1x Tsla Discussion Threads

[simon gordon] 05/5/2024 08:31

FT - 4/5/24:

...Holding the world’s richest and most powerful people to account is of crucial importance, and I, like these journalists, remain committed to calling out Musk’s many wrongdoings.

I also recognise the impulse to consign him to a good or bad bucket — I veer towards the former when I see him posing in an endearingly awkward manner on a red carpet or speaking passionately about his projects and towards the latter every time I see him post yet another offensive comment on X. But such virtue-cataloguing is misguided and dangerous.

None of us are so straightforwardly “terrible̶1; as Musk’s critics would have him; nor are we as heroic as his fans think he is. And the funny thing is that by creating a taxonomy of heroes and villains, we are in fact tied up in the same moral framework as Musk himself.

In this framework, the means — whether they involve deeming someone beyond redemption because their politics and behaviour are so obviously wrong that they need to be cast out, or treating your employees as utterly disposable cogs in a machine — are always justified by the self-evident moral righteousness of the ends.

It came as no surprise when Musk revealed his fondness of the neo-utilitarian movement known as effective altruism, infamously popularised by the now jailed crypto founder Sam Bankman-Fried. This is a philosophy that posits that you should do “the most you can do” and emphasises the importance of where your actions get to, rather than what those actions actually are. Virtue and character do not count; consequences are all that matter.

With this worldview in mind, one can see why Musk, like many other Silicon Valley executives, regards his living, breathing, human employees as mere “headcountR21; and the loss of their livelihoods as simply “cost reduction”. His grand cause — the various ways he believes he is saving humanity — is so obviously more important than any one worker (or even 14,000 of them), that pretty much any treatment of them is justifiable.

But working out what is wrong and what is right is not as easy as putting some numbers into a spreadsheet and seeing what it spits out. It requires real moral debate about which values we consider most important.

“We have all these deep moral questions, but there’s really an absence of proper moral debate,” says Edward Brooks, director of the Oxford Character Project, of the current state of much of our public discourse. “It’s just a shouting match between ‘this is so obviously wrong’ on one side and ‘it’s so obviously right’ on the other.”

I once wrote that the world does not need more Elon Musks. I feel less confident about that argument than I used to — we do need more risk-takers and innovators and people who are willing to push boundaries. Given his flaws, maybe one Elon is enough. But what all of us certainly could do with more of is some nuance in the way we view and judge the actions of other people.

[hosede] 02/5/2024 22:00

will there be figures issued for April sales? I can't find any yet, but I would have thought someone would have reported them

[simon gordon] 01/5/2024 13:35

FT - 1/5/24:

Why Xi Jinping is afraid to unleash China’s consumers

The pressure on Beijing to find a new growth model is acute but the president seems resistant to deeper economic reform

[hosede] 01/5/2024 12:35

Agreed - but China are concerned with their own problems not those of the US, and
Powell has his long term reputation to consider: I think he'll remember his Simon and Garfunkel "Id rather be a Volcker than a Burns".
Incidentally I get a quarterly email update from the Copernicus institute - I can recommend it

[cfb2] 01/5/2024 12:10

A devaluation of the Yuan will mean their exports become even more problematic for the US. Powell needs to keep interest rates high to unwind all the money printing they did, which is the source of their inflation. My gold stocks are doing well at the moment, which is another way of saying Powell is between a rock and a hard place.

Tesla up a bit, down a bit. My pricing model for Tesla shows me where they'll likely be in five years or a decade from now. I'm not smart or lucky enough to make money from short term swings. If you can do it reliably, well done you!

[hosede] 01/5/2024 09:29

A devaluation of the Yuan is on the cards - according to those who have an understanding. Meanwhile Tesla's rush up to the 190s seems to be steadily reversing - along with the US market in general.
yesterdays Investor's confidence and other figures came in a mile below expectations.
As expected Powell is between a rock and a hard place

[simon gordon] 01/5/2024 05:32

Michael Petitis in the FT yesterday was writing about China's problem of excess savings:

China’s problem is excess savings, not too much capacity

Policymakers on either side of bitter trade dispute seem to confuse two issues

...The fact that China dominates certain manufacturing sectors is perfectly consistent with free trade and comparative advantage. It is excess savings that creates a problem for the global economy — and it should be noted that many countries besides China engage in similar behaviour, including Germany and Japan. The problem is that these excess savings represent the suppression of domestic wages, and thus domestic demand, to achieve global competitiveness...

[johnwise] 01/5/2024 03:52

The phrase there's one, or a sucker, born every minute expresses dismay at the gullibility of people..


The used electric car timebomb - older EVs could be hard to sell because batteries aren't guaranteed

[cfb2] 30/4/2024 23:03

blusteradjuster: I struggle to understand what is going on with China's economy.
I agree their growth is slowing. They quote over 5% growth on GDP but nobody believes them. They seem to have been on the brink of collapse for the last couple of years.

From the outside it looks like their housing bubble is collapsing, leaving a percentage of their population paying mortgages on houses that don't exist. Obviously Evergrande is in liquidation but it seems like a number of others are going to follow.

At the same time China's manufacturing appears to be going flat out to benefit from economies of scale. What happens when countries put up tariffs to stop the flood of goods being exported?

Their multi-decade plan of investing in their "belt and road" has various countries defaulting on debts.

Little of this precarious situation is reflected in their stock market.

[johnwise] 30/4/2024 21:49

VIDEO

Jacob Rees-Mogg SLAMS climate change campaigner for 'not doing their homework' in AWKWARD exchange

[blusteradjuster] 30/4/2024 16:50

China’s growth is slowing, its population is declining, its GDP-carbon-intensity is declining, its renewables fit-out is accelerating.

The trends are obviously positive.

[hosede] 30/4/2024 16:48

And we'll probably all be going round in rickshaws too!

[hosede] 30/4/2024 13:18

cfb
I jus tlooked it up on Google so could be out of date. Even 54% is huge and makes the things that we do in the UK irrelevant.
Also watched Sunday's "Countryfile" last night. With the wettest winter (maybe ever) Britain's fields are waterlogged, crop planting can't begin, so ths years harvest will be VERY poor. Food prices certain to rise substantially.
That extra 7% moisture caused by a 1 degree temperature rise is already proving very significant.

[cfb2] 30/4/2024 12:18

hosede: Coal made up 70% of China's electricity in 2011. As of 2023 it was 54% but that should be considered in conjunction with the fact that their power usage has been increasing YoY by around 5%.

In addition, in 2024 Russia has been exporting coal to China at rock bottom prices because of sanctions.

China's manufacturing is running at full speed and whilst their renewable sources are increasing so are their power requirements.

EVs will be using electricity but as renewable sources increase their contributions to their grid will require battery storage. What better to way to store and smooth out energy in a distributed manner than EVs?

Just because China is still using coal at the moment, as they shift away from it EVs will be part of their plan to move to be carbon neutral by 2060.

[johnwise] 30/4/2024 10:36

The Tory New Green Windmill Deal..To make electricity unaffordable

Video



Video: Mark Levin sussed the government scam
The truth about global warming


If Zero CO2 was ever achieved every tree on the planet would die
VIDEO: A Dearth of Carbon Dr. Patrick Moore

[hosede] 30/4/2024 10:21

Don't forget - 70% of china's electricity is produced by coal

[cfb2] 30/4/2024 10:06

Stupidity has no limits..
Oh the irony!

Absolute madness How about pilotless planes next?
They already exist for shipping cargo.

Tesla Partners with Baidu for Full Self-Driving Rollout in China
Baidu was already providing mapping data. It was essential for Tesla to partner with a Chinese firm to make inroads.

It'll be interesting if China has FSD approved before the rest of the world as various countries are quoting privacy concerns about having camera on the outside of a vehicle.

[che7win] 30/4/2024 06:53

There is also the extra electricity wasted when charging degraded batteries due to the extra resistivity.

[johnwise] 30/4/2024 05:47

Stupidity has no limits..

Absolute madness How about pilotless planes next?

Tesla Partners with Baidu for Full Self-Driving Rollout in China

Tesla shares jumped in premarket trading in New York after Bloomberg reported that Beijing had given Tesla the 'greenlight' to roll out its driver-assistance system, known as "Full Self-Driving," or FSD, in the world's largest car market.

[hosede] 29/4/2024 18:35

Patience Juliemara - it will go well below 100 in due course - but I've found over the years that taking profits is the way forward - so I closed just before the results . As commentators said - the bad news was probabbly already in the price.
That's the great thing about shorting Tesla: it bounces about so if you time it right (I don't always)you can keep making money and if you have to stay in for a while, the interest on the short brings in £200 -250 a week

[juliemara] 29/4/2024 18:13

Of course you did. But why when in the previous post you said it was going to $100? A liar and a fool!

[hosede] 29/4/2024 17:55

Juliemara
Nothing goes in straight lines. I closed my short below 150 for a 50k profit. I guess I'll be back shorting again soon. I have to admit I didn't see this massive overreaction to Musks China visit.
Oh and 200 is still a point or two away

[hosede] 29/4/2024 17:52

Yes ability to recycle the batteries is extremely important. But why do cars need to go so fast? A top speed of 80mph is plenty. Or as someone posted earlier a horse and cart doing 12-15 is actually enough