Underneath my recent article “Hating on Tesla vs. Objective Realism,” unsurprisingly, there were several great responses. A couple of them were on the long side and quite well thought out and expressed, so I’m republishing them here. The first is from Larry Evans and the second is from Username Taycan. Thank you for the contributions.
By Larry Evans
Tesla has benefitted for too long from irrational support. People’s perception of reality became distorted. Objective realism is interpreted as hate because of that distorted perspective.
Spending ~$1B in state support for solar manufacturing that had total economic output that amounted to 20% of the state spending does not objectively make sense. Having NY starting to ask Tesla to do what they agreed to in order to get the state support is not irrational hate.
Giving one company a contract to install chargers on state property that only their vehicles can use is not objectively fair. Tesla never updated their chargers to allow other vehicles access. Having Tesla remove those chargers to be replaced by chargers that can be used by vehicles from all automakers in NJ is not “corruption” or irrational hate.
A price to earnings ratio (P/E) over 200 for a company with declining sales, revenue, margins and earnings does not make objective sense. In other words, a company that will take over two centuries at the current rate of earnings per share for those earnings to add up to the share price. Over 10 times the P/E of companies that are growing. A company that would be losing money without subsidies. An objective view of the competitive landscape does not show them ahead on emerging tech. Saying Tesla’s share price is overvalued is not irrational hate.
Tesla has benefited for too long from an irrational love that has too many projecting their values and morality onto a company led by a morally corrupt individual. Saying that Tesla needs a correction is not irrational hate.
On a certain level, people who have unobjectively loved and have had their faith betrayed deserve to hate their betrayers… at least for a while. But they eventually need to move forward.
We should move on to focus more on other clean tech companies.
By Username Taycan
In the past couple of years, though…
When was Tesla’s last successful product launch? When was it Tesla was reopening its factory in defiance of local authorities? That Covid denial tweet, or the Pedo-guy incident, or funding secured, or ‘SEC, three letter acronym, middle word is Elon’s’, Elon failing to disclose Twitter share purchases on time, which the SEC is still somehow investigating, or accidentally buying Twitter…
Unfortunately, and to the apparent surprise of many, it turns out letting a 7 year old edgelord run your company in to the ground may not have been the superlative business decision some had assumed it would be.
The damage is becoming so obvious even many of the previously devout can’t deny it, but it was done over years and years of catastrophic mismanagement. Now, as the BEV sector takes off, should be when the hard work Tesla put in over the last decade should come to fruition, putting them front and centre in the maturing industry.
In the past couple of years my foot!
Fair points.
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