The actual, obviously correct answer is pretty disappointing. Musk pretty clearly has some kind of personality disorder or maybe just is an asshole with subpar impulse control. Equally clearly, he’s also an unparalleled business/engineering (hard to tell which exactly) visionary.
It’s only an interesting subject if you feel the need to convince yourself that Musk must have good character or good opinions about non-business/engineering subjects because he’s a business visionary or else that his businesses must be frauds because he’s an asshole. Both of those views are 100% absurd, but the impulse to categorize people as Good People or Bad People is so powerful that everyone gets drawn into one absurd position or the other.
You’re definitely right. Being the supplier of a double digit % of total industrial battery production globally would be a ‘commodity business’ and Tesla is a ‘dominating consumer brand’. Tesla sold 370k vehicles in 2019 and Toyota sold 10.7m. I wish Elon the best of luck when the other car manufacturers decide that it’s time to go into EV’s in a real way finally. What could go wrong?
I bet you drive a Tesla lol. The Tesla shorts are more likely than not going to prove directionally correct, which means they’ll lose money despite being right about what was going to happen because shorting is a suckers game that requires you to be right about both what and when.
Tesla’s chance of holding off the other car companies in EV’s comes entirely down to the batteries. That’s the bottleneck that’s preventing the other car companies from producing a product that’s superior in every way + cheaper… which is why my thesis around Tesla is that the right move was to just make batteries, skip the rest, and be the biggest and highest tech battery company on earth. Building cars actually incentivizes the competition to build out their own battery plants either through third party vendors or directly.
I’d rather be the Qualcomm of EV’s than be the Blackberry of EV’s.
I mean, even if legacy automakers have some kind of unique expertise that can’t be replicated, Tesla could just buy Ford or something, then they’d have it too.
Better analogy for people familiar with Parks and Rec: this is Ben advising Tom to create a dry cleaner chemical holding company. Yeah it’s a smart idea and would be profitable but doesn’t fit the personality at all.
His businesses are frauds because he makes fraudulent statements to attract investors and I wouldn’t be surprised if his financial statements are straight up fraudulent at this point either. There is plenty of evidence of this without considering his personality.
I don’t think Musk is a total fraud but he’s not quite as smart as some of his peers like that fat ginger who inherited the Koch money. Have you seen those fruity shirts he paid someone to design? They’re fucking amazing and they haven’t killed anyone yet afaik.
That would mean that the securities are frauds. If we set aside the concerns of financial speculators though, the companies themselves are obvious home run successes. SpaceX just landed a contract from NASA to use its revolutionary next-gen launch system to put astronauts on the Moon. Tesla sells lots of awesome electric cars. (As insinuated(?) earlier in the thread, I do own a Tesla–it’s a wonderful car you should test drive one and see.) Sure, it’s possible that, despite being under ~continual SEC investigation for Musk’s recurring insanities there’s some kind of Enron-esque accounting scandal brewing, but the cars are still there. The rockets appear to have been sent into space. The engineering accomplishments happened and seem to be ongoing.
Moreover, the business successes are obvious too. Neither Tesla nor SpaceX has any serious competitors in their markets. You might point out that Toyota sells more cars than Tesla does, but that comparison assumes that a Model 3 competes with a Toyota Corolla even though it sells for 2-3x as much. If Tesla can figure out how to compete in the entry-level sedan market, they will very likely crush it, the same way the Model Y is going to crush the crossover market and the same way the Model 3 crushes the luxury sedan market right now. SpaceX owns close to the entirety of the space launch market that isn’t earmarked for governments and the military-industrial complex, and their next rocket (assuming it actually works as projected, which can’t be assumed) is so much more capable than any other rocket that has ever flown or is planned that it’s hard to explain to someone who isn’t deep into space nerdery.
That all sounds like fanboi hype, but it’s all pretty much hard data that can’t be disputed (except for the claim that Model Y will crush the crossover market, which is a prediction). Does that mean Tesla’s business is worth $150 billion or SpaceX worth whatever they’re raising capital at? Business valuation is kind of a boring subject unless you’re a financial speculator and I’m not qualified to have an opinion on it.
And, of course, this is all compatible with Elon Musk personally being an asshole and bilking investors out of lots of money.
I don’t know about you, but I definitely trust the SEC to be willing and able to do the right thing. It’s not like a bunch of banks caused a recession or laundered drug money or fraudulently opened a bunch of accounts and just got a slap on the wrist recently.
Just a reminder that the SEC already charged Musk with securities fraud for his $420 tweet, which led to a settlement where he agreed to stop tweeting anything that could affect Tesla’s stock price, which he immediately violated with no consequences. I’m sure the SEC will be all over this latest tweet though.
A ridiculous stock price can mask all kinds of nonsense. Enron worked until it didn’t. The revolving door at the top of the finance and accounting groups, coupled with a pesky inability to actually make any fucking money, are problematic.
Every rocket company is run by soulless shitheads though so at least being a SpaceX fanboy makes some sense because their rockets go brrrrrr in a totally different way from other rockets.
Business valuation is kind of a boring subject unless you’re a financial speculator and I’m not qualified to have an opinion on it.
