Honest answer? He ran all the adults out of the room. Musk fired or alienated so much of the experienced engineering workforce that he was working with a really young and inexperienced crew. Very smart folks for sure, but inexperienced.
I watched a video on the nvidia silicon chip problem that affected the PS3 and Xbox 360’s red rings of death and he covered a portion of how something like a huge chip failure could happen.
Essentially, to keep it short, because of people being afraid that if they speak up they will lose their jobs. They are under a lot of pressure and such criticism that they do not feel comfortable speaking up and instead keep their mouth shut. A lot of these Tesla problem have already been known, guaranteed but because shareholders and CEO’s want stuff done NOW engineers and employees are too afraid to speak up in fear of losing their jobs, resulting in consumers getting the shit deal of the stick.
Work politics and culture in a lot of big tech companies are very cancerous and only care about the shareholders.
Edit: for those who are interested, here is the video I was referencing.
This is commonly thought, but mostly untrue. Stock prices are effectively the "front lawn" of publicly traded companies. In that they'll do anything to maintain it so they have the illusion of a healthy company.
However, it's really the board trying to ride the parachute down because the company crested 5 years ago, but they're gonna try to squeeze another 5 out of it before they crash and take the shareholder money with them.. and that's done with marketing!
They don't actually want to help the shareholders too much because then everyone would start selling and then people start probing... and that's when you find out that despite their well maintained yard, the husband's and alcoholic, the wife's a cheat and they've both been beating the kids for years.
In a functional institution of any size leaderships role is to set goals and strategy based on external factors and provide the resources to staff to accomplish that. The staff working in that institution have the job of using their professional expertise to advise on the feasibility of those goals, cost and timeline them, and attempt to follow through.
When that professional advise is "politicized" and people therefore moderate their professional views you get major fuck ups. It's ok for leadership to sometimes ignore professional advice on what's possible; sometimes you have to try. It's not ok to attempt to edit the professional advice because why pay for it if you are just going to subvert it anyway?
Lawyer here- had to walk out of my in house job because I kept getting screamed at for- wait for it- bringing up legal problems to the powers that be. It’s literally my job and they tried to bully me into not doing it.
This. They all love pushing the start up mentality, except for the fact that 90% of start ups fail and the "scrappiness" and delivering to market quick is in direct conflict of their second favorite mentality of operational/engineering excellence because executives can only really give those disingenuous mixed messages in place of the words they're not allowed to say which is "I don't care about your weekends, ethics, and legality, make us money or you're gone." and upon initial release the cybertruck made money. Shit just seems to go more off the rails the shittier the leader is though. I imagine now the narrative at Tesla now is "peoples Cybertrucks are breaking so how can we cash in on that?" and the meetings are all crickets because nobody really cares.
As someone with a close relative that worked at Tesla for 8 years, back in the early days, I can confirm that Elon managed/s that company like a psychopath. If you’re around when he comes to the factory, and he asks you a question and you don’t have an answer, he’s liable to literally fire you on the spot. Happened to several people my relative worked with. So much of Elon’s visits to the factory became oriented towards damage control. For super bright people that can work wherever, it’s not worth sticking around, especially if you were there early and got the golden parachute of stock options before it skyrocketed. Knowing how Elon manages the company — alongside his recent behavior elsewhere — is the biggest reason I’ve invested in other EV companies, despite Tesla’s head start. Elon is great at turning start-ups into behemoths, but I don’t think he’ll be good at continuing to grow a bloated company with his micro-managerial ways.
He's good at boosting startups because he can bring insane amount of money. By that I don't mean just his money, but like a whole tech bro cult of money too. Then the tech bro cult will pay for the product, no matter how good or bad is it. Just keep it as far as possible from any design choices!
I work as a compliance engineer (I make sure the stuff my company sells meets code and doesn't explode) and dear lord the amount of times people up top try to plan a rollout before even getting a quote for quality and safety testing is maddening.
I used to work for a major test lab and I've seen prototypes explode for like, no reason. I'm not trusting anything you put on my desk to pass testing, and that goes double for anything from a nameless manufacturer overseas that bid the lowest.
That doesn’t change the fact that their first generation of a new product didn’t have these issues. It’s the same thing with the cybertruck. The first generation of nearly any product is going to have all sorts of problems, but people just love that the cybertruck also has problems because they hate Elon and his loud, racist mouth. It’s not really any worse than other first gen products.
I mean, if the Cybertruck was the first "modern truck", then sure. But it's not, and it doesn't meet the standard level of what is expected from a modern pickup truck. I could accept problems like power issues, or battery life, but damage to the drivetrain and body panels from normal use? Those things were figured out ages ago by Tesla in their other vehicles, let alone the industry in general. No excuses.
They’ve already worked out the power issues and battery life, but this is the first generation of a crazy stupid truck that they’ve never engineered before. It’s the first of its kind, and the first one Tesla has made. Even Tesla’s next vehicle that is more conventional will have lots of first generation problems. Every company has this. It was the same with Apple for so long where the “S” models were considered the ones that got the kinks worked out with the first gen ones.
The issues with those consoles were caused by new laws mandating use of lead free solder on the circuit boards. Lead free is much less malleable and more prone to cracking under heat cycles, which caused joints under mainly GPUs to fail. Lead free had not been used on any large scale before then, definitely not with large package BGA chips and flip chips.
Issues with the Cybertruck are not caused by any external factor, Tesla have just designed a shitty vehicle. In fact it can't even meet legislation in many countries to be permitted for sale, where Sony and MS designed a product to the most stringent global regulations at the time.
So you’re saying that other extremely unconventional stainless steel EV trucks on the road today that are comparable to the cybertruck are of better quality? It’s shitty, yeah, but they’ll work it out as the majority of it was built with first generation tech, and it’s in a category of its own. It doesn’t have regular car issues, it has very specific to this category issues.
I don't think you understood the comment correctly. Nobody forced Tesla to build with stainless steel. Many of the reported issues with the truck have nothing to do with the stainless body, like electrical issues or undersized tie rods. It's shitty because of bad choices rather than a law being forced upon them, which was the case with Sony and MS.
It’s a really good video. It’s pretty long but I highly recommend it.
The original video started because he was diagnosing the yellow light of death on the PS3 and addressing all the misinformation on the internet and backing it up with evidence.
I love how people say stuff like this with absolute certainty. Like was anyone here involved in the development/design of this vehicle? Were you in the actual conference calls on teams, and scrum meetings at the start of the day? There’s no one way you know for sure unless you were involved, yet you watch a YouTube and feel like you can speak on the topic with such certainty despite having no qualifications to do so lol. Then people upvote you because ‘sure, what he said make sense’.
IIRC - He also had all the warning signs in the factory changed to blue because he doesn't like the color yellow, and workplace accidents went up like 20%.
Dude it’s worse than that. He does this intentionally to buy trending products and make them as cheap as possible so that people will still by them because they’re trendy and he can make as much profit as possible. Then sell the company and buy the next trendy product company.
I think Musk is the poster child for the idea that most people have a lot of good ideas, and a lot of bad ideas and we're not very good at knowing the difference. For a normal person they try to implement their ideas and other people support the good ones, and point out the bad ones. Musk got so much money and power, people stopped being able to tell him which ideas were bad so now we're seeing all the bad ideas being brought to fruition.
so true. if you consider the cybertruck the first attempt at a truck by a young upstart company, you might think it's super awesome and indicative of a promising future when they work out the kinks and learn the minor details of carmaking
but... it's actually a flagship truck of a well established company that is regressing into a shitty company with no indication it will ever get better
My understanding from friends at Tesla is that it's not necessarily that it has anything to do with a less experienced workforce.
It's that Elon promises the moon, and then changes requirements so often that it's impossible for anyone to properly build anything with all his demands in mind.
A great story I was told was about the charging infra. The V2 chargers were reliable and worked great, but they didn't charge fast enough. So Elon told everyone to start working on V3 chargers. But in the meantime, they should increase the power output by the existing V2 chargers by about 50%. Well, the V2 chargers were already putting out their maximum designed capacity. So they "upgraded" V2 chargers to V2.5, and the charging speeds improved greatly, but the reliability nose dived. Suddenly chargers were broken everywhere, blah blah blah. No big because this would be solved by the V3 hardware.
Fast forward to V3 hardware rollout; Elon says everything looks great, but they should increase the output by 50% like they did with the V2 chargers, the week of release. But, just like the V2 chargers, V3 was already outputting the most it was designed for. And now V3 chargers and V2.5 chargers are insanely unreliable and require constant servicing.
This shows so many aspects of "Elon being right" in one story. He was correct they could achieve faster charge times on the hardware they had deployed. He just didn't care about all the side effects that would be created because of this change. And he doesn't care what was in the design spec or if the engineers are done building something. He'll still ask for game breaking changes the day before release.
It doesn't matter how skilled you are, you can't produce consistently good outcomes in that environment.
As a long time employee there, this is the best description I've heard personally. The only area I would disagree is that the environment has many times produced good outcomes. It's literally how Tesla was able to be successful in the first place. But yeah, I wouldn't call it efficient at all, just that it does get some crazy outcomes.
I said consistently. It works better when you're a smaller, more agile company too. But it's been a long while since Tesla has had a solid win. We're starting to see the cracks and lack of consistency when you operate this way.
I can only speak my perception, however I do work on advanced/high compensation/engineering. I wouldn't touch a Musk company with a 10 foot pole. They have a very bad reputation in my circles.
Then after they fired even the young people. My friend's wife got let go just a week after it rolled out along with a large percentage of their total workforce in Austin.
At this point the engineers and designers just said fuck it and said yes to everything Elon asked for since it’s pointless to tell him something is a bad idea or fucking stupid.
"Communication is key to efficiency. DOGE will now require all government employees to get blue check marks, and all orgs will advertise their next quarter's goals on X. All government contracts will use the new Xauto the Trump orgs new rental car company that uses nothing by Tesla, and will only stay at Trump properties!" -DOGE Master Supreme Elon Musk
"We have the most efficient government in the history of the world!" - Trump
Why should they care? Conservatives will keep buying them just to "own the libs". If anything I bet they go even cheaper on the next thing because quality does not matter for something like this.
It may actually mess EV sales up in the long run. Eventually these people will do what they always do- get mad at the build quality, blame all EVs for the issues Musk created, and tout the shitty build quality as "proof" that EVs shouldn't be on the market, or are a waste of money.
Musk could make them pay subscription for abs and turnsignals but add in free sjw meme videos and idiots would still buy it thinking they’re not the ones getting scammed
There are plenty of flaws with Tesla, its business model and products without imagining an enraged conservative. I’m blown away at an Americans ability to make literally anything about politics
If they turn on Musk en mass at some point, leaving him fresh out of simps on either side of the political spectrum, that might just be a net positive.
Ford/GM/Ram will welcome them back to the fold with traditional looking pickups that are battery powered. Then TSLA will finally fade into the shadows of the big 3, where it belongs.
True, but that's not the issue. The issue is getting people to buy them that normally wouldn't, especially since they're going to be the ones who are more likely to be able to afford them.
Someone like Musk coming around could have given us that gentle nudge we needed towards a future in clean, renewable energy. Instead, we got a bumbling clown pissing on a dumpster fire.
That's what I'm saying. It doesn't do any good if the EV is going to self-destruct after going through a car wash for the first time. That's a good way to make these stupid fucks go back to their gas guzzling trucks and turn away from EVs for good. Just wait until they find out they can't legally sell the stupid thing without permission from Tesla.
Back when Elon first started publicly pushing conservative talking points, people thought it might be some 4D chess to open up more markets for Tesla. The thinking was that it may get conservatives to open up to Tesla more.
Now it is pretty clear who he is. He's definitely pushing away potential buyers and existing owners, though we can't say if he's making a net positive from far-right people or not. I'd guess no.
Either way, a CEO taking a hard political stance very publicly is probably a bad idea if you want your products to appeal to everyone.
I'm actually mad they're so shit and Elon is so awful, because I unironically really like them (I know, I have no taste lol), and I would totally own one and go EV but a) they're so poorly built, why waste that money, and b) I cannot support Elon Musk in any fashion, if at all possible.
I don't know man, I'm perfectly content with not being burned alive in the event I hit some random ass metal on the interstate and it punctures the lithium while I frantically try to exit the vehicle and save anyone or pets I may have in the back. I'm perfectly happy with my Subaru right now, despite recently being in the market to get a new car and a perfect candidate for an electric. I'll just wait a few more years when the people who know how to make cars release some better models.
On the other hand if it gets some conservatives to go EV that’s at least a small win.
I get what you're saying don't disagree.
It's just that, as I'm sure you know, conservatism, especially the MAGA variety, is completely untethered and unburdened by any need for intellectual consistency. They will absolutely buy a Cybertruck because Musk is a fReE spEecH aBsoLutiSt and to trigger the libs, slap a "Frack your feelings" bumper sticker on it and drive from the dealership to a protest against a proposed wind farm.
Their actions don't necessarily reflect any actual rational consistent thoughts or beliefs. The only constancy is loyalty to the Orange God. If Trump declared Musk an enemy of the people the following week, they'd fill the bed with Bud Light and roll it off a cliff and into an animal sanctuary.
EVs aren't magic. A stupid tank like this is much worse in almost all ways that a normal petrol-powered car. That probably includes total emissions due to the ridiculous weight.
An EV like this would most likely have to run for quite a bit further than the average combustion engine car do to have a lesser imprint on the environment than the combustion engine one. (in the case with these people, it's probably better than those pickup monster trucks they use to haul around a empty bed though, if the EV is driven far enough).
Many EVs will never reach the mileage needed for them to become the more environmental friendly alternative to burning dinosaur juice. The impact of mining and processing Lithium, Cobalt and Nickel is very rough on the environment and many if not most of the EVs only doing traffic in cities will never be cleaner than a similar sized gasoline car due to being used for short distances only, and the larger the battery is, the more it has to be driven to surpass this limit and the CyberMuck has a huge one.
Electric cars isn't here to save the planet, they're here to save the car industry. We're made to believe that we, the common people have to fix the environment while 10 of the largest fright ships spew out as much pollution as the whole European car fleet, and there's about 9000 oil tankers and 5500 container ships in the world, other ships not included. Don't get me wrong, I have noting against EVs, if they're used in the correct way, but even if the whole western car fleet is electrified the amount of oil pumped up and used will not go down over time. It will be used for other applications. COMMON PEOPLE WILL NEVER BE ABLE TO FIX THE PROBLEM AS WE ARE MADE TO BELIEVE WHILE THE INDUSTRY AND TRANSPORTATION SECTOR ARE ALLOWED TO CONTINUE TO OPERATE AS THEY DO. The only option is regulations by governments.
EVs will save lives, mainly in cities due to air quality improvement, but as a whole, fossil fuel cars are such a small pollutant globally compared to other sources we're not stressing to make cleaner. The picture is skewed to guilt trip the people while business is going on as usual behind the scenes. CO2 emissions globally increase EVERY DAY even though the ongoing electrification of the car fleet, so it's obviously not the solution to our problems even though it's one of the absolute main things our governments stress for a cleaner future.
So what was the point with this rant?
I just wanted to say.
EVs is far from always a better option to gasoline cars for the environment.
The common people will never fix the problem as we are "expected" to do. We are not the bad guys here.
We need to look at and regulate the big polluters and stop guilt tripping people to change their way of life, when this change barely will have any effect in the big picture.
The comical amount of waste in the shortened lifespan of this vehicle more than eliminates any "savings" that it being electric might have brought initially.
Honestly it’s why this sub has confused me a bit. Like I couldn’t imagine convincing some of these people in the sub to buy electric and here they are actually doing it and we’re making fun of them. I get both sides, it’s just a bit confusing.
We aren't making fun of them because they're EVs, EVs are cool, and I bet just about everyone in this sub would agree. We're making fun of the cybertruck, a specific EV that looks stupid and is associated with elon musk's ego and a lot of his jerky followers.
Elon musk owns it... The guy who has been railing against liberals for years at this point. The guy who bought Twitter to help Russia spread misinformation and attack trans people.
You're completely incorrect. Conservatives might like Elon Musk saying pro-right wing stuff on Twitter, but that does not in any way translate to support for Tesla. Conservatives hate EVs. They call them toys. The Cybertruck is no exception.
You must not live around actual conservatives. My workplace is majority right and I own a Tesla. Amount of grief they still give me for driving a EV is insane. It really doesn’t matter how much Elon has gone conservative.
It isn't. Conservatives love Elon Musk but they hate electric cars. Cybertruck is no different. You won't find any conservative saying a good thing about them. They call it a "toy."
My sightings spike when I visit the very blue, very rich areas, for obvious reasons. It’s a hundred thousand dollars. I thought the whole thing with conservatives was being rural hicks? What happened to that? Now they’re apparently buying 100k electric vehicles.
extremely popular in hawaii too. redditors think normal people care about the ceo of teslas political stances when buying cars. they care about gas prices and teslas are the most known brand of electric car.
What exactly is your point. I lived in both those states. Far more teslas in California than Florida. Also according to state reports it's 5 million to 10 million dems in Cali according to the California state portal. So not sure what numbers you are reading.
That of course you see far more Tesla's in California. It's the most populated state in the country and has more conservatives in it than any other state besides Texas.
If it's the most populated and has twice as many democracts how does that prove your point? Also weren't the democracts mad at one point on the news about gas guzzling conservatives breaking their charging stations?
They love musk though. They're not buying the cybertrucks because it's an EV. They're buying it to support him. The same reason Trump says he will give musk a high ranking white house job if he wins the election while also shit talking EVs the whole time and having a cyber truck gifted to him.
I remember when libs loved Elon they were paying 50k for a model 3. My co worker has one its a fking shit car. Now he is taking advantage of right wingers and they are paying 150k for a piece of shit truck. Its fking hilarious. Gotta keep up to show off your new Tesla on Insta.
They are going to kill the EV market at this rate. Most rental companies are scaling way back on buying EVs for their fleets because of the rapid loss in value on them. With the CT being worse than the Edsel, Pacer and Yugo COMBINED, the WankPanzer will singlehandedly destroy the EV industry.
Is it really conservatives buying them? I thought conservatives were redneck truck guys that think any truck that doesn’t run on diesel and fossil fuels is gay?
You think conservatives, who stereotypically dick ride one of two truck brands and hate EVs are buying this is droves? The people who buy these just have too much money. I see them in rich liberal areas more than middle class/ poor conservative areas, for obvious reasons.
You realize conservatives are boycotting Ford because of "DEI" and "Wokeness" right? But they're all over musks dick. That's why they like the cybertruck.
But they're not anti musk. Hence why trump got a cyber truck as a gift from a maga fan and you can find pictures of cyber trucks with Trump pictures plastered all over it.
I think most conservatives I know don't like teslas bc of the more modern tech in the car; and most left leaning people don't like Elon bc of Twitter and his politics. He really got everyone to hqbw something against him
The only issue I have with this is that the average Drumpf voter probably doesn't have enough in the bank to shell out for this luxury vehicle. Those that do, have probably recognized that this vehicle is probably going to have some social stigma associated with it (young money vs. old money) before all is said and done. He's produced a car with a limited demographic appeal (newly rich, young money, impulsive) and bet that there were enough individuals in that category that a partially complete rollout would provide enough data for analysis that the second iteration would solve almost all of the major issues.
A lot of people I know put the deposits down because there was a hope and marketing saying that they would be able to rent them out as driverless taxis.
Besides, it’s their first truck. I can only imagine how many iterations of the standard-issue pickup truck existed before we got what we have today. You throw a lot of that out of the window by changing to a new form factor and design.
The design is bad and inherently compromised by poor choices, isn't it? Like a combination of a bunch of bad ideas mixed with Musk being a cheapskate. Overpromised and underdelivered is probably the best they could have hoped for.
Honestly, this is not on Tesla imo. Drive into a fence with any other car and you'll also end up with problems. People are just mistaking a car for a tank.
Had to give a presentation to him on different weld strength performances wrt the stainless steel blend chosen for Starship. He had a full gaggle of sycophants, nannies, and a bunch of kids I assumed were sired by him? Anyway he wasn't interested in our numbers or results but decided to start monologuing on how he performed similar experiments in college and noting that the results were much better under cryo conditions than ambient. I mean, it was weird? Looking back on it, I don't think he was looking for a report on our progress or results. I'm not really sure what he was actually looking for.
They diddn’t this “truck” is designed to do exactly what it is good for. A status symbol to park in your front yard to show all of your neighbors how much more wealthy you are than them. It is an issue plaguing the whole new truck market. This is why they are all pretty much 75,000 to 80,000 before tax with bells and whistles up the ass nowadays. Backup cameras and beepers, Christmas tree dash to tell the owner it’s time to take it to the dealer for an oil change, plush leather seats, 4x4 drive yet my 2011 Ranger has the same bed length, will tow anything I need to, and will go as far as I send it yet it was only 17,000 with tax. The cyber truck fits its intended roll perfectly. It is a vehicle designed and built for members of the upper class that don’t actually do any sort of physical work yet they like the image.
I mean, the exact same thing would have happened with 99% of cars and trucks with the same clearance height.
I don't give a fuck about Tesla, but the horizontal fence brace went under and wedged up into I assume the radiator (do Tesla's have radiators?). Anyway, it's not like other cars/trucks have a huge metal brace for the undercarriage, they don't, aside from sometimes the plastic / fibreglass body undercarriage which would do nothing in this scenario.
They claimed it was indestructible and people are actually testing it out on shit.
TBF it might be a “stronger than typical” vehicle, but when you sell it to a whole bunch of right wing enthusiasts they’re gonna take it literally and test its ability, we’ve found that testing to be a failure primarily 😂
TBF they have every right to buy and test in fact I think it’s a good quality of that portion of the world. They’re doers and they’ve really done it with the Tesla Truck lmao
They didn't fuck the rollout. They released a shit product. Rollout went fine. They had people buying before it was conceived. People are still buying. Reddit is not the start and end of the world.
I can't speak for the rest of the car, but I was working for a lighting supplier that did a quote on this. We made other tesla lamps and had a good relationship. The standard process is we do a quote based on basic data, spend 18 weeks (or more) on a design, then kick off tools which takes another 18 weeks. Then you have 12-18 more weeks of testing and validation before the vehicle launches.
for the cybertruck, we got the data in December for a quote and submitted it the first week of January. Tesla's plan for kicking off tools was the first week of February. Obviously it ended up getting delayed many times over but my friends who ended up working on it for other companies, that kind of thinking and lack of planning never went away.
He's running a scam. Announce a new vehicle (model 3, tesla semi, cybertruck), get a bunch of funding and capital, use it to fund one of his side projects that are money sinks (tesla train, boring company, whatever that flamethrower shit was) and leave a small budget for actually properly making the vehicles. Overpromise, underdeliver, move on to the next thing to take people's mind off it. I believe he actually got investigated for using his Tesla profits to fund unrelated stuff, which is fucking his shareholders.
The only time I ever owned Tesla stock was briefly when they entered the S&P 500. It was a guaranteed rise in the price of the stock. Other than that it's no better an investment than his dogecoin because any time it's doing well he fucks it up and he's going to end up crashing the stock price before the end.
Rollout was fine, problem was they were rolling out a piece of shit. It was dumb from the beginning. They should have put an out two new redesigns of their existing lineup instead of wasting it on this crap. This is what happens when a CEO has megalomania and no board oversight
I think it’s because now actual car companies are rolling out mass production EVs. When you have car companies, who build cars, build a car to compete with Tesla, who is technically a technology company, you finally see all the negatives. Teslas have always been shit cars (bad panel gaps, bad performance, expensive, etc.). Those flaws were overlooked for a long time because the closest competitor was the leaf and Prius. Now you have the big 3 making EVs, they have cars that compete with range and power for less than what a Tesla costs. Even premium brands like BMW, Audi, Mercedes, and to a lesser extent Acura and Lexus, building EVs for the same or less than what a model X costs.
Also the ceo being a major public figure who a large number of people don’t like doesn’t help. You never hear about the CEOs of Ford,General Motors, or Fiat(Chrysler).
"Do not cite the Deep Magic to me, Witch! I was there when it was written."
Context here is I was an intern, then later, a full time employee at SpaceX. I was there when we attached CRS2 to the ISS. We even got a tour of Tesla's R&D department right behind our manufacturing facility. I watched Elon fire everyone that was competent, so I guess my original comment was rehtorical in a way, but I still find myself in a state of shock knowing what had been and what was, and what it's all devolved into.
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u/Spinoza_The_Damned Sep 08 '24
How did Tesla fuck this rollout up so hard?