The key to Elon Musk making Tesla work well is figuring out how Apple works so well. I have no real idea how Apple manages to be effective and innovative with 100,000+ employees. I don't think Elon Musk really understands what they're doing either but I really hope he can replicate it.
The most obvious answer is that Tesla becomes a division of Apple and Tim Cook helps scale Tesla, as he helped Steve Jobs scale Apple.
tesla's liabilities are still less then their assets, and their order book is absolutely insanely robust. Their price makes it so a car manufacturer (save maybe VW) couldn't buy them, but given that both Apple and Google are trying to get into automobiles, Either of them would jump at the chance, assuming a sane valuation stock wise.
Tesla's statement was that the order book was holding solid at around 450k, IIRC. Not bad for something with a multi-year backlog.
I suspect the reason why is because Tesla is only targeting the highest end model 3s right now, and people who have put down deposits are waiting to see what the federal tax credit situation is like, and if I can manage to hold out for the base model since I don't need the 300mi upgraded on (but can afford it, if I wish). Tesla is going after the high margin cars right now (as they should). within the next month (if current tends hold) they will bass BMW, Mercedes and Audi in the premium sedan market with that strategy, all while trying to maximize incoming revenue.
On the other hand it could be a conspiracy to shaft Short Sellers, who are owed a complete collapse of the stock, bankruptcy of Tesla, and Elon being led away in chains.
I think we have a little too much faith in how some organization trees of people by itself causes effectiveness, vs having a good personal working dynamic and people themselves. And it could be many re-organizations aren't really undertaken to re-org per se, but to provide a bit of a reset to the personal dynamics of teams.
It is an interesting suggestion from a branding perspective. Apple and Tesla feels like similar brands in that they are hip and innovative. But to what extent Apple can help Tesla to scale better, vs any larger automotive company feels uncertain. Has the "Apple buys Tesla idea" been seriously discussed in media?
Tim cook is a awesome COO. As a CEO, Apple is squandering all of the advantages that Steve Jobs left them with. They have been without any clear direction or product vision for a while now, and continuing debacles like the Mac Pro situation (5+ years and counting since Apple has a had a competitive pro stand alone machine), the poor quality of the new Macbook Pro (bad keyboard, dongle hell), the absolute joke that is the Mac Mini indicates that Apple is loosing the ability to even evolutionary improve their products.
This is because you don't have a guy with product vision at the top. Instead you have someone who is great at optimization.
An alternative explanation could be that Apple is quietly discontinuing MacOS laptop / desktop computers while putting more resources into replacing them with larger iOS devices. At some point it no longer makes sense to maintain separate operating systems and hardware architectures. All the pundits have been predicting convergence for years now.
EDIT: for clarification, I fully support paying for journalism, I am a subscriber of two online news outlets myself. My suggestion is provided "as is" without moral blessing of any kind, express or implied... ;)
It's actually completely independent per user. They have a model that predicts whether or not you're more likely or less likely to subscribe and whether giving you a free preview will increase that chance.
It's a soft paywall. It's only triggered when an IP exceeds the monthly quota of free content. OP or someone on his subnet has been enjoying their journalism, but doesn't want to support it.
It the post-truth world, I have no problem supporting these news organizations whose content I regularly consume.
Amen, though once I called them it was pretty easy to get them to cancel me. SiriusXM, though...spent 25 minutes on the phone arguing with the rep that I didn't want to pay for their service anymore, in any fashion or form. I was begging them to let me cancel by the end of the call.
This is worth it if you read their content even slightly regularly. But I really only visit the WSJ when it's linked to me like on HN. I just checked my Chrome history and I've visited 10 articles total this year, counting this one. So $18.50 per month doesn't really seem worth it to me to read 2 articles a month.
I'm fascinated by this outline.com. That's a pretty nice domain name...
Nice bit of mental gymnastics going on in the DMCA page and in their Terms of Service - you, the user, are considered to be the publisher of this material. That way their hands stay clean! How could they possibly know you're NOT the publisher of Bloomberg and the WSJ?
Three business models have emerged for newspapers:
* Be a sponsor's mouthpiece. This works pretty well if you're OK with your news being nothing more than someone's PR department.
* Advertising. This, as you say, hinges entirely on tracking users.
* Subscriptions. Also hinges on tracking users.
In short, you're absolutely right! There could be a better way! I just don't know of any and can't think of any.
I'm 100% convinced this failure of imagination is just my personal failing, through. I'm very interested in knowing what this better way could be, and I'm sure the news industry would similarly be deeply curious. What do you have in mind that's practical, workable, reliable enough to build a business around, and in no way, shape, form, or manner involves tracking users?
Charge me per article I want to read. 25 or 50 cents? Make it seamless so I can hit Apple Pay and then read the article.
I would do it, and I bet so would many others.
I genuinely don't see many people doing it, at least not enough to make a tangible difference to the papers bottom line. The only answer these days is a subscription service, but I don't want to subscribe to 50+ different ones... be nice if there was a general 'internet' bill included in your ISP that distributed the money according to the sites you visited the most. Though that's a whole tracking/privacy problem once again.
This is similar to the idea mentioned, but again... requires you to be logged in and tracked. I liked the first implementation of it, not sure about the current form. https://contributor.google.com/v/beta
People have experimented with this and it's not very popular en masse.
A workable model might be something akin to a subscription service wherein you get 200 articles a month from WSJ/NYT/Bloomberg/Whoever for $10 and the revenue is distributed equitably after the provider cut.
I would definitely pay for this. Economist, WSJ, NYT, Bloomberg, FT would cost about $200/month for a full subscription to each. I don't read any of them that much to justify that sort of money, but if it was 10-20 for a bunch of articles across them all a la spotify I'd definitely pay for it. I think most people I know would too.
However, they are probably concerned about cannibalising their own subscriptions too much to do it, which sucks.
I want this model too. Unfortunately, credit card processing fees will eat most of that. We need a new payment infrastructure that's low fee and enables small digital purchases.
We may also need people whose thought processes aren't perturbed by stopping to make payments. It's possible that not all transaction costs are captured fully in per-txn fees.
How about two or three dollars? You need to give them something on top of transaction costs.
I actually think a paper might as well charge $10-50 per article because they won’t make anything charging little enough to attract tire-kickers, and above $1 they won’t get many to pay besides people who have a strong interest in the content and people using the company card.
If the NY Times allowed me to register an account, and then billed me in aggregate every month, then I would gladly pay 25 cents to $1 per article.
The problem that Lightning network hopefully solves is exactly the system that the media industry needs. And they are so hyper consolidated, it should be viable to create some type of system.
Alternatively, maybe Americans need less news and information.
Why not just get a subscription at that point? NYT basic is $180/year so you are just asking for a discount on that, assuming you would plan to read less than a couple hundred articles a year.
Pay-per-item is a wonderful business model! It works spectacularly for movies and books and similar.
However, one possible wrinkle springs to mind. That is, all the sectors what per-item media payment works well for are long-form. There's an active review and feedback ecosystem around them, allowing consumers to judge quality before paying. This performs the critical function of enabling consumers to de-risk their purchases.
Once again, I'm completely sure this is just a personal failing, but I'm struggling to find a way to construct such a system around newspapers. Reviews only work well when the desire form immediate access is low and the time-cost of the review is a small percentage of that of the content being commented upon. Newspaper articles would seem to fail both tests!
Please, help me with my failure of imagination and comprehension.
The legalization of sports betting will probably have a secondary effect of resuscitating the newspaper industry. It will be a huge boon to a lot of industries, actually.
Generally speaking, it requires knowing who is subscribed and being able to check this status when they are trying to view an article. Thus some method of tracking users is required. Cryptography and signed tokens might make it possible to abstract the who from the status, but the nature of a subscription requires the user being able to prove their status.
That's not really tracking. Advertisers track users across multiple web pages to target ads to their inferred interests. An advertising-based site would need a way to associate a visitor with a bunch of other sites. A subscription-based site doesn't have to collect or keep identifying data. A username and password will do, along with something like a Stripe token which only lets Stripe identify the user.
Here's a Firefox addon that sets your referer to "Facebook" every time you connect to either the Financial Times or the Wall Street Journal. You won't get a paywall:
There are rumors floating around that Tesla was very close to their late June target of 5k/wk after their latest line closure. If that so, I think they have turned the corner here.
The steps they are taking sure seem to look more like optimize cash-flow after the R&D is done, rather then a continue full-build to get to max capacity.
Edit since some are downvoting:
Report from Freemont on Model 3 Production line 5/13/2018 (midday):
* 4290- Last 7 days production of M3
* 638- Last 24hrs production of M3
The last line shutdown/retooling had a significant improvement on the speed of the M3 line. Everything is working in conjunction like intended and no bottlenecks anywhere. The upcoming May line shutdown for retooling is going to be much shorter than past, and currently scheduled for May 26-27th weekend. Shutdown could get moved up if production continues to increase at its current rate. The sentiment from the line is 5k sustained is pretty much guaranteed and 6k before end of June is very likely. Bottom line is I was told this is as good as Tesla employees have felt about the M3 production since production began.
They also point out that those executives left behind their option packages which is somewhat of a red flag and begs the question what is going on behind the scenes.
I'd have no problem believing it really is a leave of absence. Almost everyone would be burned out after dealing with the intense pressure and really long hours for months on end.
I wouldn't necessarily take this as a sign he is planning to jump ship.
I don't think the option packages are a red flag. Most tech executives leave behind options or RSUs when they leave, because their employers keep giving more. The execs take that into account when they negotiate their compensation with their new employers.
From the outside it looks like a house filled with Christmas lights! But... there looks to be a massive fire inside consuming all that was beautiful....
I'm curious to see Elon publish rough stochastic simulations of his Tesla Model 3 assembly lines. Both current and proposed. Full automation without buffering at several stages requires massive uptime for all segments.
every single little thing that involves this company has to be front page finance news, it's so irritating. yesterday there was literally an article that said "Tesla model S rear ends truck" and if you click into the article, it didn't even involve autopilot....it was just a normal accident. imagine a headline that read "Toyota Camry rear ends truck!"
Their function is like any business in a Capitalist Society. Profit over everything. Integrity doesn't pay the bills or buy you a new Ferrari. It's sad to see the things these days being excused as 'journalism'.
People downvoting above - have you not had a boss tell you "that would be great if we could implement like that, but do it this way instead because it's more profitable" ?
I've got journalist friends with stories to tell but are stuck because they've got a quota of 10 more trump stories and 5 more musk stories to write first.
I think you'll find nobody under the age of about 25 cares about the mainstream media, so it doesn't need to be replaced by anything. We just wait until everyone older dies, and the media will too.
What are you talking about? You can literally just go to Tesla's job posting website [1] and see that they have an entire department dedicated to marketing and spend plenty of money on it.
Just because you don't see banner ads for Tesla on the subway doesn't mean they spend zero dollars on marketing.
The Tesla website is basically one huge marketing platform/advertisement, so that's one thing. Every time there's an open house at one of their stores where they have talks by some celebrity is a marketing event. They often host events where you can come test drive their cars (they did a lot of these when "ludicrous mode" came out, and you could go test it out on a big empty racetrack) is a marketing event. Every press conference where they announce a new feature/product is a marketing event. This [1] is a marketing event. Another large part of any company's marketing is building relationships with media outlets to feed them information and build up hype. They also have a social media team as part of their marketing department, so there's a decent chance that some of the comments you see on reddit or HN or elsewhere are Tesla employees astroturfing.
Ironically, the entire myth that Tesla has a "$0 marketing budget" is the result of, you guessed it, good work from Tesla's marketing department. Marketing/advertising is much, much more than just commercials and billboards.
You live by the sword you die by the sword. Tesla and Musk, especially are in news all the time - boring company, flamethrowers, candy company etc. So, it goes to reason that even the failures will get highlighted.
Currently it's not known whether the human was responsible or Autopilot was responsible.
As Autopilot has had prior issues with detecting trucks, resulting in at least 1 fatality, there is significant concern that Autopilot was responsible in this case.
"Even the failures will get highlighted"
It seems that SPECIALLY the failures are being highlighted. I fail to understand how covering a celebrity CEO twitting about opening a candy shop and writing a negative piece about a car rear ending a truck would have the same goal as you seem to suggest.
Do you have any evidence to support that? I would argue that that scenario is way less likely than ICE / oil companies spending resources on a negative campaign givsn the current trend of negative Tesla stories making it to the national news, where as the positive ones do not to the same effect.
They should ask for their money back if their PR firm is planting negative stories like the OP and the one mentioned in the comment you're replying to!
WSJ has been publishing a ridiculous number of Tesla articles lately. Some (most?) have a negative slant. Tesla is not that entertaining to require several articles per week.
> Tesla is not that entertaining to require several articles per week
They have bonds out, a record short interest and will need to raise capital later this year. Tesla is of immense interest to bond holders, equity investors, stock lenders and investment bankers.
You also don't have news articles quoting Akio Toyoda claiming Adaptive Cruise has saved thousands of lives. The cultures of the two companies are very different.
117 comments
[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 172 ms ] threadThe most obvious answer is that Tesla becomes a division of Apple and Tim Cook helps scale Tesla, as he helped Steve Jobs scale Apple.
That said... if we’re hypothesizing then yeah, it’s a good ideological fit at least.
How many are converting? Elon would not say on the call. Why?
I suspect the reason why is because Tesla is only targeting the highest end model 3s right now, and people who have put down deposits are waiting to see what the federal tax credit situation is like, and if I can manage to hold out for the base model since I don't need the 300mi upgraded on (but can afford it, if I wish). Tesla is going after the high margin cars right now (as they should). within the next month (if current tends hold) they will bass BMW, Mercedes and Audi in the premium sedan market with that strategy, all while trying to maximize incoming revenue.
On the other hand it could be a conspiracy to shaft Short Sellers, who are owed a complete collapse of the stock, bankruptcy of Tesla, and Elon being led away in chains.
More to the point, there have been discussions in the past. Apple apparently started discussions back in 2012.
This is because you don't have a guy with product vision at the top. Instead you have someone who is great at optimization.
So yes to Tim Cook. No to running Tesla.
Isn't operations what Tesla needs right now?
You can hire and define operations, you can't do the same for product vision.
EDIT: for clarification, I fully support paying for journalism, I am a subscriber of two online news outlets myself. My suggestion is provided "as is" without moral blessing of any kind, express or implied... ;)
It the post-truth world, I have no problem supporting these news organizations whose content I regularly consume.
The one I usually go with is by pasting the link into the search box on archive.is
Sneaky but it works!
Edit: Downvoted for this lol. Can't believe paying for the content you want to read is such a controversial opinion.
Meanwhile Netflix allows you to sign-up, cancel, or even temporarily pause your service without a single moment of hassle.
Nice bit of mental gymnastics going on in the DMCA page and in their Terms of Service - you, the user, are considered to be the publisher of this material. That way their hands stay clean! How could they possibly know you're NOT the publisher of Bloomberg and the WSJ?
https://www.outline.com/dmca.html
"If someone else might own the copyright to it, don't submit it. Outline is for reading pages that:
"https://www.outline.com/terms.html
'“you” or “publisher” means the individual or entity using the Services'
* Be a sponsor's mouthpiece. This works pretty well if you're OK with your news being nothing more than someone's PR department.
* Advertising. This, as you say, hinges entirely on tracking users.
* Subscriptions. Also hinges on tracking users.
In short, you're absolutely right! There could be a better way! I just don't know of any and can't think of any.
I'm 100% convinced this failure of imagination is just my personal failing, through. I'm very interested in knowing what this better way could be, and I'm sure the news industry would similarly be deeply curious. What do you have in mind that's practical, workable, reliable enough to build a business around, and in no way, shape, form, or manner involves tracking users?
A workable model might be something akin to a subscription service wherein you get 200 articles a month from WSJ/NYT/Bloomberg/Whoever for $10 and the revenue is distributed equitably after the provider cut.
However, they are probably concerned about cannibalising their own subscriptions too much to do it, which sucks.
I actually think a paper might as well charge $10-50 per article because they won’t make anything charging little enough to attract tire-kickers, and above $1 they won’t get many to pay besides people who have a strong interest in the content and people using the company card.
The problem that Lightning network hopefully solves is exactly the system that the media industry needs. And they are so hyper consolidated, it should be viable to create some type of system.
Alternatively, maybe Americans need less news and information.
However, one possible wrinkle springs to mind. That is, all the sectors what per-item media payment works well for are long-form. There's an active review and feedback ecosystem around them, allowing consumers to judge quality before paying. This performs the critical function of enabling consumers to de-risk their purchases.
Once again, I'm completely sure this is just a personal failing, but I'm struggling to find a way to construct such a system around newspapers. Reviews only work well when the desire form immediate access is low and the time-cost of the review is a small percentage of that of the content being commented upon. Newspaper articles would seem to fail both tests!
Please, help me with my failure of imagination and comprehension.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/read-ft-wsj/
Tesla’s bankruptcy can’t come too early - the sooner they go out of business the better for taxpayers everywhere (but mostly in the US)!
The steps they are taking sure seem to look more like optimize cash-flow after the R&D is done, rather then a continue full-build to get to max capacity.
Edit since some are downvoting:
Report from Freemont on Model 3 Production line 5/13/2018 (midday):
* 4290- Last 7 days production of M3 * 638- Last 24hrs production of M3
The last line shutdown/retooling had a significant improvement on the speed of the M3 line. Everything is working in conjunction like intended and no bottlenecks anywhere. The upcoming May line shutdown for retooling is going to be much shorter than past, and currently scheduled for May 26-27th weekend. Shutdown could get moved up if production continues to increase at its current rate. The sentiment from the line is 5k sustained is pretty much guaranteed and 6k before end of June is very likely. Bottom line is I was told this is as good as Tesla employees have felt about the M3 production since production began.
According to Tesla...
Their numbers this entire year have been highly highly questionable.
Bloomberg is also projecting near 4k/week.
They also point out that those executives left behind their option packages which is somewhat of a red flag and begs the question what is going on behind the scenes.
We'll see.
I wouldn't necessarily take this as a sign he is planning to jump ship.
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/995822814291673090?s=20
I cant even imagine.
From the outside it looks like a house filled with Christmas lights! But... there looks to be a massive fire inside consuming all that was beautiful....
it's so fucking annoying.
You can't blame the news though. If the news headline was "Toyota Camry rear ends truck" you would not have clicked on it :)
I've got journalist friends with stories to tell but are stuck because they've got a quota of 10 more trump stories and 5 more musk stories to write first.
It won't be long and they'll be gone.
Tesla actively sought this attention
let's be real. it is sensational journalism that is at work here. It's NOT masterminded by a corporation spending zero dollars on marketing.
Just because you don't see banner ads for Tesla on the subway doesn't mean they spend zero dollars on marketing.
1: https://www.tesla.com/careers/search#/?department=8
Ironically, the entire myth that Tesla has a "$0 marketing budget" is the result of, you guessed it, good work from Tesla's marketing department. Marketing/advertising is much, much more than just commercials and billboards.
1: https://electrek.co/2018/05/15/tesla-model-x-electric-towing...
Advertising budget is what you use to bypass media coverage decisions, not how you drive “free media”.
Well, other than the $75MM it recorded in its last annual report for 2017 for advertising and marketing...
I’m calling shenanigans.
As Autopilot has had prior issues with detecting trucks, resulting in at least 1 fatality, there is significant concern that Autopilot was responsible in this case.
Plus, if they pay a company to write a negative article, its not 'really' negative.
It might look like a negative article, but the words are to convince you that it really isnt bad.
Not surprisingly, people are interested in seeing how that mould-breaking is going
Eh, I cant tell if this is organic, or paid shilling by Tesla Marketing.
They have been caught shilling reddit, so I wouldnt be surprised if they are paying for articles written by major news outlets.
Does that interest translate to a normal rear end crash? Nope.
They have bonds out, a record short interest and will need to raise capital later this year. Tesla is of immense interest to bond holders, equity investors, stock lenders and investment bankers.