Matt Novak: “On Tuesday, Tesla is expected to report a 40% plunge in operating profit and its first revenue decline in four years.”

“On Tuesday, Tesla is expected to report a 40% plunge in operating profit and its first revenue decline in four years.”

Elon Musk’s Robotaxi Dreams Plunge Tesla Into Chaosfinance.yahoo.com (Bloomberg) -- Elon Musk’s underlings at Tesla Inc. are accustomed to chaos. It comes with the territory of working for a chief executive who sets exacting targets and often abruptly switches directio...

I hope he takes his own solo robotaxi into the sea

Uses the accelerator rivet fix on his personal Cybertruck, puts on his favorite sunglasses, and drives unambiguously into a brick wall, foot to the floor under his own power.

Technobushido

Yeet him into the sun

The Tesla board is toothless. Any normal CEO to oversee a track record like this over the last year would be out.

Since most of the value of the company is based on an irrational messiah complex based on Musk, removing him would cause an instant drop in price. It could recover in the long term if they can get back to being a car company instead of a religious cult, but the short term would be brutal.

except their cars suck, their manufacturing ability is a fraction of that of the main auto companies, and personal electric vehicles are a marginally effective and expensive faux-solution to climate change. really, the only way they survive is as a Musk cult.

their product is the stock price and elon musk, not their cars

I mean, all of that except maybe manufacturing capacity is completely irrelevant to stock price

The cyber truck sucks. The S and Y still get high marks from customers and that Y is selling like CRAY-ZEE. The stock might come back to earth and be reasonably priced as a car company or it will continue to be the cheerleading benchmark for the Cult of Elon.

Agreed, but no facade can exist indefinitely. You already have big players publicly signaling to get out. Cultists alone won't overcome a stampede.

but to be clear, fuck Musk, and fuck battery electric trucks over highly efficient sedans. The oil and car industries really fought to make all of this as bad as possible. 90 Priuses and 10 trucks was always a better solution than 30 F-150 Lightnings and 30 diesel pickups and 40 mid-size SUVs.

They're only marginally effective on their own, though, which is true of almost any solution. Public transit is only marginally effective, if people don't use it. Heat pumps are only marginally effective. Battery electrification is for sure the worst approach, but it _is_ electrification.

David Zaslav would like a word.

(This is not an attempt to defend Musk, both of those idiots should have been out on their asses long ago)

Lowtax! Lowtax! Lowtax!

Lowtax speedrun any percentage

This is legal in the US?

U.S. labor law is essentially non-existent. You can fire anyone at any time under just about any circumstances. It’s called at-will employment and it’s truly a nightmare.

I feel like US society and politics would be transformed if you could magically create widespread awareness in the population of how things work in comparable wealthy nations throughout Europe, or Canada and Australia.

Ha! In 2017, Boeing had opened a plant to S. Carolina, and when the Seattle machinists contract was coming up, they said, we gotta help our non-union brothers and sisters in SC get the benefit. So they launched a union vote in SC. Seattle-area machinists make *good* money, and the SC shop...

... would have gotten the same pay, which would have gone so much furthwry in SC. The *workers* voted it down. Voted down the pay, the protections, the benefits, all of it. 🤷‍♀️

Wouldn't the US response mostly be 'Hey, those guys have really got it wrong'?

My last company saw the price tag on my long term disability claim after I was hit by an intoxicated driver (3000+ miles from my home, passenger, no fault of my own) and we suddenly had a “separation event” right as my short term disability was expiring. Then posted my job with a $5k salary cut.

NZ is a little unique in this respect. ACC (accident compensation) provides comprehensive, no-fault personal injury coverage for all residents & visitors. If you get injured in New Zealand, ACC helps cover your medical and rehabilitation costs, regardless of who was at fault for the injury.

ACC coverage includes everything from injuries at work or car accidents to injuries at home or playing sports. It’s funded by levies on earnings, vehicle registrations, and a portion of petrol taxes, among other things.

Geez, sorry to hear that 😟

Geez, okay, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised, but US labour law often manages that for me. Mind you, the UK has a contract called “zero hour” that does not guarantee the employee any hours of work.

Even if Tesla isn’t contractually obliged to give any notice, you’d think they’d at least give, say, a weeks notice to let people get their house in order. Given that their mission is to improve things for humanity.

Surely Musk understands that firing people on the spot must ruin some people’s lives. But I guess I shouldn’t be surprised if he even gets a little pleasure out of it.

Some states have more protections, but I live in Wisconsin, an at-will state. We can be fired at any time for any reason. That technically excludes discriminatory reasons, but in practice, not really.

In some states, it's illegal for hiring managers to ask about salary history, but Wisconsin has a law specifically protecting their right to ask. The WI GOP is the fucking worst

Yeah, I really fear that we’re going to lose Evers as Governor in the upcoming election, in which case, things will get worse again. Enough damage was done under Walker.

At least with the new maps they won't be guaranteed control of the legislature anymore. It will be disaster if/when they have a trifecta again. I would love if we could follow Michigan's trajectory the last few years but at the very least it's good to keep the GOP out of power

Tesla controls the legislature?

In most places and in most jobs you can be let go at a moment's notice, for no reason at all. It's called "Equal Employment Opportunity." I am not kidding.

Correction, it's called "Right to Work." [that's what the back of my brain was screaming when hit Reply...] If you're in a "Right to Work" state, you don't have to give any notice when quitting, you can just walk out. This right is reciprocal, though, and employers can do that it you, too.

I don’t think that’s entirely accurate. So-called right to work laws are mostly just anti-union laws as I understand it. en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right-t...

Right to work is right wing language intended to disguise union busting. And unless you have signed some crazy contract, you can pretty much walk off a job at any time. (I know I have.)

Anti- laws imposing good faith discharge and other requirements on employers.

It's not right to work. And yes you can be fired for no cause. Unless you're Union or under a contract with clauses (I believe).

You're thinking of "at-will employment".

It’s a truly masterful gambit. A Delaware judge overturned his 2018 pay package, so now he’s speedrunning taking the company back to its 2018 stock valuation.

This line of thinking is so incredibly moronic and shortsighted, only someone as idiotic as David Sacks could have thought of it.

Hope the stock craters

The stock is held up by thousands of irrational retail investors. Reality has very little to do with the price.

Fwiw it's doing very poorly by those people's standards. Still super overvalued though.

If it starts plummeting, even the most hardcore fans will have to evaluate whether they want to lose their shirt or not.

I can’t imagine any serious institutional investor still being in Tesla. The risk has got to be way too high.

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