To be clear China built Tesla a factory in a year, it is a big difference.
Exactly. I think some HNers would be amazed if they read the terms associated with Tesla doing business in China.
Readit Newsaguyfromnb commented on Tesla plans to build a new car factory in Texas arstechnica.com/cars/2020... · Posted by u/rbanffy
aguyfromnb commented on Tesla plans to build a new car factory in Texas arstechnica.com/cars/2020... · Posted by u/rbanffy
Texas is rolling out the mat for Tesla [1]. They will move faster on permitting and reviews. Tesla seems to be moving quickly with GF4 construction in Berlin [2], even with German labor laws (which is good! you still have to make sure labor regulation is adhered to). Texas is not California. The deadline is not set in stone; it is an aspirational goal to motivate.
Lots of oil and gas (O&G) construction/services folks looking for work right now in Texas [3], so it's a good time for Tesla to move in. Also, Texas has an abundance of cheap wind energy they can't export due to ERCOT interconnect capacity issues. The SpaceX McGregor engine development and static fire test facility is only 90 minutes north of Austin, and Tesla already has an Autopilot R&D office there for the engineers they hired from AMD. Good pick for the next factory. Maybe a SpaceX HQ relo is in future plans.
[1] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-tesla-... (Musk, Texas governor talk about potential Tesla move to Lone Star state)
[2] https://www.teslarati.com/tesla-gigafactory-4-berlin-ground-...
[3] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/21/business/energy-environme...
Hey, it's the guy who called Tesla a "good corporate citizen" just a few months ago. Let's add: breaking stay-at-home orders, called the US government "fascist" while praising China, hired people to hack the personal computers of a whistleblower (as reported in a recent deposition filing), extorted the California government, and forced their workers back to the factory floor amid the pandemic to the list of "good" things.
aguyfromnb commented on Tesla plans to build a new car factory in Texas arstechnica.com/cars/2020... · Posted by u/rbanffy
I think the rule with Elon Musk is all his estimates are extremely optimistic and you need to multiply them by two or three to get closer to reality.
But I'm sure it serves a purpose in giving his employees an aggressive target to aim at. Even if they miss it, at least they probably got there sooner.
>I think the rule with Elon Musk is all his estimates are extremely optimistic and you need to multiply them by two or three to get closer to reality.
What about all the promises that have been made that never came to fruition? Do we just exclude those from this formula?
aguyfromnb commented on Uber cuts 3000 more jobs, closes 45 offices wsj.com/articles/uber-cut... · Posted by u/WFHRenaissance
Ahh - the comment from the person with the multi-car garage, the tesla and the range rover.
Walk me through what folks without good car / transit access should be using? If cab companies are "essential" then uber is essential and preferred to cab companies in many markets.
A lot of folks on HN seems to be approaching this whole situation from the I have a ton of money, can work from home, have a car mental model.
>A lot of folks on HN seems to be approaching this whole situation from the I have a ton of money, can work from home, have a car mental model.
You think poor people are using Uber to get around?
aguyfromnb commented on Smashing Eggs, Dumping Milk: Farmers Waste More Food Than Ever bloomberg.com/news/articl... · Posted by u/danso
Our lockdowns were so badly done they didn't even decrease the daily case count. In Korea and many other places, they ended lockdowns after a few months because cases dropped orders of magnitude.
In the US, we're "opening back up" while many states are hitting daily records. Our lockdowns were a disaster and "opening back up" is going to cause an explosion in cases.
If our lockdowns had been done right we would be able to reopen the economy now with little risk
>Our lockdowns were so badly done they didn't even decrease the daily case count.
Is it any wonder? Look at the comments here. Look at guys like Elon Musk breaking quarantine for economic reasons and getting praised for it. Conspiracies abound.
This didn't happen in less partisan countries. Like absolutely everything else in the US, the lockdown became a political issue, for and against it.
Where I'm from, everyone took it seriously and in a matter of weeks we got down to ZERO active cases. Then again, we don't hate people who have different politics.
With formatting:
"""
1. Climate Corp was part of Monsanto before it became Bayer. It was acquired by Monsanto.
2. John Deere wanted to buy Climate as well as Monsanto but that was struck down by US courts and Bayer bought Monsanto.
3. What was Climate Corp doing before? They had something called Field View where they charged farmers to collect and collate data.
4. All precision Ag, Ag robotics and farm data collections have two big industry ‘partners’: Wall Street and Farm input companies.
5. Now add farmland to Precision Ag/Ag robotics.
6. This is a kind of consolidation of land, inputs, data and machinery.
6. Eventually, all land will be owned by farm machinery companies and input companies. There won’t be any more farmers in the future but only farming corporations.
7. It goes back to Wall Street because big Ag is commodities.
"""
(Command to format, since this comes up regularly: sed 's/ \([0-9]\. \)/\n\n\1/g')
>There won’t be any more farmers in the future but only farming corporations.
Is this any different than, "pretty soon there won't be any local movie rental places (or retail places), it'll just be content delivery corporations"?
I do share concerns about this kind of movement, and think it needs to be done judiciously, in every industry. However, I do not agree that just because you're "small" or "independent" you are inherently better or care more. There are pros and cons. People are people and don't become "evil" by working for larger firms.
Silicon Valley seems to be very suspicious of corporate consolidation in every industry, but turns a blind eye as Facebook/Google/Amazon do it on a scale rarely ever seen.
My point was - people say stocks are overpriced, presumably vs their intrinsic DCF valuation. Why do people conclude that without making a valuation?
>Why do people conclude that without making a valuation?
Most retail investors are not making any valuations whatsoever. The investment criteria is "this company's future is bright/bad", even though price is the most important factor. Then, recent momentum makes you look good...for now.
aguyfromnb commented on Elon Musk reopening Tesla factory despite Alameda County order twitter.com/elonmusk/stat... · Posted by u/heshiebee
The reasons for not restarting production seem to be dogmatic and not evidence driven. Tesla is running the factory at a 30-40% capacity, and the Fremont factory has 5.3 million square feet of manufacturing and office space. Tesla claims their plan will ensure 6 ft of distance for every employee, and PPE and masks are provided and mandatory. Even the HVAC is changed to optimise for fresh air turnover and filters are changed on a regular basis.
Tesla's full list is available here: https://www.tesla.com/sites/default/files/blog_attachments/T...
A Tesla factory is a much safer place to be than a Home Depot or a Costco, and many other businesses open in California today. We aren't talking about sporting events here: we're talking about some of the lowest risk and unavoidable interactions.
Carmakers are also defined as a COVID19 critical industry, and every other carmaker manufacturing in the United States is either open, or capable of open today. This puts Tesla at a serious disadvantage.
This is locking down for the sake of locking down, not an evidence-first safety driven approach. That is something I cannot support.
>Carmakers are also defined as a COVID19 critical industry, and every other carmaker manufacturing in the United States is either open, or capable of open today. This puts Tesla at a serious disadvantage.
So locking down is just "locking down", but arbitrarily classifying car building as essential during a massive economic downtown is a-okay with you? Seems reasonable.
>and every other carmaker manufacturing in the United States is either open, or capable of open today.
Wrong, many are opening on May 18th, which is when the government of CA would have opened Tesla. They couldn't wait 10 days.
>This puts Tesla at a serious disadvantage.
First of all, what does the health of the public have to do with the fairness of car competition?
Second, I thought Tesla had unlimited money and unlimited demand? What's the issue if they're closed for a few weeks?
I would recommend Elon's recent podcast on Joe Rogan. They have 8000 employees in China and 0 deaths. He knows what he's doing.
The podcast was boring nonsense. Elon or China claiming things don't make them true.
https://www.autonews.com/manufacturing/gm-plans-resume-produ...
GM is also restarting operations.
May 18th, the exact date Alameda County was going to allow Tesla to open until Musk had another hissy fit.