between being wrong about something and lying about something. A pretty damn clear difference.
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That is something only Musk knows of course. But considering he has a track record of being a bit too ambitious with his timelines, with these kind of things he might want to be a bit more careful with communicating those, and what he expects internally.
 
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