Method to Musk's Madness?

Many observers assume that Elon Musk has been unraveling a bit lately, because that's what it looks like.

But we've got to remember that Musk has occasionally been pretty good at putting over a public perception. Remember, for example, when people thought he was a nice guy who invented all sorts of stuff and didn't care about money and just wanted to save the planet? That was because Musk wanted people to believe that.

Maybe Musk's recent announcement that he has switched from Democrat to Republican, claiming that the Democratic Party has become "the party of division and hate," is just more calculated shaping of his public image.

 

Maybe it's part of his exit strategy from Tesla. It would fit in with a time-honoured tradition of people moving from Left to Right politically, and then proclaiming that their younger selves meant well, but were hopelessly naive. In Musk's case, the stereotypical headshaking over his younger librul self could go something like: "Once I, too, believed that mankind could survive without oil. And I tried my best to make that hopelessly naive dream a reality [...]" And then he becomes a US Senator from Montana, taking some of Montana's wealthy Democrats with him into the GOP. 

Either that, or he really is going completely crazy. Because, Republican and the owner/Dear Leader of one of the world's largest EV manufacturers at the same time -- that's not a good fit.

It didn't occur to me until just this moment that perhaps Musk has announced that he's a Republican precisely because it's a bad fit with leading Tesla. And because he senses that he may have pumped about as much money out of Tesla as he can -- if he can sell his Tesla shares before they become relatively worthless.

EV's By Themselves Will Not Save the World. But They Are an Improvement. Here are Some More Things We Can Do

I saw a story linked on Reddit, whose author had figured out that Tesla is bad, and concluded that EV's are bad. I commented that I hope this sort of simplemindedness wasn't widespread, and I hope people will actually judge EV manufacturers individually. 

 

I got some severe pushback for that remark, with people saying that EV's aren't going to save the planet by themselves, and that it would be better if people didn't drive at all. 

Well, I didn't say that EV's would save us all by themselves. And I agree that it would be better if people drove less. 

But I don't see a feasible way to get people to give up privately-owned cars and private trucks altogether. But driving less would be good, and it would be better if people drove EV's rather than ICE. 

And replacing ICE with electricity in public transportation, and in cargo railroad trains, and in ships and aircraft, wood be good.

And solar, and wind, and geothermal power, and tidal. And smarter grids, and smarter agriculture, and smarter manufacturing, and smarter architecture.

And reforestation, and afforestation. 

And restoring wetlands!

And just as I don't see a way, short term, to make all people go without driving, I don't see a way to persuade them all to go completely vegan right now. But still, it would be better if they ate less meat. We can't make everything perfect right now, but we can make improvements.

It would be better if we generated less household waste. Better waste management, better recycling, better land management, better water management, better city management. Everywhere you look, there are things we're doing that we could be doing in a more efficient, healthier way. Which is where we came in: manufacturing EV's can be done in a cleaner or dirtier way. Tesla does it in a dirty way. That's no reason not to see whether other companies aren't doing it more cleanly. As if somebody in those companies actually cared about reducing greenhouse gasses.

It's not always 100% clear which way is best. For example, are plug-in hybrids the best way to go for the moment? Are they speeding the transition to pure EV, or slowing it down? I think they're slowing down. But I realize that I might be wrong. And either way, a plug-in hybrid pollutes much less than an ICE car. 

And if BEV advocates spend too much time squabbling with plug-in hybrid drivers, it could distract them from lobbying for that bike path they both want. Denouncing all EV's, because you want nobody to drive at all, could persuade people to just keep driving ICE. Again, there's a question of efficiency. Your energy and eloquence are yet another resource which can be allocated more efficiently, or less.

Speaking of driving, there sure has to be a more environmentally-friendly way of making roads than our current asphalt-based approach. 

And hopefully I've helped you think of many more things to do.

More Musk Math

If Musk's Tesla stock was evenly divided between every Tesla employee, each one would get over $4 million worth of stock. And a lot of of them are making less than $40k/year.

It would be beautiful to see Musk forced out of Tesla, the way he forced out the founders. I realize that it wouldn't result in every poor schmuck Tesla employee getting $4 million, but I think that the boost to the company might just be huge. The boost in wages and other benefits, the boost in working conditions, the boost in the company's public image -- all of those things could be huge.

 

I know I'm dreaming. But I also know something else that not everybody knows: EVERYbody who tries to predict the future more than a week ahead is dreaming. We just don't know how things will work out. With Tesla or with anything else. There are simply too many factors. In this case: will the general public begin to see Musk as a bad man, bad for Tesla, bad for the environment, bad for himself, bad for just about everything except his net worth? I see him that way. A growing number of people see him that way. 

A number big enough to matter? Not yet. And if and when the number is big enough than Musk could be forced out of Tesla, out of the EV industry, so that all of those high ideals he claims to represent, but doesn't, could in fact be represented by millions of ex-Musk fans, spearheaded by a Tesla which actually did operate in a green and humanistic way -- if and when that will happen, is unknowable. There are too many factors. 

Such as the success or failure of other makers of EV's, and the quality of those companies. Such as how many people will no longer drive at all, such as public transportation and bicycles and plain old walking. 

Is Rivian a better company than Tesla? Is it run by people who are not monsters, who actually care about things other than their own net worths? I have no idea. They've made almost 700 RT1's. Still not very many at all, but they're much faster now than they were in September. 

Do Rivian's low production numbers mean they won't exist as a company a year from now? Or do they mean that Rivian wants to be known as the all-EV company which DOESN'T have panel gaps and other quality-control issues for the first 10 years?  

Things few people know yet. Things nobody knows.

Another SLOW Month in Non-Tesla Murrkin EV News

Lucid have actually delivered some vehicles to customers! I don't know how many.

 

So what do you think, is Lucid currently delivering units at a faster pace than Rivian?

Rivian has said they will deliver 1,000 units in 2021, so I think the only question about that is, how late in 2022 will the 1,000th unit be delivered? (I'm highly confident that they can do it before January 1, 2023.)

Seriously, though, I wish Rivian and Lucid well. And Bollinger, and Farraday Future and Fisker, and... I was about to say "and Nikola too," but it's really hard to wish those assholes well.

But someone has to crush Tesla.

Another question: Musk has always said, in media interviews, that he wishes nothing but success for anyone making EV's, and that Tesla want to do everything they can to help all of those other EV manufacturers.

So my question is: am I actually the only person on Earth who sees that Musk is completely full of shit when he says those things? Does no-one else have the computing power in their brain-grease to see that, if Tesla was actually helping even a little bit, the combined deliveries of all non-Tesla Murrkin EV-only manufacturers would currently be a lot higher than a few hundred? (Not counting aftermarket conversions, which I would guess number in the thousands in the US alone by now.)

 

Am I the only one on Earth who suspects Tesla of actual illegal interference with other EV manufacturers? Not just everyday hardball business-as-usual dirty tricks, but actual completely illegal sabotage? Answer me! Am I the only one? I did a Google search, tesla sabotage of other ev manufacturers, all I got were some stories from 2018 about Musk yelling that someone had sabotaged Tesla, no doubt to divert from the latest horrible thing he himself had done. FEAR MY SUPER-POWERED AUTISTIC BRAIN-GREASE, MUSK! You fool all these others. Not me.

The US Automotive Market From a Global Perspective

Before Tesla, there were only 3 major American automakers: General Motors, Ford and Chrysler. Apart from some very small companies, every other automobile manufacturer in the US had either gone out of business or been bought up by one of the Big Three. And even Chrysler had been owned for a while by Daimler-Benz, turning the American Big Three into a Big Two. Chrysler is an independent, American-based entity again, and the Big Two became the Big Three again. 

The inability of any other corporation to challenge the Big Three led many to predict that Tesla wouldn't last, and some, although fewer, are still predicting that Tesla will either go broke or be bought out by one of the Big Three. Also, many people give other new American automakers such as Rivian, Bollinger and Lucid little chance of surviving. Some disagree, saying that EV's have changed the game, as demonstrated by Tesla. To that, some reply that the game is still making automobiles and that it hasn't changed all that much, despire Tesla having made a huge splash.

If we change our focus from the US to the global automotive industry, suddenly things are much more complex: there are currently more than 50 different countries who each have their own indigenous automobile brands. I'm not talking about all of the countries where automobiles are manufactured, because a company based in one country will very often have manufacturing plants based in other countries. If we count every country where there is an automobile factory, the count goes well up into three figures. No, what I mean is that more than 50 different countries have their own independent companies making their own separate brands of automobiles.

That number might seem very high to some Americans, because most of those countries have never tried to import cars to the US. From the 1980's to the present, the only countries who have imported cars to the US in large numbers have been Japan, Germany, France, Italy, South Korea, the UK, Sweden, Czechoslovakia/the Czech Republic and the former Yugoslavia. In the 1980's both Yugo from the former Yugoslavia and Hyundai from South Korea began importing automobiles into the US. At first, both brands, while undercutting every other automaker in the the US in price, were also very inferior in the quality of their products. Yugo disappeared again from the US market, while Hyundai improved its product quality to an amazing degree in a remarkably short time and are now thriving in the US along with their South Korean subsidiary KIA.

China's enormous automotive sector will very soon be trying to make a go of it in the US, with three brands importing cars: XPeng, Nio and Kandi. The US imports from these companies will be electric only. And other Chinese brands will be following, most likely importing EV's only. 

It seems that the whole wide world is in love with crossovers and SUV's. I'm not. But apparently the whole world is. In India, wealthier customers have been buying the same cars as wealthy people elsewhere: Rolls Royces, Mercedes, BMW's, Jaguars and so forth. They've been buying the same electric SUV's, The Jaguar I-Pace and the Audi e-tron. But there's a brand-new all-Indian electric SUV, the Tata Nexon EV, 

 

and the Indian automotive press is going more than a little bit nuts over it. Reviewers say it's just as good as the I-Pace and the e-tron, some say it's better. There's obviously a lot of Indian patriotic pride here over a domestic product which can stand comparison with the finest luxury SUV's in the world, but there's obviously also a very special new vehicle here. 

And although I haven't heard anyone else say anything about it, I have wondered whether Tata might bring the Nexon EV to the US, as the first Indian attempt to enter the US automotive market.

EV Headlines

Tesla stock is selling for over $500 a share, and the market cap of the company is over half a trillion dollars, which is more than the combined value of the rest of the North American automotive market sector. That is: more than the combined market cap of GM, Ford and Chrysler, plus all of their North American parts suppliers, plus all North American auto-parts stores and auto-repair businesses.

Many Tesla fans seem convinced, not only that Tesla makes better cars than anyone else on the planet, but also that no other manufacturer will ever catch up with them, and that Tesla will eventually, literally speaking, take over the entire world. If you believe that, then maybe Tesla's current valuation could be justified in your eyes. To everybody else, this looks like a bubble, and the only questions are when it will pop, how bad it will be, and how many of you fans will still think that Elon Musk is Jesus after you're living in your Teslas because you had to sell your houses after Tesla stock was wiped out, and then living on the sidewalk because you had to sell your Teslas. I know, I know: many of you will still think he's Jesus. Even if he sells all his Tesla stock before it crashes and is 4 times richer than Jeff Bezos. I know absolutely incurable madness when I see it.

An automotive stock whose market capitalization is currently slightly higher than GM's is NIO. This may surprise you if you've never heard of NIO, and if you're not heavy into EV's, you probably haven't. They are a Chinese company with some impressive models coming soon to the US market. So, how many vehicles have they sold worldwide since their start up in 2014? Just over 50,000. How many vehicles has GM sold in the same time? Over 20 million. Just in the US and Canada. So is NIO another bubble? Aehhmm...

Maybe GM is drastically undervalued. Maybe none of this, literally speaking, makes any sense at all. 

NIO and another Chinese Company, XPeng, will be bringing high-performance cars to the US market soon. Automotive journalists have test driven NIO's and XPeng's products and described them as serious competition for Tesla. 

But the car currently regarded as the most serious competition for Tesla is the Lucid Air, coming soon from the American start-up Lucid Motors. I don't have range anxiety, but I know that many of you do, so for your sake I'll just mention that the Lucid Air goes over 500 miles on a single charge.

And that 500-mile range excites a lot of people. Bores the Hell out of me. But the following excites me. In another market sector, the affordable electric car, yet another Chinese company, Kandi, is making big news in the US: their model K27 

may actually beat NIO and XPeng and Lucid into US showrooms. To be frank, some of the cheapest electric cars for sale so far have been golf carts which somehow have received street-legal status. Kandi's entry-level K27 is no golf cart. Some reviewers have described it as roomier, peppier and just all-around better than a Smart Electric. And Kandi has K27's in Texas right now and is working on getting them homologated and setting up a dealer network. Looks like like they might miss their stated intention to have cars for sale in the US by the end of this year. But even if so, they won't miss it by much.

And the K27 is rather affordable. I'm not clear exactly what the sticker price will be. It was going to be $20,000, but if a recent report it's accurate, Kandi have changed their minds, and lowered it to $17,500. If that's accurate, it might be a smart move on Kandi's part, because $17,500 minus the federal $7500 EV rebate equals exactly $10,000, and then any state or local rebates which bring the K27 down into four figures, so much for for-real new EV's not being affordable. For example, it would cost $6000 in Colorado, and as low as $3000 in California. For a legit -- although very small -- brand new EV which has all the features you'd expect on a new car. I'm picturing a lot of suburban Daddy's girls in families which never considered EV's before this, getting brand-new Kandis for their 16th birthdays. Could be big. Could be big business. Watch this space.

Oh, btw, just for extra oomph: if the K27 does go on sale for $17,500, that would be exactly half of the $35,000 sticker price which Tesla promised for the Model 3, but never delivered on. I know, a lot of Tesla zombies will insist that Tesla did so offer a $35,000 Model 3, but just keep in mind, they also believe that they, as Tesla stockholders, will soon rule the world. And that Elon Musk makes about $20,000 a year working for Tesla. They believe a lot of very silly things.

Why do People Dislike Elon Musk?

Many people have commented about how Elon Musk denounced requirements for businesses to shut down because of the coronavirus, and how he blatantly violated those requirements, keeping his Tesla plant in Fremont, California open and churning out cars. Disappointingly few people have been pointing out why Musk did this: his pay from Tesla, Inc comes in the form of bonuses which are tied to several factors, and one of those factors is the number of vehicles Tesla makes. Once again this year, Musk will get a bonus worth several billion dollars, and one reason is because Tesla kept churning out those cars.

Did the Tesla employees on the assembly lines also get bonuses for hitting production goals? No. But I gather that they do get attaboy emails from Musk, telling them what a good job they're doing, and how they're saving the world.

What do they get when they talk about improving safety conditions, or about unions? They get fired.

Now, when people like me complain about how Musk mistreats his employees, or when we repeats those awfully persistent rumours that the Tesla assembly lines don't look nearly as shiny as clean as in the photos which Tesla allows to go public,

or how Musk milks the company for money, or lies to the public about how much his cars cost or about the terms he offered to other companies to join in with Tesla's Supercharger network, or discourages people from fixing their own Teslas although Tesla service is notoriously slow and expensive, or about how Musk has nothing but verbal abuse and downright slander for any company which hints that it might begin to compete with Tesla for a share of the EV market, or about how he won a lawsuit to allow him to call himself a founder of Tesla even though he's not, or about how he calls someone who rescued a group of boys from dying in a cave a pedophile, or about how the real Nikola Tesla was a brilliant man who was shabbily treated by the billionaire businessman Thomas Edison, who constantly took credit for his employees' ideas and hard work while ruthlessly eliminating competing corporations, or other complaints about how Musk is a thieving, fraudulent, cruel monster ripping off those who adore him, or what have you, we often hear the response that Tesla is revolutionizing the auto industry, and that it wouldn't be a success without Musk. But are either of those answers true?

We hear from Musk's ardent disciples -- this is a cult we're talking about -- that Tesla wouldn't exist today if Musk hadn't rescued it with money from his own pocket. They seem to believe that Musk quite selflessly offered all of the money he had in order to keep Tesla going.

No. Musk invested $30 million dollars in Tesla in 2004. This was not all of the money Musk had at the time: he had recently sold his share in PayPal for over a billion dollars.

That's right: although Musk didn't found Tesla, he did co-found PayPal. Have you heard lots of comments about how PayPal is a wonderful company which is making the world a better, safer, fairer, cleaner, more righteous place? Yeah, neither have I. In fact I've never heard a single comment remotely like that. But the next company Musk is involved with, suddenly, boom, you hear all of that all of the time, and you hear that it's all because of Musk.

So, Musk invested $30 million in Tesla in 2004, and now he's being paid several billion dollars every year. That's a pretty good return on investment -- it's pretty good for Musk, I mean. I'm not sure it's good for anyone else.

Would Tesla have gone under if not for that $30 million from Musk? It's hard for me to imagine that they would have. They raised hundreds of millions of dollars from other sources around the time they Musk put in his $30 million.

And now Tesla is making cars in China, home of those sweatshops which manufacture iPhones and Nikes and other products from companies which claim to be progressive. What's progressive about sweatshops? Why aren't more people asking what working conditions are like for Tesla employees in China?

What you hear more often than any other answer, when people like me disrespect Elon Musk, is that we're all jealous cause he's so cool and so successful and so brilliant.

Yeah. That must be it.

Rivian, Electric Vehicle Manufacturer

There is a community of electric vehicle enthusiasts on the Internet -- we refer to electric vehicles as EV's, and we call conventional vehicles ICE, which stands for internal combustion engine -- and next to Tesla, the EV company which which is generating the most excitement in the EV community may be Rivian. Rivian was founded in 2009, and it hasn't sold any vehicles yet. The R1T,

a pickup truck, and the R1S, an SUV, are scheduled to go on sale in 2021, or at least that was the schedule. I don't know whether the coronavirus pandemic will delay the debuts of the R1T and the R1S.

Some of you may be thinking that it is taking Rivian an awfully long time to actually start selling, but the thing is, it generally takes a very long time for large automotive companies to get started. For example, Tesla was founded in 2003. The Tesla Roadster and Model S, both made in relatively limited quantities, were introduced in 2008 and 2012, respectively. The Model 3, Tesla's first truly mass-produced vehicle, was first delivered to buyers in 2017.

Speaking of Tesla, Rivian has been making headlines by hiring former Tesla employees, but, according to this story from electrek from July 2019, Rivian had by that time hired more employees from McLaren, Ford and Faraday Future, an EV startup which has been having financial problems.

Speaking of Ford, Rivian has received a large financial investment from Ford, which has announced that it plans to manufacture electric trucks of its own using Rivian's platform. That same platform will also be available to other automotive manufactures who want to make their own EV's around it.

Speaking of large investments in Rivian, Amazon has invested over half a billion dollars in the company, and committed to buy 100,000 of their vehicles by 2030.

I'll give you a moment to shake off being stunned by the news that Amazon signed a contract to buy 100,000 vehicles from one company. Yeah, Amazon is big.

All set? Okay, onward -- obviously, Rivian is also moderately big solely by virtue of that deal with Amazon, and the deal with Ford is also huge, both for the money involved and for the fact that Ford will be building electric Ford trucks based on Rivian platforms. But another big factor in the excitement in the EV community about Rivian is that some people who write or make videos about EV's full-time have seen Rivians up close at car shows and been very impressed, and a privileged few have taken test drives and been very, very impressed, and some have announced that they're going to buy their own Rivians.

Suggested retail price? Something like $65-75,000 and up, depending on the options. Wait, wait, come back! Remember I just told you about Amazon committing to buy 100,000 of these? Is Amazon known for losing money? No. You save a lot with an EV, compared to ICE, in fuel and maintenance costs. A lot. And more, the more miles you drive. Before you just walk away, saying that EV's cost too much, without actually doing all of the math including the expenses of running an EV compared to running an ICE vehicle, ask yourself again, very seriously: is Amazon known for losing money? And while you're at it, look into all of the other large companies, and governments and so forth, who are buying EV's. (Not to mention all the utility companies building huge solar and wind installations.) Oh, they're all schmucks? Yeah, sure they are. They're the schmucks.

I've Changed My Mind About the Tesla Truck

Two days ago, after seeing it for the first time, I blogged about the Tesla pickup truck, calling it an unmitigated disaster. And now I'm back to tell you two things: 1) I have a very different opinion of the truck now; and 2) a lot of other people have experience something similar: shock at first seeing the truck, and then a very quick change of mind as we keep looking at it.

Let me put this in very plain terms: my first reaction to Tesla's pickup truck was wrong. And I have much less excuse for it than do many other people, because I've studied a bit of art history, and anyone who's studied art history can tell you that, over and over, works of Western art, paintings, mostly, have gotten severely negative reactions when they are first shown, and then gone on to be widely loved and regarded as masterpieces. I've learned not to make a snap judgement if I see a painting and hate it at first. I should have been able to apply this to my reaction to the Tesla pickup, a reaction which, as I admitted in the previous post, was entirely based on its looks. I have less excuse for this than many other people commenting who have never studied art history.

And of course, trucks are not entirely about looks. They are -- theoretically, at least, and in many cases actually -- made for work, and when it comes to horsepower, torque, load capacity, towing capacity and other truck stuff, the Tesla pickup puts up very impressive numbers. Also, of course, it will be much cheaper to maintain and fuel than an internal-combustion-engine truck.

And the people who actually work with trucks, as opposed to driving them as big obnoxious status symbols, pay close attention to such numbers. Because it's work. It's business. It's about the numbers. And looking at the numbers may already have induced quite a number of people look at the Tesla pickup differently, literally and figuratively.

To go back to literally looking at it: I think that the launch may have been unfortunate for more than just the shattered windows. The way that Elon Musk stood in front of it on stage, the angle at which Elon and the truck are shown in most photos and videos, makes the truck look smaller, and above all lower, than it actually is. In those photos, the truck is reminding people of the El Camino, which is not a good association unless you're going for laughs. The El Camino is a 70's-style American sedan with a small truck bed where the back seats and trunk should be, and about the same ground clearance as most other sedans, whereas the Tesla pickup is a big truck with front and back seats and a lot of ground clearance.

So, would I buy one? No. I think it's a good truck, maybe so good that it will be game-changing. If so, it wouldn't be Tesla's first game-changing vehicle. So why won't I buy one? Well, for one thing, I don't need a truck, and unlike many other people who don't need trucks, I'm not going to to buy one. There's also the fact that I'm broke.

But also, it's a Tesla. Teslas are great vehicles, but Tesla is a terrible company. Elon Musk poses as an unworldly geek who just wants to help the world, while ripping off Tesla to the tune of billions of dollars per year. That means that if I bought a Tesla, several thousand dollars' worth of the purchase price would be going straight into Musk's pocket. Meanwhile, everyone except Musk who works at Tesla is underpaid. Anyone who even talks about unions vanishes. Working conditions are nightmarish, "layoffs" are frequent. Musk lies about prices. Musk says the truck will start at $39,900. He also said that the Tesla model 3 would start at $35,000. No-one has ever bought a $35,000 Model 3, and if anyone thinks they're going to get a Tesla pickup for $40,000, their stupidity angers and saddens me. Tesla still won't share their Superchargers with any other electric vehicles. Tesla doesn't sell Tesla parts, or authorize very many people at all to make Tesla repairs. Tesla customer service is a nightmare. And all of the above makes it a more shameless lie when Musk says he's just a selfless friend of humanity.

I might consider buying a Tesla someday if Tesla got rid of Musk and fixed all of those problems. Not before. But there's no denying that Tesla's vehicles are outstanding.

The Tesla Truck is Here, And it's an Unmitigated Disaster

This is really what it looks like:

I stayed up a little bit past my bedtime last night to watch the official launch of this ugly thing at the LA Auto Show, and the reactions on various YouTube channels devoted to EV's, and far and away the most frequent reaction was: "OMG it's so ugly." Even on the channel Now You Know, haven of far-gone Tesla zombies, the top comments this morning are all negative. YouTubers who literally build their own electric vehicles couldn't talk about anything except how ugly it is. I've never knowingly seen an adult man who has just pooped his pants, but after the reveal, Elon Musk, and Zac and Jesse, hosts of Now You Know, all looked as if they had pooped their pants: very embarrassed, physically ill, and trying very hard to smile, but not quite being able to do it.

Two of the officially shatter-proof windows on the truck at the LA Auto Show shattered when they were hit with a sledgehammer to show how shatterproof they are, and yet, no-one talked about that, except as a metaphor for someone's career having been shattered: "Who will be fired?" they asked. And if someone is fired, it won't be because the windows shattered. It will be because this thing is so goddamned ugly.

Maybe we once thought that pickup truck buyers didn't care about looks, and just wanted a truck that would haul. We now know that that isn't true. Looks matter, for pickup trucks too. And this is very, very bad news for Tesla.

There were the usual Tesla fans -- for some reason, they're often referred to as fanboys. They're also often referred to as zombies, but the reason for that is perfectly clear to me -- yelling "Alright! Yeah, Woooooooo!" and "Okay, Elon!" and so forth, at last night's reveal. But last night, there was also a lot more laughter. And it didn't sound like friendly laughter. I think that the model reveals up until now were overwhelmingly attended by the zombies. But the Model 3 is selling several times as fast as any previous Tesla, and it has changed things. Tesla is getting much more mainstream attention now. I think this was the first really public Tesla model unveiling, and oh my God did it go badly.

I haven't talked about how this thing actually functions as a truck. That's because I don't know any of its specs, and I don't know anything about trucks, so its specs wouldn't tell me anything anyway. There are plenty of other people who can tell you all about that. The usual car and truck guys. But, as I mentioned above, last night those guys weren't talking about anything else except how ugly this truck is. It might be the best pickup truck ever made, from the perspectives of performance, reliability, maintenance costs and so forth. But that wouldn't matter as much as how ugly it is. One of those guys who literally builds his own electric vehicles said last night, "That's it, I'm buying a Rivian." Rivian is another manufacturer who will be offering an electric pickup truck for sale soon. And they've been showing pictures of the truck all along, and letting journalists look up-close at the prototypes. (It looks pretty much like a pickup truck. Completely different than this monstrosity from Tesla.)

Tesla didn't do that. They allow a normal amount of glimpses into their upcoming models, usually, but with this pickup, they were completely secretive. It was very unusual. Musk kept saying that it was not going to look like any pickup anyone had ever seen. Turns out he was actually telling the truth for once. I figured that it would be a sort of mild let-down when we finally saw it. I figured people would say, Hm, yeah, it looks like a pickup.

But it doesn't look like a pickup. And not in a good way.

If some Tesla zombies read this post, they will call it a hit piece. But it's not. Musk hit himself right in the face last night. All I'm doing is reporting about it.

Alternative-Energy Developments in Ann Arbor

Christopher Taylor, Mayor of Ann Arbor, has announced -- well, I don't know whether he's announced a "resolve," or actual concrete plans, to put solar panels on the rooftops of all the public buildings in town. Either way, part of that project was completed four days ago, when volunteers from the University of Michigan and the Ann Arbor community helped to install rooftop solar panels on the roof of one of the stations of the Ann Arbor Fire Department.

US Representative Debbie Dingell was there, and posted about it on Facebook, and, of course, one of the right-wing trolls who are all over Michigan Democrats on Facebook immediately complained about this "waste of taxpayer money," and why didn't Dingell yada yada instead. I read a few of the replies to this troll, which of course pointed out that these solar panels will save taxpayer money by generating electricity which the taxpayers have been buying from a utility. I stopped reading the replies to the troll before I noticed any mention that Dingell had linked a story about people volunteering to install the panels, which of course saved the taxpayers even more money. And if you've read the news story I linked above, you already know that in addition to working for free, students and local residents also raised several thousand dollars toward the cost of the installation.

In the past several months I have suddenly ratcheted my interest in electric vehicles, known to us aficionados as EV's, way up. I've been paying a lot more attention to the vehicles within a mile or so of where I live, which I suppose is one of the more left-wing 2-miles circles in the US, but which is also very close to downtown Detroit, and has always had a very deeply-entrenched internal-combustion culture. I've seen quite a few Tesla Model 3's since June. How many is "quite a few"? I don't know. I'm sorry. I've seen at least one Tesla Model X. I've seen several Toyota Leaf's, several Chevrolet Bolts and several Chevrolet Volts, and some BMW i3's, and a few other EV's.

Those are all vehicles running strictly on electricity, Although the Volt also has a small gasoline engine which isn't really necessary, except, presumably, to reassure buyers who don't really know how EV's work. (They work just fine without any gasoline at all, believe it or not.)

Then there are the hybrids in Ann Arbor. The city buses are biodiesel hybrids. I have noticed a few hybrids from Ford and Honda, and one BMW i8 which looks like it wandered onto the street off of a seriously-fast racetrack. I talked to the driver, who said, yes, it was very very fast and fun to drive, but who seemed tired of talking about it, as if strangers were constantly asking him about his car, so I tried to give him a break, said thanks and broke off the conversation early. [ PS, 24 October 2019: I forgot to mention that I've seen a couple of Toyota Camry hybrids and one Hyundai Ioniq hybrid.]

And then there are the Priuses. Toyota has manufactured millions of units of the Prius since 1997 -- how many million? I don't know, and I don't know why I'm having such difficulty finding a reliable figure. And I certainly don't know why so many statistics on Wikipedia having to do with things like solar and wind energy and EV's and hybrids stop at around 2016 or 2017. That's ridiculous. It's like having statistics about computers up until 1983.

Be all of that as it may: there are about 3 million Priuses within a one mile radius of my home. I'm kidding, but there are a lot. A lot.

A few days ago I spoke to a nice lady who drives a Toyota Prius+ and does not seem at all tired of talking about it. I asked her what sort of mileage she got. She said 30 or 40 miles. At first I thought she meant 30 or 40 miles per gallon of gasoline, but no, what she meant was that she charges the car overnight in her garage, and then it goes 30 or 40 miles before the gasoline engine starts. The + in the car's name means you can plug it in. (Does her house run on solar, I wondered but didn't ask.) And, she added, the gasoline engine doesn't start very often. She rarely drives that far in a day. She said she got a full tank of gas four months ago, and still has 3/4 of a tank.

If this nice lady has driven 3000 miles in the past four months, an average of 24 miles a day for 125 days, and if her Prius has used 5 gallons of gasoline over those 3000 miles -- that's 600 miles per gallon.

A lot of the EV enthusiasts I've been hanging out with lately are obsessed with getting longer range per charge from EV's, and the range of EV's is increasing very rapidly. 5 years ago, 100 per charge was pretty good. For a brand-new EV today, in a lot people's opinions, 200 miles is pathetic. This would make sense if they were all driving across Alaska, the Yukon and British Columbia all the time, or across Mongolia, but they're not. I'm one of a vocal minority, but definitely still a minority, who think that the obsession with range is sort of getting out of hand. For longe-range vacations and business trips, charging stations are beginning to sprout everywhere like gas stations, and they're not stopping. The EV revolution is underway.

For these EV enthusiasts, among whom it is usual to want more, more, MORE RANGE!!!!! it is also usual to be very frustrated at the continued success of the Prius, when there are completely gasoline-free EV's are available. I wonder how many Prius+ owners get 600 miles to the gallon, and I wonder how much the EV enthusiasts know about real-world Prius gas consumption.

Also on the topic of opinions and awareness: it seems that the general public don't realize how fast EV's are. A new Tesla is faster from 0-60 than any internal-combustion car which costs less than a million dollars or so. But also very sedate-looking EV's like the Chevy Bolt

accelerate more quickly than just about any ICEV's (as we call internal-combustion-engine vehicles) which can be had for less than six figures. Priuses are slow, as people tend to know by now because there are 35 million of them (I'm exaggerating, but I don't know by how much), but EV's are an entirely different thing. They tend to be ridiculously quick, which is among the reasons to stop obsessively loading them with such large battery packs, which give them the lusted-after long range per change, and make them ridiculously quick, and also very heavy, and also more expensive than they really need to be.

Still, ridiculously fast, overweight and all, a new EV doesn't necessarily have to be very expensive any more. Especially not after a big fat Federal rebate, and possibly state and local rebates as well. It's like with solar energy: people need to resort to more and more ridiculous arguments in order to put EV's down.

The More I Learn About Tesla, The More Appalled I Become

It's hard to talk sense to fanatics -- maybe impossible. If you criticize anything said by any New Atheist, you are immediately denounced as a fundamentalist believer, whether you actually believe that God or gods exist, or not.

If you criticize anything about Tesla or Elon Musk, the Elon fanboys immediately accuse you of being in league with Big Oil, CNBC and the German automaking industry. Tesla doesn't publicize the fact that many of the parts of their cars have been made in Germany, by Bosch or Daimler or other companies whom they publicly diss. If you try to bring this up with the fanboys, chances aren't they won't hear you, because they'll immediately begin drowning you out (and perhaps also drowning out their own attempts at rational thought?) by calling you a liar and repeating the company's talking points.

So I don't know whether I'm going to change any of the fanboys' minds. This is addressed more to the general public about the fanboys, than to the fanboys. But if I do change some of their minds too, well wouldn't that blow my mind.

Tesla is worse than most car companies, because they're more dishonest, and more ruthlessly dedicated to squeezing every last penny they can out of their adoring fans, and giving billions of that revenue, yearly, to Musk. Who is always referred to as Elon, as if he were everybody's pal. He's not your pal.

Tesla is so dishonest, they can't even tell you how much their cars cost, and the fanboys are so hypnotized that they'll insist all day long that Tesla was never misleading about their prices. The Tesla Model 3 is known as the $35,000 Tesla. The only problem is that it actually costs $44,000, except that it actually costs $49,000, except that it actually costs $50,200, except that it actually costs more than that. Realistically, $60,000 or more. But the hypnotized fans who've actually payed this much for Model 3's will tell you that they haven't. There may actually be some $35,000 Model 3's -- a dozen or so. In Canada. Since early in 2019. Or maybe that was just another lie.

Back in 2017, when Tesla began to establish the lie of the $35,000 Model 3 in the public consciousness, they got the figure of $35,000 by taking the retail price, subtracting the Federal and state rebates in California, and then also figuring in the fuel cost savings. (Fuel cost savings compared to what? I'm sure the fanboys don't care.) Tesla says they're not an average car company. By God, they're not. A normal car company will actually state the retail prices of their vehicles.

Tesla is supposedly a liberal, Leftist, humans-before-cash company. But they're completely union-free, and the low-paid employees routinely work 80 to 100 hours a week. Less humane than the big carmakers, while claiming to be really good guys. Press cameras aren't allowed inside the Fremont, California factory, but they can get close enough (briefly) to the perimeter fence to see the campers of employees in the parking lot. From the factory to the camper and back again -- or is the camper home?

The people most likely to shout down any and all objections to Tesla's practices -- the employees, the shareholders, the owners of the vehicles, and very often two or all of the above in one person -- are the very ones I and other critics are trying to help, by pointing out how they're being used.

EV's (That's Short for "Electric Vehicles")

Lately, all of a sudden, I've been paying a lot more attention to the cars around me. Specifically, I've been looking for EV's, electrical vehicles. For years, I'd already been spotting Toyota Priuses, which are gasoline, electric hybrids, because of their distinctive body shape. But besides the Priuses, there are more hybrids and pure EV's around me than I had thought.

This afternoon I saw a Tesla Model 3 in a parking lot nearby. I've been looking at so many Teslas online lately that this one looked familiar from a long way away, and I came up for a close look, and sure enough. It surprised me that I was right, because none of the Teslas -- to my way of thinking -- is nearly as distinctive-looking as, say, a Prius. Many Tesla fans would denounce me for this opinion, because to them, Teslas are distinctive-looking and very uniquely beautiful. And who am I to try to minimize their joy in beauty. Lately, I've seen either several Tesla Model S's, or the same Model S several times. The Model S is a rather expensive model which Tesla first started selling in 2012. The Model 3

is a less expensive model which went on sale in 2017, and which will surely soon surpass all of the other Tesla models, going back to 2008, in number of units sold, if it hasn't already. (As of the end of 2018, combined sales of all other Tesla models added up to almost 400,000 units.) One of the Model S's zoomed past me very quickly on the right, accomplishing being ahead of me instead on behind me when the road narrowed down to single-lane single-file. I was startled, and yelled out the window, "Was that really necessary?!" Yes, I still sometimes yell at other drivers. But I'm trying to stop once and for all. I don't road rage as much as I used to.

Since I've been looking at the rear fender of every single car I walk past lately, I've been seeing the green badge on the back of many Fords which says "EcoBoost." I've been having a hard time finding concrete information about EcoBoost, information such as: is there actually anything ecological about EcoBoost, or is the name just a cynical ploy on Ford's part to make buyers think they're being green?

I saw a BMW i8, a very high-end, very sporty hybrid, and spoke to its owner, but soon got the impression that many strangers talked to him about his car and he was tired of it, so I left him alone.

A Tesla driver might be more green, in his personal transportation carbon footprint, than an ICE (internal-combustion engine) driver. If the Tesla driver gets his electricity from solar or wind, then there's no maybe about it. A Nissan Leaf driver might have a smaller carbon footprint than the Tesla driver. Someone who has no car and takes the bus might be greener still, especially if the local buses are green. There are other factors besides whether you drive a car and what kind of car you drive, such as how many miles per year you drive. And airline travel is very dirty, ship travel too, although some ships are much cleaner than others. Many ships are hybrids now. So are many trains. And of course, many trains have been all-electric for a very, very long time. And transportation is only a fraction of the current total hydrocarbon usage. So, I'm just saying: if you drive a Prius or a Tesla: Thank you. But don't forget that there are also many other things you can do, or not do, to help us all survive our own activity.

Elon Musk: Not MY Hero

Let's start with those patents which Tesla allegedly "released" in 2014, in order, supposedly, to stimulate others to build electric vehicles. For the good of the whole planet, dontcha know.

But if you read the fine print, the release of the patents is stipulated to be for the use of companies who are "not competing" with Tesla. How exactly are you supposed to build electric vehicles at all and not compete with Tesla? The release also stipulates that other companies who use Tesla's patents must be "operating in good faith." What "operating in good faith" is, is not more precisely defined.

But perhaps the biggest whopper in the patent release is that any company which uses a Tesla patent must agree not to sue Tesla -- not just in matters related to these patents, but not to sue them at all, over anything.

This is truly diabolical: if you use any of Tesla's patents, Tesla can sue you if they deem you to be competing with them -- and just let me know if you know how it's possible to build an electric vehicle and not compete with Tesla -- or operating in bad faith, and you can't sue them for anything at all. Not even a counter-suit in response to a frivolous lawsuit. To me, the conventional arrangement where you just pay the patent owner an agreed-upon price to use their patent, and then just move on from there with no further restrictions, looks a lot more attractive. I don't see how this so-called "release" of patents does anything but restrict and discourage the making of electric vehicles by other companies.

And, to make the diabolical nature of it all quite complete, Musk was able to sell this "release" of patents to his adoring fans and customers, and for the most part to the general public as well, as an act of phenomenal generosity, as just one more example of how he is better than other CEO's. Morally better.

In reality, the "release" of the patents is one more example of how Musk is worse than other CEO's. It's one more piece of evidence of his extreme tendency toward control.

Teslas are good cars, but Tesla owners have to wait extremely long times to get the cars repaired, because authorized Tesla repair centers are few and far between. Tesla doesn't want to sell parts to do-it-yourselfers who work on the cars themselves -- the way all other car manufacturers have done for a century and a third now -- because they make less money that way. They want your money when you buy a Tesla, and more of your money every time you have it repaired -- and even more of your money every time you charge up at one of those Teslas Superchargers where only Teslas can charge up, and Teslas can't use other superchargers without an adapter. Does having an entire network of charging stations which only Teslas can use encourage the growth of the entire electric-vehicle sector? Of course not, it does exactly the opposite. And to top that off and make it perfectly diabolical, they've somehow managed to convince the Tesla fans that the non-compatibility in charging stations is 100% the fault of other electric vehicle manufacturers. Tesla TRIED to work with the other companies on the charging stations, the fans insist, and the other companies all refused.

Did you notice how all of the other companies had no difficulty making chargers that were compatible with everybody except Tesla? And did you notice how none of the other companies had patented charging technology which other companies were free to use, but only if they agreed that the company with the charging technology could sue them for anything, and they couldn't sue that company for anything?

Back in the early 80's, when it was Beta vs VHS, did Sony keep making Betas and get its customers to blame all the other video-cassette manufacturers for the fact that there were two incompatible formats? No, Sony started making VHS cassettes and didn't complain. Why? Because Sony isn't as evil as Tesla.

It's the lying that's evil: the narrative which Tesla sells (just like the narrative which Apple sells), which says that this company is morally superior to all of the others, when in fact their management is a bit sleazier.

Successfully selling the lies means that the company's fans will constantly make excuses for the company.

And this brings us to the lie that Elon Musk IS Tesla, that The Man and The Company are one and the same. Well, Tesla fans may say: Elon founded the company. No, as a matter of fact he didn't. He joined the company after Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning founded it, then won a lawsuit giving him the legal right to call himself a founder -- the legal right to lie. This guy's good. Good at being evil -- and then forced out the actual founders.

The fans will say, but Musk made the company what it is. If by "what it is" you mean "a company which drives other electric vehicles builders out of business and then blames others for there being so few other electric vehicles," then I would tend to agree. But that's not what the fans mean. They mean that Tesla automobiles are so good because Musk designed them. Did he? Or is he really good at taking the credit for the work of other people, thousands of other people who've worked long hours for low pay and done brilliant work at Tesla and then let Musk convince them that he'd done it, not them? I don't know for sure, but I find the story where Musk takes the credit much more believable than the one where Musk actually makes the brilliant cars.

Which brings us to the money. Tesla stockholders haven't gotten any dividends yet, while Musk has been paid billions by the company. If I were a Tesla stockholder, I'd be pretty steamed about that, and calling for Musk to be dumped and replaced with a CEO who could be bought for a measly $30 million a year or so. But I can't even penetrate the denial of these fans and stockholders, who insist that Musk makes $150,000 a year or less. They focus on Musk's salary and somehow manage to ignore his bonuses. Sometimes, if the bonuses are brought up, they point out that Musk invested tens of millions of dollars in Tesla and saved the company. They're engaging in the logical fallacy called post hoc ergo propter hoc: the company has survived after Musk joined it, and the fans say that the company has survived because Musk joined it. Except that they're usually also in denial about the fact that he joined the company, as opposed to founding it. Not to mention being in denial about how investing tens of millions of dollars once, and then getting billions of dollars of return per year on that investment is pretty sharp even by the sleazy standards of billionaires.

And finally, as many of you no doubt have already noticed, I refuse to call him Elon. To me, he's Musk. Calling him Elon would imply that I regarded him as my friend, my buddy, and, as you may have noticed, I don't. I don't think he's my friend, and I don't think he's yours either. I think he's pretending to care about the environment in order to prop up a lie about him being a hero and a wonderful human being.

Welcome to Tesla Service Hell

Another great video from the YouTube channel Rich Rebuilds. Here Rich vents some frustration at Tesla because Tesla won't help a non-authorized repairman, such as himself, to make repairs, the way every other car company does.




In this video, Rich says (I'm paraphrasing), if you treat your customers the way Tesla treats theirs, they're going to buy another brand.

That would be true if people were rational, but we aren't rational. Not completely. And most people, not even mostly. If people were rational, Apple wouldn't have sold hundreds of millions of computers -- or is it billions by now? -- for twice as much money as PC's that go twice as fast. Tesla buyers and Apple buyers put up with all sorts of crap from their cult leaders that they would never tolerate from any other companies. I hope that changes someday, but I don't see any sign of it changing soon. Apple's been selling overpriced crap for 40 years, but they're not about to go out of business. McDonald's is still going strong, speaking of popular overpriced crap sold by a long-term successful company. And aside from all of the service BS, Tesla's products are actually extremely good, so already they've got a big leg up on business titans like Apple and McDonald's.

I shouted at the screen at one point in this video, when Rich was talking about how it's ecologically sound for him and other repair people to fix up damaged Tesla's, and asks rhetorically, isn't being ecologically sound what Tesla is all about? I shouted at the screen: "No, it's not! It's all about making a billionaire much, much more rich!"

Tesla presents itself as being all about ecological soundness and saving the Earth. That's part of the reason they have such a blindly devoted following.

The thing is, though: you don't have to treat your customers like crap in order to be ecologically sound. In fact, that part of Tesla's way of doing things, when you add it all up, may not be very green.

Nuanced Discussion of Electric Vehicles

A few years ago, I dabbled in discussions about atheism versus religion, and about whether or not Jesus ever existed. Some of my participation in these discussions can be seen on this blog. I quickly became frustrated by the general nature of these discussions: on one side were New Atheists whose attitude is nicely summed up by the sub-title of one of Christopher Hitchens' books, Religion poisons Everything, and on the other side were believers out to denigrate any and all expressions of religious doubt and/or doubt about the existence of the historical Jesus. They mostly weren't actually discussions so much as flame wars. I soon had enough.

Recently, dipping my toe into the waters on public discussion of Tesla, Inc and its allegedly charismatic CEO Elon Musk, I've been very much reminded of those earlier flame wars. In this case, on one side are people who think everything Elon does (they often call him Elon as if he were their personal friend, and often act as Elon has personally, single-handedly accomplished every good thing ever done at Tesla, Inc) is pure genius, and pure blessing for all life on Earth; and on the other side are climate-change deniers and enthusiasts of internal combustion engines, without much in between. And I have absolutely no appetite for more flame wars. I'd rather see nuanced discussion.

I'm not 100% anti-Tesla. Far from it. I'm very excited to see that sales of electric vehicles are exploding worldwide. And outside of China, where they are building electric cars for domestic consumption at a rate which dwarfs the electric vehicle (EV for short) production in the rest of the world -- outside of Chine, far and away the best-selling EV in the world is the Tesla Model 3. The Model 3 is taking EV sales to an entirely new level, and I love that. I love that that huge battery which Tesla sold to Australia is actually working, contrary to the predictions of many. I love that Teslas are made with a high percentage of green electricity, and that many of their owners also operate them with mostly or all green electricity. There is a huge upside to Tesla, from my point of view.

But that doesn't mean that I love everything Elon Musk does and says, or that I don't wonder whether he actually deserves billions of dollars a year in compensation, or that I don't worry that many Tesla owners and Tesla shareholders (are there actually any Tesla shareholders who don't own and drive at least one Tesla?) are giving way too much in return for what Musk gives them.

In between the Tesla cult members on the one side, who are not nearly concerned enough that Musk might be screwing them over financially, and the Tesla critics who have a whole bunch of facts completely wrong, asserting, for example, that electric vehicles are not better for the environment than those with internal-combustion engines (ICE for short), and that Teslas are made and operated with dirty electricity from the grid, and that demand for Teslas is about to dry up, among many other claims which are completely wrong -- in between is at least one other person besides me: Rich Benoit, Tesla owner and star of the successful YouTube channel Rich Rebuilds, on which you can see him repairing and rebuilding Teslas. Both his own Teslas, and those owned by other people who also have become frustrated by Tesla's normal way of servicing the cars they make.



Which is something which Tesla, Inc absolutely does not encourage people outside of Tesla, Inc to do. Rich says that he loves the Tesla company, but thinks that it can do much better in some areas -- like being much more like a normal car company which lets customers fix their own cars or take them to non-factory garages for repairs if they want to, the way people have been doing with every model of car for as long as there have been cars.

In other words: Rich has a lot of praise and also a lot of criticism for Tesla and is very open about both. A nuanced approach. How about that.

What is more completely Murrkin than workin' on yr car, or takin' it to yr local Mom-n-Pop gas station to get it fixed? Precious little! Hopefully Musk will relent on this subject soon. And if he doesn't, I predict that it will only help the sales of non-Tesla EV's. Lead, follow or get out of the way -- Elon.

More Tesla Math

Maybe you've already heard about Tesla's Superchargers, their amazing network of thousands, I said thousands of places worldwide, a rapidly-growing network of stations where you can stop and recharge your electric vehicle extra-quickly. The quick charging is the "super" part.

I've even written a post on this blog about them. They used to be free, but they're not free anymore except for a small number of early Model S and X owners, but that's not the math I referred to in the title of this post.

The math I referred to in the title of this post, I just learned today. It's the number of non-Tesla electric vehicles which can recharge at Tesla Superchargers: 0. Number of Tesla vehicles which can re-charge at non-Tesla stations without something called a J-1772 adapter: also 0. Price of a J-1772 adapter: not well-publicized, so I'm assuming it's high. Number of adapters which let non-Tesla vehicles charge at Tesla Superchargers? 0. Number of non-Tesla electric vehicles which can't charge at non-Tesla charging stations? As far as I can tell: 0, because: number of carmakers who decided not to used charging units which are compatible with every non-Tesla supercharger in the world is: 1. Tesla.

Chance that Tesla could've unintentionally made their superchargers incompatible with everybody's else cars and the cars incompatible with everybody else's superchargers? Zero. Part of me prepared to believe the Tesla party line that hostility to them from other companies is 100% attributable to evil oil-company greed? Plummeting fast.

Remind you of Apple? Yeah, me too! And not just the billionaire owner and the creepy cult-like devotion of the fans to him, finding that he can do no wrong, only genius-type things, but also: the equipment that doesn't work with the rest of the equipment on the planet, only with the equipment made by the genius cult company. Tesla Supercharger = Apple Store: a place for white people with more money than brains to feel superior to the rest of the planet -- for a substantial fee. (Non-whites are of course welcome either place, but they gotta pay as much as everybody else.)

I Just did Some Math

In my previous post, I mentioned how Zac and Jesse, big fans of Elon Musk and Tesla, said that what Musk has done to help restore Puerto Rico's hurricane-ravaged grid could be great PR for Tesla. Something I didn't mention is that Zac and Jesse also made a big deal about how Musk personally donated $250,000 to charities working in Puerto Rico. I'm not sure, but I think the phrase "right out of his own pocket" may have been bandied about.

I think it's good that Musk donated that money. I think that money helped a lot of people. Assuming it wasn't stolen by corrupt officials, and I have no knowledge of that sort of thing happening in Puerto Rico.

The math referred to in the title of this post has to do with just exactly how deep Musk's own pocket is. The math has to do with to what extent a quarter of a million dollars, for Musk, constitutes giving until it hurts.

If the reports are true that Musk got bonuses from Tesla in 2018 totaling $2.6 billion, then $250,000 would be less than 1/10,000th of his annual pay. If we stipulate that Musk works twice as long as a mere mortal, 80 hours a week, that means that he works 4000 hours a year, and THAT means that $250,000 is less than what he makes in a half hour.

Look at it another way: if Musk somehow came face-to-face with 685 panhandlers a day, every single day, 7 days every single week, and he gave a $100 bill to each one of them every time they met, in a year, it would add up to -- $250,000, less than Musk makes in a half-hour, assuming he works 80 hours a week. If he works 40 hours a week, then $250,000 is less than he makes in 15 minutes. [PS, 2 November 2019: Oops! And I'm always bragging on this blog about my superhero-level autistic arithmetic skills. Let's try that again: $100 each to 685 panhandlers a day is $68,500 a day, times 365 is $25 million a year. And it takes Musk a whole half of a week to earn $25 million.]

I have a feeling that Musk very rarely sees any panhandlers or homeless people. I could be wrong. Maybe he volunteers 20 hours a week in homeless shelters. It's just a feeling.

I'm not saying that billionaires are horrible people. Plenty of people will tell you that, but not me. I think billionaires can be horrible or wonderful, and I'm not sure what to think of Elon Musk. If I had to guess right now, I would guess that there is a mix of horrible and wonderful in him, and that his reality is so different than mine that I can't imagine all of the implications of being him. I'm just saying this: $250,000, for someone who makes $2.6 billion a year, is half an hour's pay if he works 80 hours a week, and 15 minutes' pay if he works 40 hours a week. I'm saying: if you think Elon Musk is just a down-to-Earth, folksy, regular guy, maybe you should keep on thinking.

"Now You Know" -- Cult Members, or Just Really Enthusiastic Tesla Fans?

Tesla doesn't advertise -- you know how I know that? I heard it on the YouTube channel "Now You Know," which is mainly about Tesla. With You Tube channels like "Now You Know," Tesla doesn't have to advertise. Zac and Jesse, the channel's hosts (sorry, I haven't been able to find their last names. Perhaps they actually don't have last names), present an extremely positive view of Tesla which only occasionally loses controls and looks like an out-and-out obvious cult. I don't think Elon Musk pays these guys, but he really should.

Then again, if Elon Musk has ever heard of Zac and Jesse, maybe it creeps him out a little that they always refer to him as "Elon," like it does me.

Then again, maybe Musk insists that all of his employees call him Elon, and Zac and Jesse are going for Employeee of the Month every day, although, as I say, they don't actually get paid by Tesla (I'm almost 100% sure).

Speaking of pay: recently, on several of their videos, responding to criticism of Tesla and Musk, which they refer to as FUD, the spreading of Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt, Zac and Jesse have mentioned that Musk's salary is $0 per year.

I researched the subject of Musk's financial compensation from Tesla, and the subject is a little controversial: some say he has no salary, some say his salary is minimum wage, some say it's a high as $53,000 a year. Some say he never cashes his salary checks, some say he donates his entire salary to charity... But I don't care about Musk's salary nearly as much as the fact that he gets billions of dollars per year from Tesla in bonuses. The same that I don't care whether Zac and Jesse's figure of $0 is exactly accurate or off by several dozen thousand dollars a year, nearly as much as I care about the fact that they don't mention the the 10-figure annual bonuses at all.

Another thing which strikes me as cultlike and disturbing: in this video from 2017, Zac and Jesse describe Tesla's efforts to set up a new electrical grid in hurricane-ravaged Puerto Rico.



It doesn't bother me that Tesla's sending batteries to Puerto Rico and doing other helpful things there. What bothers me is this: Zac and Jesse don't refer to the situation in Puerto Rico as a humanitarian disaster. They also don't accuse the Trump administration of being responsible, by neglect, for the deaths of many Puerto Ricans. They should have mentioned both of those things, but they didn't. But they did mention that the whole Puerto Rican episode could be great, business-wise and public-relations-wise, for Tesla and Musk.

Zac and Jesse say many things with which I wholeheartedly agree. I agree with their negative take on conventional automakers and the petrochemical industry and climate-change deniers. I agree with them that it's extremely important and urgent that we stop using fossil fuels, completely and very soon.

I'm just not sure that Elon Musk is the Messiah.

Now, maybe I'm wrong. Maybe Elon Musk is single-handedly saving the human race. Zac and Jesse have recently compared Musk to Steve Jobs, which set off alarm bells in my head, because I've always thought of Jobs as the most successful cult leader of the late 20th and early 21st centuries, a purveyor of overpriced IT hardware which is incompatible with the rest of the IT in the world, making his cult members wholly dependent on his overpriced parts and service.

And what's the biggest complaint about Tesla, by far? Parts and service. Elon doesn't want you to get your Tesla repaired by anyone else. He wants you to wait 2 months to replace that lug nut which you can't get from anyone except Tesla. And if you're Zac or Jesse, you probably will wait, and pass the time by angrily denouncing everyone who thinks you're a chump, calling them all dishonest, corrupt dinosaurs.

Maybe I'm wrong about Steve Jobs, and maybe Musk also isn't all bad. Maybe they're only partly assholes, and partly very good. Maybe I've been all wrong all along about the quality of Apple products, which I admit I have used very rarely. I'm trying to keep an open mind about everything. One thing seems very clear: almost everyone who's ever driven a Tesla agrees that they are very good cars.

They're kinda pricy, though, too. The way that Apple products are pricy. And Starbucks coffee. And Nike shoes, and some other products as well which are purveyed by billionaires who supposedly have good hearts. I'm really trying to keep an open mind, and stay well-informed.

Revised Fuel Cost Estimate For Plug-In Electric Vehicles

In in a previous Wrong Monkey blog post, I incorrectly stated that the fuel costs for a plug-in electric vehicle are about half those of a hybrid vehicle of comparable size and performance, and that that hybrid uses about half as much fuel as a comparable conventional vehicle.

Well, loyal Wring Monkey readers, I'm sorry. I should've done a little more research before shooting my mouth off with such sensationalistic figures, because the truth is that for many drivers of electric vehicles, their fuel cost is not 50% of a hybrid and 25% of a conventional vehicle -- but 0% of anything. Nada. Zip. The null set. Just exactly squat.

And I'm not talking about the example I gave in the earlier post about someone living in a zero-energy house which generated enough energy for the car as well. I'm talking about people who drive electric vehicles and are having all of the electricity for those vehicles given to them. For example, anybody who owns a Tesla and is in driving distance of one of these dots:

Those are Tesla recharging stations. Any Tesla can be recharged at one of those stations any time for free. There are more of those stations per square miles in the US than in other parts of the world, but Tesla is working on that. They're also helping people convert their houses into ones which will generate all the electricity from solar, plus enough left over for the car. (What is this Elon Musk guy trying to prove, anyway? And can we all agree that he's proving it?)

In addition, many employers are now providing free recharges to their employees who drive plug-ins. This Department of Energy website has some info about that. Not everybody can afford a Tesla, but if you shop around for a good sale or lease bargain on, say, a Nissan Leaf, and factor in a fuel cost of Squat annually, it no longer seems like you need to be Donald Trump or Elon Musk to get in on this.