tesla motors

[Holman]

Has anyone pointed out that the cybertruck is the Windows Millennium of automobiles?

[Max Peck]

This seems fine...

Tesla to lay off everyone working on Superchargers, new vehicles

There's more chaos at Tesla this week. The Information reports that last night, the company's erratic CEO Elon Musk emailed workers with news that he has dismissed a key pair of executives—one responsible for the Supercharger network and the other head of new vehicle development.

The electric car maker posted its quarterly results last week, and they paint a poor picture, with shrinking sales and plummeting profit margins. While Tesla once had a strong first-mover advantage and benefited from Musk's marketing savvy, the company has frequently ignored the many hard-learned lessons of the auto industry.

Customers not turned off by Musk's antics instead are losing interest with a product lineup of two EVs that are ancient in car years (the Models S and X) and two EVs that are merely old (the Models 3 and Y). The Models 3 and Y are also the only two vehicles that Tesla sells in volume. Any other automaker would have a second-generation Model 3 ready to go either this year or next, but at Tesla, the product pipeline is empty.

And yet, Tesla is not just laying off Daniel Ho, director of vehicle programs and new product introduction, but also his entire team.

Even Tesla's harshest critics must concede that the company's Supercharger network is its star asset. Tesla has more fast chargers in operation than anyone else, and this year opened them up to other automakers, which are adopting the J3400 plug standard.

All of which makes the decision to get rid of senior director of EV charging Rebecca Tinucci—along with her entire team—a bit of a head-scratcher. If I were the driver of a non-Tesla EV expecting to get access to Superchargers this year, I'd probably expect this to result in some friction. Musk told workers that Tesla "will continue to build out some new Supercharger locations, where critical, and finish those currently under construction."

[LawBeefaroni]

College kids feeling the love now:

Elon Musk said he wanted to be “absolutely hardcore” about reducing Tesla’s headcount earlier this week, and it looks like he’s entered full “demon mode,” as his biographer calls it. Now, an unlikely cohort is feeling his wrath: Tesla’s summer interns. College students shared how Musk’s cost-cutting efforts imploded their summer plans, first reported by Bloomberg Wednesday.

“I will no longer be interning at Tesla this summer,” said one North Carolina State University student on LinkedIn Thursday, who posted a month earlier that he’d received an offer. “After a single phone call of less than two minutes, my entire plan for this summer had vanished as if it had never even existed.”

Shaddup, kid, we gave you have a whole three weeks advanced notice!

[stessier]

In fairness, that's not just a Tesla thing. All the big companies I've worked for would do it like that if the decision was made to cut Interns.

[Jaymann]

Alas, my free self driving trial has elapsed. Never tried it once.

[Holman]

Alas, my free self driving trial has elapsed. Never tried it once.

That's why you're still alive to post.

[Exodor]

In Tesla Autopilot probe, US prosecutors focus on securities, wire fraud

U.S. prosecutors are examining whether Tesla committed securities or wire fraud by misleading investors and consumers about its electric vehicles’ self-driving capabilities, three people familiar with the matter told Reuters.

Tesla’s Autopilot and Full Self-Driving systems assist with steering, braking and lane changes - but are not fully autonomous. While Tesla has warned drivers to stay ready to take over driving, the Justice Department is examining other statements by Tesla and Chief Executive Elon Musk suggesting its cars can drive themselves.

Tesla videos demonstrating the technology that remain archived on its website say: “The person in the driver’s seat is only there for legal reasons. He is not doing anything. The car is driving itself.”

[Exodor]

[pr0ner]

You can currently lease a base Model 3 for $299 a month.

[coopasonic]

And 0.99% on Model Ys.

[LordMortis]

https://jalopnik.com/kid-rocks-general- ... 1851488237

I normally don't post links with no comment but...

Kid Rock's General Lee Cybertruck Rolls So Many Bad Ideas Into One

[gilraen]

Has anyone pointed out that the cybertruck is the Windows Millennium of automobiles?

Or, apparently, the cheap Christmas lights of automobiles:


(yes, the Xitter post is pretty old but the design is still shit)

[Zaxxon]

These types of posts can't help but get in their own way. You can criticize the design. But of course the car doesn't fail when a light goes out or a speaker blows. It's actually an elegant encapsulation of the level of bullshit inherent in most Tesla criticism. There's so much worthy of criticism! It's not hard to criticize Tesla! Yet most Tesla-haters suck at it so bad.

[LawBeefaroni]

Less hate-y take on the 48V wiring:

But beyond SBW, Abuelsamid wonders what’s the point of going 48-volt in an EV. When stepping from 12 to 48 volts in an internal-combustion car, you can jump from around 2/2.5 to 10/12 kW of electricity available for various electrical systems—a huge gain. “For an EV, that’s not an issue,” because much higher voltage is readily available. “An EV is already running at typically 400 volts and up, and all of your power is coming from the battery. Even for a low-end EV you’re looking at a minimum of 100 kW that you’ve got in there, and generally much more. Again, there’s not really a good driving force to go to 48-volt for that.”

Perhaps, then, Tesla isn’t playing four-dimensional chess. It’s not to say 48-volt systems are without benefit—maybe it was the only way Tesla could actualize steer-by-wire. But beyond that, it’s hard to see how different what Tesla is doing than other automakers that use 48-volt systems, and the benefits in an EV are even less clear.

The system sums up the Cybertruck story. Is it a work of revolutionary genius or too clever by half?

https://www.motor1.com/features/704878/ ... -48-volts/

[Zaxxon]

The steer-by-wire piece was the obvious goal here, with smaller/lighter/less costly wiring that comes along with higher voltage also being major benefits. But the ancillary 12V (now 48V) system is separate from the high-voltage system and battery. It is not the case that you've 'got 100 kW in there' for the electronics in the car outside of the motors and HV battery.

[Montag]

48 volt will eventually be the standard - especially for on highway trucks. The power bus is getting pushed to the limits and the high voltage will help drop the current down. This has been discussed for several years and will be adopted.

[LordMortis]

Robber Baron surviving off the government teat gonna Robber Baron...

https://www.cnbc.com/2024/06/04/elon-mu ... x-xai.html

Maybe this should go into investment enclave thread as it's more about private investors vs public investors than the cars...

By ordering Nvidia to let privately held X jump the line ahead of Tesla, Musk pushed back the automaker’s receipt of more than $500 million in graphics processing units, or GPUs, by months, likely adding to delays in setting up the supercomputers Tesla says it needs to develop autonomous vehicles and humanoid robots.

“Elon prioritizing X H100 GPU cluster deployment at X versus Tesla by redirecting 12k of shipped H100 GPUs originally slated for Tesla to X instead,” an Nvidia memo from December said. “In exchange, original X orders of 12k H100 slated for Jan and June to be redirected to Tesla.”

[Zaxxon]

It's abundantly clear at this point that Musk is prioritizing his other companies above Tesla, violating his fiduciary duty to Tesla. Remarkably fun given his current push to get shareholders to re-approve his 2018 comp plan.

[LordMortis]

Remarkably fun given his current push to get shareholders to re-approve his 2018 comp plan.

Exactly what I was thinking and tried to imply with my Robber Baron jab. Tesla got going because of gub'ment subsidy at every corner. Once it was finally successful, he's been using it to subsidize all of his private ventures at the expense of the investors and he does this while asking for billions more (which he had earned, IMO) which should send the investors running for the hills but I rather doubt they will.

[Zaxxon]

Remarkably fun given his current push to get shareholders to re-approve his 2018 comp plan.

Exactly what I was thinking and tried to imply with my Robber Baron jab.

It's been fun watching Musk go from adamantly refusing to advertise for Tesla for years to advertising to Tesla shareholders to get them to vote their shares. I guess spending Tesla money on ads is OK so long as it's to push Musk's personal interests.

[gbasden]

Remarkably fun given his current push to get shareholders to re-approve his 2018 comp plan.

and he does this while asking for billions more (which he had earned, IMO)

How has he earned it? He has essentially ignored Tesla ever since he got enamored with being head edge lord on Twitter. He has said that he no longer considers Tesla a car company, but instead a Full Self Driving AI company. If he is giving away the very tools he needs to further that goal to Twitter, he's failing in his duty to Tesla.

[Zaxxon]

Remarkably fun given his current push to get shareholders to re-approve his 2018 comp plan.

and he does this while asking for billions more (which he had earned, IMO)

How has he earned it? He has essentially ignored Tesla ever since he got enamored with being head edge lord on Twitter. He has said that he no longer considers Tesla a car company, but instead a Full Self Driving AI company. If he is giving away the very tools he needs to further that goal to Twitter, he's failing in his duty to Tesla.

He achieved the goals set out in the 2018 comp plan, and he did so while he was still actively paying attention to Tesla. So I'm with LM on that point. But I'm also with you on everything you've said, and it's pretty clear his head has been elsewhere for a few years now. Given that, along with the fact that the 2018 comp plan in question was pretty clearly not actually negotiated by the board in good faith, I have very mixed feelings on how this vote should go.

[LordMortis]

Remarkably fun given his current push to get shareholders to re-approve his 2018 comp plan.

and he does this while asking for billions more (which he had earned, IMO)

How has he earned it? He has essentially ignored Tesla ever since he got enamored with being head edge lord on Twitter. He has said that he no longer considers Tesla a car company, but instead a Full Self Driving AI company. If he is giving away the very tools he needs to further that goal to Twitter, he's failing in his duty to Tesla.

He made an appeal to the shareholders that if he met measurables no one believed he could meet that he should be compensated insanely. The shareholders approved his compensation. It's all very Robber Baron but it was not clandestine and it was approved at every point along the way. His compensation package that was denied was based on what the company accomplished, as promised, not what he is doing now and how he is using his position to drain the coffers as well as human and capital assets for private ventures, for which he should be drummed out of the company by any reasonable investor who still believes in TSLA, IMO. These are different issues IMO.

[LawBeefaroni]

Remarkably fun given his current push to get shareholders to re-approve his 2018 comp plan.

and he does this while asking for billions more (which he had earned, IMO)

How has he earned it?

He repeatedly lied and occasionally violated SEC rules to pump the price to meet the bonus thresholds related to TSLA share price. And it worked.