Musk left the vaporware club long ago. Not saying he's babbling a lot and may still be guilty of lying to investors in the future.. but right now the data says otherwise.
Come on mate. He is at least a proper engineer. He builds stuff himself. No project gets delivered exactly on the promised date. There is always a delay. That's normal. I'm a petrol head (read idiot) and I don't like Tesla cars. But I'm fascinated with engineering and I do appreciate Elon Musk. He is bloody awesome.
- Founded three different multi-billion $ companies
- Created market for practical, affordable electric cars
- First successful car company listed on the stock exchange since Ford
- Founded most valuable car company in the world
- Made model S, model 3 which have 98% customer satisfaction
- Produced cars on the cutting edge of automation technology (no, not really self-drive, but still market leading)
- Has manufactured 800k + cars
- First private company to launch a spacecraft into orbit and return it to earth
- First (and only) company to carry humans into orbit and return to earth
- Developed re-usable rockets
- Developed and flew the first full-flow staged combustion engine.
Is Musk perfect? No.
But, he has achieved an amazing amount. Calling him a "fraud" or putting him in the same category as Trevor Milton is clearly dishonest.
He is extremely polarizing, yes... And the cult around him is... Distasteful. But if you don't respect what he has achieved, then just what would it take?
Robotaxi and Self Driving are basically the same thing. Yes, he is overly optimistic on that.
What about Neuralink? Nobody ever said it was a product that you could buy. They are clearly working on it. What your issue?
The Solar roof wasn't fake. They just realized they couldn't scale fast it and had to do more validation testing to prove that it could last 30 years. They are now delivering a pretty large numbers of them.
He said in 2015 that they will deliver 500k vehicles in 2020 and it looks like they might hit that. That is an insane growth. The Shanghai factory has been a model vehicle manufacturing program. The Model Y was delivered perfectly on time. Berlin and Austin seem to be going great. There is absolutely nothing to complain about as a shareholder since they overestimated how fast they could scale Model 3, the execution the last 2 years has been brilliant.
And we want even start talking about SpaceX one of the most amazing companies in the world.
If at this point you still have an issue with Musk other then that you personally don't like him, its really a you problem.
This title violates the HN guideline that says: please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait; don't editorialize.
Okay, so lots of submissions violate that guideline. But in this case the changed title is simply wrong!
Trevor Milton was NOT the CEO. Mark Russell was and continues to be the CEO. This tidbit actually appears in the article body itself. Milton was the Executive Chairman.
Executive Chairman and CEO are not the same thing.
Moral of this rant: If you're going to change the submission title, at least don't get it wrong!
For those that dont know, about a week ago a report came out that shed some light onto the incredibly shady things that were happening at Nikola: https://hindenburgresearch.com/nikola/
For example, they showed their truck Nikola One on video, which turned out to be them just rolling a truck down the hill and making it look like it was actually a functioning truck.
Their defence against this allegation? "We never said the truck was moving under its own propulsion. We just said it was in motion."
This is likely related to sexual assault allegations that are emerging as well as the Hindenburg report. When his friend Jonathan Howard Robb started talking about it online, Trevor Milton had him arrested.
> But the Nikola truck is more than just a fuel cell vehicle; it’s a rolling super computer. One of the key elements of Nikola’s advanced system is the Bosch Vehicle Control Unit, which provides higher computing power for advanced functions while reducing the number of standalone units.
"The entire infotainment system is a HTML 5 super computer," Milton said. "That's the standard language for computer programmers around the world, so using it let's us build our own chips. And HTML 5 is very secure. Every component is linked on the data network, all speaking the same language. It's not a bunch of separate systems that somehow still manage to communicate."
GM didn't pay $2B. They took a $2B stake in Nikola and agreed to be remunerated to manufacture their truck by using their electric battery tech which they were working on regardless of this deal.
28 comments
[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 64.9 ms ] threadhttps://www.engadget.com/nikola-ev-short-selling-012546201.h...
- "Full self drive"
- Neuralink
- Solar roof (totally faked demo)
It's all there if you look past the personality cult.
- Created market for practical, affordable electric cars
- First successful car company listed on the stock exchange since Ford
- Founded most valuable car company in the world
- Made model S, model 3 which have 98% customer satisfaction
- Produced cars on the cutting edge of automation technology (no, not really self-drive, but still market leading)
- Has manufactured 800k + cars
- First private company to launch a spacecraft into orbit and return it to earth
- First (and only) company to carry humans into orbit and return to earth
- Developed re-usable rockets
- Developed and flew the first full-flow staged combustion engine.
Is Musk perfect? No.
But, he has achieved an amazing amount. Calling him a "fraud" or putting him in the same category as Trevor Milton is clearly dishonest.
He is extremely polarizing, yes... And the cult around him is... Distasteful. But if you don't respect what he has achieved, then just what would it take?
@KiwiJohnno Nice one! :D
What about Neuralink? Nobody ever said it was a product that you could buy. They are clearly working on it. What your issue?
The Solar roof wasn't fake. They just realized they couldn't scale fast it and had to do more validation testing to prove that it could last 30 years. They are now delivering a pretty large numbers of them.
He said in 2015 that they will deliver 500k vehicles in 2020 and it looks like they might hit that. That is an insane growth. The Shanghai factory has been a model vehicle manufacturing program. The Model Y was delivered perfectly on time. Berlin and Austin seem to be going great. There is absolutely nothing to complain about as a shareholder since they overestimated how fast they could scale Model 3, the execution the last 2 years has been brilliant.
And we want even start talking about SpaceX one of the most amazing companies in the world.
If at this point you still have an issue with Musk other then that you personally don't like him, its really a you problem.
Okay, so lots of submissions violate that guideline. But in this case the changed title is simply wrong!
Trevor Milton was NOT the CEO. Mark Russell was and continues to be the CEO. This tidbit actually appears in the article body itself. Milton was the Executive Chairman.
Executive Chairman and CEO are not the same thing.
Moral of this rant: If you're going to change the submission title, at least don't get it wrong!
For example, they showed their truck Nikola One on video, which turned out to be them just rolling a truck down the hill and making it look like it was actually a functioning truck.
Their defence against this allegation? "We never said the truck was moving under its own propulsion. We just said it was in motion."
"The entire infotainment system is a HTML 5 super computer," Milton said. "That's the standard language for computer programmers around the world, so using it let's us build our own chips. And HTML 5 is very secure. Every component is linked on the data network, all speaking the same language. It's not a bunch of separate systems that somehow still manage to communicate."
https://www.truckinginfo.com/330475/whats-behind-the-grille-...
This man is a billionaire
https://nikolamotor.com/press_releases/nikola-and-general-mo...
https://techcrunch.com/2020/09/08/general-motors-takes-2-bil...
Either GM made a $2bn mistake or they knew exactly what they were doing and everything is going according to plan...