Guest post by David Middleton
In a stunning setback to Stark Industries’ Tesla Motors’ effort to save the world from Hydra Gorebal Warming, hundreds of workers were fired in an effort to speed up production of the Iron Legion Model 3…
Tesla has reportedly fired hundreds of employees amid signs that the company is off to a slow start in manufacturing its crucial Model 3 electric car.
[…]
But the firings reportedly included engineers, managers, salespeople and factory employees.
The move comes as Tesla is aiming to rapidly expand production of its new mass-market Model 3. CEO Elon Musk had said the company would be making 5,000 cars per week by the end of the year, but that goal appears to be in jeopardy amid early stumbles.
[…]
Musk acknowledged on Oct. 6 that the company was facing “bottlenecks” in Model 3 production. He said Tesla was “diverting resources” to clear up the Model 3 production challenges, which was one factor in the company’s decision to delay its reveal of an electric semi-truck by about three weeks.
The company said in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing on Oct. 2 that “a handful” of its “manufacturing subsystems” have “taken longer to activate than expected.”
When a CEO issues production guidance that he knows to be false…
The Truth Is Catching Up With Tesla
CEO Elon Musk is a visionary, but there is a fine line between setting aggressive goals and misleading shareholders
Charley Grant
Oct. 7, 2017 2:02 p.m. ET
New revelations about Tesla Inc.’s production of the highly anticipated Model 3 sedan should shock, but not surprise, investors.
The Wall Street Journal reported Friday that Tesla has recently been building major portions of the Model 3 by hand. This comes less than a week after Tesla announced it fell short of its third-quarter production guidance of 1,500 cars by more than 80%.
[…]
The WSJ article goes on to say:
“There is a fine line, however, between setting aggressive goals and misleading shareholders.
Tesla is inching closer to that line. Tesla was making three Model 3s on an average day in the third quarter. Mr. Musk should have known in August, when production guidance was reiterated, that the company wasn’t going to produce 1,500 Model 3s by the end of September.”
When a CEO routinely issues production guidance that he knows to be false…
Five stars for the parody using Marvel references. 🙂
I freely admit that I am a Marvel Cinematic Universe geek… particularly Guardians of the Galaxy… Yondu Udonta Rocks!
Marvel’is
dido
we are groot ?!?!
Hate to tell you Dave, but just saw Guardians Vol. 2 and Yondu unfortunately has gone to that big Ravager colony somewhere in the spirit world.
We bought the DVD/BluRay the day it was released. We’ve seen it about 40 times. I could watch the Come a Little Bit Closer scene a million times and not get tired of it… 😉
Personally I’ll take Mr. Blue Sky….always was partial to ELO for some reason. 😉
LMAO every time I watch that scene!!!
In any business its focus, focus, focus.
Elon should have gone to Specsavers.
Perhaps good that he stayed away. Wife and I got 4 pairs of specs from them and haven’t been able to use any.
But we’d likely be looking at different things
There’s a company that’s been advertising mail order contact lenses lately. The companies name is Hubble.
How’s its stock doing today?
Not so well over the past month…
https://www.google.com/search?q=tsla&oq=tsla&aqs=chrome..69i57j69i60l3j0l2.759j0j8&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8
Model 3 hype sent TSLA up from ~$200 to nearly $400/share since December 2016.
Set Michael Mann onto that graph. He’ll make it look fantastic!
Stock price wanderings are fascinating. Many will agree that at these share prices only idiots are investing. That may be but just because you are or think yourself smarter doesn’t mean you can make money. After all you are attempting to engage in a transaction with people you know are idiots. This is like driving safely on a highway full of drunks. Your sobriety does not protect you.
There could be another hype-driven leg up… As long as the Tesla cult is in place, people will still throw money at it.
I hear Musk will be personally offering Thomas Karl the coveted position of Exec VP in charge of Data collection for production quotas
Looks like there is a ‘pause’ in Tesla’s stock price increase. Seems to be some divergence from the model ensemble.
@HotScot: +100000000000
CBS: Tesla, Daimler, VW, Volvo, BMW getting hundreds of millions in new job creation assistance from tax-victims…contrac out plant construction ultimately to Bring in cheaper Eastern European/Baltic labor with no special expertise… sometimes illegally under B1 & B2 (business dealing, non-work visas):
http://keepamericaatwork.com/wonder-why-your-children-cant-find-good-paying-jobs-in-america/
mib8
Thanks for the eye opener on CBS: Tesla, Daimler, VW, Volvo, BMW.
Your link is proof positive that the H-B1 Visa program is a crooked scam facilitated by swamp dwellers in government and industry. Trump is right it’s time to drain the swamp and then fill is with concrete.
Other readers should watch the short video that exposes the the crooked H-B1 Visa program and the flood of foreign workers doing American jobs.
See:
http://keepamericaatwork.com/wonder-why-your-children-cant-find-good-paying-jobs-in-america/
Musk will soon announce he has secretly outsourced model 3 production to a robotic assembly line on the dark side of the moon. Those who didn’t believe will soon have to eat their words when deliveries start dropping out of the sky attached to Amazon super drones.
Actually- if that was the method of delivery, I might even pay those hyper-inflated prices to see that.
But what would I do with a 3000 pound paperweight afterwards?
Why does this make me think of the scene in Avengers: Age of Ultron, when the Iron Legion went haywire?
Dark Side of the Moon: Excellent plan – get some german quality in there…. 😉
Most well run companies get rid if the lowest 5% performers every year. There isn’t much incentive to keep them around. That appears to be what is going on here.
That Tesla is getting product out the door at all is a major miracle. He’s doing fine. Wish I could get one… Still like my Nissan Leaf for running around. About 5 cents a mile to drive and essentially no maintenance.
The 2017 leaf has a range improved range of “up to” 107 miles. This is why electric cars are a non-starter for most families.
If you don’t charge and discharge from 90% to 10% on every charge/discharge cycle, you are going to shorten the battery life.
Of course it can be used by families. Most families have 2 cars, it’s easy to have one car for whichever person takes shorter trips and a longer range car for the other person and long distance trips on the weekend.. In the US, for example, 68% of commuters drive less than 15 miles each way.
Electric battery performance has never been outstanding in cold weather. Of interest in Calgary and points E & W, is an article from Forbes on March 2014.
“The AAA tested three different EVs under controlled circumstances to gauge their performance in stop-and-go-traffic according to cold, moderate and hot climactic conditions. While the test found the three models averaged a range of 105 miles at an ambient temperature of 75 degrees, this plummeted to just 43 miles when the thermometer dipped to 20 degrees. Scorching temperatures likewise adversely affected the tested vehicles, though a bit more moderately, limiting the average range to 69 miles on a charge at 95 degrees.”
“Most families have 2 cars, it’s easy to have one car for whichever person takes shorter trips and a longer range car for the other person and long distance trips on the weekend.”
In the real world, families use the “clunker” for those shorter trips. Not many normal people can afford a $35K+ car just for short around town trips.
Of course, I don’t know about inside-the-beltway lobbyists, think tankers and journalists.
2018 Leaf is 150 miles. US average miles per day for private cars is 30. But I agree it needs to get up to 300 with 80% fast charge in 20 minutes; which it will
Not so sure it is a bottom performer thing, If this were the caes, the company would have to let itself go. Musk for certain…
150 miles in ideal conditions with a brand new battery pack.
Just make sure your family never has an emergency and needs a second car that can be used for something other than short trips.
“Chris October 16, 2017 at 11:01 am”
97% of statistics are made up.
Cheap, because others are being taxed to first help you buy your toy, and then to pay for the roads that you are driving on for free.
No maintenance until you have to replace the battery pack.
“Most well run companies get rid if the lowest 5% performers every year. There isn’t much incentive to keep them around. That appears to be what is going on here.”
Maybe Musk should be on that list, Don’t know about your well run company, but mine doesn’t do that. We hire good people. we train them well and rarely fire anyone. We haven’t fired a production operator in 10 years, every operator in that time period that has left has either retired or gone back to school for a higher profession.
Oh, the company has been around for over 150 years and is privately held, profitable and growing.
That seemed to start with jack Welch at GE, but I think the number was 10%. Works OK for the first or second cut, but then you’re getting rid of good people. Long range, very damaging to all but the largest companies.
Hiring, training, and keeping good people is the route to success, and loyalty is a two-way street.
“Most well run companies get rid [of] the lowest 5% performers every year.”
I was never told that in my management courses. It’s better to avoid hiring those people in the first place. What I’ve learned since is that behind every horrendous business debacle there’s at least one MBA.
Bob, I’m not sure with what industry your company is associated but I have seen several high tech companies, and work for a couple, that grew like mad for several years to the point that there was actually no accountability in management. They had grown faster than the available talent. When they finally got to the point where growing had slowed down and the CEO wanted to clean houses a bit management used that opportunity to get ride of people they didn’t like, not the worst workers. There were also few, if any, managers let go, just workers that had gotten on the bad side of his/her manager.
Another thing you can count on, at least in high tech, is that when a company or even a government subsidiary, has its first, to use a government term, ‘RIF’ or layoff the competent employees, those that have no trouble getting jobs elsewhere, start leaving in droves. The sharp people see the hand writing on the wall and bail out. Pretty soon the company is left with mostly mediocre and incompetent employees and managers. Then, one of the rules in ‘The Entrepreneur’s Handbook’ takes over, i.e. ‘First rate managers hire first rate people. Second rate managers hire third rate people.’ I suspect that’s what happened to NASA after Congress started screwing with their budgets, and I would not be surprised if the same thing doesn’t happen to Tesla.
Hiring and training is an expensive process. If your turnover is a constant 5% (plus whatever people are leaving for better jobs or retiring), then you are going to be wasting a huge amount on onboarding.
For many technical positions, it takes a month or two before you can be more than marginally productive.
@ur momisugly Kpar
“Hiring, training, and keeping good people is the route to success, … .”
Maybe not THE Golden Rule, but it’s right up there!
Also, a lot of people (both managing and managed) would do well to pay particular attention to your observation about loyalty.
@ur momisugly Joe Crawford
“… those that have no trouble getting jobs elsewhere, start leaving in droves. The sharp people see the hand writing on the wall and bail out. Pretty soon the company is left with mostly mediocre and incompetent employees and managers.”
This is one of those things that is ‘obvious’ and ‘well-known’ — but it STILL has to be said! (and ‘Well done!,’ for that). So many companies fail to take heed of this particular lesson. For me, it indicates fundamental problems in higher management … or, I suppose, that the company is about to go out of business.
“Most well run companies get rid if the lowest 5% performers every year. There isn’t much incentive to keep them around. That appears to be what is going on here.”
Really? Let’s do a thought experiment. Let’s consider a company of 100 employees that achieves a 2% gain in productivity every year along with a 4% yearly gain in sales volume. So, let’s say in 2010 the company, to stay even, needs just 2 new employees to compensate for the 4% gain. But it lets 5 go. Firing employees for ’cause’ is always going to be a problem so the company just simply eliminates their jobs which leaves them with unemployment compensation for which the company has to reimburse the state unemployment compensation pool (in other words, it costs money to terminate people). The 7 new hires will take about 6 months to fully learn their duties and get up to speed and that costs the company money too. And, that also drives the 2% productivity increase right out the window. Hire more? Or don’t meet the 4% sales growth? Or have the experienced employees put in for pricey overtime?
How do you think that’s all going to end up. And, even if sales are flat and the company didn’t experience 4% growth in sales which leaves the company culling 2% of its employees (since 2% productivity increase is the norm), they still have to let 3% more go. Three employees that need to be replaced by new, uncertain hires.
A successful company does not, year on year, terminate five out of every one hundred employees.
BS.
What really is happening, as evidenced when Musk left President Trump’s business advisory council in a cunningly orchestrated huff earlier, is a clear recognition on his part that the free ride (pun intended) is over for him.
Bingo!
You are right GetItRight
Exactly.
Oh Bummer is no longer there to pay for the 400 surplus worker bees.
Everyone knows that when you are having trouble meeting production quotas, you put off people???????
In the bad old days when battery powered electric cars, steam driven cars, and cars driven by internal combustion (Otto and Diesel cycles) were all competitive with each other, the steam driven car lost out for being more difficult to drive and requiring more time to get going, despite the handy advantage of maximum torque at zero rpm. Getting the maximum range out of a tank of water required careful management of the throttle, the steam cut off, and the stoking of the firebox. There was the additional problem of doing all this while navigating the vehicle along the road. The carburetor managed to balance fuel flow reasonably well on its own and the choke and spark advance were not as critical to efficient operation as the cut off and automated timing advance in the ignition was fairly simple.
The battery powered electric car never solved the battery issues and electric vehicles only thrive in settings where swapping out batteries is a non-issue and the heavy weight of lead-acid batteries is a feature, not a bug. Internal combustion powered forklifts only have advantages where swapping batteries is difficult. They still have the same problems that they always did. As replacement battery packs are literally stranded assets, long haul electric trucking only makes sense for large operations that can keep the number of batteries waiting for trucks to a minimum.
A fuel cell that ran on diesel fuel would convert electric long haul trucks effectively into diesel-electric hybrid trucks that had lower emissions because the fuel is not actually burnt in compressed air. I am trying to figure out who I could pitch this to, but my anxiety issues make me a terrible at sales, so cold calls to truck manufacturers are right out.
Plug Power and perhaps others are working on it. The electrochemistry involved in fuel cell technology is also not easy.
let me know how that range works on -20 deg F weather.
Good point. Given that Tesla employs about 33,000 people, the departures amount to 1-2% and on one has reported on how many replacements they have hired.
Numbers dont really tell the story. It depends on who you lose from where.
Fuel for my gas car costs about 5 cents per mile and has a 400+ mile range in any weather, hot or cold, hilly or flat, loaded or not, with the A/C or heater on full blast. Takes about 5 minutes to fully recharge. The engine will probably be good for 200,000 miles (basically the life of the car).
Tell me more about your EV.
9¢ for me and 500 miles: 2016 Crosstrek; Oh! it is not an EV, sorry.
Heck I have a 15 year old German sports car that I bought last year for less than $10k and on premium gas I run at 10.5 cents per mile. So tell me how long it will take me to pay back that extra $10k by saving 5 cents per mile in gas? And I’ll take the challenge of drag racing a Telsa.
oh man…
you can’t draw any conclusions from it- a few hundred bad apples always makes the one good one look bad.
I live in N. Nevada near Tesla Gigafactory. I wonder: Take the fastest Tesla car – How long would it take to travel from Reno to Las Vegas (including recharge time)? My ’92 Civic can do it in 7 hours getting 50 mpg. And just where would the Tesla stop to recharge?
Google it, bro. http://lmgtfy.com/?q=nevada+superchargers
https://www.tesla.com/charging
Reno to Las Vegas is 448 miles.
Let’s say you had a Model 3 and paid extra for the 310-mile range battery. There are three super-charger stations on the route: Hawthorne, Tonopah and Beatty. Tonopah is just over half-way (237 mi).
310 – 237 = 73
73 + 170 = 243
It’s 211 miles from Tonopah to Las Vegas.
243 – 211 = 32
Theoretically you could just make 1 30-minute recharging stop. Of course, if you run the AC, you would probably have to recharge at least twice.
Depending on how many times you had to recharge, assuming you don’t speed, it would take 7.5 to 8.5 hours to drive from Reno to Las Vegas in a Tesla with a 310-mile range.
Most well run company dont pay them all year, wait till annual review time, and fire them en masse.
‘5%’? So Tesla Motors employs 14,000 people? They must have gone on one heck of a hiring spree since 2016 because they were reported to have a tad < 3,000 employees in 2016. Solar City acquisition inflated those numbers considerably, but I don't think the 'culling' included that 25,000.
700 represents roughly 23% of their 2016 employee count. Lots of underperformers at Tesla Motors if you ask me. It also looks more like a 'layoff'' to me.
Downthread, in response to a video posted at https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/10/16/tesla-fires-hundreds-as-model-3-electric-car-production-drags/comment-page-1/#comment-2638397, I wrote that the presenter claimed that Tesla had 33,000 workers, and that if that included merged-in Solar City workers, her not mentioning it was deceptive. If the Tesla car component employed 7000 (33,000 -25,000), then 700 firings = 10%. That’s suggestive of a need to conserve cash in a hurry.
More like 2 percent. 5 percent actually represents fairly massive turnover.
Oh, like Enron.
Tesla model S; a car driven by rich folk, paid for by middle class folk, driven for FREE on roads paid for by middle class and poor folk.
Elon Musk has made a passel of claims – one being that if Tesla does not make good on all of the debt owed by the solar roof company that Tesla took over, he will make it good himself, making for the biggest conflict of interest one can imagine – Musk , biggest official of Tesla Motors, forcing Tesla Motors (its shareholders, actually) to make good the debt so that Musk is off the hook for a personal billion of so dollars. Tesla also being sued for stock fraud via his unkept promises and also by several employes fired the day before they were to become vested in their company stock. – I’d like to know how Tesla expects to win those lawsuits(they probably don’t). Tesla’s bankrupt and
heavilly fined solar roof company (Musk was one of its directors) – tens of millions in Govt fines for defrauding customers is now involved in his newest venture – solar shingles , which, after examining the claims that it makes that one can buy a $75,000 solar roof and have it pay for itself (if the location is good and the local power rates not high) and also requires a govt $15,000 to $25,000 subsidy. They provide a mortgage for your roof, which means they own it. Reselling your house may be negatively affected I would assume. Just another uneventful day in the life of Tesla Motors.
Personally, were I able to change the Headline of your article, I would recommend
“Tesla fires hundreds as Model 3 electric car sales (er, production) drag”
Musk obviously never read about Henry Ford’s assembly line creation of 100 years ago
Hand building major portions? Seems like the company is circling the drain.
OX010101: That’s great news about the Nissan Leaf. I tried to make an economic case for a Chevy Bolt here in Quebec where the electricity is cheap and gasoline is expensive (an e-gallon costs one fifth of a regular gallon). Couldn’t do it. I guess I don’t clock enough miles.
If electric cars ever do make it past 1 to 2% of all cars, they will find a way to start charging electrics to help support the roads.
At which time most of the cost benefit you are currently enjoying will disappear.
That is why the state of Oregon is pushing for a GPS system to keep track of miles driven, so they can apply taxes based on usage. As an added bonus, now the state can keep track of your whereabouts, and bureaucrats can now sell your info to the highest bidder, legal or not.
Oregon and Washington have either implemented or discussed implementing (for years) a special tax on hybrids and EVs to compensate for missing fuel tax proceeds.
Why can’t they just read the odometer every year when the car is re-registered?
How about taking road use taxes off of fuels and taxing all vehicles based on miles driven?
Miles driven and weight. Heavier vehicles do more damage to roads.
WA State is investigating ways (5, I think) on how best to do this. The numbers of EVs is small so at this time, it is not a big burden. Sometime in coming years, pay they will.
Turning on the heater in a Bolt in a Quebec winter will reduce its range a lot.
Yes you may be right Roger. Later Leafs and a number of other types use a heat pump system rather than resistive heating which is substantially more efficient.
Ditto the AC anywhere south of the Mason-Dixon line.
John, and also a lot more expensive up front.
Plus one more thing to maintain.
PS: John, you are aware that battery performance also goes down by a lot when they get cold.
Are you planning on heating them as well?
@John Hardy
Heat pump systems have a performance roll-off when you get below about 30°F – 40°F. So, while performance at 20°F may be better than simple resistance heating, it won’t be by much. Heat pumps are much better at maintaining high COP’s while cooling.
John, have they figured out how to make a heat pump system a better heater when the temp drops below 35-40F? heat pumps make very good air conditioners, but they are lousy heaters.
I don’t know Trebla. It’s pretty cold in the winter in Quebec. Electric heaters draw a lot of current, and frozen batteries already are a dodgy proposition when it comes to accepting and holding a charge.
Perhaps if your dumbass provincial politicians had half a brain they would have supported line 9 East and the cost of fuel would be more in line with real economic standards.
I wonder if this is a natural result of Gen-X and millennials who grew up believing that anything could be accomplished by surfing the net and swiping at your tablet or phone.
Meanwhile Home Depot is freaking out with the realization that their next generation of potential customers has absolutely no idea what any of their products are for, or how to use them.
Typical Boomer, trashing Gen-X… I agree about the millennials though. 🙂
Freaking out? Heck, no! It’s a marketing opportunity to forge closer relationships with local plumbers, electricians, and HVAC contractors. Joe or Jane Millenial screws up a home repair project and Big Orange gets them in touch with someone who can fix it – for a piece of the action, naturally.
At Menards we arn’t too worried about the lack of handyman talent among the average millennial. SOMEBODY has to build or fix everything.
Around here, it’s mostly the Mexicans and the Amish. And they make enough at it to afford to buy the GOOD tools.
^¿^
Had my 19-year old son help me replace a water heater. It was fun watching him try to apply what he could find on sweating copper pipe from Youtube in a real situation. When he realized that he actually could do it, and how much money we saved doing it ourselves, I think he was convinced. Hope there are a few Menards and Home Depots around for DIY when he’s my age.
Simple. Tesla thrives on subsidies, not sales, so payroll is an expendable overhead.
Yet cut subsidies and there sales drop about 90 percent.
Tesla model S; a car driven by rich folk, paid for by middle class folk, driven for FREE on roads paid for by middle class and poor folk, often recharged on the backs of the middle class. ( see your local government building with the “free” charging station)
But… but… the…the goal was s’posed to be 5,000 a month or sumptin’, er…. wasn’t it?
Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain, folks. Here, doggie, come back here! Come back! Oh, rats! Now you’ve done it!! No more please let me know when lollipops and rainbows for you, my pretties!!! (Cacklesnort!)
This was on the news last night. Why does it come as a surprise to anyone? The Tesla thing has been a scam from start to finish. Musk wants to build a colony on Mars. By the time he does anything besides run out of other peoples’ money, Mars will already have a working colony and a spaceport for tourists who want to do the Titan flyby tour.
“An attempt by one of the world’s biggest car makers to secure long-term supplies of cobalt for its push into electric vehicles has been shunned by leading producers of the metal.
Volkswagen issued a tender last month seeking a minimum of five years of supply at a fixed price, according to people familiar with the process, but struggled to find any takers.
The car maker put off miners by suggesting a price that was well below current market prices, which have jumped by more than 80 per cent this year, the people said.”
https://www.ft.com/content/297d7d4a-b002-11e7-aab9-abaa44b1e130
sorry pay wall link (maybe this one
ups, wrong, my bad, little utility for putting links into text misfired.
Five year plans are back!
They should negotiate directly with Mr Soros and the Chinese, who, between them have quietly acquired 70% of the cobalt production market – and have no qualms about the use of child slave labor used to produce it.
Inching closer? Give me a break.
They were lucky just getting fired and not electrocuted.
now that is an interesting point.
an ordinary vehicle is lethal only when moving.
an electrical vehicle can be lethal:
– when moving
– 350V (or 375V (Tesla’s battery voltage) can be lethal for many people
– incapacitating or lethal some days even weeks later. Contact across 300V+ DC even for a second will cause rapid electrolysis of blood creating gas bubbles in the blood vessels, which eventually may end in the brain, cause stroke etc.
Gas bubbles in the brain? That sounds a lot like the qualification for buying a Tesla.
And gasoline is perfectly harmless, then?
Hi Jer0me
I failed the ‘vehicular health, safety and environmental test’
vukcevic – I suggest as a weekend project trying to find out how many people have been electrocuted by production EVs (I suspect zero), and how many have suffered fatal burns from petrol/gasoline
John, why don’t we wait until there are more than a few hundred Tesla’s on the road, and the average age of them approaches the average age of IC cars.
@vukcevic
Fairly silly to be worried about electric vehicle voltage, we all live in houses containing yards of wiring, outlets, appliances containing lethal voltages. Over a hundred years or so we have got quite good at insulation and safety codes. No reason to consider 300-400V in a car any more dangerous than higher voltages in your TV or microwave oven or solar panels.
How many people try to do maintenance on the micro-wave ovens?
Ok guys I got the point, it was just word of caution.
There maybe some people around who may not be aware that Tesla batteries voltage is 350V + and can be lethal.
Vukcevic, any vehicle-related battery is lethal, including those in conventional, gas-burning cars and trucks. If you accidentally close the circuit by touching both posts on a car battery, well — ZAAAAAAPPPPP!
Sara, 12Vs is not enough to kill anybody.
I was always told “It isn’t the voltage, it’s the amperage that kills.”
With that in mind, I still bet a car DRIVEN by electricity would give you a worse zap then one that just uses it for control systems and accessories.
Down the road from me there is a row of terraced houses, but no garages. There is a hybrid car parked in front of one of the houses, with charging cable (frequently) plugged in and stretched across the payment (walkway). Probably illegal, not to mention hazards from tripping over to vandals having a go at the cable. Presumably in the next few years our local authority and the UK Power Network will have to install charging point for each dwelling. The mind boggles.
I note that what I think is the UK is a much more law-abiding place than where I lived in California. Cable left out unattended would vanish is short order there.
schitzree, true it is the amperage, but you need volts to push the amps.
Even with wet hands, the resistance of the body is too high for 12Vs to push enough electrons through you to kill you.
Tom, especially if it is copper.
…hum, maybe some were and we just find out about it later in some followup audit reports in the appendix.
The scary part of high voltage battery packs is that they cannot be turned off. I work with high voltage inverter supplies and the one thing everyone that works on them has to keep in mind that the batteries are live. One false move and there is a distinct possibility of your death. I also work with 13.8 KV in the switching stations but it is not as dangerous as the 600 volt inverter supply as it can be turned off and grounded for safety. In a car wreck I wouldn’t want any 300+ volt battery packs flying around. All charged battery packs are potential bombs and the higher capacity packs just make the bomb bigger. I find it illuminating how the Leaf’s ads read almost the same as the ads for the electric cars back in 1917. There hasn’t been much improvement in 100 years has there.
Interesting.
In a petrol car crash it is easy to empty fuel tank before the wreck is towed away, but how do you discharge fully charged 350V, 85 kWh battery.
https://www.google.com/amp/mobile.reuters.com/article/amp/idUSKBN17U2X5
Questions???
http://gas2.org/2017/05/08/tesla-job-fair-event-mexico-draws-hundreds-applicants/
This is the Roi Christophe worker incentive scheme employed during the construction of the Citadelle in Haiti.
These firings took place across the board. That is a sign of healthy management and should send a positive signal to shareholders as well as to employees who see that under-performers are not tolerated. Reading anything more into it is pure speculation.
The Roman method was decimation, they found that pretty effective for a while until the Barbarians got inside the gates.
Roman decimation was counting 1 out of every ten regardless of merit on the battlefield. Firings based upon performance appraisals is entirely different.
Except such firings are only loosely based on merit.
More often then not, it’s’ based on who’s good buddies with the manager.
Dans ce pays-ci, il est bon de tuer de temps en temps un amiral pour encourager les autres.
[In this country, it is good to kill an admiral from time to time to encourage others. .mod]
The lowest 5% are triimmed one by one. A mass firing is a horse of a different color.
“The lowest 5% are triimmed one by one. A mass firing is a horse of a different color.”
That’s the way I always saw it done. I suppose it could be done otherwise. But my experience was that mass firings/layoffs were usually the result of either loss of a contract, sale of a division, or the CFO telling the CEO that either we get the headcount down quick or we won’t make the November 30th payroll.
Why are we bandying about this 5% figure? Tesla Motors executed the ‘performance firing/layoff’. Before the acquisition of Solar City with it’s 25K employees, Tesla Motors had <3K employees. As far as I can tell the 700 were directly from Tesla Motors, not the Solar City 'acquired' employee count. If that is the case, the firings constitute almost 25% of the old 'Tesla Motors' staff.
Healthy management does not wait till review time to address issues
Yarpos thinks Elon is “healthy management”.
That’s a cracker!
Pull the other leg.
The question then, is, at what price do you exit the short on TSLA stock? A lot of people have been burnt shorting Tesla the last few years as the hype fuelled the stock, but now it will trade on earnings and ratings will start to fall. The fact that Solar City is now in the stock will also be a drag on earnings as new rooftop solar falls off as subsidies dry up. If you own the stock, sell it and take the money and run. Looks like Elon Musk might be on the first spaceship to Mars and not coming back with everyone on the good Earth holding the bag.
If I knew the answer to that question… I wouldn’t tell anyone else… 😉
What you need to look for is not just the price as such but also frequency of large packets (volumes) of trades when buying or selling the actual stock. Alternatively the information can be used in the options market when taking long or short positions to magnify gain but if not certain look for ‘in profit’ not frequently but occasionally available ‘butterfly’ spread positions (there are number of versions).
Good summary except the rooftop solar was still not a sustainable business for Solar City even with subsidies. It was more of a mortgage mill operation with duped applicants to mine the subsidies at a fast enough rate to leverage the business model.
Darn, just when I was about to cash in my BitCoin to buy a Tesla…
I can’t wait for our Canadian Prime Minister Selfie to offer a few hundred million to start at Tesla factory here.
Not building pipelines and hauling oil by train is a more lucrative operation in Canada. sarc.
Is that –
“Not building pipelines and hauling oil by train is a more lucrative operation in Canada. ” – for some??
Auto
How about Bombardier selling a 50.01% equity interest in the C-series Jet to Airbus just now for about …
… No dollars at all it appears. Bombardier gets Airbus’ “procurement, sales and marketing and customer support expertise to the airliner program.”
https://beta.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/bombardier-sells-majority-stake-in-c-series-to-airbus/article36610340/
So, we can see actual economics and old-school finance has gone completely illogical in today’s world. That does not continue indefinitely. It is reminiscent of the dot.com bubble of 2000 and the commodity/housing bubble of 2008.
Investing your own money depends on you figuring out which craziness will continue for a time and which will blow up tomorrow . I’m betting solar blows up any day now but Tesla continues the pixie dust magic until some disaster day which will impact all kinds of other pixie dust investments. But that is not today.
When does Tesla run out of other people’s money (cash). That is the day. Move into bonds fast when this looks to be imminent. If anything, buy Lithium since Lithium batteries are not going anywhere except dominating the market for battery power.
Too bad there isn’t an Idiocracy ETF. Idiocracy is one bubble that will never burst…
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/oil-headed-to-10-china-may-be-in-the-drivers-seat-2017-10-16
😆
Are they getting rid of the PR department too? They could get rid of hundreds of jobs in house that way and thousands of subcontractors currently in the MSM.
“About 5 cents a mile to drive and essentially no maintenance.”
If you are in the business of selling junk to clueless consumers EV and PV is the product you want to sell.
Being in the power industry, I know we would love to gain market share from the oil industry just as the drillers would like a piece of the power industry.
The reason this not happen is the dynamics of the industry. Power is a cheap commodity but expensive to store. Transportation requires a fuel that is cheap to store during transportation.
Capital costs are very high in the power industry. It is a regulated public service so that those costs can be shared. Maintenance cost is important too. The longer you can keep something running the lower the capital cost per unit of generation. Maintenance is also critical for safety.
Power = voltage x current
As mentioned earlier, EV batteries are at much higher voltage. Visualize the difference between bumping into someone walking and getting hit by a car going 60 mph. Maintenance is what keeps you from getting run over by the energy stored in your battery to provide the power to drive 60 mph.
There are all kinds of justifications people give for buying a car. I am fine with ‘because I wanted it.’ However, there is no good engineering or environmental reason for buying an EV.
Tesla model S; a car driven by rich folk, paid for by middle class folk, driven for FREE on roads paid for by middle class and poor folk, often recharged on the backs of the middle class. ( see your local government building with the “free” charging station)
It’s good news week.
Musk has made his fortune by basically figuring out how to get free money from the government and pushing people to work for him for free. I have friend and ex-coworker who interviewed with SpaceX for an engineering job. At the final interview Musk talked to him in person and told him “I can’t pay you what you’re making at your current company (Boeing), you’ll have to take a paycut of about 5 to 10%, and I will need you to work at least 60 hours a week for your salary”. Musk did tell my friend that he would get shares of company stock, SpaceX is a private company but when it went public he could make money that way. Last I read from Musk though is he doesn’t want the company to go public until after they land on Mars, which is targeting to do in 2045. Knowing his over estimations that date will probably be more like 2065.
Internal company review sites are full of engineers at SpaceX who say they love the fact that they can basically do whatever type of engineering method they want to solve things (Doesn’t sound like they will be ISO 9000 anytime soon), but ALL of the reviews mention how many hours the engineers work, estimates I saw were anywhere from 70 to 90 hours a week, with no paid overtime.
The people in the shop at SpaceX on the other hand said its a great place to make a lot of money (hourly workers must be paid for their overtime) since they work long hours, but they are nearly all shocked at the lack of quality control being enforced. Comments like I’m amazed that every rocket out of this shop doesn’t explode, or I’m shocked when any rocket makes it off the pad, you can use whatever tool you want for any job, nobody cares…
For me, I’m still at Boeing, and to compete in commercial space with SpaceX our managers are constantly deciding to cut on quality of engineering and increase risk to save money. Being a public company Boeing can’t hand out stock to employees like SpaceX since Boeing stock is money, and it counts against the bottom line when given to employees.
One last note, I read an article about a manager who used to work for Musk, he said you can always tell when a person has just left a meeting with Musk because they look defeated. No matter how much you do, Musk always wants you to do more, and many times just because its cool, not because it will make the product any more effective or more reliable or cheaper.
So to me, Musk is not making anyone’s life better, especially not salaried people who work for him, he sucks the life out of his workers and then fires them if they only work 55 hours a week for 40 hours pay.
Steve, I am not surprised that Musk has that attitude. It’s a damned shame that some people, driven by ignorance and avarice or arrogance, have to learn about safety the hard way. Hopefully he will learn his lesson from unmanned testing before he gets into manned flight. His attitude reminds me of Bill Gates’ attitude toward software design and development (re: reliability and security) that almost single–handedly destroyed the internet.
I am surprised that Boeing seems to be following Musk down that rabbit hole. You said of Boeing “…our managers are constantly deciding to cut on quality of engineering and increase risk to save money.” It sounds like they are falling into the same trap that BP (i.e., British Petroleum) fell into that has killed 15 workers, injured 180 more and has cost them around $10 billion in fines and settlements over the last 12 years. BP pretty much became the laughing stock of the petroleum industry with their attitude toward maintenance and increased risk.
I’m no great fan of Musk’s other companies, but SpaceX is leading the way in space because it’s not following the same procedures as the rest of the aerospace business. We’re not talking about airliners that will have to fly twice a day for decades with minimal maintenance here, but rockets that will fly perhaps ten times at most with time for maintenance between every flight. More than that, we’re not talking about rockets that have to work first time and be thrown away, we’re talking rockets that are reusable, which allows them to study exactly what does and doesn’t become degraded during a launch, to determine what needs to be beefed up and where corners can be cut.
They’ve lost two Falcon 9s, but neither were due to assembly issues. One was caused by a contractor sending parts that didn’t meet the spec, and one due to a fuelling procedure change that had entirely unexpected effects. You can certainly argue that the former should have been caught with better internal checks and the latter should have been tested more thoroughly before use, but clearly the way they assemble rockets is working fine so far.
NASA had complex procedures for the shuttle to the point where three people had to sign off to say that a tool had been removed from the vehicle after use. Yet they still managed to fly tools into space and back on a couple of occasions: clearly all that paper-work didn’t. And they flew astronauts for decades in a vehicle that killed its crew one time in sixty or so: even if the SpaceX rockets blew up every other launch, they’d probably be safer than that because it actually has a way for the crew to escape.
Job-wise, yeah, I wouldn’t work there. But I’d probably have jumped at the chance if I’d had it in my 20s, just to be able to build rockets.
Elon is proud when his rockets explode and said he will nuke Mars to make it habitable. He’s like Howard Hughes in the 1970s, a certified lunatic
“Elon is proud when his rockets explode”
No, he’s not.
Given (just) the admitted production issues, only the truly gullible would buy any of the early-made Tesla 3s.
Time for Musk to make another tour of Congressional staffs and other gullibles for another batch of tax breaks, subsidies, etc.