beta testers aren't strengths by themselves. They just make it a lot easier for Tesla to catch up and test new technology when Elon Musk wants to develop SDCs in earnest.

They don't do any such thing. They're irrelevant. Think through what's involved in developing a SDC and that will become obvious.

What a winning company about to enter a golden era of mass production looks like:

Your opinion is contrary to the opinion of most AI researchers today at least on this particular point.

You fundamentally refuse to accept that Tesla is basically a bet (with a decent probability of success, though probably not to the extent of justifying Tesla's stock price) that Musk can fake it until he makes it, kind of like what he did with pretty much all the companies he's built and sold before.

Right, and my opinion that Tesla was far behind most of the majors on autonomous driving was contrary to all analysts and most of this thread, including people who claim to be working in the industry. Guess who was right?

Also, citation that "most" AI researchers believe that layman customer beta testers are a big leg up for getting autonomous driving built faster or better? I think that's a false and unsupportable claim.
Musk can certainly fake it. He's fantastic at PR, lying, fraud, creating a cult of personality. I've been consistent on that. The question is, can they make it? Must has never succeeded at a competitive business.
What companies has he built and sold that were competing against cutthroat competition? He was involved in an online payments startup in the infancy of the web that got acquired by PayPal for stock, which was a company that later became very valuable and made him rich. I'm not aware of him selling any other companies.

The rest is all rent seeking of various kinds. SolarCity is a bankrupt failure. Tesla is burning cash like crazy, has had to go the market for a large number of secondaries, and is losing a ton of money despite historically low interest rates, a raging bull market, large government subsidies, and little competition as yet.

To me it seems like Musk is good at personal enrichment and picking government subsidy niches to try and capture - he's gotten billions is handouts - but has zero demonstrated success in cutthroat competitive industries. In fact he's demonstrated failure so far in profitable execution, in meeting his own timelines, in moving fast enough.

I would like to know on what rational basis you think he has a decent probability of success vs the major car makers. A startup in this industry has low probability of success as the baseline. Considering that, the next question we ask is: has the CEO consistently made good decisions? Has he delivered on time? Has he moved fast enough? Is competition going to increase or decrease?

There's no rational reason to think he has a > 10% chance of success (meaning a profitable self sustaining business some time in the next 10 years) with TSLA. Rockets are way, way easier and far less capital intensive and far less competitive and far more forgiving of mistakes than profitable volume car manufacturing.

And meanwhile, back in the real world, and not the mind-**** that the fraud, Musk, has managed to push on you all:

Waymo orders thousands of Pacifica minivans in push to open ride-hailing service
A public ride hailing service on city streets with all of its complex traffic is going live later this year, with many thousands of vehicles and no driver.

Tesla are still trying to figure out how not to hit parked fire trucks, and avoid swerving lanes on the highway when the light changes.

Hands up - who was enough of a dumbass to believe that Tesla was in anything but last place? Let alone in first place? That you believed differently shows the level of pure bull**** that Musk has managed to download into your (non-working, sheep-like) brains.

I agree with your thoughts on TSLA as a whole. Yet where I come to a different conclusion is how much it matters (or not) that musk cant keep his end. Yes almost all their goals arent going to be met, yes musk has most traits of your typical insane fraudster. However if you consider people on this site to have sheeple mentality you must realize the avg 30+ upper class (at which TSLA aims) is completely blind to all of what youre rightfully stating. My mother doesnt know **** about cars, AI or tech stuff in general. She sure af almost ordered. At this point im quite certain that it really has no relevance what goals he doesnt meet, he will just create new goals every quarter and so on and so forth.

Oh for sure. Eventually reality catches up though. Tesla is priced for perfection and then some, even assuming Musk hits every fanciful claim he's made on time and under budget.

The reason this matters (and i mention it) is because people need to realize that you have to give very low probability to his timelines and future predictions. You have to 100% discount anything Musk says, because it's worthless. He's not a reliable information source. In fact, betting against what he said being true is pretty reliable.

Take the people here. They don't realize it, but they've had their mind directly ****ed with by a charlatan. Part of the reason they bet on Tesla was because they thought Musk was ahead on autonomy. Why did they think that? How did they not get the right answer even with the evidence laid out amply for them? There's something instructive in that.

Also, it says a lot about Musk. There are two reasons he would have made the claims he did about the current state of Tesla autonomy and its future:

1) He's a charlatan who's deliberately lying to and defrauding investors and customers
2) He's so incredibly stupid and lacking in technical savvy and basic sense that he actually thought his predictions were possible or likely.

I believe it's (1). If it's (2), which is possible given his numerous very stupid decisions at the helm of Tesla such as too much vertical integration, lack of beta testing and industry standard planning of M3, pushing too far on autopilot such that he risked the company and his MobileEye relationship for zero gain, gull wing doors, etc, then Tesla shareholders need to look out below, because (2) means that Tesla is a guaranteed failure.

"Reality" never caught up to Amazon which had a lot of same red flags (valuation implied 100+% market share of the relevant market, bleeding cash, underdelivering on promises). More importantly, SpaceX had similar red flags and Musk pulled it off anyway.

I am actually onboard with most of your arguments. I said from way before that Musk's approach to AI is iffy and Musk's major advantage is that he has a much lower threshold to market. I even said that Tesla's battery technology edge isn't its moat although Tesla probably still does have some lead (a year or two) but that's not a sustainable competitive advantage.

The most likely explanation for Musk is he lives by the motto "Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you'll land among the stars." At least that's how investors and many of his cultists perceive him, in large part because that's exactly how Musk has delivered in the past with his enterprises. This is actually a trait pretty common amongst engineers, it is just especially pronounced in Musk.

I wish I could call Paypal non-competitive and then convince them to allow me to become the largest shareholder. Guess Peter Thiel just really really liked Elon.

eta: Wish I could fake 165m to 20b+. Sounds like the same shade thrown at Trump.

The reality distortion field is active. It may be made of unrealistic promises (and even outright lies) but it works and it has value.

He can raise absurd amounts of capital at great rates. That has tremendous value.

The most annoying thing about TS rambling is the fact that financially, anything he's said was a money loser and we are still at levels close to a full bankruptcy if you believed his thesis that TSLA was worth 0.

Also, almost all of his sources are complete and utter nonsense, authors with no credibility and always look like something that comes up #5 at Google if you attach "Musk liar TSLA Tesla **** trash charlatan" to any search.

Elon Musk is a dreamer and no one takes his claims at face value. It's absurd to even think this and it makes TS look stupid when he thinks I believe every word Elon is saying. He has still pulled off tremendous things and saying private rocket launching is easy, is just fantasy thinking. Meanwhile, TS is down on every bet he's ever made against companies that actually disrupt a current business.

'Elon Musk is a dreamer and no one takes his claims at face value."

LOOOOOOOOOOOOL, sums it up nicely.

Another way of saying the same thing: "don't mind the securities fraud!"

Good to see he's really focused on the big problems.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/...hwart-customs/

Model 3 ripped by a highly respected car build critic:

Tesla Model 3 Teardown By Engineering Firm Reveals Quality Flaws Like 'A Kia In The '90s'
The "Alien Dreadnought" and the "most advanced car manufacturing facility in the world" and "the machine that makes the machine" were PR lines to fool morons into buying/not selling at $380.

When does it become obvious to even the Musk mouth breather brigagde you've been conned? Autonomous driving lies and fraud, false Model 3 production claims, attacking journalists who wrote the truth about the state of production months ago...

Those flamethrowers do look cool though. I wish I had got one now.

I don't get what the point of things like this or the Boring Company is except to distract from all the problems the model 3 is having. I bet we're not far off from Musk transitioning into a chairman like role, you'd think the most important product of his career is what he'd be focusing 100% on.

Quality flaws like a '90s Kia is indeed some harsh criticism. Enough to make me stay far, far away.

If you guys are actually considering that guy a credible source then there is really not much more to discuss. His bias is absurd. It is pretty impressive that you are using this as even a single data point. Here is a data point: I own the car. It is awesome and the fit/finish is perfect. There are going to be some growing pains in production. My car is in the first 2k built so it is going to get better. maybe find something real to hate on.

Let's see:

Red corner:
1. Well known car diassembler who does this for a living and has a reputation to protect
2. Copious complaints from real owners validating precisely what he's saying

vs
Blue corner:
3. Anonymous Musk ultra fanboy on the Internet who's long the stock and happens to like the particular single car he got.

I mean I like hearing your opinion, but it's farcical that you think this "single data point" is less reliable than your claims. It's like arguing the merits of e-Meters with Scientologists. Once you've drunk the koolaid, it's gg.

Listen, I get it. I love electric cars too. Hell, the little ones I hire to zip around in France with their horrific design and all kinds of flaws and horrible fit and finish and no leg room, I choose over a Mercedes or BMW. Electric cars are great. Performance electric cars are hella fun. This is a point against Musk though, not in favor. I'll bet you'll overlook nearly any flaw as long as you have a performance electric drive. And you're wealthy and can do that - this isn't your day-to-day car (you have a Model S, which is 3x more expensive and ultra low volume, so much more time and money can be spent on manual quality control) and you're all-in on Musk. Great. You're a first adopter with ultra low standards and this product give you a raging boner.

But the masses aren't like you and will care about these kinds of flaws because they're not rich and they're not a tech groupie. More importantly, the existence of those show huge failures of planning and design and testing, which means a few things:

- Costs are going to be very high, which erodes margins
- Musk has no ****ing clue what he's doing at car manufacturing; he's incompetent

Both are big weights on the future of Tesla, especially at this price. A single recall once you have volume and a much lower price point ($35K vs $100K) can wipe out a fledgling company. And Musk clearly is terrible at quality control and properly planning car design. It's not good.

Another thing that will send them under? If 10% of cars coming off the lots are majorly flawed. That will still leave 90% very happy customers and a business that's going down the toilet.

Also, where do you practice medicine? I will try to avoid doctors in that state if you can't grasp the simple statistical logic in that last paragraph, and hence realize that your data point is completely irrelevant, while flawed data points and the nature of those flaws (which highlight manufacturing procedures) are highly relevant.

But I'm happy you like your car and are enjoying life. Really.

I am not going to engage in this discussion with you. The guy starts his video by complaining about the door handles and then admits he has a bad wrist so he needs 2 hands. I mean that's just so ****ing stupid the entire credibility of anything he says goes right out the window. Then you want to insult me about my medical practice. Lol.

Your read is pretty far off. I don't own even own TSLA. I own 2 cars and just try to provide some real world value since it sounds like you haven't even see the model 3 and prefer to spew nonsense from clickbait internet garbage.

So because he's personable on an Internet video, all of his expertise is out the window? His criticisms are wrong? The fact that his criticisms mirror legions of actual Tesla owners is invalidated? The fact that you have a car you're happy with is a more powerful data point?

All of these positions are absurd and illogical. In a trained medical professional, they're pretty worrying.

The fact is that if 90% of cars are reaching customers in a perfect state, Tesla have a very serious problem. Which means that 1000 positive data are irrelevant. This is about flaws in manufacturing and it's only the cause, type and rate that matters. 2 sigmas go bankrupt these days in manufacturing, while 6 sigmas dominate the space. Yet in 2 sigmas, over 90% of people are happy and have a perfect product.

The nature of the flaws here show a pretty terrible quality control. This stuff just shouldn't happen in modern car manufacturing, let alone the "Alien Dreadnought" that Musk has been spewing about.

This car should not have been manufactured if their processes were even low average quality. And it certainly shouldn't have left the lot.
Far enough re: owning TSLA stock.

And I like reading your take so please don't take this as discouragement. I was just smacked in the face by the profound illogic in your post. I'd expect that from a not-too-bright college student or cult inductee maybe, but not from you.

@ToothSayer - At what price levels would you exit your short position as in take your profits or throw in the towel?

It's never been a secret that Tesla cars got serious quality issues.

I have actually seen Tesla cited as a successful example of applying the MVP concept to manufacturing.