You were supposed to be watching him. Letters from SEC claim Tesla breached deal to police Elon Musk's tweets The SEC has repeatedly found itself frustrated by the bombastic tweets of Tesla CEO Elon Musk. And letters from the regulator have revealed that two of Musk’s postings were in breach of a previous settlement. The letters, sent last year and obtained by the Wall Street Journal via a Freedom of Information request, showed the …
It's the quck, and easy fix to this problem. Next time Musk tweets and breaks the rules, put a 30 day trading halt on Tesla. Then 60 days. Then 120.
It can be bizarre sometimes. So Tesla buys $1bn+ of bitcoin, then books a handy $100m gain on that investment. Then Musk dumps on crypto, and presumably Tesla loses >$100m based on an SNL performance and a few tweets. Which would seem to be a bit of a fiduciary problem where the CEO ends up acting against the companies interests.
But such is politics. See also-
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-57253947
We're on the verge of a tipping point, says Ramez Naam, the co-chair for energy and environment at the Singularity University in California.
He believes as soon as electric vehicles become cost-competitive with fossil fuel vehicles, the game will be up.
That's certainly what Tesla's self-styled techno-king, Elon Musk, believes.
Last month he was telling investors that the Model 3 has become the best-selling premium sedan in the world, and predicting that the newer, cheaper Model Y would become the best-selling car of any kind.
"We've seen a real shift in customer perception of electric vehicles, and our demand is the best we've ever seen," Mr Musk told the meeting.
With the evergreen Bbc hyping EVs. But then the Model 3 was supposed to be the $30k 'affordable' compact EV, but wasn't. And Tesla just announced a combination of price increases & feature deletions, blaming that on rising raw material costs. Not sure how much of that is actually raw materials & how much would be component shortages, but sans regulatory credits, Tesla loses money on it's cars. But that's another of those areas where auditors might want to take a closer look given the way those credits have been used to create profits. Especially given competition with EVs will mean demand for those credits falls.
And of course the Bbc glosses over a few points-
But, says Ms Tyson, when you factor in the cost of fuel and servicing - EVs need much less of that - many EVs are already cheaper than the petrol or diesel alternative.
EV's still need both fuel & servicing, and there's an assumption that governments won't look at falling fuel & VED, and act to 'correct' that. Texas (being Texas) already proposed an EV fuel tax that'll make charging a bit more expensive. What'll happen with energy costs as joules shift from being in tanks to batteries is another of those thorny subjects.
Why sell them at 30k when they sell all they can make?
Or not. But that's another of those Tesla curiousities. Keep opening up gigafactories to add production, but sales flattening off as the novelty wears off and there's more competition. Kinda like the usual China experience. Get invited to open massive manufacturing facility there, watch as your competitors borrow your ideas. But then China's making Teslas for the European market due to it's proximity. Or something.
But such is politics. The Bbc compares it to the Model T, but that was a cheap/mass-produced car like Tesla's aren't. And oddly enough, other motor manufacturers with a tad more experience in making mass-market product are starting to demonstrate why Tesla ended up in an abandoned GM/Toyota factory. Curious thing about that. In NUMMI days, it produced almost 500k cars a year. Now, after much spending and massive expansion, Tesla's almost producing the same volume* as NUMMI did in 2006.
Strange the way hype and reality tend to end up misaligned when it comes to Teslanomics. I think Tesla quickly realised $30k was a tad unrealistic, and getting worse. But fear not, the Model Y will be the new low-cost model, and they'll make up the numbers by selling millions of FuglyTrucks, Semis, Roaster Mk2s and various other things that have been announced, but not materialised.
*Not sure if you can count a vehicle 2-3x, if it keeps getting sent back for rework.
30k was a target price
the aim was that the roadster, followed by the S would generate enough of a market that economies of scale would make the E (as it was meant to be) profitable at 30k, the plan hasn't quite worked and the scale isn't quite where they need it to be. 4 years of Trump hasn't helped and delays with Giga 3 and 4, but with the resolution of issues around 4 and 3 now coming along, there is possibly light at the endo of the tunnel for the Y being finally cost-competitive with ICE cars without subsidy.
For 6 months a year, my EV is mostly powered by the electricity generated by my Solar Panels. In May, that gave me 590 miles of travel at zero running costs.
My EV had its first service back in April after 2 years and 20,000 miles. Total cost £226.00 inc VAT.
I do expect a mileage base VED to be introduced but quite how they will get around charging for miles driven outside the UK is something for the Politicians to mull over.
I wonder how many El Reg commentards really know their energy use pattern? I'd guess at very few.
Until you have a proper handle on your own consumption profile then it might not be wise to comment on that of others.
Downvote this all you like but the EV revolution is on the horizon and rapidly heading our way.
For 6 months a year, my EV is mostly powered by the electricity generated by my Solar Panels. In May, that gave me 590 miles of travel at zero running costs.
I think that's one of those fun economic challenges. So you've essentially built your own filling station, rather than simply using someone elses, ie 590 miles is a couple of tanks of gas, and probably <$100. So you could spend $20-30K+ on solar to get that 'free' 590 miles. Then it gets complicated depending on subsidies for solar PV, and ROI calculations that can be based on 'free' domestic electricity usage and being paid to export electricity.
I wonder how many El Reg commentards really know their energy use pattern? I'd guess at very few.
I think that becomes energy use both domestic, and then driving patterns. So kinda curious how your production ends up being split, ie does it mean your electricity increasingly gets used for car fillng. Then how that changes usage and billing, so if your electricity bills increase. But that's also dependent on how much you've invested in solar. So basic PV might mean you're producing when there's low demand, ie daytime and you're not home & car isn't home either. Or then night time, when you might want to charge, but solar PV is useless.
And then of course there's batteries. Buy a stack of PowerWalls to store that solar at 13kWh a slab and a 5kW discharge to fill an EV with it's own 100kWh battery pack. So then it's how many Powerwalls you need based on your driving patterns, and if your solar PV can keep up with the charging. But charging batteries to charge batteries isn't exactly efficient, even if it makes for fun TCO/ROI calculations.
My EV had its first service back in April after 2 years and 20,000 miles. Total cost £226.00 inc VAT.
I think that's comparable to an ICE, especially given they've improved in reliability a lot over the last couple of decades. Which is something Tesla's also discovering, ie how much it'll cost to service wear parts, like tyres, brakes, suspension etc given EV's can be rather heavy. Also curious if fluids will become an EV thing given there's a lot of plumbing in a Tesla.. And more to come with the new heat pump system. But that's something ICEs have been doing for decades, ie using 'waste' engine heat for cabin heating. And another challenge with EVs, so energy used for cabin heating/cooling eating into range. Which is also true for ICEs, although semi-free via an alternator.
I do expect a mileage base VED to be introduced but quite how they will get around charging for miles driven outside the UK is something for the Politicians to mull over.
I think that's been done & dusted some years ago with all new EU cars having to have a 'black box' that records mileage, and can transmit that.. somewhere. Which could be combined with 'smart' meter networks to pull data from EVs and ICEs and produce a bill.. Which probably won't care where those miles occured. That'll probably end up with another EU bunfight about revenue distribution.
But it's also one of those policy challenges. ICE's already pay road charges, and already distance based. So the more fuel used, the more fuel duty and tax paid. EV's currently get a free ride on those costs, but that will have to change unless governments are content to lose billions from transport duties and taxes. But also has wider economic implications, mass EV adoption will require mass increases in electricity production, and someone has to pay for that.
That may end up being socialised, and all electricity bills increase to prop up EVs.. But obviously that will be rather inflationary, and regressive given the impact on energy poverty. So one of those wicked problems. Governments have been massively subsidising EVs and 'renewables' already, and announcing road charging for EVs will blow holes in marketing claims for low-cost motoring. So the situation in Texas at the moment with EV owners claiming it's unfair to charge them for road usage.
Would this be the same SEC who failed to investigate Bernie Madoff (who literally 'made off' with a great deal of other people's money)?
"More and more embarrassing stories of keep leaking out of the SEC, which is beginning to look somehow worse than corrupt – it’s hard to find the right language exactly, but “aggressively clueless” comes pretty close to summing up the atmosphere that seems to be ruling the country’s top financial gendarmes.
The most recent contribution to the broadening canvas of dysfunction and incompetence surrounding the SEC is a whistleblower complaint filed by 56-year-old Kathleen Furey, a senior lawyer who worked in the New York Regional Office (NYRO), the agency outpost with direct jurisdiction over Wall Street.
Furey’s complaint is full of startling revelations about the SEC, but the most amazing of them is that Furey and the other 20-odd lawyers who worked in her unit at the NYRO were actually barred by a superior from bringing cases under two of the four main securities laws governing Wall Street, the Investment Advisors Act of 1940 and the Investment Company Act of 1940.
... Furey in her internal arguments over this case specifically warned that the agency needed to begin enforcing section 206 of the Investment Advisers Act, which barred money managers from employing “any device, scheme, or artifice to defraud any client or prospective client.” She warned that pursuing cases under that statute “may save the agency from future embarrassment.” Section 206 was the exact statute that the SEC ultimately employed both in the Value Line case (many years later), and in the case against Bernie Madoff.
... The scandal was incredibly embarrassing to the SEC, which had failed to investigate Madoff despite being tipped off in extraordinarily detailed fashion by investigator Harry Markopolos over eight years before."
From: https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/why-didnt-the-sec-catch-madoff-it-might-have-been-policy-not-to-86356/
Madoff was an investor / part owner / made-member of the SEC, while Musk is not (I'm a fan of neither of them). Like any mafia leader, Madoff was allowed / encouraged / expected / required to steal from everyone *except* fellow members.
The RS article is good, Harry Markopolos' book is excellent, but Godfather I has more accurate insights into the SEC.
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