$TSLA is a glorified penny-stock

What pains me that Nikola Tesla gave away all patents so his work can be used for free and human race can move forward.

He died in debt, poverty, misery, and loneliness.

And Elon Musk, uses Tesla's name to build a shallow brand value to become world's richest man, file patents, exploit labour, and js actively trying to escape Earth when he should be saving it.

How fucking ironic that is.

FUCK ELON MUSK.

@Floydimus

Disagree with you there.

Tesla is notoriously bad at keeping trade secrets. They've also shared many patents to be freely used.

Musk has many faults, but projecting a top-hat wearing "Monopoly" figure just because his shares have inflated to billions isn't fair.

Reasons the share price deserves to be high:

1. They're frontrunners in self driving tech — even when it's overpriced, overpromised & underdelivered.

2. They can deliver on a well-integrated package solution for solar, grid-storage & EV.

3. Their software doesn't suck donkey balls, like all other car software.

Tesla's largest shortcoming at the moment is still price/quality though.

If they can't produce a solid $20k competitor to tiny European city cars like VW e-up, Seat Mii, Smart, Mini, etc, they'll have an issue.

The upper middle class segment isn't enough to warrant the current share price, and if they don't keep pushing towards the low end of the market they'll just be leapfrogged.

@Floydimus (Disclaimer: I don't own any Tesla stock, I do own a second hand beaten up Nissan Leaf EV, I don't have a driver's license at all, and I have driven my Boss's Tesla model S while he wasn't looking)

@bittersweet most of what is mentioned is future promises and very little delivered.

Which means that their shares are overly inflated.

Nikola Tesla delivered and yet wasn't valued.

@Floydimus Yeah true.

I think the main positive function of Tesla is to pull the automotive industry out of their rut.

Cars haven't changed that much in the last 2 decades, and Tesla is forcing change by scaring other companies — much like the iPhone once did for smartphones.

Whether Tesla can also truly become a market leader in the long term... I have my doubts.

But I have those doubts because Apple's long term success is based on guarding trade secrets and vendor lock-in.

I personally wouldn't buy Tesla stock because I think many EV enthusiasts aren't locked in or brand-loyal, and will ditch their Tesla for a more affordable option once the market starts maturing.

@bittersweet what if they change the automotive industry landscape?

Does there really exist clean energy?

I am not a climate change activist, but I surely know the clean energy shit is just a marketing tactic like Cloud.

Edit: agree on your stock decision. Their target audience would anyday ditch them for a cheaper alternative. Brand loyalty is inexistence in such hip companies.

@Floydimus

> Does there really exist clean energy?

It's always relative.

But even disregarding climate change & CO2 arguments, I prefer that we move towards electric cars charged by "as clean as possible" forms of energy.

For a selfish reason: I dislike breathing in pollution. From cars, from power plants, from industries.

Fossil fuels create massive destruction around the world, from lead poisoning and radioactive coal dust to natural gas earthquakes to aquifer fracking damage to nature reserve oil spills.

But affordability is a concern. You can't say "everyone MUST buy an EV", if there's a $10k premium cost and a large portion of people are shopping well below $20k total sticker price.

@Floydimus Also, while I can technically afford it, I want to be able to choose not to spend a fortune on transportation (hence the beaten up Nissan Leaf).

Looking forward to buying a dented Tesla Model 3 with an abused battery in 5-10 years though.

@bittersweet I partially agree.

Because we eventually lose energy in transmission from one form to another.

Earlier we were operating cars straight from fossils.

Now from fossils to electricity to cars.

And if we look at the fundamental level of evolution and growth, it is all about improving efficiency in what we do, not reduce it.

Well, I don't have exact numbers to back my claim of energy loss in conversion but science and logic that I learned in school tells me that we are fucked.

Clean air and water are surely something we all desire. When I landed in Gatwick and had to walk from plane to arrivals on the runway (for the lack of better word), my lungs could literally feel the difference in the air. I still haven't forgotten that feeling. Pollution sucks.

They pollute because we consume.

@bittersweet have you seen that comparison picture of cars vs bicycles vs bus to transport 60 people?

I am big fan of public transport.

@Floydimus

Internal combustion engines in cars are extremely inefficient though.

Vehicles running on methane (LPG/LNG) can reach an efficiency of 43%, while an LNG peaker plant reaches 91-93%. For gasoline it's worse.

The issue is that a car tries to convert fuel directly into motion, and loses the rest to heat -- while a power plant uses heat to boil water and drive an ultra-optimized turbine.

So, ideally you would like only magical hippie power, but consolidation of the "energy transformation process" inside of a fossil power plant instead of the vehicle is actually vastly preferential as well.

This difference in efficiency is already visible through simple economics: My Nissan EV can drive to Paris for $7 (shitty old battery needs to charge 4 times in between though), while a gasoline car would take $40-45 in refueling.

@Floydimus And yeah, speaking of efficiency, big proponent of trains.

Not even "build expensive maglev" or "more high speed bullet trains".

Just standard basic boring trains, with affordable tickets, high frequency rides, both short and long distance.

Most EU governments subsidize car & plane travel, while I think improvement of train networks would benefit society more.

@bittersweet quit watching Adam Something on YouTube. Stop making clown out of yourself

@kiki

Que?

I don't watch that much YouTube, certainly no car stuff. Factorio vids... occasional Tom Scott, Kurzgesagt, Sabrina from Answer in Progress... stuff like that.

I don't know who "Adam Something" is.

I like Musk as an engineer. I think he also understands what makes companies grow.

He's quite terrible as an executive though.

I think SpaceX has flourished because of Shotwell & Mueller, and to a certain degree despite Musk.

I'm quite familiar with the space industry, having worked as a QA software dev for Arianespace.

I have also worked as an Environmental Analytical Chemist, among other things for power plants. My dad in law works as an chief engineer at Vattenfall, a large (and somewhat evil) European power multinational.

I used to own quite a bit of "green" Nissan stock when they were the first to push (kinda) hard into the EV & solar market, but sold the stock a year later.

Feel free to tell me why I'm making a clown out of myself.

@bittersweet good points there.

I stand corrected on car efficiency.

And I didn't know car and aeroplane travel are subsidised in Europe. Damn!

I thought you Europeans are big on train travel and the other two modes are primary to Americans.

No wonder the ticket price for trains is so damn fucking high and planes are dirt cheap.

@Floydimus Trains are definitely more popular in Europe than in the US, but still only for shorter distances. Very few people go on holiday by train, or travel between capital cities by train.

In my opinion we need a EU train agency to develop international rail infra (and stop subsidizing air travel), but sadly "EU" is seen as a dirty word these days.

@bittersweet lol everyone has now turned towards EU instead of US for a better life.

@Floydimus Yeah, or China, if you're sub-Saharan African. Although that's a really strange relation going on there.

Meanwhile a lot of people from already developed countries move to Europe.

It's weird, because organizationally we (EU) couldn't create a dent in a package of butter (my favorite Dutch colloquialism).

We're the wimpiest, most bureaucratic superpower. Our form of corruption is getting elected and doing nothing because no one knows what should be done by whom.

People feel "proud to be American", but very few people will cry singing Ode an die Freude while waving the golden stars on a field of blue.

Yet somehow the EU is kind of successful enough to be one of the greener pastures.

I think it's mostly because climate-wise we're in a rather fortunate place, and whenever another superpower threatens us the threat ends up on the bureaucratic superpile between "fishing rights argument number 465" and "why don't our laws allow us to kick Hungary out of the union"

@bittersweet Europe has seen its fair share of struggle and battles.

And we cannot deny that Europe and Europeans evolved well.

Rest of the world is atleast a thousand years behind EU.

We, especially Indians, are going through what Europe went through in first century.

So we'll be there but by that time I'd be dead.

@Floydimus

I don't think it's quite that dramatic.

Politically, there's a bunch of shittiness in the EU as well. You could argue "yeah but at least there's functioning democracy"... But in the EU it's also pretty new and fragile in many places — I mean Franco ruled over Spain until '75.

Technology distributes all over the world within a decade or two. You'll have a hard time finding African villages without shitty Android Froyo phones and prepaid kilobit internet antennas, in 15 years they'll be driving my dented Nissan Leaf charging it off Chinese-installed solar.

I think the only true advantage the EU has had historically is moderate climate and fertile soil.

We might be messing that up though.

And that's where our disadvantage lurks: We're not unified by language or culture, and we're at 2/2 when it comes to starting world wars.

So maybe I'm being pessimistic, but I think the EU's success stories will eventually turn out to be flukes.