Don’t want to do business with Elon Musk? The answer to that conundrum may soon be “too bad.” Now that both Ford and General Motors are moving to Tesla’s charging standard and getting access to its vast charging station network, that could soon become the norm—and now Stellantis is looking at the situation as well.
Welcome back to another edition of The Autopian’s morning news roundup. Also on our showroom floor today: What happened at Toyota’s contentious shareholder meeting in Japan, more challenges for Rivian, and are we at Peak Oil yet?
Stellantis Eyes Tesla’s Charging Too
Yes, I’m as tired of the morning roundup being dominated by Tesla news as you are. But you have to admit the charging thing lately is a Very Big Deal. Ford, General Motors and Tesla together make up something like 70% to 80% of the EV market in America, so them going with Tesla’s NACS plugs may spell doom for the non-Tesla CCS plugs that the rest of the market has relied on so far.
I think it’ll take one more big domino to fall for that to happen—for Tesla’s NACS to be the plugs the market will end up using. I figured it might be Volkswagen or Hyundai, but now Stellantis is looking at things too.
Note that this statement is very noncommittal, but the vibe is that they at least seem interested. Via Reuters:
Automaker Stellantis said on Tuesday that it continues to evaluate Tesla’s charging standard after Ford Motor Co and General Motors said they were adopting it.
“At this time, we continue to evaluate the NACS standard and look forward to discussing more in the future,” Stellantis said in a statement to Reuters, referring to Tesla’s charging design, the North American Charging Standard (NACS).
“Our focus is to provide the customer the best charging experience possible. Our Free2Move Charge brand will offer seamless, simple solutions whether at home or on-the-go through partnerships with charging providers,” it said.
It’s hard to say what will happen here. CCS chargers are effectively the standard in Europe and Stellantis’ 14 brands operate more globally than GM or Ford, but there’s nothing stopping the automakers from tailoring their plugs to the biggest markets; even Tesla plugs are CCS in Europe. But largely, when it comes to fueling or charging, the approach automakers take is “You deal with it.” For EV charging, that “you” more and more is looking like Elon Musk.
Toyota Shareholders Back Toyoda
After spending the weekend at the 24 Hours of Le Mans, Akio Toyoda found himself in the hot seat this week over a surprisingly contentious shareholder and board meeting at Toyota. A small group of investors, citing concerns over the company’s EV strategy and climate lobbying, said they’d oppose Toyoda’s ascension to the board chairman seat and the appointment of Koji Sato as CEO. This is the first resolution proposed in 18 years, which should give you a sense of how uneventful Toyota board meetings are.
But shareholders say Toyoda and Sato are their guys, reports Reuters. And the timing of that aggressive new EV plan—as I called it yesterday—may have helped things along, although the likelihood of their appointments getting spiked was always fairly low:
The meeting came a day after the world’s biggest automaker by sales volume announced a road map for EVs involving solid-state batteries and radical production changes, in the strongest signal of its intention to grow its battery EV market share and boost its share price.
“Japanese people like Toyota and I think they support Akio,” said 61-year-old Tadashi Imai, an individual shareholder who said he has held stock in the company for about a decade.
“Toyota’s announcement yesterday about the solid-state batteries rollout by 2027 sent the shares up 5 percent. That is really impressive, 5 percent.”
I am still trying to figure out if a proposal was made on an electric MR2 or not. If not, it should have been. Do I have to do everything myself?
Rivian Gets Punted Off The Nasdaq
It’s tough out there these days for the EV startups. Lucid and Rivian both have seen production problems, concerns over demand and in Rivian’s case, a pretty major recall last year. While they show immense potential, some investors are starting to get fed up—and the current weird economy and tight capital market isn’t helping.
Neither is the fact that Rivian just got kicked off the Nasdaq-100. Here’s Quartz to explain:
Nasdaq is dropping Rivian because it shrunk too much.
The electric carmaker will lose its spot on the Nasdaq-100, which comprises 100 of the largest non-financial companies listed on the Nasdaq stock exchange, on June 20, Nasdaq confirmed yesterday (June 13).
The EV stock is being booted because it has had a weight of less than 0.1% for two consecutive months on the market-capitalization-weighted index, where companies with growing stock prices yield higher influence. The biggest companies on the New York-based index Microsoft and Apple, both of which have a roughly 12% weightage.
JPMorgan Chase analyst Min Moon, who had warned that Rivian was on the verge of getting kicked off two weeks ago, also correctly predicted its replacement: ON Semiconductor (Onsemi).
Nasdaq will sell all the shares it holds in Rivian and replace them with On Semiconductor’s shares. This could deal another blow to the struggling, money-draining EV company.
Profitability may be a ways off for Rivian, and its next new product, the R2, isn’t due out until 2026. The trucks are great, so here’s hoping the company can find a way to rally.
Peak Oil: Coming Soon?
You know, I feel like I’ve been hearing predictions about “peak oil”—the point where demand for petroleum hits an apex and then begins a presumably permanent decline—the whole time I’ve covered cars. Only now, as we stare down a potentially zero-emission future, does it seem to be really looming. Here’s Bloomberg looking at this concept:
By 2027, electric vehicles will force a reversal to the era of rising demand for oil used in transportation, according to a new forecast by analysts at BloombergNEF. For areas outside of transportation — such as plastics, petrochemicals, manufacturing and agriculture — oil demand will continue to rise with no end in sight. But by 2029, BNEF expects the stark shift to EVs to outweigh all else and bring total demand to its apex.
Oil analysts have spent years grappling with the impact from the transitioning to electric vehicles, and have often been proven wrong. Small differences in assumptions about EV adoption can shift predictions by years. But a growing consensus is emerging that peak oil for transportation is within sight. Four charts from BloombergNEF’s 2023 EV Outlook show where demand has already entered terminal decline and where lingering uncertainty remains.
By the way, things had been trending this way for a minute:
Electric vehicles on the road right now are already displacing demand for more than 1.5 million barrels of oil a day. Battery-powered options are becoming competitive with internal combustion in more categories, and each new segment narrows the market for future oil sales. Global sales of cars powered by oil peaked six years ago, and the handoff to batteries is accelerating. Last year saw EV sales increase 62% worldwide — nearly doubling in China, Australia and Japan, and more than tripling in India and Southeast Asia.
Also, that study puts peak internal combustion engine sales at… 2017. Which already happened, if you’re bad at math or calendars. Welcome to the great upheaval.
Your Turn
Settle a debate we had in Slack this morning: is Elon Musk the new Henry Ford? Both redefined manufacturing (perhaps Tesla’s greatest trick is building EVs profitably), both revolutionized and kick-started their industries, both were inherently bad at releasing new products—Ford had to be dragged kicking and screaming to the Model A—and both have, uh, controversial takes. To put it gently. What do you think?
I’m convinced Tesla will end up as an energy supplier rather than a vehicle manufacturer
You get Tesla and the big 3 together game over.
Let’s start off with a correction:
Ford has said they are adding the Tesla port in addition to CCS. GM was really unclear with the language, but they’re also just adding the port more than likely for reasons you and others have already pointed out. Like Europe or the fact Tesla isn’t standardized (mentioned a lot in these very comments).
Y’all (everyone paid in clicks) are making a lot of fuss out of this when we still don’t even know clearly what Tesla will charge those who don’t drive the old-eggs from the 2010s, how Ford/GM will incorporate the port, and how the Tesla community at large will respond to Hummers hogging the watering hole.
Also, as has been reported on since the Ford announcement: Tesla charging lacks desired features of CCS that are inherently necessary for grid balancing.
These are two companies patching their poor product planning by forcing their customers to use non-standard product. As for Stellantis, remember they’re PHEV heavy and that doesn’t look to change, in volume, anytime soon. Outside of the somewhat more frequent Tesla destination charger, there’s little benefit with batteries that small to adopting a second port. And then there’s Europe.
Also no, he’s William “Billy” Durant. Multiple companies, vertical integration, cult of personality, massive wealth based on valuations, and even stock fraud as well as the fact he isn’t actually an engineer or innovator. He’s a hype man who is very good at bringing products to market that other people built and designed.
LOL, I am now picturing Teslarati mobs with pitch forks and torches as a Hummer EV is hogging a L2 charger all day to charge, then the owner doesn’t pick it up until the next day, as a few model3s with tow ropes overheat and burst into flames as they couldn’t tow the massive H’EV out of the charging spot.
Can you explain what “grid balancing” is and why Tesla cant do it? Honest question, I’ve never heard of it.
I wish I were enough of an expert to speak to it well.
Essentially as I understand it, you need the ability for bi-directional charging to allow flow both to and from EV batteries. If you think of all the batteries connected and charging as well as all of those fully charged and also plugged in as grid objects, you can move power around between all the “nodes” if you will. You’re balancing demands. Because we’re already to the point where everyone plugging in overnight isn’t the best idea.
Check out John Voelcker’s recent reporting on the Ford/Tesla charger news for better insight. I think it was C&D.
Also, Hummer drivers (for those of you that don’t know) cannot park. They always end up on lawns, and sidewalks, and other odd non-car parky places. Imagine what that’s going to be like in a crowded Tesla supercharger next to I-95.
Bi-directional charging, I know what you’re talking about, thanks! Since Superchargers get power from giant batteries, it reduces the demand at peak times, refueling the supercharger’s battery at non-peak times. It doesn’t go as far as bi-directional, but helps ease the demand curve.
The superchargers are powered by batteries, but the bi-directional charging is mostly for home purposes. If your car is charging overnight and there’s a power sag or something, it can feed some energy back into the grid or your home, then continue charging when power is normal.
I don’t know how much good that will do overall, especially since the feature is not mandatory, but it’s certainly something that some people want.
There is also the question of whether that capability could be added to NACS without too much of an overhaul. I suspect that it could, but I’m not an expert.
Between General Motors, Ford, and Tesla, all three of the largest US automakers, representing over 35% of the new light vehicle market, are now on Tesla’s standard. I think the floodgates have been opened at this point, whether it’s the right move or not, it seems to be happening regardless, so I would not be at all surprised for Stellantis to jump on board and more after them.
You guys in the comments crack me up! Did Elon actually invent anything? Who knows and who cares. He did have the idea to use modular assembly techniques to build his rockets. It wasn’t an invention, but a different way to do it in that industry. So, in that way, he’s a “Henry Ford lite” along with many others in all other sectors. I’d toss Mark Cuban in that ring as an example of someone who took existing tech and improved on it as well.
There are very few companies in the world where the inventor is the founder or CEO. That’s what the employees are for.
The one thing that Musky DID figure out to do that no one else has done is run the afore-referenced rocket company (SpaceX) efficiently. I think they just did their 52nd (?) launch to deploy Starlink sats, which are pretty vital in providing internet to the far reaches of the earth. That and efficiently delivering/retrieving astronauts safely from the ISS like it’s an Amazon delivery. That’s big stuff and where I give him his due respect.
I think Elon is more of a Vanderbilt, had money, invested in tech stuff, some of that tech stuff succeeded, so he’s done well.
I think Jobs/Wozniak were more like a mordern Ford, created a revolutionary product, not the first, but the first that did well, that everyone had to have and now we all have smartphones, also not a fan of unions as they make them overseas….
Not sure who the equivalent to a Ford in the auto industry would be nowadays, probably some guy in China cranking out Chang-Lis better than the next guy.
The BEV landscape is still very much the wild west. Most of what is currently available will soon be obsolete. Until standardization takes hold, and interchangeable battery modules(to keep up with advancements, add or reduce range/weight) I’m a hard pass. What bothers me the most of current offerings,BEV and ICE is the lack of driver/owner operator focus. I can’t be the only one that thinks smart phones, and laptops have their place, and it’s not in cars.
To clarify, expand, and perhaps an old man yells at a cloud; planned obsolescence integrated into an otherwise durable product, rendering it disposable, is not ecco-friendly. Non serviceable batteries, UI systems that give the manufacturer control that the purchaser/user can’t access. Tesla did a “hero” move during a California fire that allowed their cars to operate into a deeper discharge state as many were stuck in traffic via OTA update. I don’t think it’s impossible that an OTA update could lead to a systems crash, resulting in a real world crash. I acknowledge that electric motors and batteries are the most efficient means of potential to kinetic transference, and look forward to access to cars that have replaceable batteries like my mower, chainsaws, trimmers. I want a car incapable of OTA or internet access, totally stand alone. Real user controls. and ownership. I would buy a new BEV that reduces cost via no screens, internet, or OTA, and think many would.
I wonder when the government will step in and say ‘you know ,actually we want every car connected so we can monitor things ”
I cant see it not happening 🙁
Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield of Transport Evolved brings up some extremely cogent points regarding the transition toTesla’s #NACS. One thing she makes clear is something automotive journalists (besides Kyle) I’ve read/watched seem to have missed, or have glossed over. NACS is not just about the hardware. NACS covers hardware, software, communications protocols and (I believe) backend processing. NACS belongs to Tesla. In my opinion, for the transition to NACS to successfully and smoothly proceed, Tesla will have to act as a responsible standards body. NACS will have to be responsibly managed like, for example, IEEE 802.11 or IPv6 are. Managed in a way that it doesn’t serve a single company’s interests. Is this a role a rapid iteration, “move fast & break things,” type company is ready for? What do you think? https://lnkd.in/eCMtk2fh
BTW, the Kyle I mentioned is Kyle Connor of Out of Spec reviews.
CharIN is looking at implementing NACS as a standard now, and they should be the responsible standards body. I’m hopeful that they will manage it in a neutral and fair manner.
Even though Tesla is a member of CharIN, they don’t have an amicable history with each other. I would not be surprised at all if Tesla and it’s growing collection of auto and charging partners (partners? clients? vassals? Just kidding.) create their own NACS standards body or an SSO (standards setting organization) like the W3C which is responsible for standards like HTML, CSS and XML. I also would not be surprised if SAE was tapped with the task since it no ties to either party. ANSI is also a possibility, it already has an Electric Vehicles Standards Panel. Still,Tesla forming its own standards body for NACS allows it to retain a good amount of control, and that, I think, is something Telsa (as a company used to rapid product iteration) would greatly prefer.
SAE or ANSI could certainly govern it, which would likely put an end to CharIN entirely. I’d be nervous about a new organization at this stage, unless you included all EV makers currently selling in the US from the start.
I’d prefer Tesla not have too much control over such a body, because moving fast and breaking things leans more and more toward just breaking things with increased variables, as a bunch of different manufacturers introduce.
Yep!!! Don’t want this to happen…
Piqued Celestique owner on the phone with their Celestique customer care executive, “My driver just pulled into a Supercharger and my $400,000 car would not charge! We had to search for a Cadillac dealer in Salt Lake to charge! Now I’ll be late pulling in to Sundance. What are you going to do about it?”
Customer care exec to whomever does GM <–> Tesla relations, “Help!”
Tesla to GM, “Oh yeah, we pushed an update last night. Tell them to update their car.”
Tesla chuckles to themselves, “I guess they should have bought 3 Model X with that money.”
tesla to gm, “poop emoji”
Tesla should bundle a move to the metric system with NACS, saying it doesn’t work with imperial standards, perhaps they would get more support that way. Heck if presented with the US adopting NACS & metric system, I might even vote for it to win.
As far as I know (and I’d love to be corrected if I’m wrong) every US automaker switched to the metric system decades ago. They convert to English units when communicating with the American public because, well, commie plot or world government or lizard people or some such.
But lets make it official. Also Tesla should say NACS doesn’t work with DST so we can get rid of that too.
The Technology Connections guy was speculating that Tesla is going to start talking CCS since they have to in Europe anyway. If that’s the case, the charger form factor and communication protocols could be decoupled.
Also, on a personal note as someone who deals with a lot of networking in his day job, I sincerely hope charging standards are not managed like IPv6. It’s a disaster of a standard for real world use. It’s an order of magnitude harder for people to understand and people already struggled with IPv4. /off-topic rant
I think the biggest success of the Tesla network is that they charging stations are maintained and actually work.
I can say, since having a plug-in hybrid again, I’ve run into many more non-working charging stations than working ones. The grocery store near me has 1 of 4 stations working, and it’s been that way for over a year. I was at a college last week, and they were old style Chargepoint stations where they had a Level 2 and then a protected 120V receptacle that you can lock your portable charger into. Only 1 of the 3 stations was working properly with the Level 2 cord and it was in use. I used my own Level 1 in the provided receptacle, and it locked like it was supposed to, but then when I was leaving I couldn’t get it to release my charger. I had to find a facilities person and I was pretty much stuck unless I wanted to leave my portable charger behind. They ended up getting one of the faculty that had an EV to help me, and the only way we got it unlocked was by him trying to start another charging session and then me starting one after. Since they were “off network” Chargepoint stations, there was no help available from Chargepoint. Luckily for me, when a charging station doesn’t work, I’m never counting on it.
I think the DC Fast Charge are a bit better maintained, but the Tesla system reliability and location are the biggest reason that I think other companies are moving toward NACS. I doubt the Tesla networks makes much money now, but I bet going forward it will be a larger and larger portion of Tesla profits.
Those Chargepoint stations, even on network, are generally owned by the property owner so its up to the property owner to deal with any maintenance. DCFast chargers are rarely owned by the property owner but its still possible.
Same with Tesla Destination chargers vs Superchargers. My problem with J1772 is the stupid lock on the handle and how easily it gets broken.
Complete vertical integration of an EV ecosystem makes it far easier to maintain. Bringing in outsiders will be challenging, perhaps even painful, or at least as easy or painful as Tesla wants to make it.
YES, Elon is absolutely our generations Henry Ford. I’ve said this before in these comments too. You don’t need to be an inventor or be a Nazi to be equivalent.
As much of a petulant douche that Elon is, lots of things today would not be without him and his drive to innovate.
FTR, I have always viewed it as such:
Inventors turn money into ideas, innovators turn ideas into money.
Ford got a medal from Adolf Hitler, so he wins any tie break.
Dunno.. who would be the current equivalent of Adolf? Would Xi and Trump count, since Elon’s a pal of both? Or should we wait for his inevitable Kremlin invite?
So is the switch to NACS going to result in better performance than CCS? Like, I’ve seen several of the EV charger companies mention that they’re adding NACS now, so are those going to be crap like their CCS plugged chargers, or is NACS going to solve that?
My understanding is that a big issue of CCS was related to the handshake between the vehicle and the charger. Tesla controlling that on both sides, more or less, eliminated that issue for Teslas. Will it be the same for non-tesla’s with NACS, or non-superchargers?
It’s not just the handshake but the credit card processing, app quality and then power being reduced on many CCS chargers. Going to NACS will not solve those problems. For all we know Tesla may have the same problems with third party vehicles but they don’t seem to have them in Europe. NACS integrates a lot of CCS communication standards already likely thanks to the EU mandate for CCS so it may make it easier.
To be fair the CCS networks have been improving over the last few months. Lots of new equipment is coming that performs better as well. Its still a new industry at scale.
The Ford and Elon comps are similar…but like everyone is already saying, at least Ford invented things. Elon hasn’t actually invented shit. All he’s done is thrown around piles of his family’s generational apartheid wealth to invest in things in the hopes of being ahead of the curve, more or less as his overgrown rich kid hobby.
And do you know what? That is something he’s actually quite good at. I can certainly give him that much. He was way ahead of the curve a couple times and has made himself incomprehensibly wealthy as a result. In this one, specific area, he is in fact very good at what he does.
But all he does is buy stuff, slap his name on it, and market it. He doesn’t invent. He doesn’t innovate. He’s not an actual engineer. He’s just an investor and marketer. Look at what happens when he actually takes total control of stuff (Twitter) and look what happens when he’s fairly hands off (SpaceX).
Ford innovated the assembly line, amongst other things. He may have been a horrendous ass of a human being and an unapologetic bigot with fascist leanings like Elon, but when it comes to making actual vehicles he was a legitimate genius. Elon is just a figurehead who has blank checks.
And yet they are choosing not to use them here. This is idiotic. So we’re going to effectively have 2 “world” standards. Why not just make everything CCS? Is there a limitation on CCS that NACS solves?
One more time. CCS in Europe is not the same as CCS in the US. The CCS plug is a worse standard for the US.
The CCS in Europe is a little different from the one here, but no, there isn’t a problem with CCS that NACS solves, unless you count a bit of extra bulk as a problem.
Also, there are more world standards, since China uses their own and Japan uses CHAdeMO.
Personally, I’ll just be glad to have any standard become the US standard just so that you can expect any EV to be on the standard.
This just makes me more annoyed. I’m with you. Give us one standard instead of all these different standards. I understand it’s the early days of it so it’s a bit everywhere but one solution would benefit all of us.
Elon is Elon, stop comparing him to others cause it moves him to a level he can’t be removed from. All the manufacturing/design innovation are not his inventions, simply his decisions for his company. Also it still remains to be seen if these innovations are truly here to stay and change the car industry forever, or are just a flash in the pan. Many companies are trying more buttonless approach to dash design and UI, but I foresee a future where these things start getting rejected by consumers when they have more choice of design in more electric vehicles.
Steve Jobs didn’t invent anything either. Sometimes it just takes someone who can drive the right people to perform to accomplish a goal. Someone with a vision. You are right, will all of Elons vision remain? Maybe not but he is responsible for modern EV adoption because Tesla made it easy from a user perspective.
What bothers me even more is the other comparison of him to Howard Hughes. He WISHES he was HH, at least the earlier part of his life.
Except for the part about Elon not having actually invented a fucking thing in his life.
I really want to see Rivian and Lucid succeed. Elon’s shit isn’t the only reason for that.
Elon Musk is more like the new Howard Hughes. The older he gets the more batshit crazy he is. Cybertruck may be his Spruce Goose.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c06hIXPxvwk
” I said hop in”
So, is he going to invent a new pushup bra, get momentarily into amateur golf tours, start a brewery, and make some movies before going into casinos? If so, I might actually come to like this Elon guy
I don’t think he’s getting crazier, he’s just less restrained. As for HH, no way. HH had balls and not only used them for things like flying his own aircraft, but he was women far beyond Elon in both quality and quantity.
Hughes’ problem was his untreated/self-medicated mental illness that was left to progress to a debilitating level, while an army of opportunistic yes-men kept him drugged and locked away and used his companies like their own personal ATM. Really sad, if he had more living close family members, or at least one or two close advisors who truly had his well-being at heart, things could have been different. He was only in his early 70s when he died, that’s like 50 in billionaire years.
Everyone yelling obscenities at each other about Elon feels real Old Lighting Site, so I’m going to pretend this is Thanksgiving dinner and change the subject with no segue.
Anyone got recommendations for good books for gearheads that aren’t actually about cars? As an example, I read A Man Called Ove last weekend, which I then described to a friend as being about “dealing with grief, filling voids in one’s life, the concept of the self as a function of others, and Saab ownership.” Cried three times reading the book cover to cover in one sitting.
Not at all car related but I just finished Blood Meridian and it’s probably my favorite book of all time. It’s profoundly bleak and a dense, slow read but it’s worth the journey. With McCarthy’s unfortunate passing yesterday now seems like a good time to celebrate his works.
The 99 Percent Invisible City: A Field Guide to the Hidden World of Everyday Design by Roman Mars and Kurt Kohlstedt is pretty spiffy. It contains no tear-jerking moments or gratuitous romantic interludes.
Red Moon Rising: Sputnik and the Hidden Rivalries that Ignited the Space Age by Matthew Brzezinski was eye-opening to me because I knew almost nothing about the USSR side of the space race. Perfect for nerds and gearheads of all types.
As goes the truism, the first step in solving any problem is recognizing there is one. I challenge the authors of The Morning Dump to go a week without mentioning Tesla in these fine Web pages.
OOOOOOH. 99PI is one of my favorite podcasts, hands down. I didn’t realize there was a book!
Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up To Me is my favorite adult book. Not about cars-though there is a road trip in it (and a slightly disturbing scene with a VW type 2)-but it reminds me of On The Road. A somewhat psychedelic journey of self-discovery.
No one (yet) who I have recommended it to has come back unhappy that they read it. I’ve given away at least 4 copies-happily.
Wizard of Oz, AKA Elon goes to Encino.
Not a book, but I just watched ‘Drive My Car’ this past weekend, a 2021 japanese movie featuring a Saab 900 Turbo. It was pretty awesome and I strongly recommend it.
Don Norman’s “Design of Everyday Things”, Persig’s “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance”
Just watched the movie adaptation starring Tom Hanks (A Man Called Otto), I liked it.
Sigh, this again.
I have no real affection for Elon Musk, but the idea that sending some weird tweets or holding apparently conservative views is in any way equivalent to publishing your own newspaper articles/book called “The International Jew: The World’s Foremost Problem” is pretty ridiculous.
Let’s keep a little perspective.
So two compared things (people in this instance) cannot be similar at all unless they are identical in severity? Ford, I would argue, is bigger in every way, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t any relevant similarities that are worthy of discussion.
Look, there’s obviously a large constituency here for groupthink about how much Elon Musk sucks, but it’s pretty tiring for those who would rather just not do it over and over again for the 1000th time. Yet here we go in another Flush. My fault for engaging in the first place of course, but it’s hard to believe there’s nothing else to talk about.
Yes. The perspective is this: Elon Musk demonstrably holds extremist beliefs in line with Nazi ideology, has vocally encouraged violence against minorities, has championed and participated in discrimination, uses his platform to amplify calls for violence against minorities and government officials, uses his platform to spread anti-Semitism and personally tweets anti-Semitic things, has repeatedly denied the existence of COVID-19, has repeatedly stated in clear terms that he is anti-LGBTQ+, routinely uses his cult to threaten and harass critics, and we’re not even started yet.
There’s your fucking perspective.
I mean, we are using computers to write this, which were hugely marketed and popularized (although certainly not invented) by IBM, who directly facilitated the Holocaust. People everywhere have awful beliefs and sometimes they are also rich. Knowing that someone is an ass…. what next? We still have to vote in elections, have jobs, and buy stuff.
A large part of my own visceral dislike for Elon is his total misunderstanding of how engineering and development tasks are even accomplished. He seems to equate ‘effort’ with ‘activities employees dislike’ and believes that increasing effort yields a proportional increase in results. And as someone who works in an IT-adjacent industry, that makes my blood run cold. It’s catnip for every single unqualified pencil pusher whose only contribution to an organization is nagging the hosts of their parasitical behaviour.
So I think anyone who has had that management experience is waiting with bated breath to see him finally get his comeuppance.
Knowing someone who controls a rather influential social media site holds these views is of some importance. Knowing it of someone who holds enormous wealth and the disproportionate power that comes with that is important. And, critically, we’ve been told ever since WWII that we should be on the lookout and not allow these ideologies to take hold.
As to your point that we still have to participate in society, sure. But that doesn’t mean we can’t criticize or try to improve it.
You’re not wrong about his unwillingness to understand project management or engineering, but you can certainly fault him for both that and his abhorrent views, especially with his outsized influence.
I honestly think the two issues are interrelated. And, perhaps pessimistically, I don’t think Elon is unusual at all amongst the 1% for his degree of prejudice. But I would observe that prejudice frequently operates through covert channels. And while people can deny their beliefs, we can hold them accountable for their actions.
For example: treating some employees worse than others because of bigoted preconceptions about who is lazy, hard-working, etc. We tolerate the vector of harm (unrealistic expectations in the workplace) because we have a cultural belief that rich people have a supernatural ability to ‘push’ others to accomplish goals. We basically endorse his idea that he’s better than other people, which is also the emotional root of prejudice.
If we didn’t treat him like a messiah for being in the right place at the right time I bet he would be way less vocal and confident in his dumb opinions.
You’re almost certainly right on the interconnectedness of the issues. And definitely right that a lot of 1% folks practicing a lot of prejudice, generally more covertly.
Sorry that I misunderstood what you were getting at. I think we are on the same page here.
Appreciate this. Better than I could have put it. Don’t forget he picks fucking weird names for his kids…
They are ALL going to tesla, eventually the government will probably mandate their tech as a standard to make the rest follow.
This is like the blue ray hd-dvd and 8 track vs tape etc…. Tesla won.
NACS may have standard in it’s name, but no one has considered it a “standard” outside of Tesla. It is not certified by a IEEE or any other electrical governing body. If it is to become the “standard” for US or anywhere else, then someone needs to properly certify and test it, as we know Tesla can’t be trusted.
I was thinking the same thing.
Yes, Tesla cannot be trusted. Its not like the NACS plug is in use anywhere or for any real duration of time. /s
CharIN is on board to make it a standard.
It has not seen significant use outside of Teslas, so there is definitely some room for testing and certification. Which CharIN plans to do. With a bunch of other companies getting involved in it, being sure they are all meeting the same standard will be important.