So are you admitting that Elon musk is solely responsible for Tesla’s success?
Because whenever Tesla has a huge accomplishment, people always come out of the woodwork and claim Elon is Not the founder and all he does is take credit for everyone else’s work.
He is almost certainly responsible for Tesla not having filed for chapter 11 yet, but they have gotten close a few times. Every time they get close, he does something in the media that raises the stock price by 200% so they can quietly sell shares to cover the shortfall.
I personally wouldn't give him credit for the great engineering done at tesla. It seems like he is good at hiring decent people, and when he gets out of their way, great things happen. When he gets involved (like with the absurd touchscreen console, no-LIDAR self-driving, and the "lights-off" factory idea) it goes wrong. Musk is an amazing marketer and he deserves credit for that, but not for engineering work.
As far as I have been able to gather he is an engineer of historic significance like Brunel and Stevenson. He does get involved in engineering, and quite evidently "gets involved" way better than any other hands on technology investor alive.
Starts up a reusable rocket company after Blue Origin has started with the same basic ambitions - achieves it and remains the only reusable space launch system in the World for 7 years and counting... and is a good way through building a model carrying 150 tonnes to orbit, made out of stainless steel. I cant appreciate how to chalk that exceptional success up to an ability to hire talent that can push him of the way at the right time, but even that alone would be a great gift and demonstrated in multiple super successful technology ventures.
Telsa's self driving is while incomplete, also the most capable that has yet been produced or revealed to the world. The idea that Lidar is the secret of the final success is your hunch, I'm inclined to agree with Elon that its a software achievement - it certainly is in humans.
> Every time they get close, he does something in the media that raises the stock price by 200%
This is not really the case at all. Why are you just making stuff up?
Go look at between 2016 and 2018, by far the closest Tesla came to bankruptcy then at any time sine 2008.
So I'm looking at that data and there is no magical 200% stock price raise based on media.
What actually happened it Tesla managed to execute and bring a mass market vehicle market successfully.
> like with the absurd touchscreen console
Man somebody should have told the 1.5 million vehicles they will sell this year for 30% magin how stupid that is.
> no-LIDAR self-driving
That's why you can now anywhere in the US can jump on a self-driving LIDAR tax and buy a LIDAR self-driving car at your local dealer.
> and the "lights-off" factory idea
And now Tesla has some of the most advanced factories in the car industry where literally the CEO of VW said that VW was not able to produce vehicles as fast. What an idiot he is ...
> Musk is an amazing marketer and he deserves credit for that, but not for engineering work.
That is literally the opposite impression you get when you actually investigate anything other then twitter opinion.
Pretty much everybody who got to spend any time at Tesla or SpaceX comes away with the opposite impression. Musk literally spends the waste majority of his time in detailed engineering review meetings.
Tesla had a gigantic amount of negative press, more then any other company I can think of. But Musk made the company successful with marketing?
What are you even talking about, what marketing? His twitter account and a TED interview or something every could of months? The viewer numbers on those things are far to low to explain Tesla value.
> where literally the CEO of VW said that VW was not able to produce vehicles as fast
Musk's RDF in full effect here.
That quotation was about quality control - and Tesla's relatively abysmal QC compared to other production lines.
VW's CEO said that an average VW took nearly 30 hours to come off the line, versus approximately 10 for Tesla.
He also said that they're targetting 20 hours in the next decade. Huh. They're not even trying to beat Tesla, there. Wonder why? Maybe it's so they don't deliver cars with mismatched tires, leaking sunroofs, _missing brakepads_, and so on.
I think it's hilarious that people like you believe with a straight face that a $250B/year production line hasn't fired up a spreadsheet and done the numbers on costs of "implement another line, so we can spend more time on each car and push more out in parallel" (VAG manufactured 8.4M vehicles in 2021 versus 900K for TMC), than "hey, if we just cut some more corners, and deal with things after the fact, it'll be cheaper".
So what? If they target 20 or 10h doesn't matter. The fundamental point is that they clearly outperform VW there their CEO admits it and they are doing major investments to catch up.
And the claim that you need 10h for quality control is utterly ridiculous. The reason they likely are not targeting a lower number is because their production centers are far more distrusted and they don't have full vertical integration from battery cells to cars in one building.
There are other possible explanation. You can't just assert whatever you want without any evidence at all.
If VW has a higher quality standard then Tesla (questionable) then that fine. That literally changes nothing about my argument about production argument.
And Tesla quality issues have been far less in Shanghai were they have faster production then in Fremont. We have yet to see if Berlin will have production issues.
And outside of VW or whatever. Its unquestionable that Tesla made major gains in manufcaturing that is a competitive advantage. So the claim that Musk is dumb because he wanted to increase automation or simply wrong.
The idea that they cut 20h of production by 'cutting corners' is just a delusional take. Sorry. If that was possible do you think GM would not have done that in the 2000s. Do you think Nissan wouldn't have done it?
Tesla first attempt at that automation was wrong, but they adjusted and actually did make real innovations. Denying that is just making you look silly and uninformed.
He did say that, but see my sister comment. It was actually a disparaging remark about Tesla QC, and how even VW's plans to improve their line productivity would still see their vehicles spend twice as long as a Tesla on the line (but hey, you would at least feel pretty confident your car would be delivered with four brake pads, so that's a bonus).
At the nearby Gruenheide factory outside of Berlin, Tesla is currently trucking along and set to achieve the goal of making an electric vehicle in under 10 hours. At this time, Volkswagen’s main Zwickau plant requires 30 hours per vehicle. Diess hopes to reduce that to 20 hours per vehicle by next year.
Conclusion: Neither Tesla nor VW are producing EVs in ten hours. And Zwickau is not a dedicated EV plant and needs rebuilding to become one. Interesting that we only get concrete numbers from VW, so. I have to admit, it is funny to see VW, which was the most marketing dependent car maker I know up until Tesla showed up, and Tesla to slug it out in a PR and marketing war!
Even if you want to make the most pessimistic possible attitude.
Tesla went from a company who had never manufactures anything in large quantity, 5 years later they are seriously comparing to VW a company that has been a globally dominate automaker for decades.
So look at Tesla in 2017 and say 'Musk is an idiot he thinks he can automate production' and then look at how Tesla produces cars in 2022 and tell me he is an idiot.
Musk still is an idiot when it comes to car manufacturing. Why? Because he gives a fuck about first pass yield and those things. Plus, Tesla is still almost a factor 10 away from production volumes of VW, Toyota and the like.
From publicly available footage, a Tesla factory looks not any more impressive, even less so from commentary that knows much about automotive manufacturing than I do, than state of the art factories from legacy coomoanues.
Tesla and SpaceX are impressive feats, I don't get the urge to pass Tesla and Musk as all encompassing geniusus that know everything better than encumbents.
> Because he gives a fuck about first pass yield and those things.
Do you mean he doesn't? Anyway whatever you are trying to say, fact is Tesla is producing a lot of vehicles, they are a major automaker, they are growing fast, and they have industry leading margins.
> Plus, Tesla is still almost a factor 10 away from production volumes of VW, Toyota and the like.
What an absurd argument is that? So do you think BMW, Daimler and co are also all shit at manufacturing? Because they don't make as many cars as VW either.
So in your mind, only if Tesla creates the largest car company in the world he can be considered good at manufacturing? You realize that is a totally absurd position right?
Tesla went from selling a few 100 vehicles 10 years ago to likely outproducing BMW and Geely in 2023. That means they had continues massive growth curve for 10+ years straight.
If you compare the output of individual plants, Tesla plant in Shanghai is easily one of the most productive car plants in the world and that is the first plant that Tesla ever even built.
> I don't get the urge to pass Tesla and Musk as all encompassing geniusus that know everything better than encumbents.
That not the argument anybody made. Tesla is not better at everything. But they are actually very good and anybody that still thinks of Tesla in 2017 is just stuck in time. In some important they are actually better, body structure, electronics, battery integration is just ahead of everybody else.
If you want to dislike Tesla and Musk that's fine, but your arguments about him being and idiot and Tesla being depended on marketing just don't have a bases in reality.
Ford is on track to deliver 1.6 million cars this year. Tesla is doing 300k a quarter with two factories and about to open two more factories. Volkswagen is targeting 2.4 million this year. Consensus from the street (not provided by Tesla) is that Tesla will deliver around 1.5 million as it works through the Germany and Texas ramp up.
So non EV cars don't count anynore or what? VW is just a tad above 10 M cars per year, that is without Audi, Skoda, SEAT and the trucks under MAN / Scania. Ford is at 6.4 M cars.
Not sure where you get your numbers from, but they are incorrect per WSJ / NYT. A quick Google doesn't validate your 6.4 million number anwhere.
On Ford -
"The Detroit automaker sold 1,905,955 vehicles in 2021, ending up behind new U.S. leader Toyota Motor Corp (7203. T) and rival General Motors Co (GM. N). Ford had sold 2,044,744 vehicles a year earlier.Jan 5, 2022"
VW (not including sub-brands, which are managed and mostly built separately):
4,896,900
It's worth noting both of those companies production is failing, while Tesla is increasing 50% YoY.
Edit: Turned out it was more like 2017 numbers... This source here has 9.5 million units for Toyota, 8.8 million for VW, both after steep drops in 2020. Ford is down to 3.9 million, I am honestly surprised by this. But then I undersetimated the drop in car deliveries in 2020.
What we are seeing now in the car industry that there is a lot of grouping up to save cost.
We will have a few really large groups, VW, Toyota, Stellantis, Renault–Nissan–Mitsubishi alliance. GM has also lost a gigantic amount of vehicle volume in the last 10 years. There will likely be even more consolidation.
In general volume is going down and because of supply issues its not going up as much as people thought this year.
- 2016 - model 3 preorders with no backing except a drawing.
- 2018 - cybertruck, semi, and full-self-driving preorders with one single prototype of the vehicles.
- And after each one of these, there is a huge bump in stock price. 200% is hyperbole.
These are feats of marketing, not feats of engineering. A CEO spending a lot of time in detailed engineering reviews doesn't make you an engineer, it means you enjoy doing detailed engineering reviews.
It is undeniable that Tesla is successful in large part because of the cult of personality that Musk has built, largely on Twitter. That has bought his company the good grace to do preorders with ridiculous turnaround times and to lose money year over year on the stock market while keeping an astronomical valuation.
The rest of Tesla-the actual car making thing-is something that an organization of several thousand engineers could have certainly done without Elon Musk given the amount of cash they had, and probably could have done better without Elon Musk. They just needed Elon Musk to raise the cash.
He is exactly like Steve Jobs: a briliant marketer with a cult of personality, who people think of as an "inventor" because he likes to spend time doing that.
Very common mistake to assume he is exactly like Steve Jobs. Jobs was not technical, he had great design awareness and marketing skills. Musk is an engineer at heart AND a great marketer.
> - And after each one of these, there is a huge bump in stock price. 200% is hyperbole.
Its not hyperbool is literally just false.
The stock price in 2018 was essentially flat.
The stock price in 2016 is flat.
You made an argument about 200% and at best its like a few %, meaning your argument is total nonsense. Literally made up with nothing to back it up.
And even if the stock went up a bit based on announcement, that doesn't even remotely prove that that stock raised 'saved' the company.
> These are feats of marketing, not feats of engineering.
No what are actually feats of engineering, and actually had impact on the stock price is when Tesla from 2017 to 2018 made the first EV that was produced over 5000 times a weak and had significantly possessive margin. And when they turned a mud field in China in to a working factory in about a year.
That is when the stock ACTUALLY started to go up. When Tesla proved they could produce cars at very high volume and good margin.
So you are just flat out factually wrong on this and I don't know why you are trying to hold on to your take. The data is right their anybody can look up the data and instantly know that you are wrong about this.
> It is undeniable that Tesla is successful in large part because of the cult of personality that Musk has built, largely on Twitter.
That is just total nonsense. Tesla successful brought the first modern Li-Ion EV to market before Musk was famous. Even when the Model S came out Musk was not very well known. Actually releasing the Model S successfully and getting car of the year is part of why Musk did get more famous.
So Tesla already had like 5 years of growth before Musk got all that well known. Also, you vastly overrated, twitter, far fewer user, use it then you might think.
People were attacked to Tesla because they made actual real EV that you could buy, that had a charging network. Tesla had a message about EV saving the environment and that message reached 100x wider then Musk twitter. People don't spend 50k+ on items because of a guy on twitter.
> That has bought his company the good grace to do preorders with ridiculous turnaround times and to lose money year over year on the stock market while keeping an astronomical valuation.
Well turns out they very actually undervalued not overvalued. And they didn't actually lose that much money, and didn't raise that much money.
They showed they were profitable with the Model S and they were a sustainable company. Then they went into Model 3 and everybody knew this was capital intensive and they guided for loses for a few years.
Do yourself a favor and compare how much money Tesla raised and what their evaluation is compared to companies that are in this space now, Rivian, Lucid and so on.
Tesla actually operated handled their cash very well and did a lot with not that much money.
> The rest of Tesla-the actual car making thing-is something that an organization of several thousand engineers could have certainly done without Elon Musk given the amount of cash they had, and probably could have done better without Elon Musk. They just needed Elon Musk to raise the cash.
And who heirs the engineers? Who defines strategy? Who decides what people should have leadership positions and so on. Tesla was not a company with 1000s of engineers when Tesla became CEO, its was a company about to go bust who had not delivered a single car.
This is HN, building a company from tiny to gigantic is a huge achievement that doesn't just 'happen'.
There were Tesla competitors many had just as much or more cash then Tesla, but they failed. Why? I thought if company just had money they would magically start mass produce cars.
> He is exactly like Steve Jobs: a briliant marketer with a cult of personality, who people think of as an "inventor" because he likes to spend time doing that.
That you think they are the same just proves that you have not really been paying attention beyond surface level. They are very different in their approach. And with both its not actually marketing.
I want to just clarify that I think that Tesla the company has done some amazing engineering work. However, _Elon Musk_ himself has not been a great contributor to that work, and he is not a good engineer. He is good at hiring people and holding them accountable to a vision. He is good at raising money from both investors and average people. He is good at selling dreams. He is clearly not particularly good at actually building things.
Being an "engineer at heart" is part of his marketing game, just like it was for Elizabeth Holmes and Steve Jobs. Also, being an engineer at heart doesn't make someone a good engineer. Tesla has accomplished incredible feats of engineering, but that doesn't mean that _Elon Musk_ has accomplished them. Also, the fact that Elon Musk is an incredible marketer shouldn't be taken as a dig: he is clearly the best marketer of his generation and Tesla undeniably would have failed without him. It's when he or his followers get fantasies about Elon Musk being brilliant at everything that I get upset.
As to credibility as an engineer, let's look at the other examples of Musk's engineering work (the ones we know _Elon Musk himself_ was responsible for):
* The hyperloop is a ridiculous concept that defies physics and engineering. Musk personally wrote the "white paper" for it. He wrote that white paper because the California legislature was proposing high speed rail from LA to SF (that would be a ridiculous waste of money), and he didn't like their proposal.
* The boring company makes tunnels. They are not particularly cheap or fast to dig, unless you compare their tunnels to tunnels several times the diameter (as Elon Musk does in his marketing material).
I have no problem with Tesla and I hope they become a successful car company. There is a good chance that my next car 3-5 years from now will be a Tesla if the company proves itself capable of surviving a bear market and the quality issues go away. Musk has been great for Tesla in the growth phase, but they may need a new CEO for the next stage of life.
> However, _Elon Musk_ himself has not been a great contributor to that work, and he is not a good engineer.
This old sad meme again.
Do you mean he is not a technically certified engineer? Because a lot of people are not that but go into engineering, specially in software.
What would you suggest qualifies somebody as an engineer?
Musk studied physics and was was accepted as PhD student for material science at Standford. Many people from that path go into engineering fields. Musk didn't finish his work on ultracaps and instead created a software company where he was the main software engineer. He actually wrote the code and lead the team of coders at a company that sold for 20+ million. Does that not count as engineering?
And Elon did actually work on the actual Falcon 1 rocket. Both on design and on the actual hardware.
He is not the Chief Engineer in name only. He does what a Chief Engineer does. He is in every technical review meeting with senior engineering leaders and make top level decisions, he defines the strategy and direction of the engineering work. He fundamentally makes a the choice of material/manufacturing process and so on, and takes responsibility if it doesn't work out.
There are plenty of domain experts who have interacted with Elon who have talked about how he actually has the knowlage to talk with all the engineers about domain specific details in those peoples field. And those people were not working at Musk companies.
> * The hyperloop is a ridiculous concept that defies physics and engineering.
Funny then as it was validated by engineering teams of both Tesla and SpaceX with the best simulation tools available in the industry at the time. Please tell me what defies physics.
> * The boring company makes tunnels. They are not particularly cheap or fast to dig, unless you compare their tunnels to tunnels several times the diameter (as Elon Musk does in his marketing material).
Well the bought a commercial tunnel boring machine to start of at. So of course those are not faster. But the point of the company is to make it faster. Are you suggesting that they have made their next generation tunnel boring machines slower then currently commercially available designs?
Where do you get your knowlage about tunneling prices and speed? Do you have some sort of internal knowlage about cost from the boring company?
The Boring Company just raised 600M$ but so I guess at least some investors who look at the tech don't think its trash.
Because whenever Tesla has a huge accomplishment, people always come out of the woodwork and claim Elon is Not the founder and all he does is take credit for everyone else’s work.