
Ask HN: Why do so many people want to see Tesla fail? - jppope
Tesla articles have been blowing up this week, and with good reason. The only thing I&#x27;m wondering is why are there soooooo many people that want to see Tesla fail?
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rmason
People who short Tesla stock have become an industry. Tesla is a volatile
stock and they've made seriously good money on the dips.

So they have a vested interest in amplifying all bad news about Tesla. At
times as some have commented Elon has been his own worst enemy.

It's messy but he's inventing the future with Tesla and SpaceX. I've got a
friend with a brand new Tesla. He took bets a while back on when the first
fully self driving car would be available. This week he drove on our town's
main artery, Grand River avenue, from Dusty's Cellar in Okemos to Biggby's
Coffee in East Lansing. There are many signal lights, varying speeds with MSU
students dashing out in front of you. He drove the entire 3.9 mile stretch
with one finger on the steering wheel to prove a point.

I guarantee you without Elon Musk's efforts to save Tesla this future would
have arrived many years later. If that doesn't get you excited likely nothing
will.

Just sorry my Dad who first had his drivers license in 1930 didn't live to see
it.

~~~
unityByFreedom
> People who short Tesla stock have become an industry. Tesla is a volatile
> stock and they've made seriously good money on the dips. So they have a
> vested interest in amplifying all bad news about Tesla.

Sounds like Ken Lay at Enron. He continued to blame shorts and the media even
after bankruptcy and criminal conviction.

Enron wanted to convince people they were a low-risk cleaner-energy (natural
gas) company. In reality, they were a high-risk trading venture, whose losses
in non-trading business were covered up by trading gains. When they stopped
making money on trading, everything fell apart in a matter of weeks.

> He drove the entire 3.9 mile stretch with one finger on the steering wheel
> to prove a point.

That's a very short distance. It is odd that Tesla doesn't report testing
miles to California's DMV like every other self-driving venture. Waymo is at
about 1 driver takeover per 10,000 miles. Tesla is nowhere near that, probably
more like 1 takeover every 5 miles.

Odder still is Elon declining to release data backing up his statement that
driving with AP on is twice as safe as driving with it off [1]. In his words,

> "I think reporting the details just gives those who are opposed to Tesla
> that might data mine the situation and try to turn a positive into a
> negative, ... so we're going to keep reporting the numbers at a broad
> brushstroke level"

In other words, he won't release data backing up his statement about AP being
twice as safe because he thinks some people will use that data to show his
statement is wrong.

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HqvatzjHGyk&t=47m17s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HqvatzjHGyk&t=47m17s)

~~~
Gustomaximus
> Waymo is at about 1 driver takeover per 10,000 miles. Tesla is nowhere near
> that

2 Questions:

1) Anyone know what Tesla is at for km/takeover?

2) Is Waymo still testing inside tightly limited zones? If so I kinda feel
this is unfair to compare controlled zone vs nationwide wherever customers
choose.

~~~
unityByFreedom
1) Tesla does not report their numbers, though one person who went for a
ridealong in the autonomy day demo reported one takeover in 20-minutes [1], so
at least once every 10 miles.

2) Waymo does testing on a lot of types of roads. They reported 1.26 million
miles in CA last year [2]. It's not possible to apples-to-apples compare this
to Tesla's numbers because Tesla does not share their data. Musk even turned
down an analyst's request the other day for details backing up his claim of
autopilot safety [3].

Tesla/Musk are being unreasonable when they claim stats show their system is
40% safer or 2x safer than normal driving because they are comparing to NHTSA
stats which include all classes of cars (including motorcycles), all road
types (whereas AP is mainly used on divided highways), and all weather
conditions (nobody activates AP in the snow, I hope, and I doubt many do in
rain).

[1] [https://youtu.be/2BZHXh1nbWc?t=450](https://youtu.be/2BZHXh1nbWc?t=450)

[2] [https://medium.com/waymo/an-update-on-waymo-
disengagements-i...](https://medium.com/waymo/an-update-on-waymo-
disengagements-in-california-d671fd31c3e2)

[3]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HqvatzjHGyk&t=47m17s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HqvatzjHGyk&t=47m17s)

------
_bxg1
Elon Musk is brash, impulsive, and overly self-confident. These qualities are
what make some people follow him with a cult-like dedication, but they make
many others want to see him fail.

Personally I don't care about all that. He's not a great person. He's a bit
obnoxious. But I think that from a purely technological standpoint, Tesla is
having an important positive impact on civilization. So I want to see it
succeed despite Musk (and despite his best attempts in recent months to bring
it all crashing down).

~~~
3327
Elon can be obnoxious- I cannot, you cannot, everyone you know should not. We
all know obnoxious people and none of them currently are walking around
landing rockets on earth are they? When they also do something as such, they
can be obnoxious too. I think people being critical of Elon for being
obnoxious - are actually obnoxious and are missing the big picture for
personal traits of one of the greatest inventors of our lifetime. How about-
Sit the fahk down and have popcorn while your car drives you to work while you
(and everyone else) watch a falcon heavy auto-landing its boosters.

~~~
_bxg1
I wouldn't call him "an inventor". He only knows enough about the technical
side of things to make business decisions. Here's what's made him uniquely
successful:

\- He was fortunate enough to be a founder of one of the dot-com boom's most
successful companies, starting him out as an Insanely Rich Individual.

\- He has a smart mind for business, when he uses it.

\- He has a knack for envisioning products that aren't just incremental steps
forward from what's out there, but multiple steps forward, and then unifying
people smarter than him into implementing that vision (the "Steve Jobs
effect").

He didn't invent rockets that can land themselves. He had the idea, figured
out the business plan, and funded it with his piles of money. That's not
nothing, but it doesn't make him Our Lord and Savior. And even if it did, that
doesn't give someone a free pass on being a jerk to others (he hasn't been
that big of a jerk, as billionaires go, but the principle remains).

~~~
gitgud
I'm not a huge fan of Elon, mainly because he puts himself forward as a lone
genius inventor, when in reality there's hundreds of engineering teams below
him accomplishing his goals...

------
ACow_Adonis
Why do you think people WANT to see Tesla fail?

I'll call out Musk as an unstable and (when it comes to things like the boring
company) an ignorant idiot, and I'm absolutely amazed at the cult of
personality surrounding him, and I think you'd have to be a fool to invest
into tesla given his behaviour and all the financials/news about the company.

But I WANT solar panels and electric cars to take off in a massive big way,
and i'd LOVE tesla to be able to provide an affordable electric car.

I think its everyone saying 'people WANT tesla to fail' who are exposing more
of this personality cult, because the rest of us can separate the objective
facts around the company and its leadership from our personal feelings towards
its products and industry.

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wilsonnb3
Tesla is just a cult of personality around Elon Musk.

Most of its supporters, especially its die hard supporters, are just people
that love Musk.

He’s kind of an arrogant prick though, hence all the haters.

~~~
askafriend
And yet Tesla produces a game changing product in it's industry against
literally all odds. Hard to say how much of it just requires a certain brand
of crazy.

------
gitgud
_related topic:_ Elon's "Hyperloop" project has gained a lot of criticism too.
Many [1] long video essays have been made to debunk why it's not a good
invention.

Now the _hype_ has died down considerably and it seems a lot of people have
lost faith in the idea... maybe they're losing faith in all of Musk's
ventures...

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RNFesa01llk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RNFesa01llk)

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detaro
Do that many people _want_ to see Tesla fail, or are just many people
skeptical about what Tesla is saying and doing?

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muzani
One reason is because they work very long hours, below average safety, and
have below average compensation. If they succeed, it's a signal to everyone
else that they should also work under the same conditions.

Look at the inverse - Henry Ford wanted to pay people as much as possible,
improve work conditions as much as possible, and work hours as short as
possible. I'm sure people wanted him to succeed.

~~~
dv_dt
I think these are very valid reasons to push Tesla on.

------
7e
Check your assumptions. Many people are simply calling out Elon Musk on his
bullshit. He harms the whole cause. Personally, I dislike his hypocrisy around
carbon offset credits. The way he sells them to polluters sets the whole world
back a decade or more.

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dv_dt
$10M+ of funding by the Koch brothers to manufacture outrage against Tesla?

[https://cleantechnica.com/2018/08/26/tesla-musk-hit-by-
trife...](https://cleantechnica.com/2018/08/26/tesla-musk-hit-by-trifecta-of-
fossil-money-short-money-media-weakness/)

~~~
h2odragon
Wow that some of the most effective PR money ever spent then, isn't it?

~~~
dv_dt
It helps that the Koch network has probably hundreds of millions of dollars of
already laid into relationships, think tanks, and academic centers, so the
$10M is all action, with little need to foundation build.

------
richardknop
I think for a lot of people (this is just my personal opinion), it is based on
arrogance of the leadership at Tesla. Especially their dismissals of the rest
of the car industry which has been around for decades and knows a lot about
how to build cars and wild predictions that turn out to be empty. I think lot
of people have become emotional about this and want to see Tesla fail just
because of the arrogance displayed by its CEO. There’s an equal amount of
emotions on the other side though. People who support Tesla no matter what and
dismiss all negative facts.

~~~
_ah
I agree... my impression is that people want Elon to be "taken down a notch".
Tesla's failure is merely the vehicle (heh) for that comeuppance.

It's interesting to note that SpaceX, another Elon venture, seems to have much
more goodwill. I attribute this to the fact that Elon has been much more
humble about every rocket launch ("we'll be happy if the payload makes it to
orbit, forget about that landing nonsense") as opposed to the extreme rhetoric
around the cars ("it will drive itself!")

~~~
rootusrootus
I have no desire to see anyone taken down a notch. Except for maybe the wild
fanboys who can't believe Tesla isn't perfect. I hope the company succeeds. I
think they make a good product, though it has flaws, and I hope they continue
to refine it. I think the hype is unnecessary, especially with regards to FSD.
At this point I am planning to buy a Tesla myself, but only if they make
through the next couple years and actually produce the Y.

~~~
richardknop
I would like to see a proper SUV as model Y. What they revealed was just
hacked model 3 with some custom plates at the back (the door gave it away). I
don't believe that's what Y will actually look like (it won't sell if that's
the final form as most people wouldn't consider it SUV).

They rushed the reveal because they are probably trying to get some hype going
in order to raise capital soon. But I really hope they are planning to design
Y from ground up as a proper SUV, not just a slightly modified model 3.

Although I get that having as many similarities with model 3 as possible would
make it cheaper for them to manufacture it as they would have lots of parts in
common. But when I think of SUV, I imagine a much bigger car with higher
seating, model Y is not an SUV in my mind and in minds of most people I know.

------
alfredallan2
One of the reasons some short sellers are shorting is they are pessimistic
about the prospects of self-driving cars in messy real world scenarios.

Tesla seems to inextricably tie the two together. That's too much innovation
at once (ergo, more than double the risk). If he just focussed on making
awesome electric cars (with auto-drive as an option), it would 1) make Tesla's
job easier, 2) make their PR reps job easier, and 3) everyone is positive
about green tech. Winning over the BMW/Merc fans with high performance
electric cars seems like a better strategy for a car company than trying to
push a fleet of average performing occasionally fumbling self driving cars on
the streets - from the perspective of the short sellers.

So in the current scenario, everytime there is some news about how the auto-
drive confused one thing for another and crashed into it, the short sellers
are convinced that there will be more of a negative public feedback cycle
which will bring Tesla, or at least its equity, down. So they short.

Source - I have shorted Tesla in the past after the auto drive crashed and
killed a driver. I am also technical enough to be paranoid about trusting
human lives to a not-100% reliable piece of tech at high speeds. I only trust
our attitude of move-fast-and-break-things with things like websites, not
things which could kill you.

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tinus_hn
It looks pretty similar to the typical Apple hating.

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going_to_800
Not a fanboy, just that I support Tesla and what they achieved in a short
time. There are 2 main reasons in my opinion: 1) lots of short sellers which
are very vocal online 2) many people hate Musk thus they hate Tesla as well.

I don't argue with hard-core haters or fanboys since most of them seem
brainwashed.

Still, I haven't heard any good reason why someone should be against Tesla as
a company.

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dragonwriter
> The only thing I'm wondering is why are there soooooo many people that want
> to see Tesla fail?

There are probably some people that want that (including people who have a
financial interest in it, like shorters or people with long positions in
competing firms), but it's also very easy for people who have positive
aspirations or expectations of Tesla to mistake (or sometimes, misrepresent
dishonestly) reporting of negative facts or negative expectations with wanting
to Tesla to fail.

You see a similar thing very much in other fields, too (the most common
egregious example being political allies of the status quo regime in a nation
accusing people who advance the view that the existing policy will fail for
the nation of wanting the nation to fail.)

------
unityByFreedom
Because they're wasting money that would be better allocated to companies with
better leadership.

Pre-Musk, they had a decent model. Sell luxury EVs. Now, they can't make a
profit and still call themselves a startup after 16 years. Meanwhile, Musk
keeps promising more and delivering less.

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jezze
I think what he has achieved so far is pretty impressive. He has a car company
that is easily the most talked about of any car company and really put the
electric car on the map, he has also made the public interested in space again
and is really pushing new boundries there with his landing boosters.

With that said, his visions are sometimes too unrealistic like his vision of
self driving cars. He really underestimates how hard that problem is. Saying
he will have a self driving car before this year is over is borderline stupid
and that pisses me off.

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hhs
I get the feeling that people are more fed up with Facebook than with Tesla. I
don't own a Tesla but have family that does and they respect the big vision.

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norin
I think what Elon needs is someone along side him who keeps his impulses in
check. Tesla could go on to do many great things.

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JoeAltmaier
Its cool to predict things. Every bump in the road for Tesla brings out the
nickel and dime soothsayers.

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leowoo91
ELI5: disruption is difficult

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dekhn
The Elon musk personality cult.

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julienreszka
Haters gonna hate. That's it.

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powerbroker
Two words: Elon time.

