
Elon Musk Gambled Tesla to Save SolarCity - AndrewBissell
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2019/08/how-elon-musk-gambled-tesla-to-save-solarcity
======
docker_up
The purchase of SolarCity by Tesla was the single dumbest thing Elon Musk did
and it has dire consequences for Tesla the car company. Shareholders
definitely have a great chance to sue Musk because he did not do this in the
best interest of his shareholders, it's in the best interest of his cousin.
Co-mingling all parts of his companies (SpaceX buying SolarCity Bonds) is a
huge red flag that reeks of corporate malfeasance. He should have let
SolarCity die, it would have come back as a stronger company once the initial
investors were wiped out.

~~~
dragontamer
> The purchase of SolarCity by Tesla was the single dumbest thing Elon Musk
> did

Why was it a bad move for Elon Musk?

Elon Musk owned many SolarCity shares (in fact, Elon Musk was the chairman of
SolarCity). If SolarCity would go bankrupt, Elon Musk would have lost a lot of
money and power. Elon Musk saved SolarCity to save his own skin and money. Its
not really that hard to imagine.

Now Tesla shareholders, who overwhelmingly voted for the merger, made a big
mistake. But Tesla shareholders own the company, they are allowed to make
whatever decisions they want.

Its definitely a sketchy move, but Elon Musk did it correctly. Elon Musk
recused his voted, and left it up to shareholder vote. Tesla shareholders only
have themselves to blame for this move.

EDIT: Even if you voted "no" and were overridden by all of your fellow
shareholders, you had plenty of time to sell your Tesla shares to avoid this
disaster. Tesla bought SolarCity back in 2016. Plenty of time to sell if you
were keeping up with the news.

~~~
xkjkls
> Now Tesla shareholders, who overwhelmingly voted for the merger, made a big
> mistake. But Tesla shareholders own the company, they are allowed to make
> whatever decisions they want.

They voted for the merger based on Musk's claim that SolarCity had a good
financial position and that they were releasing a revolutionary solar shingle
product. Both of those were wrong.

~~~
dragontamer
Note: the financial positioning of SolarCity was obvious to anyone who could
read a 10k. SolarCity never made a profit, and it spent tons of money chasing
imaginary products (similar to a lot of other Musk-based properties). 10k
documents exist for a reason.
[https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1408356/000156459017...](https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1408356/000156459017003084/scty-10k_20161231.htm)

In 2016, SolarCity lost a full, solid, $Billion. The Tesla investors who voted
for SolarCity / Tesla merger has no excuse on this part: all information was
public, and no fraud has been detected in any of these numbers (yet).

> and that they were releasing a revolutionary solar shingle product

That one... I'll blame Musk for for sure. But investors really should have
done their own proper leg-work and analyzed SolarCity's financial position on
their own.

~~~
FPGAhacker
> In 2016, SolarCity lost a full, solid, $Billion.

Amateurs. Uber does that every quarter.

~~~
dehrmann
I'd love to see Uber's projections on what fare chances to do the demand
curve. How much would they have to raise fares (accounting for decreased
demand) to break even? If it's <5%, they're actually in a pretty good spot.

~~~
dragontamer
Uber doesn't have a yearly 10k yet. But their 10Q (quarterly) data for first-
half (aka: 1H) 2019 is as follows:

$6.2 Billion in revenue, $(6.2) Billion in net loss.

So Uber roughly, has to increase prices by 100% to break even.
[http://d18rn0p25nwr6d.cloudfront.net/CIK-0001543151/bb9ba252...](http://d18rn0p25nwr6d.cloudfront.net/CIK-0001543151/bb9ba252-3fd3-4633-b57e-2de50831f71d.pdf#FY2019Q2FINANCIALSTATE_HTM_SA42F159CECEB567FB9E80911DB0CB0E7)

I wish I were kidding. But that's what the data says. Page 5 of the above
link, Revenue: $6,265 and Net (6,262) if you want to ctrl-F things.

Uber spent $6 Billion more this half-year on Cost-of-Sales, R&D, and
Administrative costs (compared to the 1H 2018).

\------------

Operational income / Operational Margins are negative as well. Sooo... yeah...
somewhere around 100% price increases across the board for Uber to break even.

Realistically, Uber will only become profitable if they cut back on marketing
(aka: giving incentives to drivers), raise rates, and cut back on their R&D
spending (all this self-driving car nonsense... Uber isn't rich enough to fund
such a project).

------
spiderfarmer
For all the negativity here about Musk and his business decisions, there is
something to be said for integrating transport and energy services in one
great package.

I consult for a large energy conglomerate that wants to get into this market
from the energy suppliers side, but the problem is that they are completely
clueless when it comes to expanding beyond their traditional business. In
their vision, they'll supply customers with solar panels, an EV charger, home
battery, heating solutions and as a backup their traditional business: gas and
electricity. All integrated in a nice package.

It took them two years to set up a department that sells their first product
(besides gas and electricity): an outdated EV charger, from a company they
bought that stopped innovating after acquisition and is now lagging behind
competition. Not a car, just the charger.

~~~
pmorici
Maybe Musk will be proven right in time but having followed Tesla for a long
time and having recently purchased a Model 3 (It's an incredible car). The
Solar City purchase is the one thing that never made a lot of sense to me.

Even if you start from the premise that it makes sense for Tesla to be in the
solar business, it's hard to rationalize that the best way to break into that
market was to buy a debt laden solar panel installer.

I don't buy the short's narrative that this is anything like an Enron style
fraud but the only point that the Tesla short sellers are a little bit right
on, among the mounds of BS they publish, is that the Solar City acquisition
was a shitty deal and Tesla would be better of today had it not happened. That
said I don't think it is going to sink the company the Model 3 is just too
good.

~~~
semi-extrinsic
AFAICT they are still losing money on every Model 3 though?

Doesn't matter that your cars are really good if you're not profitable. Just
look at Saab.

~~~
marvin
All of Tesla’s models have a healthy gross margin, meaning that their
economics get healthier with every car they sell.

Tesla as a whole still operates at a loss, but that’s to be expected with the
massive expansion of production capacity they’ve been continuously doing since
2012.

~~~
semi-extrinsic
OK, I should rephrase that. They are not losing money on every car. But they
are still far from being profitable selling hundreds of thousands of $35k
cars.

According to the letter Musk himself posted in early January of 2019, he said
they can squeeze out a tiny profit when selling the top end Model 3s at $45k+.
And that they have a big effort ahead to make a profit selling $35k cars. This
is a far cry away from a healthy gross margin.

[https://www.tesla.com/blog/tesla-company-
update?redirect=no](https://www.tesla.com/blog/tesla-company-
update?redirect=no)

~~~
legacynl
There is a healthy margin on every car they sell. They just invested so much
that they are still not making a profit. The way I'm reading it is that they
can make a profit if they sell them at 45k, but they rather sell them at 35k
to sell MORE. Expansion has a cost, and it's the reason why they're not making
a profit.

~~~
semi-extrinsic
No, the point is they are currently not selling any at $35k. They are filling
the high-end orders first, hoping that they can do $35k profitably in the end.

~~~
kingnothing
You can walk in to a Tesla store and buy the $35k car today. It's just not for
sale on their web site.

------
smacktoward
This bit seems pretty damning:

 _> As SolarCity struggled to raise money from institutional investors, it
began offering individuals a chance to buy what it called Solar Bonds. (“Now
you can get paid while driving the solar revolution,” the marketing material
said.) But there were few takers—so other parts of the Musk empire took up the
slack. According to the shareholder lawsuit, SpaceX acquired $255 million of
the bonds._

Other than Musk's involvement in both, what's the situation where a company
like SpaceX sees a need to plow $255 million into debt obligations issued by a
solar panel installer?

~~~
btilly
SpaceX's stated goal is "occupy Mars".

Being able to land and deploy solar panels at scale is essential to this goal.
And Musk has learned the hard way not to trust third party suppliers that he
doesn't control.

SpaceX's aspirational goal is to launch something Mars-wards in the 2022
window to identify where the base will be and have some resources. Then send
several vehicles and a few people in 2025 to set up a mission. Primary on that
mission is to deploy solar panels, and start making methane+oxygen from CO2,
water and energy. This is both for a return trip and for people to breathe.
Then in 2027 send the first trip that can make a return flight. (Those dates
are set by the fact that the Earth and Mars come into a good conjunction for
launching from one to the other every 26 months.)

Musk says "aspirational". I think "crazy". But bump those by 2-5 years and it
becomes barely plausible. And the end goal sounds less crazy now than it did 5
years ago. When it sounded less crazy than it was 11 years ago when we all
were laughing at him.

And if he succeeds, the Mars colony could come to be worth more to SpaceX than
its satellite launch business. By a lot.

~~~
joering2
Very interesting, but can you elaborate how we could benefit from colonizing
Mars? Even more so - how could SpaceX be much more worth by being able to go
to Mars, and how others wouldn't be able to achieve similar step sometime
after them (depriving SpaceX from exclusivity of operation)

Mars is much smaller than Earth with much more hostile environment. I heard
some ideas of growing trees or putting air on Mars, but just to adjust a flow
of a river on Earth could cost millions of dollars; if you add complexity to
get it done on Mars I don't think a price tag could be even put on it.

Visiting Mars - sure who wouldn't want it, but other than biologist and
geologist, I doubt masses would want to migrate and live there, making SpaceX
worth billions in process (that assuming somehow SpaceX would be given an
exclusivity to park their rockets on Mars - a body to give such approval
doesn't even exist and I doubt any single country can claim Mars' ownership)

~~~
btilly
Most people will not want to move to Mars, just as very few Europeans wanted
to move to the New World in the 1500s.

However while relatively few people want to move to Mars, it is a large
absolute number. For example a few years ago when Mars One called for
volunteers for a one way trip to Mars, they got 200,000 people volunteering.
Even filtering for people whose education and skills would make them useful,
they had a large number.

One estimate that I saw said that a viable colony would require about 100,000
people to move over a century. And a person leaving Earth can reasonably spend
their life savings to do so. The value proposition is essentially sell your
house, use the money to move to Mars. SpaceX is planning to make the trip
barely above cost. But don't forget. They will be landing on a planet where
basic infrastructure, starting with energy, oxygen and tunnels, are provided
by SpaceX. That's going to be billions per year. Of course it will be a long
time before that colony is self-sustaining. But when it is, those
infrastructure basics will be worth a lot.

As for a second contender, developing a rocket that can compete with SpaceX
takes over a decade, and many billions of dollars. And then when you try to
travel to Mars, you're going to be landing on a place where the infrastructure
is owned by SpaceX. Musk is likely to welcome the competition...and charge top
dollar for fuel for a return trip. So you'll have to invest billions more. And
once you've done so, you'll be competing against an established competitor who
is charging thin margins. And you still won't be in that lucrative
infrastructure business.

As for who owns it legally...I believe that the people who live there will
claim the land that they settle. And will create their own laws. They would
mostly come from the USA where legal tradition resolves all property disputes
in favor of squatter's rights. There will be room for all for a long time, but
guess who the first and biggest squatters would be?

~~~
jacques_chester
I think everyone else would conclude that Musk is welcome to have the Mars
monopoly.

There's nothing there you can't get on Earth without the hassle of climbing
out of a gravity well, schlepping across in front of a 24-hr supercharged
X-ray machine, then climbing back down into another gravity well, then
gathering whatever it is you felt is worth a hundred billion dollars of
investment, waiting 2 years for the planets to align again, climbing back out
of the gravity well you descended into, crossing the same X-ray moat, then
finally returning to Earth and discovering some cheap bastard got it all from
a mine in Australia.

------
martythemaniak
Well, Tesla is one long stream of gambles. You dont get to school an
established, global, trillion dollar industry without taking risks.

The only notable thing here is that hating on Musk is really popular these
days. So the failed gambles (this, falcon doors, the initial overautomation of
the Model 3 production, etc) will be highlighted and mocked, while the
successful gambles will go unmentioned or incorporated as a matter-of-fact
developments.

Running Tesla stories through a selection bias filter is really useful, as
it'll discard most stories that pop up.

~~~
seem_2211
Pretty unsurprising really - sure, hating on Musk is popular, but it's mostly
a reaction to the fawning uncritical gaze most people give him, and the way
he's portrayed as this genius who is amazing at executing.

Elon Musk is great at promising stuff, and then terrible at executing. For
every promise he fulfills there are 20 that he doesn't. But sure, the guy who
flies private everywhere and shitposts more than I do is "working 100 hour
weeks" and "cares for the environment."

~~~
martythemaniak
I have a buddy - amicable, smart, did great in a tough school, did even better
career wise, responsible for dozens of people, etc - who nevertheless explodes
with anger and hatred and goes on 15-minutes tirades if someones brings up
Musk in any positive light whatsoever. It is quite a shocking sight.

"Reaction" is the key word here. The opposite of a fanboy is not a hater, it
is the person who doesn't care. The fanboy and the hater are two sides of the
same coin - they both develop an obsession with a person and define their
personalities as a function of this person. Whether that function is love or
hate is secondary.

The way out of his is to ignore him, or judge him by his work. He sells cars -
really good cars. For example, they have the best range and are incredibly
safe. Your emotional reaction won't make you car's range go down, or make you
any less safe in a crash.

~~~
toast0
> The way out of his is to ignore him

And any thread that involves him; I'm not good at this, but I'm trying. The
reason Elon Musk inspires such hate is because he is constantly PRing
(generously) unverifiable claims, but rarely gets any consequences from it. If
he would let his work speak for itself, there would be less haters; his
companies are clearly doing some things well.

It's kind of a Steve Jobs thing, but Jobs rarely made forward looking claims
-- sure his claims of invention were irritating to some, but they were about a
product that existed at the time of the claim.

------
whatok
If anyone is unfamiliar with the author, she was one of the first mainstream
media authors to be critical on Enron and eventually wrote a book on Enron as
well.

~~~
olivermarks
She wrote 'Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room' subsequently made into an
excellent film. I suspect we will be seeing 'Tesla: The Smartest Guys in the
Room' soon. It still rankles me that Nicolai Tesla's name is associated with
all this.

~~~
brandonmenc
> It still rankles me that Nicolai Tesla's name is associated with all this.

Why not? He was also an unstable "genius" who couldn't figure out the business
side of things. Seems appropriate.

------
Animats
There are real "solar shingles", but not from Tesla/Solar City.[1] The big
player is CertainTeed, which makes roof components. CertainTeed is for real;
you can order those. The strange thing is CertainTeed makes both regular and
solar shingles, but don't offer a matching set. DeSol has a product line of
roof components, with solar, non-solar, and edge parts that all fit together.
Theirs looks good, but may be vaporware.

Tesla does have some "solar shingle" installations, but few; they're more like
demos than a production product.[2]

The big problem with "solar shingles", which are just solar panels mounted
flush to the roof or as the roof surface, is cooling. Most solar panels have
air space behind them. Without that, these things run very hot. Dow backed out
of solar shingles several years ago because theirs kept overheating. So, no
thin-film solar cells in that application.

Somebody should have gotten this right by now. These things have been around
since 2013 or so, and they're still marginal.

[1] [https://www.solarpowerworldonline.com/2019/04/the-latest-
on-...](https://www.solarpowerworldonline.com/2019/04/the-latest-on-solar-
roofs-solar-shingles-and-solar-tiles/)

[2] [https://www.teslarati.com/tesla-solar-roof-long-term-
review-...](https://www.teslarati.com/tesla-solar-roof-long-term-review-
homeowner-insights-elon-musk-solar-tiles/)

~~~
Animats
Amusingly, the DeSol web site has a copyright date of 2023 on it. I sent them
a message asking if the product existed yet. They sent back, from a GMail
account, "Who are you". I replied that I'd signed my message with my name and
sent it from my own domain, what more did they want? Asked "You're sending
from GMail, who are you?" Got back "(HN does not do Unicode emoji)". So, not
sure what to think of that outfit. They seem to have a good sense of
aesthetics; no idea if they can make it work.

~~~
hayyyyydos
> Amusingly, the DeSol web site has a copyright date of 2023 on it.

It's a Wix website (which probably tells you a bit about the company) - many
of them have Copyright 2023 on them[1]. It's a phenomenon I've noticed for a
while, but never worked out why. If anyone knows the reason I'd love to know.

[1]
[https://www.google.com/search?channel=fs&q="copyright+2023"&...](https://www.google.com/search?channel=fs&q="copyright+2023"&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8)

------
jacquesm
HN discussion at the time:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11949434](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11949434)

~~~
slavik81
A few highlights:

> unclebucknasty - Wow. Sounds like a huge shell game that Musk has set up
> among his companies. It's betting big, which should be expected from Musk,
> but it seems a bit odd to be so personally intertwined with public companies
> and making decisions accordingly. It also seems unduly burdensome to the
> companies in the "portfolio" which might otherwise perform well.

> a13n - Some people think SolarCity is doing terribly because they're losing
> so much money. Actually them losing money is an incredibly great sign for
> the long run (assuming they don't run out of money - which Elon won't let
> happen).

> partiallypro - The CEO is his cousin, but he has recused himself of voting
> on the deal. I doubt the SEC & FTC will care; Wall Street on the other hand,
> I think they all see what this is about.

------
mrnobody_67
Charlie Munger said - "I've never seen a board vote against the CEO when their
livelihood depends on keeping the job".

Boards are dysfunctional, in the best of times.

------
admiralspoo
What are actually Elon Musk's engineering talents? It seems he is not much
more than a marketeer. It's not even clear his visions of reusable rockets and
electric cars were original...he is known to take credit for subordinate's
ideas and achievements.

~~~
thecleaner
Cult of personality mostly. However Electric cars are actually useless for the
environment without renewable energy. So it probably made sense to save Solar
City. This whole thing seems like a long term plan for building an absolute
monopoly - like what would happen if oil companies also owned all the cars.

~~~
kelnos
> _However Electric cars are actually useless for the environment without
> renewable energy._

Isn't even a modern coal-fired power plant cleaner than the ICE in a car? It
certainly isn't perfect to have fossil fuel sources powering the electricity
used to charge a car, but I'd much rather isolate and improve CO2 capture at
coal-fired plants over having 250+ million polluters spread out over the
entire country.

------
wil421
>the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, announced criminal
charges against a handful of Cuomo staffers for rigging the construction bids
for the Buffalo Billion program to favor the governor’s campaign donors. The
man tapped by Cuomo to oversee the taxpayer subsidies, as well as a leading
donor who received a $225 million contract to build out the Buffalo factory,
were both convicted last year of conspiring to rig the bids.

At the end of the article they mention the lack of car by New York State. Of
course they don’t care, the decision makers already got what they and their
rich friends wanted.

------
michael_madsen
I have solar panels on my roof. The were installed on top of regular roof
tiles, since my house was already built by the time I was ready to install
solar panels. But if you are building a new house, I think it makes a lot of
sense to use Tesla Solar Roof. The roof looks great, you get clean energy and
the warranty is for the lifetime of your house, or infinity (whichever comes
first). From a personal standpoint, I wish these had been available when I
built my house. As for the gamle on Tesla/Musk part, I would say that this is
a long term, strategic move. More an more energy will come in the form of
electricity. The solar panel market is full of chinese panels to put on top of
your existing roof tiles. But in the future, when the "normal" will be to
generate your own electricity, people will want the cool roof that looks like
a normal roof. Not then weird "add-on".

------
chiefalchemist
One person's "gambled" is often another person's (e.g.,
entrepreneur)opportunity. Musk and his ilk are where they are for a reason.
They don't fear risk, they go toe-to-toe with it and mitigate it.

Words like "gambled" fit a narrative and get attention, but they are also
misleading.

~~~
AndrewBissell
Musk and his ilk are where they are because of luck and enormous amounts of
political rent seeking and outside capital to paper over losses.

Musk's career arc is "internet yellow pages sold in the dotcom bubble" ->
"payments company he was drummed out of so Peter Thiel could clean up his
mess" -> "rockets and electric cars which have needed huge infusions of
government and investor money to stay afloat since their inception"

------
omarforgotpwd
More negative news on Tesla drawn from interviews with short sellers. The
journalist on this is famous for working with Jim Chanos, the short seller who
was involved in exposing Enron. He is shorting Tesla and thinks it's the next
Enron, and got this journalist to push his short narrative.

I don't buy it. The economics of solar are great long term, and selling it
with electric cars makes a lot of sense because a) EV buyers use a lot of
power, and can save a lot of money with solar b) the electric car batteries
also work great for storing solar energy to use at night

What they're offering to consumers with their new $50 a month solar rental
program is the ability to have a completely off the grid sustainable energy
solution for your car and your home. That is huge. Have you heard about the
multi-trillion dollar petroleum industry?

Also the cars drive themselves better and better every day. Go try it. It's
not perfect, but the car fucking drives itself with an object detection neural
net and some traffic law heuristics. It's fucking amazing. Go try it if you
don't believe me

This short bet will blow up in their faces

~~~
xkjkls
> The economics of solar are great long term

Why? It seems like a flooded and commodified utility market, the opposite of
something with great economics.

~~~
omarforgotpwd
I'm talking about the economics of powering cars with renewable energy rather
than oil: [http://ieefa.org/bnp-paribas-oil-losing-the-economic-
battle-...](http://ieefa.org/bnp-paribas-oil-losing-the-economic-battle-with-
renewables-evs/)

Whether the panels themselves are a commodity doesn't matter -- it may
actually be advantageous by lowering the capital cost required for
installation. The user wants to buy the whole experience -- the panels, with a
home battery to store and serve as a backup maybe, and a car all controlled
through one app.

Right now you can go on Tesla.com and in five minutes you can order a Tesla
for lease at $399 / month and rent a solar system for your roof at $50 a month
to fuel the car. You're completely off the grid, prepared for the apocalypse,
and no polluting the air. That's very compelling.

~~~
xkjkls
I'm talking about the economics and moat that Tesla has itself, with which the
fact that the panels are a commodity matter a great deal. This makes Tesla a
servicing/financing company, and why do they have a systematic advantage at
that over competition? That doesn't seem like a high margin business that is
going to justify Tesla's lofty valuation (especially when their solar
installations have gone down close to ~90% since the acquisition of SolarCity,
and their competitors now have greater market share than they do).

~~~
omarforgotpwd
One advantage they have is that they try and pre-assemble systems into fixed 4
kw systems that are easier to put together on site

Another advantage they have is a very simple online ordering system -- try
getting a quote for solar somewhere else vs ordering on Tesla.com

another advantage they have is asthetics

and also integration with the same app you use to control your car

~~~
xkjkls
> Another advantage they have is a very simple online ordering system -- try
> getting a quote for solar somewhere else vs ordering on Tesla.com

Is this really a long term advantage? One, producing a website to have simple
online ordering is not a problem for any company on this sort of scale, and
two, how big an advantage is this? This isn't a sort of purchase on a whim
like a new book on Amazon, these are long term planning decisions for a given
family.

They're going to do the math and figure out what might actually be best for
their electricity usage, home, and financial situation. Simple ordering isn't
that huge of an advantage.

> another advantage they have is asthetics

Again, why is this something not easily copied?

> and also integration with the same app you use to control your car

Is this really that big an advantage? I don't know who is making multi-
thousand dollar a year decisions based on this.

------
smallgovt
There weren't many pertinent facts or details included in this story.

The article focuses on how poorly SolarCity seems to be performing post-
acquisition. However, hindsight is 20/20\. The fact that the acquisition
turned out to be a mess doesn't make it a fraudulent transaction -- many if
not most large acquisitions don't live up to expectations.

The facts that need to be considered to deem this fraudulent are the
data/arguments that drove the decision to acquire SolarCity at the time of the
acquisition. Mainly, were the arguments to acquire SolarCity honest and
factual? Here is the acquisition pitch deck that Tesla put out at the time of
acquisition: [http://www.solarwakeup.com/wp-
content/uploads/2016/10/Tesla-...](http://www.solarwakeup.com/wp-
content/uploads/2016/10/Tesla-SolarCity-Investor-Presentation.pdf)

Unsurprisingly, the author of the article doesn't address any of the primary
points contained in this pitch deck.

------
munherty
Elon has been quite open about the fact that he wants to just try new things.
If things work great he gets the shift economy's, otherwise he just keeps
going to the next thing. If you can't get with it then hop off

------
at-fates-hands
This looks like a very complicated pump and dump case.

------
auslander
He should stop smoking.

------
SmileyRedBall
The full title is ‘“HE’S FULL OF SHIT”: HOW ELON MUSK FOOLED INVESTORS, BILKED
TAXPAYERS, AND GAMBLED TESLA TO SAVE SOLARCITY’. Makes me wonder are we in the
middle of yet another Tesla shorting cycle. Buy some shorts, trash Tesla in
the media, wait for stock to drop, then cashout.

------
boyadjian
Tesla is a Ponzi scheme.

~~~
standyro
Ponzi schemes don't produce anything of value, like amazing supercars that
cost <$50k. (I'm biased)

By that same logic, any Y Combinator "unicorn" startup is a ponzi scheme.
Overvalued, unrealistic investor expectations.

Granted, this SolarCity deal was definitely not in Tesla's best interest...
having chatted with a former engineer there who left because of their
dysfunction.

~~~
xkjkls
Most Ponzi schemes usually do produce something of value for those who cash
out early enough. I'm not saying the comparison is apt though.

~~~
kelnos
Do they, though? My impression was that most Ponzi schemes generate _cash_ for
early participants by paying them with cash infusions from later participants.
Nothing of value is created there; it's just taking money from suckers and
giving it to unethical speculators.

~~~
xkjkls
That's still value for the early investors.

~~~
kelnos
Sure, but you're splitting hairs; that's not how the parent used the term
"value".

------
DanCarvajal
Musketeer's trying to keep this link off the front page.

------
wfbarks
He (and all the brilliant people at his companies who work so hard) are
delivering to humanity, a future where we produce and consume energy
sustainably, and are out in space exploring our solar system. Everyone at the
companies is there because on some level they believe in this vision. So I
(and many Tesla shareholders like me) am willing to look the other way with
respect to his fiduciary responsibility.

There are better targets out there.

~~~
dragontamer
So was Enron, the company who was creating the future of energy. A future in
which we produce and consume energy more sustainably.

Enron wasn't tackling space challenges, so I guess there's a slight difference
there.

Look: fraud is fraud. If someone is lying to the public, it is wrong on that
basis alone. Elon Musk could have done everything the same and simply NOT lied
about it, and things would have gone far smoother.

The workers at the Gigafactory2 plant have been disenfranchised due to this
SolarCity issue.

~~~
woodandsteel
>So was Enron, the company who was creating the future of energy. A future in
which we produce and consume energy more sustainably.

What in heavens name are you talking about? Are you really claiming that Enron
was in the business of replacing petroleum and natural gas with solar and wind
energy?

~~~
liability
> _" Enron Wind Systems, part of the Enron group, were manufacturers of wind
> turbines. The group was formed after the acquisition in January 1997 of Zond
> Corporation of California, the largest US developer of wind-powered
> electricity at the time. On May 10, 2002, following the Enron scandal,
> General Electric acquired the assets of Enron Wind Systems continuing and
> thriving as GE Wind Energy, after which the empty shell of Enron Wind ceased
> to exist."_

[https://tethys.pnnl.gov/institution/enron-
wind](https://tethys.pnnl.gov/institution/enron-wind)

------
wfbarks
If Elon Musk gets taken down, then humanity should probably just throw in the
towel.

We (humanity) are in a boat that is taking on water rapidly. The guy working
the hardest to patch the leaks is Elon Musk and all those that work at his
companies (they definitely aren't working there for the money or the
lifestyle)

Solar City is a part of this vision.

Articles like this and the comments section here at hacker news are making me
very depressed about our prospects.

~~~
whenchamenia
If elon musk was anywhere near the best humanity has to offer, I would agree.
Thankfully, the facts suggest otherwise.

------
patagonia
Damned if Elon does. Damned if he don’t. “An electric vehicle is worthless
without electric charging stations.” So Tesla makes a risky move to save one
such company that happens to provide an answer to that criticism. People pile
on. Predictably.

~~~
danso
Is SolarCity an exclusive, or otherwise prominent producer of the solar panels
required for Tesla charging stations?

~~~
mikeash
Solar panels aren’t required at all.

~~~
amluto
Not only are they not required, they aren’t present at any station I’ve seen.

Some supercharger stations do have an interesting thing: a big battery bank
with a four-quadrant utility meter. I assume Tesla has come up with some
clever billing arrangement that combines peak shaving, demand response, TOU
arbitrage, and selling reactive power to minimize the cost of operating the
station. Otherwise it makes little sense to me to collocate battery banks with
superchargers.

The part I don’t understand is that Tesla’s stations seem to operate at 480V
input. Utility rates are a bit lower if you buy power at “primary” voltage.
Maybe Tesla doesn’t want to deal with the fact that primary voltage is
different in different places?

~~~
mikeash
Yeah, I’ve visited a couple dozen Supercharger locations and never seen solar
either.

I think the main purpose of the batteries is just to cut down on demand
charges. Even a smallish older Supercharger can pull 500kW if a bunch of cars
arrive at once, and that gets pricey. I wouldn’t be surprised if they got
fancier as you describe, though. If the capability is there, might as well use
it.

~~~
ryanhuff
Solar at latest Supercharger in Las Vegas:

[https://electrek.co/2019/07/18/tesla-v3-supercharger-
station...](https://electrek.co/2019/07/18/tesla-v3-supercharger-station-las-
vegas-solar-power-battery/)

~~~
mikeash
There are definitely a few! It’s just not the norm.

