Pretty stupid. People aren't allowed to hate Apple now?
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Elon Musk Backtracks on Earlier Comments, Says 'I Don't Hate Apple'
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Making fun of Apples latest products kinda shows how worried Musk is. Did Elon forget that he's been targeting and poaching Apple employees as well? Tesla seems to have a fascination with the talent at Apple. Why is that? Because with electric vehicles and fully autonomous vehicles, it's all becoming about software and technology. Cars are adding more and more technological features, and becoming more and more reliant on the sort of things that Apple specializes and excels in.
Building a car really isn't that "hard" anymore. Evidenced by the fact that Tesla even exists. Musk built a startup car company, which is a great achievement. But the challenges moving forward are not making a car, but making a car SMART. Apple has a ton to offer here.
I love Tesla. I love Teslas reason for existing, as stated by Musk. I think Musk is an ambitious and brilliant leader. But these comments from him simply reek of nervousness about impending competition with Apple. Like Ed Colligan from Palm right before the iPhone. Or Ballmer laughing at both the iPhone and the iPad. Musk knows damn well that he should be taking Apple very seriously, if Apple has decided to fully commit to a car. The great thing, is that they both can coexist. Musk has said this himself, saying that he wants more competition in the EV space to simply raise adoption and awareness. Who better than Apple to take a nascent unfinished problem, and blow the whole thing wide open bringing it to the mainstream. I think Musk wants Tesla to be that company, and is probably a little scared.
Building a car really isn't that "hard" anymore. Evidenced by the fact that Tesla even exists. Musk built a startup car company, which is a great achievement. But the challenges moving forward are not making a car, but making a car SMART. Apple has a ton to offer here.
I love Tesla. I love Teslas reason for existing, as stated by Musk. I think Musk is an ambitious and brilliant leader. But these comments from him simply reek of nervousness about impending competition with Apple. Like Ed Colligan from Palm right before the iPhone. Or Ballmer laughing at both the iPhone and the iPad. Musk knows damn well that he should be taking Apple very seriously, if Apple has decided to fully commit to a car. The great thing, is that they both can coexist. Musk has said this himself, saying that he wants more competition in the EV space to simply raise adoption and awareness. Who better than Apple to take a nascent unfinished problem, and blow the whole thing wide open bringing it to the mainstream. I think Musk wants Tesla to be that company, and is probably a little scared.
How is this back tracking, its a joke that most people took too seriously, if anything, he was just clarifying. It's getting pretty bad now that people even attack Woz when he has a negative comment about Apple. I use to not understand that hate people have for Apple but now I wonder if it's these loyalist that actually paint a negative image of anyone even holding an Apple product.
Good thing he backtracked cause what.. you will actually punch him? LOL listen to yourself. He said, Yo I don't hate Apple, it was more of a WTF people can't sense a joke these days and the media loved it.
Can you seriously relax? Like wtf? I just posted a few pages back my post was immature and didn't make any sense. Calm down.
Did you happen to miss the Silicon Valley anti-poaching lawsuits, where that practice was found to be illegal?
Elon Musk is a modern American visionary. He knows the way to make it in America is get the government to subsidize your product. That's the new US we can all love!
As for his comments - they were dumb. The overlap between his target audience and Apple is huge but their product overlap is currently zero. Seems a silly comment to needlessly offend your customer's sentiments.
As for his comments - they were dumb. The overlap between his target audience and Apple is huge but their product overlap is currently zero. Seems a silly comment to needlessly offend your customer's sentiments.
What's with the Apple bashing and then retracting or at least backtracking from their original message from two notable successes of their industry? First Sorkin backtracks from his scathing remarks about Apple's "sweat shop" conditions in China after Cook takes a slight jab at all Jobs films (c'mon he only said "opportunistic" and lumped all Jobs films in that category - not really singling his out). Now Musk gets on the defensive and trash talks Apple in regards to a question about defecting engineers.
They were NOT DOING IT in general, though maybe not with Tesla, and had to pay a crapload of money because of it. Google anti-poaching lawsuit.
There's nothing unethical or illegal about poaching. The other company doesn't like it (they call it poaching), but employees are free to do what the hell they want once their contract is up, or even before that in right to work states.
If you want to keep them on, treat them better or pay them more; pretty simple isn't it.
Nah, Musk was simply vocalizing what he thinks of Apple, no fear in there at all. If anything there is plenty of truth in what he said, which of course is why so many are bent out of shape. If there were any fear then Musk would not have made so much of his technology open source. As for software and technology, god I can only wish and hope we never get something as primitive as iOS on a car interface. Can you imagine having to make dozens of folders just to categorize apps and having that convoluted settings page on a car interface?
The challenges for Tesla have been car dealers, car manufacturers, and even states which tried to ban them from direct sales. If you research Tesla it's amazing how much they have persevered and overcome, it makes you realize just how difficult their path has been. The challenge isn't making the car smart, it's already smart, it's building an infrastructure to match that of gasoline powered cars. So now we have companies like Apple who are going to benefit and build upon the hard work of guys like Musk. Apple is great on building off others, really no original ideas but masters of taking existing product markets and polishing them.
At the end of the day competition fuels innovation and Apple would not be where they are if there were not competitors to push them along. Apple should welcome his comments and work to improve their product, asking themselves if Musk thinks like that then who else thinks like that, is it significant to our market share and how can we appeal to that segment of consumers. And you know what, I'll bet they do exactly that. But I'm sure Apple is ecstatic that all 30 of their loyal fanboys are defending them vigorously on some 2nd rate forum.
If car interfaces need that many apps then someone's doing it wrong. Though I wasn't aware that CarPlay had dozens of folders and a convoluted settings page. Does CarPlay even have a Settings app?
If there's anyone that can **** on Apple or Tim Cook, it's Elon Musk.
This is coming form a huge Apple fan boy.
I'd join his religion if Elon were to make one.
This is coming form a huge Apple fan boy.
I'd join his religion if Elon were to make one.
I think Tesla cars are amazing, but this is spot on. Who couldn't build a car company (or a solar panel company - c.f. Solyndra) with interest free government loans and essentially infinite money to make mistakes with. No profit? No worries! Meanwhile the rest of the U.S. auto industry (and taxpayers) subsidize Tesla with carbon credits and a $7500 tax write off for the 1%ers who buy Teslas. Where is the $7500 credit for the < $20,000 cars driven by ordinary workers that get 30+ mpg? Right, it doesn't exist and it's not like they can go buy a Prius or a Leaf.
I give Musk major kudos though for figuring out how to milk Washington for hundreds of millions of dollars to build cars driven by the tiniest fraction of a percent of the 320+ million Americans who pay for his products without ever getting to drive them. When Apple enters this market they will:
A) make a profit day 1
B) not require subsidies to survive
Tesla gets no special subsidies or task breaks that aren't available to any manufacturer. Sure, they take advantage of them more than anyone but there's nothing stopping GM or Toyota from doing the same thing. The Nissan Leaf gets the same $7500 rebate.
The loan they did get was paid back early.
Tesla is profitable and their margins rival Apple. What they've been doing is putting all the profits and reinvesting in capital expenses like battery factories and scaling production.
As for the amount, what Tesla and the green industry get in subsidies is pennies compared to what the oil industry gets.
http://www.politicususa.com/2015/06...benefits-5-3-trillion-subsidies-annually.html
Oil Companies Reap Billions From Subsidies http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/04/business/04bptax.html
It is a definite sign of intelligence to be able to look at your statements and decisions and reevaluate. If you think that is stupid or silly then you need some life experience.
You are wrong. Tesla has made a tiny profit in only one quarter, but not enough to offset the other losses. Tesla is currently not a profitable operation. I suggest you look up the earnings reports. It is quite straightforward.
Your statement about the reinvestment of profits is also incorrect. They might do this but are only able to reinvest money that is left over after interest, tax, amortization and depreciation, which is profit. So, the reinvestment of funds into research cannot possibly be the reason why Tesla is unprofitable. This is accounting 101.
You are wrong. Tesla has 25% margins and make a profit on every car they sell. They are in startup mode so they reinvest every penny into expansion so it shows up as a loss for accounting purposes.
If they stopped the expansion, they would be profitable right now.
http://bgr.com/2015/08/11/tesla-model-s-profits-4000/
Please go look at some accounting sites and understand how this works because you are definitely wrong. They might make a profit on their car by car sales but the entire operation is running at a loss. BGR do not have any accounting specialists. Go download an earnings report from Tesla to understand what is going on.
Yes, they show a loss. I know how to read an accounting report. Like Amazon does, they choose to use their profits to expand their business. It's not a bad idea because they are focused on long term rather than short term performance.
Long term strategic investments can take the form of Research and development which are expensed in the year they are incurred. Please go see there statement of operations and you can see their research and development costs for 2014. There are rules for capitalization (for development costs I believe).. but I'm unfamiliar with US GAAP so I could be completely wrong in this case.
While all major car manufactures have significant research and development costs, Tesla's 2014 R&D costs would be quite high because they are still in their early stages of an organization not to mention were at manufacturing capacity.
I think you are pointing out that Tesla is unprofitable to prove some point, but I'm not sure which. All I can say is if you think you are smarter or would be more successful than Elon, then please go take over spacex and tesla. These companies are changing the world, and I wish them (and you) all the best.
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I don't know where you got that I think I should be smarter than Musk, because I never said that.
Dmunjal mentioned earlier that Tesla is profitable and I tried to correct him, because Tesla IS unprofitable. It is right there in the financial statement. What Dmunjal meant was that Tesla sells their cars as a profit, which is correct, and then reinvests the earnings into R&D, which is also correct. But selling your products at a profit is something entirely different than operating your business at a profit. A good example will be to look at VW's financial statement next year, which will show profitable cars (gross profit), but an incredibly large liability base that will pull the entire organization into a loss.
The problem with Tesla is the following and you need to dig around the financial report to understand what is going on. The past year, Tesla has seen a deterioration in performance. The rate of increase of revenue is outmatched by the increase in operational cost. Mostly due to increases in R&D (which doubled) but also because of Sales, General and Administrative expenses which tripled. R&D is a long term thing, so that is fine, but the tripling of sales etc expenses should in general also be accompanied by an increase in revenue, which it did not to the extent that it should. In other words, their overhead increased without a corresponding increase in sales.
In addition, Inventory went up, which in the car business is deadly, as well as accounts receivables (the last thing could indicate that some of the suppliers have problems settling their bills - never a good sign). Interest expense has tripled, which means an increase in debt (liabilities have almost tripled), which is reflected in the gearing whihc has basically doubled (a definite sign of alarm).
So, we can look at this superficially and say that Tesla is investing into the future and doing well, or we can look at the real numbers and see a definite deterioration of the business over the past year. I love Tesla and ride one about twice a week (Taxis in Amsterdam are Teslas) and hope they give the established car manufacturers a run for their money, but they need to reverse the development of the past year.
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