The Elon Musk Thread

[wjfox]

Whether you love him or loathe him, he's one of the most influential people in the world of tech.

So here's a dedicated thread for Elon Musk.

Topics covered:

– SpaceX
– Tesla
– Neuralink
– The Boring Company
– OpenAI
– Starlink
– Hyperloop
– Tesla Energy
– And more!

[wjfox]

On Elon Musk's 50th Birthday, A Major Throwback From Mom Maye Musk

June 28, 2021 11:07 am IST

Elon Musk's mother brought in his 50th birthday with a major throwback picture. Maye Musk took to social media this morning to wish her eldest son a happy birthday with an old picture and a sweet message. The throwback photograph shows the Tesla and SpaceX CEO as a baby, swaddled in a blanket and being cradled by his mother.

"Happy birthday @elonmusk," wrote Ms Musk, a Canadian author and model, on Twitter while sharing the picture. "Thank you for this wonderful day 50 years ago. You have brought me great joy. Lots of love," she added. Ms Musk also noted that the hashtag #HappyBirthdayElonMusk had begun trending on social media.

Maye Musk often treats fans and followers to throwback pictures of her family. Only last week, she had shared a picture of Elon and his brother Kimbal Musk as teenagers.

https://www.ndtv.com/offbeat/on-elon-mu ... sk-2473973

[caltrek]

Elon Musk’s Tesla Bot is a Joke
by James Vincent
August 20, 2021

https://www.theverge.com/2021/8/20/2263 ... usk-ai-day

Introduction:

(The Verge) After a dense presentation about the undeniably impressive work Tesla is doing with AI, the company’s self-anointed Technoking, Elon Musk, capped the evening by bringing out a dancer in a spandex suit. Behold, said Musk: my Tesla Bot.

The dancer in the suit, he said, was the model for a new humanoid robot Tesla will produce in the near future. After the dubstep and applause had faded, the vaguest of briefing slides promised that the Tesla Bot will stand five feet, eight inches (1.7m), weigh 125 pounds (56kg), have “human-level hands,” and eliminate “dangerous, repetitive, boring tasks.”

Musk said that building a human-replacement robot — something no company in the world is close to achieving — was a logical step forward from Tesla’s work developing self-driving cars. “Our cars are semi-sentient robots on wheels,” he said. “It kind of makes sense to put that on to a humanoid form. We’re also quite good at sensors and batteries and actuators so we think we’ll probably have a prototype some time next year that basically looks like this.”

Even by Musk’s standards, it was a bizarre and brilliant bit of tomfoolery: a multipurpose sideshow that trolled Tesla skeptics, fed the fans, ginned up the share price, and created some eye-catching headlines. The latter being particularly important in a week when most Tesla news has focused on a federal investigation into a tendency of the company’s Autopilot software to crash into parked emergency vehicles. Forget about all that, says Musk, just look at the person in the spandex suit! Next year, it’ll be a real robot, I promise.

Do you believe him? Should you believe him? I won’t answer that for you, but I want to restate the facts...

Some funny observations in the rest of the article such as…

Over the years, these ambitions (for the Hyperloop) have shrunk until the project morphed into The Loop: a small tunnel that you can drive a car through, if you want. (Otherwise known as: a tunnel.)

...he doesn’t even need a simulacrum of a robot to sell the dream. All he needs is a dancer in a spandex suit. Now that’s innovation.

[caltrek]

Tesla's Battery-Manufacturing "Megafactory" Breaks Ground in California
by Aria Alamalhodaei
September 23, 2021

https://techcrunch.com/2021/09/23/tesla ... alifornia/

Introduction:

(TechCrunch) Tesla broke ground on its “Megafactory,” a new production facility in California, so christened because it will produce the company’s large-scale battery system Megapack.

News of the previously unannounced factory was confirmed by the Lathrop Mayor Sonny Dhaliwal, in a Facebook post that was deleted and re-posted. “We are proud to be the home of the Megafactory, Tesla’s most recent expansion here,” he said. “The future of green energy will be produced right here in our community.”

The factory, in the small northern California city of Lathrop, is near Tesla’s automotive plant in Fremont. Lathrop is also home to Tesla’s 870,000-square-foot distribution center.

Megapacks, as well as Tesla’s other energy storage products, were being manufactured at the electric automaker’s so-called “Gigafactory” in Sparks, Nevada. This is the first facility dedicated to the Megapack, though it’s unclear if production of Tesla’s other storage products – which include Powerwall and Powerpacks – will shift to the new factory.

The new factory is a positive signal for the automaker’s growing Energy division. As opposed to the Powerwall, which is a home consumer battery product, the Megapack is meant for utility-scale energy storage. Utilities building solar and wind farms are increasingly pairing these with large batteries to store excess energy to discharge to the grid later. Just last week, the Arizona electric utility Salt River Project brought online a 100 megawatt-hour Megapack project.

[wjfox]

Elon Musk holds Twitter vote over $21bn Tesla share sale

35 minutes ago

Tesla billionaire Elon Musk has launched a Twitter poll of his 62.6 million followers asking if he should sell 10% of his shares.

The vote, which closes later on Sunday, could see him dispose of $21bn (£16bn) of stock in the electric carmaker.

He promised to abide by the result of the poll, a response to a "billionaires tax" proposed by US Democrats.

The plan could see Mr Musk, who is one of the world's richest men, face a huge tax bill.

By late morning on Sunday, with about 8 hours to go before the poll closes, 57% of the 2.8 million respondents had voted "yes".

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-59182278

[caltrek]

Well, he did it. (At least in part).

Elon Musk Sells Around $5 Billion of Tesla Stock
by Lora Kolodny and Christine Wang
November 10, 2021

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/11/10/elon-mu ... stock.html

Introduction:

(CNBC) Tesla CEO Elon Musk sold nearly $5 billion in Tesla stock, according to financial filings out Wednesday evening. He still holds more than 166 million shares.

His trust sold more than 3.5 million shares worth over $3.88 billion in a flurry of trades carried out Tuesday and Wednesday. Those transactions were not marked as 10b5, meaning they were not scheduled sales.

Earlier Wednesday evening, filings showed Musk is selling a separate block of Tesla shares via a plan that he set in motion on Sept. 14 this year. Those sales amount to more than 930,000 shares worth over $1.1 billion.

Musk sold these shares in part to satisfy tax obligations related to an exercise of stock options.

[caltrek]

Early Data Shows Musk's Las Vegas Loop Not Yet Up To Speed
by Mark Harris
November 12, 2021

https://techcrunch.com/2021/11/12/early ... r-service/

Introduction:

(TechCrunch) When Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority CEO Steve Hill unveiled The Boring Company’s plan for a subterranean shuttle that would whisk visitors to different parts of the city’s vast Convention Center campus, he predicted it would take just under two minutes to travel between its farthest stations.

“If the system doesn’t work, we will get all of our money back,” Hill said, in June 2019, according to the Las Vegas Review Journal.

That two-minute promise was repeated to the media as recently as April, according to an email between a Boring Company (TBC) representative and the LVCVA. That email was part of a 5,051-page drop of documents obtained by Plainsite under public records legislation.

So far, it seems the two-minute target is still out of reach.

Detailed trip reports from the same records request show that in its first six weeks of operation, the LVCC Loop’s Tesla taxis took an average of nearly four minutes to span the system.

[wjfox]

[caltrek]

^^^Maybe I am just a cynic, but I have to wonder how much of this is just profit taking on the part of Musk. That is to say, he knows that the Tesla stock is overvalued. Still, how to cash in on that fact without telegraphing that opinion to other stock holders?

Well, just coach it in terms of "paying my fair share of taxes" on his wealth. I believe that a previous article I posted on this also discusses other accounting reasons why it might make sense for Musk to sell a significant share of his stock, even if that does mean paying out a healthy tax bite.

[wjfox]

[R8Z]

To use words of the current generation: Musk is both based and slightly cringe.

As a tech innovator I think he deserves the amount of wealth and prestige he has accumulated (e.g. I don't see him as a fraud in any way). As a "anti-government bully" I think he deserves even more flak, as he has surfed quite well the money incentives and partnerships he has done with the government and now is portraying himself as a freedom fighter.

[Cyber_Rebel]

"It can easily turn many people against spaceflight who see this stuff from the outside."

Oh, there's a solution to that, too.

Nationalize Space X

Not only would the public begin to benefit from their own taxes/investment for a change, but it might even inspire more general interest in spaceflight, scientific advancement, NASA funding etc... when it's viewed as a national treasure or identity. The idea that "we can go to the moon" is just more attractive than, Elon Musk can do it!

[caltrek]

JPMorgan Files $162 Million Lawsuit Against Tesla
by Rebecca Falconer
November 16, 2021

https://www.axios.com/jpmorgan-tesla-la ... 93d53.html

Introduction:

(Axios) JPMorgan Chase filed a lawsuit against Tesla Monday, accusing the electric car firm of "breach of contract action" over stock warrants following CEO Elon Musk's 2018 tweet that he might take his firm private.

Why it matters: JPMorgan alleges the bank and Tesla "entered a series of warrant transactions, which required Tesla to deliver either shares of its stocks or cash to JPMorgan" if the car company's share price was above the contractual "strike price" when the warrants expired.

• The warrants "substantially decreased" in value after Musk tweeted that Tesla had "funding secured" to take Tesla private at $420.

• They expired in June and July of this year "with Tesla's share price above that strike price," JPMorgan alleges.

Of note: "JPMorgan demanded the due shares or cash, but Tesla has flagrantly ignored its clear contractual obligation to pay JPMorgan in full," the bank said in the suit, filed in the U.S. District Court in Manhattan.

[wjfox]

[Yuli Ban]

Elon Musk tells SpaceX employees that Starship engine crisis is creating a ‘risk of bankruptcy’

• Elon Musk described a dire situation with SpaceX’s development of Raptor rocket engines the day after Thanksgiving in a companywide email, a copy of which was obtained by CNBC.
• “The Raptor production crisis is much worse than it seemed a few weeks ago,” Musk wrote.
• Raptor engines power the company’s Starship rocket, with Musk adding that SpaceX faces “genuine risk of bankruptcy if we cannot achieve a Starship flight rate of at least once every two weeks next year.”

[erowind]

.

[wjfox]

[caltrek]

Elon Musk Loses Another Round with Tesla Critic
by Mario Dinzeo
December 20, 2021

https://www.courthousenews.com/elon-mus ... la-critic/

Introduction:

(Courthouse News) — A California appeals court ruled Tesla founder Elon Musk’s public statements that a critic of his company “harassed” and “almost killed” Tesla employees are not protected by state free speech laws.

The court ruled in favor of Randeep Hothi, the man behind the Twitter account @skabooshka where he expressed skepticism about Tesla's autonomous driving claims.

Hothi fact-checked Tesla’s production rate claims regarding its Model 3 vehicles, which were advertised as hyperautomated and could largely function without human input — a process Musk called “alien dreadnought.” Hothi was doubtful that Tesla could meet the production goals publicly touted by Musk.

On April 16, 2019, Hothi spotted a Tesla-owned vehicle with roof-mounted cameras on the road. The vehicle appeared to be recording audio, video and data, so he followed it, photographed it and posted the photos on Twitter.

A few days later, Tesla filed a civil restraining order against Hothi claiming he trespassed, stalked, harassed and endangered Tesla employees, hit a Tesla security guard with his vehicle and swerved his car toward the Tesla-owned Model 3 vehicle he encountered on the road.

[caltrek]

Elon Musk Paid $11 Billion in Taxes Only Because He Had No Other Rational Choice
by Bob Lord
December 30, 2021

https://www.commondreams.org/views/2021 ... nal-choice

Introduction:

(Common Dreams) Elon Musk has had a field day trolling advocates for a fairer tax system on Twitter. They've been attacking him for not paying much at all in taxes over recent years. But Musk knew what they didn't: that in 2021 he was going to be paying plenty in taxes.

So when Senator Elizabeth Warren took the bait and tweeted, "Let's change the rigged tax code so The Person of the Year will actually pay taxes and stop freeloading off everyone else," Musk could respond faux nobly: "And if you opened your eyes for 2 seconds, you would realize I will pay more taxes than any American in history this year." Youch!

Musk had won the Twitter war. On paper, he will pay over $11 billion in tax this year, just as he said.

But Musk's tax situation hardly rates as "super simple," as he also says. Musk isn't paying his $11 billion in tax voluntarily or at the behest of his Twitter. He's paying this tax only because he had no other rational choice. Let's explore why. (See article linked above quote box).

[funkervogt]

In December 2020, Elon Musk said Telsa cars would have fully autonomous driving abilities by the end of 2021.