Is Tesla Inc. (formerly Tesla Motors) an elaborate ponzi scheme?

Rural Plains wrote:

You still have the desire to buy a Tesla, good for you The fact remains that Tesla loses tens of thousands on each car it eventually delivers and makes up for that debt by pumping up its stock value with vague promises of future miracle products.

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This. This is exactly what I'm talking about.

Feels unsustainable and investors throwing good money after bad

The funny thing is that you take a Toyota, put leather seats in it, maybe backseat tv screens and change the badge. Suddenly the car is less reliable.

qw wrote:

When the age of oil comes to an end (and it will happen much sooner than you think since for exmaple Norway and Belgium has already restricted sales of new gasoline powered cars starting with 2025 with many to follow) Tesla will be the leading car maker in the world. In everything.

That's cute of Norway, are they going to stop selling oil too?

There is NO techno solution to climate change, pollution, urban sprawl, general degradation of the environment. Economic growth is the enemy. The material luxuries of civilization will use more and more until it finally must collapse.

History has proven this over and over again, as civilizations outstrip their resources and die. Cities are revealed for what they are, clusters of crazy people living on land that can't support them all, importing what they need from elsewhere. Their ruins stand everywhere as a warning to those who would repeat the mistake of unsustainable living.

Just learn to use less energy. Very simple. Don't go on a mad crusade to replace all the oil with wind and solar farms (insane amount of infrastructure change required for that btw), just let it go already. The industrial revolution was a catastrophe and has to be undone.

New York (AFP) – Tesla electric cars, which have a passionate following around the world, will soon have their own racing competition, a global sports organizer said on Thursday.

Electric GT Holdings said the Federation Internationale de l’Automobile (FIA), motor sports’ governing body, has approved circuit races for the Tesla Model S P100D.

“The Championship is the first all-electric circuit race series in the world and heralds the dawn of a new electric future,” Electric GT said on its website.

Last week, the race-prepared model passed its official FIA crash test required for competition, it added.

Tesla founder Elon Musk has billed a model S P100D with “Ludicrous mode” as the third-fastest accelerating production car ever made, capable of going from zero to 60 miles per hour (96 kilometers per hour) in 2.5 seconds.

That is slower only than the LaFerrari and Porsche 918 Spyder two-seaters, according to Tesla.

No date for the races has been announced, but they will involve 20 international drivers racing for 10 professional teams, according to Electric GT.

They will be organized in two rounds of 38 miles (60 kilometers) each, one in the day and another at dusk, after a three-heat qualifying round.

Competition for 100-percent electric vehicles has grown. Formula E, which bills itself as the world’s first fully-electric international single-seater street racing series, brings competition to 10 cities around the world.

Since it began in 2014, the series has drawn an increasing number of automobile manufacturers. The 2018-2019 season will include Mercedes, Porsche and BMW.

Volkswagen on Wednesday said a 100-percent electric prototype, driven by Frenchman Romain Dumas, will join the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb in the United States in June.

After winning Pikes Peak three times, Dumas aims to top the best time realized by an electric car in the race, the American Rhys Millen’s 8 min 57 sec 118/1000, which is also the third best of all times.

Dorna, which runs the MotoGP World Championship of motorcycle racing, is preparing for an electric motorcycle championship in 2019, when the RallyCross championship prepares to become the “E-WRX” in 2020.

Tesla produces a great electric car. If anything else it will be bought by another company.

Short answer = yes.

I don't know about the stock market side of it, but I used to work for a company that designed machines for them, and they were by far my least favorite customer. Constant product changes. Unreal timing expectations. Heard plenty of bad stories about working inside tesla as well.

joedirt wrote:

It's not a Ponzi scheme because a Ponzi scheme promises profits (Tesla has never made a profit). Musk is really just a crook that likes to live high off of other peoples money by giving them a conscionable investment (bunch of democrats who are investing in renewable energy). After taking a look at the Solar City merger (where he was able to unload a bunch of he and his family's worthless stock by selling it to Tesla shareholders at an inflated price), he is definitely a crook (and he is currently being sued).

Trump is currently being sued

Tesla is not a Ponzi scheme. A Ponzi scheme takes money from new investors and then uses the new investment money to pay dividends (or similar benefits) to investors. A Ponzi scheme fundamentally just recycles investor funds (minus what the owners skim off) and is therefore ultimately unsustainable.

Tesla takes investor money and actually uses it in a business where it creates products that it sells. Tesla may ultimately fail as a business, which many businesses do, but that doesn't make Tesla a Ponzi scheme.

There's a glut of AI Self-Driving Car software projects out there so we will see many projects merge or be swallowed up.

The whole notion of waiting hours for the the battery to charge will limit Tesla and other 1st Gen electric cars. Until Electrified Roads a.k.a. Cold Rail a.k.a. Cold Paint Grid works I don't think electric cars will be useful to consumers.

We have solar at home, haven’t paid an electric bill in years. That’s including charging my Tesla. You charge over night. You have a gas car for longer trips.

Worked for Musk/ Tesla for 2 years. Quit in '15.

Takeaways:

-he's a conman who surrounds himself with yes- men to do his bidding. Think Hank Scorpio from the Simpsons.

-his company is socialist: using taxpayer dollars and credits to build his vehicles, that only the wealthy can afford

-his vehicles are unreliable. Consumer reports took the Model S off their top 25 most recommended vehicle purchases.

-as a car, it's pretty lousy. It's not a luxury car, it's a "premium " car. Bac seats are tiny; cheap interior components, etc.

-many owners report failed electrical systems that will not allow the vehicle to start or open. My favorite story was a sucker who bought a tesla, parked it in his driveway, and couldn't get it to open or turn on. Blocked his wife's car since hers was in the garage. ...gets it towed by 3rd party towing company with no training on towing Teslas. Ended up destroying the drivetrain and voiding the warranty.

Many people complain about the oil industry, and greenhouse gasses/ emissions. Blah blah blah. What all the hippies in the cities and politicians in Washington fail to recognize is the real crime of Lithium Ion: the battery production causes more greenhouse gas emissions and child labor than any gas/ diesel vehicle. Research cobalt mining for yourself.

Wired Mag: Tesla's EV not green as you think

https://www.wired.com/2016/03/teslas-electric-cars-might-not-green-think/

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/electric-cars-are-not-necessarily-clean/

High Human Cost of Lithium:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/business/batteries/congo-cobalt-mining-for-lithium-ion-battery/

Here are my plans for a totally emissions free vehicle.

https://www.damninteresting.com/the-atomic-automobile/

And here's what my competitors are working on...

http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/transportation/2013/08/car_of_the_future_nuclear_solar_and_battery_power_from_the_1950s_and_1960s.html

It's still a lot greener than a gasoline powered vehicle:

"“We’re shifting pollution, and in the process we’re hoping that it doesn’t have the environmental impact,” says Abraham. He believes that when you add all the environmental impacts, they still come out in favor of electric vehicles. (The Union of Concerned Scientists agrees; it found that even when you add in emissions from battery manufacturing, EVs generate half the emissions of a conventional car over the course of its life.) "

Outlaw wrote:

Worked for Musk/ Tesla for 2 years. Quit in '15.

-his company is socialist: using taxpayer dollars and credits to build his vehicles, that only the wealthy can afford

I don't think you know what socialism is

I think I'm going to buy some more Tesla stock just because of this thread.

Bitcoin fascinated me about 3-4 years ago...thought I was too late to game then....should've bought....

Now he's selling flamethrowers.

A group of activist investors has called for a radical shake-up of Tesla's board of directors, aiming to remove Kimball Musk, the brother of company’s CEO Elon Musk, as a board member.

“has no professional experience in the auto industry, and has proven ineffective as a public company director at Chipotle.”

CtW Investment Group, which represents some $250 billion worth of union pension investments, reportedly wants the company’s shareholders not to support the reappointment of three Tesla board members at the annual meeting, scheduled for the next month. Apart from Musk’s brother, the group urges to boot James Murdoch and Antonio Gracias from the board.

“While adding new directors was a step in the right direction, the choice of Mr. Murdoch as one of those directors does not appear well considered, given his troubled history as an executive and director, the disturbing parallels between nepotistic practices at Fox and Tesla, and his lack of relevant industry experience,

“While Tesla has never reported a profit, going into 2017 shareholders could reasonably believe that the company was on the path to profitability, but since the beginning of 2017, Tesla’s financial position has deteriorated along every dimension.”