
Tesla Is Doing Much Better Than Headlines Suggest - kartikkumar
https://medium.com/s/story/musk-and-tesla-are-doing-much-better-than-headlines-suggest-9091d8ea59d0
======
superfrank
This article seems to be saying that Tesla is in a good place because they
build good, popular cars and electric vehicles are the future.

Maybe, I'm reading different news stories than the author, but I don't feel
like those are criticisms of Tesla that I'm seeing anymore. Pretty much every
current news story I'm seeing is either focusing on Tesla running out of money
because their cars aren't profitable enough, or the fact that Elon's behavior
on Twitter is hurting the company. The author addresses neither of these
points.

Sure, maybe a few years ago I could get behind the idea that the Koch bothers
are spending billions of dollars to try and suppress the electric car
industry. But currently, pretty much every major car company has some sort of
electric offering and many are making commitments to be fully electric in the
near future. Even if the Koch's are spending money to hurt the electric car
industry, it seems like they are fighting a losing battle.

Honestly, this whole article reads like a straw man argument.

~~~
crunchyfrog
Of course the narrative has changed because Tesla's success has forced it to
change but the underlying conclusion (i.e. "Tesla is doomed") has remained the
same through out.

It would be ridiculous if they were still running articles about how Tesla
will never build the Model S or the Model 3 or reach 5,000 cars a week or are
always bursting into flames or whatever because reality has proved them wrong
time and again.

Saying this new narrative is plausible unlike all those previous narratives
ignores that all those previous narratives where plausible and wrong when they
were pushed.

~~~
gamblor956
Tesla still hasn't consistently hit 5000 cars a week. They've so far only
managed this for about 3-4 weeks, split up between two roughly fortnight-
lengths periods at the end of quarters. It's possible they managed to hit this
milestone in Q3, but based on past PR behavior if they had they would have let
the world know by now.

The naysayers were never saying that Tesla would never build a Model S or
Model 3, you're just creating false strawmen to tear down. The naysayers were
always saying that Tesla wouldn't be able to make cars _profitably_ , which to
date it has not by industry-standard metrics or the generally accepted
accounting principles (i.e., GAAP) most companies use (and definitely not
under IFRS standards, which most non-US companies use).

~~~
prostoalex
The 5,000 mark seems to be a red herring, though. Tesla has lined up European
and Chinese factories (latter one seems to be accelerated due to tariffs) and
copying existing processes to new factories is something that seems doable.

So even if Fremont stays at 4,500 forever, they could double or triple
worldwide weekly production by just completing the factory build outs.

------
mapgrep
I decided to just look into an assertion from the first paragraph of this
post: "NHTSA testing shows that the #1, #2 and #3 cars with the lowest
likelihood of injury in a collision are the Tesla Models 3, X and S in that
order."

This is linked to a news article on "CleanTechnica," sourced to the Tesla
corporate blog. Notably, the blog does not claim that these vehicles are
#1,2,3 in the rankings, but rather that in prior tests the X and S models were
found to have "the lowest and second lowest probabilities of injury of all
cars ever tested."

But it turns out NHTSA disputes even Tesla's more mild assertions:

"A five-star rating is the highest safety rating a vehicle can achieve," the
agency said in the statement, which did not name Tesla. "NHTSA does not
distinguish safety performance beyond that rating, thus there is no 'safest'
vehicle among those vehicles achieving five-star ratings."
[https://autoweek.com/article/car-news/nhtsa-downplays-
teslas...](https://autoweek.com/article/car-news/nhtsa-downplays-teslas-
statements-model-3-crash-ratings)

In 2017, just over 30 cars attained 5-star ratings:
[https://www.safercar.gov/Vehicle-
Shoppers/my2017_5_star_test...](https://www.safercar.gov/Vehicle-
Shoppers/my2017_5_star_tests)

~~~
kbenson
> But it turns out NHTSA disputes even Tesla's more mild assertions:

I think it's worth noting that neither are contradicting each other, as they
are saying different things. Tesla says NHTSA testing shows something, which
may have nothing to do with specifically what the NHTSA says or how it rates.
If they have access to the actual test data (or the tests are publicly
available), they can make assertions off that data.

If that was the case, the NHTSA is clarifying its position, in that _it is not
making those claims_ so them saying "NHTSA does not distinguish safety
performance beyond that rating, thus there is no 'safest' vehicle among those
vehicles achieving five-star ratings." is a way of clarifying their position
and staying neutral, since they haven't made that assertion for any other
vehicles in the past.

In other words, it's possible for them both to be be correct and accurate, but
talking about slightly different things. This doesn't even require intent to
deceive from either party.

I, of course, have no idea if that's true and this is the case. It is one
possible way to interpret the statements though, so a little additional
investigation might be warranted before we determine that either statement is
false or intentionally misleading.

~~~
singingboyo
This was my impression as well, in that what I've read suggests Tesla is
making claims on the basis of percentage chance of injury from NHTSA data, but
NHTSA does not take a position on whether differences in those percentages is
significant.

I can't say I've verified the percentages myself though, nor do I have the
requisite understanding to say whether there are margins of error present
(which would make Tesla's claims correct but potentially statistically
meaningless.)

------
sokoloff
> Tesla has achieved enormous results in ramping up its Model 3 production
> faster than almost any new model car in history.

That defies my gut feel, so I checked on carsalesbase to confirm/refute.

Nearly any new car model that I look at far outsells the Model 3 during new
model ramp up...

[http://carsalesbase.com/us-car-sales-data/tesla/tesla-
model-...](http://carsalesbase.com/us-car-sales-data/tesla/tesla-model-3/)

~~~
JumpCrisscross
The author describes himself as a cleantech and blockchain reporter [1].

[1]
[https://medium.com/@michaelbarnard_46445](https://medium.com/@michaelbarnard_46445)

~~~
kbenson
> blockchain reporter

I wonder if the general public has as negative a connotation of blockchain
reporter as I assume most HN readers do.[1]

1: Even if you're bullish on blockchains, I don't think it's a stretch to say
that blockchains reporters are not unfamiliar with overhyping news.

------
adamkittelson
They're really struggling with delivery logistics though. I was scheduled to
pick up my Model 3, which will be my 3rd Tesla, this Wednesday.

I've been hounding them for my bill of sale because the bank needs it before
they'll send a check. I called the local delivery center again this morning
and they informed me they gave my car to another customer. They didn't bother
to let me know about this or the home office so they could begin looking for
another VIN to assign to me. Apparently I was just supposed to show up on
Wednesday and find out they didn't have a car for me then. I've also already
taken out insurance for the VIN they gave me and provided it to my bank so now
I have to redo all that whenever they get around to giving me another VIN and
hope they don't give that car away too.

My first two delivery experiences were great but now I'm starting to think I'd
get a better experience working with a traditional dealership.

~~~
ryanhuff
I suspect as they fix one issue (production, etc), the next in line becomes
the bottleneck. Now it’s delivery logistics, but once that’s fixed, it will
become service, which already seems to be straining.

~~~
threeseed
Companies around the world are building, shipping and supporting products
simultaneously.

Really confused why Tesla can't do the same.

~~~
Kliment
The way I understand it what the previous poster was saying was that they're
building a high-volume pipeline which is likely to have issues as it's new to
them, and the delivery issues can't show until there's sufficient volume
coming in from manufacturing, and the service problems can't show until
there's sufficient volume of vehicles delivered.

------
prostoalex
As much as I'd like the company to succeed, it seems frivolous to dismiss the
concerns as short sellers' PR projects and media's desire to drive traffic
through clickbait.

Bond markets are largely dominated by institutional players who've seen every
PR trick in the book, pay astute attention to fundamentals in hopes of finding
a minuscule mispricing opportunity, and even they are not treating TSLA
positively

[https://money.cnn.com/2018/09/10/technology/business/tesla-s...](https://money.cnn.com/2018/09/10/technology/business/tesla-
stock-bonds-elon-musk/index.html)

~~~
AtlasBarfed
Does that show the debt servicing costs vs the expected profitability of the
current production pace? The August/September production numbers were pretty
robust, and given the profit margin on the current models I could see the debt
being serviced.

The tweets and executives leaving are just drama. Tesla will make or break on
the production rate and the profitability per car, both of which seemed on
target, but I haven't seen definitive numbers.

~~~
threeseed
> Tesla will make or break on the production rate and the profitability per
> car

Sure. For now.

But every car company is releasing electric cars over the next few years. Many
of which look like serious threats against Tesla's more profitable models.
Electric as a differentiator will disappear and all that will be left is (a)
brand, (b) design, (c) quality, (d) service. None of which Tesla is better
than its competitors at. And you need executives around to be able to resolve
this.

~~~
reissbaker
You need a charging network to fix range anxiety, and infrastructure to make
batteries at scale. Charging network the major brands don't really have an
answer for yet. And as for batteries, the major brands are still stuck at the
small batch, high end segment of the market, because no one makes enough
batteries to tackle the lower ends of the market except Tesla — everyone else
just buys their batteries from Asia. BMW is trying to reopen their old,
shuttered plants, but still are only aiming to be able to support 20-25% of
their cars being electric by _2025,_ despite claiming that a fraction of that
by 2020 constitutes "mass production." [1]

That's a long "for now."

[1] [https://www.forbes.com/sites/jaclyntrop/2018/07/01/bmw-is-
ge...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/jaclyntrop/2018/07/01/bmw-is-gearing-up-
to-mass-produce-batteries-in-house-for-2020)

~~~
gamblor956
BMW sold nearly 600k each of the last few years, so even if "only" a quarter
of their sales are EV, that's still almost as many cars as Tesla sells each
year. And that's just one competitor out of a dozen, all of whom have
significantly more marketing muscle and better supply chain and maintenance
networks than Tesla.

~~~
prostoalex
> and better supply chain

Curious how well that will work with shift to electric.

Tesla claims that spending so much on Gigafactory will give them the lowest
cost per kWh compared to everyone else.

Someone like GM might be a big kahuna in the internal combustion world, but as
far as buying lithium ion batteries on the open market they will have to line
up behind Tesla, Apple, Samsung, home battery companies and those no-name
Amazon brands building power banks.

------
csours
Disclaimer up front: I work for a Tesla competitor, any opinions are solely my
own.

From the linked article:

> "And now NHTSA testing shows that the #1, #2 and #3 cars with the lowest
> likelihood of injury in a collision are the Tesla Models 3, X and S in that
> order."

[https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/tesla-model-3-nhtsa-
safet...](https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/tesla-model-3-nhtsa-safety-
claims/)

[https://www.nhtsa.gov/press-releases/national-highway-
traffi...](https://www.nhtsa.gov/press-releases/national-highway-traffic-
safety-administration-issues-statement-about-new-car)

> "NHTSA does not distinguish safety performance beyond that rating, thus
> there is no "safest" vehicle among those vehicles achieving 5-star ratings."

Perhaps stop making claims that are not backed by the source you claim to use.

~~~
1123581321
The CNET article you linked says:

“Over email, a Tesla spokeswoman did offer more explanation on the
probability-of-injury statistic. NHTSA compiles raw injury data in a load of
spreadsheets every year, and it computes the overall probability of injury,
listing it as a Vehicle Safety Score in its published results. That's where
Tesla pulled the data from, and you can check this year's results for yourself
on regulations.gov.”

It seems that NHTSA is only disputing that they hand out an official “safest
vehicle” rating, not that Tesla did that well in their data. I would say that
the claim is backed up if going by the actual results and not the capped,
publicized rating. I’m curious what you thought when you came across that part
of the article.

~~~
dwighttk
Man regulations.gov is a terrible site. The only document I could find that
contained "vehicle safety score" was:

[https://www.regulations.gov/document?D=NHTSA-2015-0119-0001](https://www.regulations.gov/document?D=NHTSA-2015-0119-0001)

~~~
csours
It's linked from the CNET article:
[https://www.regulations.gov/docket?D=NHTSA-2017-0037](https://www.regulations.gov/docket?D=NHTSA-2017-0037)

------
throwawayosiu1
Just as a note, the author is from CleanTechnica. They are known to be
extremely pro-tesla.

Best case scenario - most of their articles quietly ignore the downside and
prop up the upside. Worst case - they lie or embellish the truth.

Disclosure: I've followed both bulls & bears for almost 6 months - and I've
got quite a lot riding in short positions.

~~~
AtlasBarfed
I saw a graph on one of the pro-Tesla sites that basically showed that the
Tesla debt is to scale with the rampup of the Model 3 production, and that it
isn't out of proportion for the scale of what the production scale of the
Model3. And the scale now is above profitability. Is that not true?

~~~
gamblor956
That is not true. Tesla still hasn't paid off its debt from the Model X, the
Model S, the Gigafactory, or the Supercharger network. They might have managed
to achieve positive cash flow with respect to Model 3 specific investments,
but that doesn't mean they generating anywhere near the level of cash they
need to pay off past debts.

~~~
Latteland
I think that is an arguable point and at least we don't know what their
profits are, but we'll know better after q3 earnings are out. If they are
making the claimed 25-30% margin on current model 3's, making 50k of them a
quarter at avg price of 60k, 50k _60k_.25, that's a car profit $750
million/quarter. That will pay down their debt at a rate 3 billion a year. I
think this is why they said after q3 they will start being a real company,
with q3 and q4 at the current rate they could be profitable and actually pay
off debt. If all else fails they could sell more stock right now, but that
only goes so far. I think they will make a significant profit by q4, and
probably a good profit in q3.

------
roywiggins
The Kochs didn't make Elon tweet himself into an SEC sanction

"Musk and the Tesla board have decided to keep Tesla public." Decided as in
_there was no plan in the first place_

~~~
Latteland
Yeah, that was stupid and an unforced error. Anyway, that seems to be close to
being closed.

------
Animats
Tesla still isn't doing all that great on production.[1] They've been unable
to sustain the 5,000 units a week output for the Model 3 line. They're back
down around 4,000. The week to week numbers are all over the place, from 2000
to 6000.

Auto plants are usually much more consistent. A Ford exec points out that
their F-150 production line at the Rouge produces a truck every 55 seconds.
You can take the plant tour in Detroit and see this.

Tesla's open-ended tent setup in Fremont isn't going to work once rainy season
starts. Their production problems should have been fixed by now, but clearly
they're still struggling. And, as Bob Lutz says, they have way too many people
in the Fremont plant. Tesla has 10,000 workers in Fremont. Ford's entire Rouge
complex has about 5000 workers.

Tesla has accomplished a lot, but the core business still isn't running
smoothly.

[1] [https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2018-tesla-
tracker/](https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2018-tesla-tracker/)

~~~
_ph_
First of all, we don't know whether the production is "all over the place".
Your are quoting the weekly numbers from the Bloomberg tracker. But this
tracker does not know about actual production numbers. It mostly looks at VIN
allocation, which is not directly coupled to production numbers. Typically,
Tesla allocates about 30% more VINs than the production numbers. Based on
that, Bloomberg came close to the total quarter production number, but it does
not give information about the weekly production numbers. We only know the
average production number of over 4000 cars/week.

Tesla has more workers in their Freemont plant, but they have a very high
vertical integration. They are producing their own seats for example.

~~~
Animats
Ford's Rouge plant has a steel mill. Iron ore comes in via barge. They have a
glass plant. A power plant. A casting plant. An engine plant. Now that's
vertical integration.

~~~
reissbaker
Ford also sold (far) fewer cars of any model in North America than Tesla did,
and is exiting the market minus the Focus Active and the Mustang, retreating
to just SUVs and trucks.

------
throwaway2016a
I actually really want to buy a Model 3 but these stories that Tesla has a
bridge note due in March that they may not be able to cover have me concerned.
If I buy a car I want to make sure the company is around to service it.

I don't see this article covering that particular article. In fact the word
"debt" appears nowhere in it.

Edit: I'm actually asking someone to prove the debt issue wrong if they can.
It is literally the only thing keeping me from buying.

~~~
bfwi
The CEO has shown willingness to fund Tesla Motors and SpaceX with almost all
his personal funds. If I remember correctly, he is worth more than Tesla's
debt, and unless he is somehow unable to liquidate enough assets to cover that
debt, it won't be the end of Tesla.

~~~
JumpCrisscross
> _he is worth more than Tesla 's debt_

Most of Elon's net worth is in illiquid SpaceX stock and Tesla shares.

~~~
bfwi
Why is the Tesla stock illiquid? It's publicly traded.

I'm sure he could sell SpaceX stock on the secondary market quite easily.
SpaceX has never lacked in interest from investors.

~~~
JumpCrisscross
> _Why is the Tesla stock illiquid? It 's publicly traded._

Pardon me, imprecise phrasing. SpaceX stock is illiquid. Tesla stock is
liquid, but if Tesla is having financial difficulties its stock will go down.
If Elon can sell Tesla shares, Tesla can sell Tesla shares.

> _I 'm sure he could sell SpaceX stock on the secondary market quite easily_

Not "quite easily". One, he's a super material insider. That makes the process
more complicated for everyone involved. (It would be difficult to avoid giving
everyone else the right to participate on the same terms.)

Two, he's a super material insider. The fact that he's selling will scare away
many buyers.

Three, he's a super material insider. His selling SpaceX stock to prop up
Tesla screams that nobody is willing to finance Tesla in the open market. It
would immediately lead to a rout.

~~~
bfwi
I'm not convinced that selling some of his SpaceX stock on the secondary
market is difficult, or that selling some of his Tesla stocks would cause a
rout, especially when the immediate consequence would be paying back the debt,
thereby saving the company.

But I hope some experts (e.g. stock analysts) would comment on this scenario,
I think it's interesting.

~~~
JumpCrisscross
> _I 'm not convinced that selling some of his SpaceX stock on the secondary
> market is difficult_

Selling SpaceX stock is not difficult _per se_. The CEO selling his SpaceX
stock for the purpose of purchasing shares in a public company, of which he is
also the CEO, is. (Source: this is what I do for a living.)

> _selling some of his Tesla stocks would cause a rout_

Elon Musk selling his Tesla stock to buy new Tesla shares, thereby giving
Tesla cash, wouldn't be a problem. (Though it's a roundabout way for Tesla to
issue new shares.) Elon Musk selling his _SpaceX stock_ to buy new Tesla
shares would be. It shows Tesla was unable to raise capital in the stock
markets.

------
dwighttk
Article could really use a disclaimer clarifying if the author owns stock in
Tesla.

------
appleiigs
Fluff article. He could've spent a moment reviewing TSLA's financial
statements for facts instead of talking about conspiracies.

------
ed_balls
And this is a bad article as well

> The company is massively outselling its competitors in North America

How can you compare Tesla models to BMW 7? It should be compared to BMW5. What
is more, SUVs rule the market and that's where they main focus is (Audi
e-tron, Mercedes EQ etc.)

~~~
FireBeyond
The 3 is more comparable to a BMW 3 series.

~~~
reissbaker
The Model 3 became the fifth best selling car in North America in Q3. Take a
look at the sales numbers for any car BMW makes that you want — the Model 3
beats all of them. The only cars that outsell them are the Honda Accord, Honda
Civic, Toyota Camry, and Toyota Corolla. And it looks to be on track to become
the fourth best selling car as of current sales numbers.

------
jseliger
This article is especially interesting in light of "Can We Go Electric Before
It’s Too Late?" [https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2018/10/where-
america...](https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2018/10/where-americas-
charge-towards-electric-vehicles-stands-today/572857). The answer may be "no,"
but Tesla is a big part, and outside of China likely the biggest part, of the
answer.

~~~
Animats
China is aggressively going electric. Shenzhen went with all electric buses
last year. Getting a permit for a car in Beijing is far easier for an electric
car. China's electric car production is 3x US production.[1] Yes, many of them
are small city cars, but then, they're used for getting around big cities.

[1] [https://qz.com/1303594/when-it-comes-to-making-electric-
cars...](https://qz.com/1303594/when-it-comes-to-making-electric-cars-theres-
china-and-everyone-else/)

~~~
seanmcdirmid
Ya, you’ll see lots of Tesla’s in Beijing these days because of the lottery,
even though they cost 2X what they do in the states (rich Chinese don’t want
to be seen driving around in a BYD).

------
danso
Besides the problematic assertions this article makes about Tesla's business
fundamentals (already addressed in the comments), I just want to call out the
absurdity of its media conspiracy theory:

> _Media outlets are doing what they can to survive. They’re laying off
> seasoned journalists with strong fact-checking instincts. They’re laying off
> fact-checkers. They’re laying off editors. They’re rethinking how they write
> headlines to compete with clickbait...Tesla and Musk are big eyeball
> grabbers. They have been for five years, as this Google Trends graph shows.
> One publisher I work with regularly told me, anecdotally, that anything with
> Tesla or Musk in the headline is likely to perform better than average._

Only someone who has his head firmly in the Tesla bubble could imagine that
the eyeballs that Tesla/Musk articles attract are any kind of significant blip
in the revenues or traffic of a major general news outlet. It's really hard to
imagine how clueless this author is, as if he had just woken up from a 2 year
nap and doesn't realize what currently dominates the headlines and reader
traffic.

Take this Sept. 4 article from BuzzFeed News, which arguably directly led to
Musk bringing a libel suit upon himself:
[https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ryanmac/elon-musk-
thai-...](https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ryanmac/elon-musk-thai-cave-
rescuer-accusations-buzzfeed-email)

I would bet a decent chunk of money that the reporters who worked on that
story get paid more, and put more work into that article than did their
colleague for this article from yesterday, "16 Bakers Who Should Be Very, Very
Ashamed": [https://www.buzzfeed.com/jamiejones/people-who-wont-be-
winni...](https://www.buzzfeed.com/jamiejones/people-who-wont-be-winning-star-
baker)

The "16 Bakers" article has 326,000+ views, according to Buzzfeed's own
metrics. The BuzzFeedNews domain does not display pageview metrics, perhaps
partly to look more dignified, but also because BuzzFeed's reported articles
generally are nowhere near as popular in pure pageviews as the standard
Buzzfeed listicle. Moreover, the Buzzfeed listicles sell ads (the Bakers'
listicle has a sponsored Uncle Ben's ad), whereas the BuzzFeedNews articles
rarely have any ads.

So tell me how paying quality reporters to write damaging articles about
Tesla/Musk helps BuzzFeed's bottom line?

------
thewizardofaus
But who would want to buy a car that was made in a tent?

------
tardo99
A company can be doing well and have its stock massively overvalued at the
same time.

------
iamgopal
Theirs is 50 percent profit business. Only matter is, it will take time to
zeroing their debt.

~~~
twblalock
Tesla aims for a 25% profit margin on the Model 3 and is not there yet:
[https://www.cnbc.com/2018/05/21/tesla-shares-to-soar-on-
stro...](https://www.cnbc.com/2018/05/21/tesla-shares-to-soar-on-strong-
model-3-profitability-analyst.html)

From what I can see, the margins on the other models are similar. And the
company still loses money overall.

~~~
AtlasBarfed
May? That's pretty old.

[https://www.teslarati.com/tesla-model-3-solidly-
profitable-s...](https://www.teslarati.com/tesla-model-3-solidly-profitable-
sandy-munro/)

That is more recent (July) and shows 30% on the long range, without dual motor
or performance bumps, all of which are probably really profitable add-ons. Of
course who knows who is paying this guy to do the teardown/sourcing for the
article.

I'm guessing the 35k version rolls out when it becomes profitable to do so to
keep on target with the debt payments.

------
jonknee
Anyone who has eyes can see that there are lots of Tesla vehicles on the
streets wherever there are lots of wealthy people. That has never been a
question or something that headlines suggest. The problem is Tesla sells these
cars for less than it costs to build them and have had trouble making enough
of them with a build quality matching the luxury price tag. Short sellers will
magically go away if Tesla can start to consistently make money by selling
cars, until then nothing matters.

If you haven't read it already, don't waste time reading this article.

~~~
stephengillie
Supposedly, Tesla's cars themselves sell for more than their production cost.
The loss comes in supporting Tesla-as-a-fuel-reseller* - aka the Supercharger
network.

It would be like if Toyota started opening gas stations, and Camrys and RAV4s
and Siennas and Tundras got almost-free gasoline. While these businesses are
complementary, they're very different operations, and should at least be in
separate business units, if not a subsidiary or partnership with an existing
fuel supplier.

*Electricity of a specific voltage and amperage is now a motor vehicle fuel.

~~~
jonknee
Any source for this? The Supercharger network is no longer free (at all for
Model 3, 400 kWh in annual credit for Model S/X), but either way it was and
still is a heavily marketed feature of Tesla vehicles so you can't ignore the
cost. They need to make money or they will go out of business.

------
enraged_camel
Tesla's biggest problem right now is Elon and all the negative publicity he
generates. I think the stress and lack of sleep and crazy long hours are
finally getting to him, resulting in outrageous behavior that has become a
severe liability for Tesla.

Just a year ago I would never have thought I would say this, but perhaps he
needs to step aside and hand the reins over to a talented COO-type like with
Gwynne Shotwell over at SpaceX.

edit: of course I'm getting downvoted for saying bad things about Elon on HN.
Oh well, I've got karma to kill, so bring it on. :)

~~~
tarboreus
This is probably availability bias. You read about his gaffes but you have no
exposure to what he actually does inside the company.

~~~
enraged_camel
That's the thing though: why do we have no exposure to what he actually does
inside the company? You would think that Tesla would put in some effort to
generate positive PR for their CEO to counter his nonsense. Why aren't they?

