Isn't "fake it till you make it" about presenting self-confidence in achieving something despite not (yet) having the skills to do so?
What Tesla did was starting a presale on a product they probably had no intention or resources to actually build, in order to get a cash-injection to continue working on Model3 ramp-up...
I'd argue even the cybertruck wasn't seeing much of development work beyond that presentation during that period, considering that the self-praised exoskeletton chassis of it actually turned out to be impractical and was dropped entirely.
What's so pernicious though is the fail it till you make it. This absurdly performant roadster 2 isn't going to happen, ever. Tesla semi seems unlikely to be real. Cybertruck seems dubious. There's no skunkworks team of engineers that can go wild & make dreams fantastic dreams real here. But just riding the grift, riding the promises along, that's been ok. There's been no checks. The lies enabled survival amid the darkest times, actually: the fantastic lies are the only thing that counted, for a while.
You say "it is too often now" but actually it feels like the opposite. There isn't anyone left swinging for big, as far as I can tell. Everyone is receeding. No one is making new big claims. I don't like the lies, but I think we are better as a species holding ourselves in some heat of competition, to be good, to try hard, and it feels like we're in a diminishing expectations world, and that... that is shit. That is the failure mode, where the broadband efforts of trying all cojointly give up. I don't like it.
Are you aware that there are Cybertrucks in show rooms right now? And the launch event is tomorrow? [0]
Tesla has already delivered 21 Semis to Pepsi. [1]
That he makes up products they have no intention of delivering on has been obvious for a few years now. What’s so perplexing is why the market continues to reward it. The company has a $800 billion market cap and an 80 pe.
I suspect it’s on a long road back to reality and being given some premium because of the first mover advantage, but still the company is basically BMW with the illusion of being run by the next Steve Jobs.
> I suspect it’s on a long road back to reality and being given some premium because of the first mover advantage, but still the company is basically BMW with the illusion of being run by the next Steve Jobs.
Unlike BMW Tesla actually sells meaningful quantities of electric vehicles that people can actually afford.
Just look at the models BMW is advertising [1]: 2x 55k (iX1, i4 GC), 1x 67k (iX3), 1x 70k (i5 L, i4 M50 GC), 1x 77k (iX), 3x 100k+. In total, across all (!) BMW i models, they are on track to sell 340k this year worldwide [2], while Tesla aims for 1.8 million units [3].
Because of the asymmetrical risk of betting against it. It's easy for people to buy a Tesla lottery ticket with the chance (at least in the past, and in their minds still) of 10X or 100X your money. Much like crypto. Or the actual lottery. But those who believe it's overvalued have to either risk their entire investment betting on it to crash within a relatively short period, using options, or risk an unlimited amount (or more likely a quick stop-loss exit) with limit upside and high borrowing costs, if they short sell.
I'm pretty damn confident Tesla is overvalued, but I'm not confident I can time when it will drop, nor that it won't go up significantly before then, so I don't really have an attractive way to bet against it.
> This absurdly performant roadster 2 isn't going to happen, ever.
Read the article: other electric cars already hit these performance figures. With tech advancing and Tesla’s strong finances, it comes down just to their willingness to produce it.
As I understand, this is mostly due a battery production capacity issue. When they have more battery production capacity, they will begin mass production. Also, you can Google for pictures of Tesla semis driving in Silicon Valley during testing. They are real, but not yet mass produced.
I assume you're referring to this widely circulated blog post [1]?
I think what has been written there sounds plausible, but ... I wouldn't write it off as "has worked out terribly" yet. Pepsi is the first one to actually adopt electric trucks, it's inevitable that they're hitting issues now. No one before has ever even considered trying to design an electric vehicle that delivers hundreds of kilowatts of power continuously - even the multi-megawatt hypercars are only able to deliver that power for seconds to minutes.
The semi will happen. The cybertruck will work but it’s goddamn ugly and the trunk is small and useless. The roadster always seemed too good to be true, it’s not going to happen. A 600 miles per charge is a rubicon and we’re not there yet.
Things are only going to get more difficult for them as money gets tighter. Auto manufacturing is a notoriously capital intensive business and running factories with lots of employees is very expensive. You have to make enough money to keep the factories open and the workers employed. I think very soon the new realities of the post zirp world are going to catch up.
Even if this monstrosity was released on time and people actually wanted them (a big if) I still think they would struggle mightily to move them after the early adopters for the simple fact that these are very expensive vehicles. Which brings me to the most incredible point in all this- they are claiming sales when people don’t even know what it costs!
The Lucid Air Dream managed >500 miles per charge in multiple real-world tests. The EQXX concept from Mercedes has managed >620 miles in two separate real-world tests, though admittedly it probably benefits from ideal conditions and doesn't have to deal with the challenges of being produced at scale.
