316 Comments

Musk's little rocket company is the only soundly run company in his portfolio. His Falcon 9 rocket has launched over 200 times in a row without failure. He's landed the first stage over 200 times as well. SpaceX has the only operating manned spacecraft with 8 missions to the space station so far. This is in sharp contrast to all his other companies -- The Boring Company, Neuralink, Tesla and twitter.

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It is because the engineers have the power to ignore him.

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Isn't it time we take an X on Elmo?

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Here's an odd, back of the envelope calculation. Based on info I find by asking Google, Musk's current fortune of $USD 190 bn seems to have a Tesla portion of 37%, or $USD 70.3 bn. Since Tesla stock is grossly overvalued, I deflated that number by comparing Tesla's P/E with that of Toyota, which is a company that actually know how to build a car. The ratio was about 4.8, so that tells me that his Tesla shares are overvalued by $USD 55.0 bn -- just the amount that Musk's buddies wanted to give him. They were probably planning on taking on that amount of debt to do the deal.

Isn't corruption fun!

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So Tesla has decided to make itself into the next Packard, or Auburn. Given how well it worked out for those two companies, let me just stand aside and watch. . . .

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Ta, Gary. Funny, psychedelics never had that effect on me. Then again, I'm not heir to an emerald mine fortune.

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Muskrat is living proof that CEOs aren’t special geniuses who deserve all the money. The driverless car is still a pipe dream. The companies running a pilot program in Austin recently shut it down after a series of embarrassing mishaps where the cars just stopped working and blocked traffic. The technology just isn’t ready for large scale deployment.

To put all his company’s chips on autonomous vehicles instead say, cars he could sell to people, is as dumb as, well, any of Muskrat’s other erratic decisions lately.

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"Elon Musk microdoses a lot of hallucinogens. He has admitted this on the record, so anything he says should be taken with a grain of salt the size of Zimbabwe."

Or a grain of bath salts.

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I propose we stop calling his cars Teslas, and use the more appropriate term "Muskmobiles".

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Nikolai Tesla spins in his grave every time his name is used for one of those cars.

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Poor Elmo. His kids still hate him.

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He has what? Ten now?

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why is he microdosing anything if he's such an Übermensch already?

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Is he manipulating stock prices again?

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Usually, his actions manipulate the stock downward.

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I hope next term will see the Proper Taxation Of Inherited Fortunes bill race through congress.

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I'd love to see a Proper Taxation Of Inherited Fortunes bill succeed. It could be such an easy sell to the majority of voters across the spectrum. Adam Smith, Winston Churchill, Thomas Jefferson, and Andrew Carnegie all hated the idea of inherited wealth.

Also, I'm very glad Manchin and Sinema won't be around next year when renewing Trump's tax cuts comes up.

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founding

IF we take back both houses of Congress and IF we re elect Biden/Harris. And IF, once the Legislative branch is cleansed, the Democrats ram through their agenda, ignoring the wails from the FNYT, the FWSJ, the FWP and the major TV "news" suppliers, who will continue to ape the Fox disinformation machine. What do the Traitor Party do when they get a 1 vote majority? Act as if the Democrats do not exist while scheming to suppress their votes.

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With something like 30 billionaires getting inherited wealth according to the Forbes list or whatever that is ...

Yes, it should race

That means we have to elect a CONGRESS FULL OF DEMOCRATS as well as keep POTUS Joe in his office, in order to get anything passed

Sometimes people do not connect the dots

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There's a lot of reasons I wouldn't have considered even an inexpensive Tesla, most notably that there's no dealership who will service them in my city and my coworker who owns one has had to drive 75 minutes to Atlanta to get his car looked at every time it throws an error code.

I'm also a bit of a Mazda Miata fangirl, and I'm holding out for a hybrid or all electric MX-5 in the next few years. If they can keep the price point around $40K for it, I might actually plunk down the cash for a new car for the first time in my life.

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Miata Is Always The Answer.

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Miatas are great fun.

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founding

Or Musk could have just done this: 22R to EV Swap: 1981 Toyota Pickup Hilux 4x4 All Electric Conversion with Hyper9 motor Tesla Battery

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B3T5U_RapIA

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That rocks.

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so where are all these $10K Chinese built EVs i keep hearing everyone cry about? last i saw they were only sold in China.

i guess the Volvo EX30 is built in China (though Belgium starting next year) and that is definitely better than anything Tesla sells for the same price. but it ain't 10K.

only things i can think of are those glorified golf carts you can order online and manually import. but those are jokes for youtube channels. not things actual people are buying and driving around. not even sure they are street legal.

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I heard a Canadian electric vehicle expert last year who said there wasn't a market for cheap electric vehicles in Canada, that consumers weren't interested. It may be a chicken end egg thing, but I have no trouble believing that Canadian vehicle buyers aren't interested in things that aren't pricey SUVs and pickup trucks.

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Canada probably has the same barriers to EVs as Australia. Everyday people routinely drive huge distances, through very isolated places, where getting stranded could easily kill you. EVs have shorter range, take much longer to refuel, and have greater range variability than ICE vehicles. And you can't easily carry spare recharge.

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And EVs seem to be unreliable in the cold.

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Chinese suck at making a business infrastructure here where they could sell them. On top of generally failing environmental or safety regulations

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The US currently* has a 27.5% tariff on them. When you have trade barriers with manufacturing nations, but no local alternative there is not going to be a viable market for the suppliers to consider. They will always prefer to focus on their local markets.

*see what I did there?

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That math 100% does not math. Even with the tarrif, that's still only 12,750, still easily beating the price. It's deeper than simplistic China blaming. They have historically sucked at making the infrastructure necessary to even sell them if they wanted to over here, on top of historically failing to pass environmental regulations or safety regulations. They just suck, are low quality, and yeah most American consumers don't want to buy a Chinese car

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Sales of Chinese made EVs have been increasing in the EU. That is now 8% of that market and will increase to about 15% next year. They only attract a 10% levy across all the EU nations, not 27.5%. It makes more sense to just focus on a market that is much bigger and won't penalise you for trading with them.

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Lol, that's not how businesses operate. They would gladly do it if they could, because they would want money. They aren't being penalized, the consumer is

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Apr 5·edited Apr 5

Not the consumers in the EU. They now have a wider choice of cheaper vehicles than anyone in the USA.

That is exactly how a business operates. By avoiding regulations and bad press in one place, for viable markets with fewer barriers and no barking-mad politicians who want to put a 100% tariff on everything.

Hey, you have the option of opening a fast-food franchise in either Portland or St Louis. The costs are the same for rent and products. You pick the spot that isn't the murder capital of America as it is smarter to minimise your risks, not just consider profit.

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Are you done with your silliness that has zero basis in reality or would you like to whinge on some more?

The tariff doesn't hit them. It hits consumers. Fun fact contrary to your infantile example most businesses would open in both Portland and St Louis.

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Look on the bright side...

That pickumup truck will be a collectors item at many car shows...comedywise anyway...

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Only the ones with flux capacitors.

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