e.w. niedermeyer
@niedermeyer.io
this gentle soul, cyberbullying elon musk since 2015, author of "ludicrous:the unvarnished story of tesla motors" (2019), and cohost of the autonocast
"Retail investor" just means smaller holders and non-professional investors. In this case it is code for Elon fanboys who support the 2018 pay package, whereas institutional investors tend to be against it.
I've summitted Mt Adams twice, and Mt St Helens is just a tiny baby by comparison. You really do look down on it.
This pic gives a bit of a sense of the scale. Adams is on the extreme right and St Helens is on the far left, with Mt Rainier (which is much farther away) in the middle.
hard to imagine a more impressive show than looking down on the Mt St Helens eruption from the top of Mt Adams
we love to see a 1993 Ford F-150 to Big Banana Car glow-up, don't we folks
My dad lifted his first-gen Scion xB, which is pretty great too. Surprisingly capable!
www.curbsideclassic.com/auto-biograp...
Auto-Biography: The xB EXBRO Overland Edition Is Finished and Ready For Off-Road Adventure
Some of you apparently thought it was an April Fool’s joke when I announced 0n April 1st that I was turning my xB into an off-roader. Well, here it is, […]
www.curbsideclassic.com
It can be done!
www.motortrend.com/features/jef...
The reasons almost all boil down to slowing sales and an unwillingness to slow/stop production. Tesla is uniquely caught between the need to live up to a growth narrative even as sales slow, and doesn't have a new model year to reset demand when they blow out the discounts to move metal
Difference is A) that Tesla owns these vehicles, whereas dealer inventory has been sold by the OEM, B) Tesla is ostensibly build-to-order and not a show-up-and-drive-off retail model, and C) it's really just an indicator of rapidly slowing sales which is the real story b/c Tesla is a "growth story"
I haven't seen that kind of analysis, but it would be interesting... especially because hybrids have basically never had consumer subsidies like BEVs.
Please don't buy one of the ex-Hertz $25k Teslas, they are cheap for a reason! People are finding damage to battery packs and other dangerous and expensive problems.
jalopnik.com/hertzs-used-...
Hertz's Used Teslas Are Glitchy, Damaged Nightmares (Update)
It turns out buying a cheap EV that used to be a rental car isn’t the best idea.
jalopnik.com
The role of the chair is not "to make sure the board has a good relationship with the CEO," it is to provide oversight and accountability for the CEO even if the CEO doesn't want it.
If you're wondering when the grownups will ride in to rescue Tesla from Elon's mad flailing, the answer is never.
“If I had a magic wand, Twitter wouldn’t exist,” says woman whose literal job it is to hold Elon Musk accountable and provide independent governance at Tesla.
Guess she's too busy looking up words like "lacksadaisical" to actually earn her $280 million over the last 2 years?
ft.com/content/aa54...
Tesla’s chair on Elon Musk: ‘I might wake up to a tweet. I don’t wake up to a strategy shift’
Robyn Denholm rejects criticisms of carmaker’s governance ahead of landmark votes on Musk’s pay and Texas move
ft.comdang, the UAW's hot streak had to end sometime but this was sooner than I expected
real issue is that the stock needs constant growth news so they've way overbuilt factories they need to keep pumping even as demand drops, and they can only keep cutting prices for so long until margins go negative. That's where the rubber will really hit the road.
floorplan credit isn't always from the OEM, but even when it is it's pretty rare for dealers to default on floorplan loans. In any case, Tesla is supposed to be on a build-to-order model and they're falling into overproduction trouble which has much more dire consequences than dealer oversupply.
Good question! In the traditional model, dealerships are the manufacturer's customers so all those vehicles on the lot have been paid for. In Tesla's case, they're left holding the bag. Also, Tesla buyers usually don't show up and drive away with the best vehicle on the lot for them.
The second gen Prius is one of the few stone classics of 21st Century vehicle design, and you shouldn't trust anyone who argues otherwise.
www.theautopian.com/its-time-for...
It's Time For The Car Enthusiast Community To Apologize To The 2nd-Generation Toyota Prius - The Autopian
The second-gen Toyota Prius (2004-2009) was cyber-bulled for years, particularly by automotive journalists. I was not one of them, but I did not stand up and defend the poor little hybrid hatchback; i...
www.theautopian.comone of these days I'm gonna have to get an "I love my Tesla, but" tattoo
I mean, EV inventory is pretty high at 136 days of supply. That said, I don't think any other auto brand has anything like 10% of its production in inventory. More to the point, Tesla sales are falling even as they cut prices so this problem will only get worse for them.
Elon Musk's main source of wealth is torching cash and you're... laughing?
lol I love that movie and have got to rewatch it, it's been way too long
Hyundai is such a tease these days
www.hyundai-n.com/en/models/ro...
N Vision 74 | Hyundai N
N is keeping the promise for sustainable high performance with the first hydrogen hybrid Rolling Lab.
www.hyundai-n.com
What you think you see is a bunch of unsold cars in parking lots, but what you're really seeing is giant piles of cash merrily burning away.
insideevs.com/news/720018/...
Thousands More Teslas Are Piling Up In Parking Lots
Tesla’s growing inventory can sometimes even be seen from space, via satellite images. So what's the problem?
insideevs.comI mean, Toyota's whole strategy was based on diversification! Like, their EVs aren't incredible but they're doing enough. H-K definitely has the hot hand and they seem like a much more vibrant challenger than VW or GM... but "commanding lead" is tough to win, and tougher to keep.
it's so maddening... it really feels like it's going to go on this way right up to the moment when the fraud indictments drop, and meanwhile Reuters is winning Pulitzers for unloading on the guy with both barrels. Like, do they not see how they look here?
I loved having a Terminal when I was at Bloomberg Opinion, it was an amazing perk for just being a regular contributor and if anything I didn't use it as much as I should have... but yeah, there is a lot more competition in that space now and my understanding is that BBG got a bit lazy & left behind
I don't want to rush into anything here, but after many years of observation I am beginning to suspect that Ed Ludlow may not be a serious person
it's also extremely funny to me that Threads has somehow become the outlet for my most toxic social media behaviors, in spite of (or is it because of?) the management's insistence on a "good vibes only" culture
Let it be known: even if we're old pals and I like you and you work for a company that someone like myself should try to stay on the good side of, if you edited and shared a piece both-sidesing Tesla's "Full Self-Driving" in the year of our lord 2024, I will still ratio your ass on Threads
That's where I think not being owned by a socialite billionaire becomes a factor... I've seen a bit of how Bloomberg operates, and it doesn't always inspire confidence.
It's a good question. I think the terminal business is not as good as it once was, so the journalism side has faced more commercial pressure. It's also very sensitive toward Mike Bloomberg's buddies and pet causes, which helps dull the edge too. This has been consistently evident on the Tesla side.
Tesla is literally under a federal investigation for fraud behind this shit and a Bloomberg reporter is out here talking about maybe I should get a subscription. Absolute clown behavior.
Hi folks, very serious journalist here. Does the blatant fraud that Tesla has been taking money for since 2016 actually work? No, of course it doesn't, but imagining it might is like a glimpse of the future. I am strongly considering paying for the thing I admit doesn't work. Serious journalism.
Yeah, they took some PR knocks for it but I think it was pretty clearly the right choice.
This. Much better at making cars, but still plagued by trend-chasing and lack of strategic stick-with-it-ness.
they haven't actually tried to be better at making cars in a way that matters
in a just world, every reply to every Elon Musk post on Twitter would just be this gif
really hard to overstate this. I've been following Tesla launches via forums for years, and even when they rushed out Model 3 in 18 months it was worse than anything anyone had seen but it sure as hell wasn't this bad... and this is a product that has ostensibly been in development for like 5 years.