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PaperclipPerfector  5mo ago (text post)   27966 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 27, 2024

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Diversification seems like a really good idea here, in that it seems to bring the nature of the disagreement into focus. Almost all the replies I'm seeing are related to SpaceX, but Musk has multiple businesses. Is the general consensus that those other businesses are write-offs, and thus SpaceX has all the value? Does anyone actually expect him to crack auto-driving or tunnel boring or robots or making twitter profitable? Is it just the rockets? Maybe the rockets are enough, maybe not, but is any of the rest plausible enough to bet on, or is it essentially fog?

I guess the flipside, though, is what the alternative is supposed to be. Like, let's say I conclude you're probably right, and Musk is probably going to fail. Why is that information useful? Is there an effective way to "short" him? What's the benefit to doing so, beyond bragging rights on the Motte? If he succeeds, I think that's probably a very good thing, and if he fails, I'd agree that's almost certainly a bad thing, but if we knew for sure that he was going to fail, right now, what should we do about it?

Auto-driving seems believable to me, though I imagine regulation's a fairly dangerous threat to any company attempting to do so.

Diversification seems like a really good idea here, in that it seems to bring the nature of the disagreement into focus. Almost all the replies I'm seeing are related to SpaceX, but Musk has multiple businesses. Is the general consensus that those other businesses are write-offs, and thus SpaceX has all the value? Does anyone actually expect him to crack auto-driving or tunnel boring or robots or making twitter profitable? Is it just the rockets? Maybe the rockets are enough, maybe not, but is any of the rest plausible enough to bet on, or is it essentially fog?

SpaceX is so far the only really "cool" company that Musk has. Maybe Tesla used to be cool, when EVs were new and they could shatter acceleration records while talking big about "saving the earth." Now they just seem normal- lots of other companies make EVs now too, and we've all had a chance to ride in them and see "OK yeah it's pretty just another car." It's decent but no where near enough to justify it being one of the most valuable companies on earth, ahead of other companies that produce way more money.

SpaceX can still trade on that "we're going to mars!!!!" sci fi aspect. But I think their real value is launching spy sats for the military, and maybe eventually ABM missiles like Brilliant Pebbls, or straight up weapons like "Rods from God." For that, they can pretty much name their price to the military and the US taxpayer.

Ignoring the whole Cyber Truck Fiasco, can the other EV cars be considered competitive with a Tesla from a branding perspective?

https://posts.voronoiapp.com/automotive/Global-BEV-Market-Share-Tesla-Retains-its-1-Spot-for-2023-733

The biggest competitors seem to be Chinese EV cars which sell to a mostly Chinese market. I haven't looked into it much but I have seen several videos about the poor quality of Chinese EV cars. I don't think they will catch on in the Western market.

Factor out China and Tesla is still well far ahead of the competition as of last year.

Their brand is nowhere near as strong as it was 10 years ago. Rivian is the new "cool" EV company, while Kia, Hyundai, Ford, and GM offer perfectly good normie alternatives. They had the dream of being apple, selling for twice the price of anyone else, but I don't see that happening.

I got curious so I found some better stats:

In the first quarter of 2024, fully-electric vehicles (BEVs) declined to 7.3% of new sales market share in the United States. Of the nearly 3.8 million light-duty vehicles sold in America in Q4, 268,909 were fully-electric Tesla’s share of the EV market held steady at 52%, but is down significantly from 60% in Q1 2023, and down from 79% market share in 2020.

So Tesla has maintained consistentl sales of units of cars in the past 8 quarters while the other players are growing. 52% is still a lot but it doesn't seem like Tesla is able to really grow it's customer acquisition rate. EV in general is also slow to catch on. But in comparison to another individual company Tesla is still far ahead.

In comparison to Apple in 2024:

In the US, iPhones hold a market share of 60.77%.

But this was a drop from when Apple basically had 100% of the market since they were basically the first popular smartphone. I think the fact that EV has a strong competitor in just regular cars (EVs are not that much better than regular gas cars, while smart phones were vastly superior to flip phones) coupled with many other players entering the market before Tesla could grow too big makes your summary correct.

Cars are just too expensive to be iPhones. Apple hit that perfect price point where people are willing to pay $1000 vs a $300 Android because of the OS, convenience, style, brand and lack of desire to switch, and that means huge margins for Apple. People are not willing to pay $70,000 for a Tesla vs $35,000 equivalent tier other car. That’s real money, which many car buyers literally cannot afford.

I think many people would pay that premium if the car could drive itself, but they just can't crack it.

Sure, but regulatory factors mean that most manufacturers will likely be able to develop or buy capable self-driving tech at around the same time, and there’s no real reason why it wouldn’t work in ICE cars either, so Tesla wouldn’t necessarily have a great advantage in that event.

It seems to me like SpaceX is the stand-out success (reusable rockets are a big deal!) so there's a sort of natural gravitation towards it, perhaps particularly on here. But I think you raise a good point! In the spirit of answering your questions, here's my somewhat reflexive thoughts on the other stuff:

  • Tesla: OP criticizes them for hype (which seems fair) but from what I can tell on a two-second Google they do seem to make money, billions of dollars worth. And my recollection is that they beat the rest of the US automakers in electric cars and still outperform them in other areas. I'd consider leading a company to that sort of success (or really any success!) a W under about any circumstances (even though I think it's perfectly fair to point out how it is rewarded by subsidies.) However, I'm...skeptical about some of the issues with the cars (which may not be unique to Teslas) and I am not sure if the engineering is particularly good – China's got a huge EV market, perhaps in the future they eat his lunch. I'm not especially optimistic about self-driving, at least in the medium term, but that's partially because I think there's strong inertial force against it, and fixing the engineering problems doesn't entail fixing the regulatory and repetitional problems.
  • The Boring Company: seems really cool, but also like they missed their moment. Just doesn't seem to be enough demand. Maybe their time will come, but it doesn't seem like it has yet.
  • Twitter: renaming it was a bad idea (imho). Firing most of the staff and generally decreasing the draconian attitude was a good idea. I'm very interested to see if he can make the finances work. (In his defense, my understanding was that "getting the finances to work" was something Twitter struggled with before Elon took over.) I actually think the basic plan (strip down the staffing costs, print money on the world's most high-velocity social media platform) was good – obviously some of the advertising income streams hit snafus. I will say that although I'm a fan of the ad-revenue-sharing deal in theory, in practice it does seem somewhat scammy to me. I'm not saying that rises to the level of an actual scam but I can definitely imagine a lot of people misunderstanding which end of the distribution they are on.

So, overall, based on my assessment, I'd say SpaceX is a huge W, Tesla a solid W so far, Boring company hasn't had it moment yet and may never, and Twitter probably a good thing on balance but the jury's still out on the end results for Musk.

Well I think most people expect Twitter not to be that valuable.

Tesla is still one of the largest valued companies in the world. It is profitable car company. The latest FSD is amazing. The big question there is whether Elon will still be there if they try to screw him on his earned comp (after a terrible ruling by a Delaware judge).

Also it isn’t as sexy as talking about literally space travel.

Almost all the replies I'm seeing are related to SpaceX, but Musk has multiple businesses.

Yes! I wanted to bring it up in this comment but it ended up slipping my mind. This discussion is useful in figuring out where Elon's strengths and weaknesses are. Like you said, from the replies it seems like Falcon 9 and Starlink are his strong points.

Is there an effective way to "short" him? What's the benefit to doing so

Well, the only "short" I'd urge people to do is to avoid falling on any swords for the guy. He (rightfully) won a lot of goodwill with his takeover of Twitter, but I'm worried people are too defensive of him. It might all be very silly in the end, I doubt preventing the establishment to have a gotcha on the contrarians will work, even if it's achievable... but, I dunno, I feel like this will end up being a pretty big egg on some people's faces.

Everything Musk does depends on the government being fairly friendly. The government is the big customer for SpaceX and Starlink (note that the FCC cut off some grant funds recently). The government is behind a lot of the push for electric cars and solar energy (both Tesla). The Boring Company would make its money from government if it ever made any. Twitter doesn't depend on the government but he makes no money from it thanks to the Left, Inc. boycott. This kinda leaves him in a tough spot -- he depends on government friendliness but he and the Democrats have a somewhat hostile relationship and they are willing to punish him for it. The Republicans, on the other hand, are less likely to push for electric cars and solar energy, though they're fine for SpaceX.

I feel like solar/batteries, specifically, are exempt from a ‘f you, greenies’ push by republicans because government solar programs are so often about giving middle class people free money.

The majority of Republicans with solar seem to be off grid and not eligible for the absurd subsidies given to California Democrats.

"I have solar and get paid $.5/kwh to use the grid as my battery!" <-probably leftist.
"I installed it myself" <-probably conservative.
"I'm off grid and power my home with a salvaged Tesla battery and some microcomputers I had laying around" <-there are two wolves inside you: they are both far-right libertarian congressman Thomas Massie.

This is probably one reason why IRA subsidies now require home inspections from "energy efficiency experts", other than the usual "jobs for the folx" pork.

Edit: this also applies to heat pumps, on a scale of "brags his $25k install is saving the planet", "installed it himself", and "is a real HVAC tech"

I've seen the first from people of both parties.

Lots of middle-class suburban homeowners get solar as a home improvement, many of them fairly red. As a minor datapoint, I drive all over DFW frequently and see about as many solar panels on roofs in Tarrant county(light red) as Dallas county(deep blue), and only slightly fewer in Denton county(deep red). Exurbs aren't eligible for solar subsidies, just the tax credit, but I still see plenty of panels in exurbs. It's often a reasonable financial decision to install solar panels, even if they're a retarded basis for a power grid.

That's interesting. The majority of people I know here who did solar before the subsidies were fringe Christian survivalists (great folks, very practical, always good for a 5 gallon bucket of 1999-dated dried beans).
Now it's the Subaru and Prius crowd getting paid to put prayer flags on their roofs.

Think I ruined a "friendship" with one when the power went out at his place during the day, and I laughed at him because his grid-tie solar couldn't even power his own house. I may as well have been Mohammed spitting on his pagan idols.

The subsidies and large tax credits are part of what makes it a reasonable financial decision; the thirty percent credit gets to you immediately and you still have the low payment, for one thing.

Maybe the neocon or Whig wings, but the minarchist and libertarian wings are quite willing to end subsidies.

They're pretty small. Fact of the matter is subsidies for at home solar- which probably benefits Elon Musk more than solar power plants- are fairly popular among the republican base.

Is it just the rockets? Maybe the rockets are enough, maybe not, but is any of the rest plausible enough to bet on, or is it essentially fog?

I forget who said it, but some Carl Sagan type science communicator/futurist predicted that whoever mines the first asteroid will be Earth's first trillionaire.

You know what, a quick google later, and it was Neil DeGrasse Tyson. Make of that what you will.

Casey Handmer writes some on why he doesn't think this is feasible here.

TL;DR: Transport's costly enough that there aren't many things that would be profitable. But for these, the market demand would quickly be saturated, meaning the price would go way down, so there wouldn't be the enormous revenues.

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