I’m a great admirer of what Elon Musk has done with SpaceX. With Tesla, not so much. The company should never have gotten a dime of federal loan guarantees, or support with tax credits. No one and no company should.
21 thoughts on “Is Tesla The Next Solyndra?”
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Now that the hype behind Tesla is coming to light, should we be concerned that Musk will take a fall, and SpaceX with him?
I don’t know what “take a fall” means. The Tesla could go under, but it wouldn’t affect SpaceX.
Given the political connections of the company, Tesla could fail in a bad way. In such a case, Musk may not end up free and clear of the failure – he could go broke, get black-balled, other not so good results.
Seems very unlikely but stranger things have happened.
More than just unlikely. Suppose Telsa not only fails but fails ugly. So what? So they decide to take away any government support of SpaceX? Great. That frees SpaceX to move forward without government entanglements. It’s looking more and more that, that is exactly what they should do.
The government is out of control. This is problem one.
The government is out of control. This is problem two.
The government is out of control. Uh… we should fix this.
Take away their power which resides in the tax codes. This is probably the number one reason for something like the fair tax. AZ is the only state that supported Forbes and his flat tax plan. Where was everybody else?
Are we really that prejudiced against an ugly president and first lady… too bad, we’ve got them anyway (ugly on the inside mostly, but mooch got back.)
Solyndra the bankrupt green jobs company, or Solyndra the government investment scandal and coverup?
Or both, I suppose…
OTOH, if your competitors are getting federal handouts (a huge loan for Nissan to build Leafs in Tennessee), you’re a fool not to try to get the same.
Right now their record of execution looks unusually good for a new car company (which is to say… not terrible). I was actually much more skeptical initially, but am now cautiously optimistic that they will ship a viable mid-volume car in 2012.
Don’t forget, Solar City also has government guarantee loans…
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-09-07/solarcity-gets-u-s-guarantee-for-1-billion-military-solar-plan.html
I for one hope that both Telsa and Solar City are very successful.
Make E said: OTOH, if your competitors are getting federal handouts (a huge loan for Nissan to build Leafs in Tennessee), you’re a fool not to try to get the same.
Or you can go the Ford route and advertise that your product was produced without a cent of Federal handout.
Either alternative is viable.
I’ve always thought the AGW thing was Al Gore’s attempt at creating the equivalent of what the defense industry used to be for Republicans. A politically significant government supported slice of the private sector whose monetary interests are parallel to the Democrat agenda. The important thing was to make eco-policy as important as defense policy. AGW does that as long as you can get the public to buy into “the science is settled”.
Some of the comments leveled at Musk regarding his ego do seem to hit the mark. I know I have cringed at times listening to Musk talk about the rocket that “he” designed, or some technical problem “he” solved. Not much use of the word “we”. I’m sure he is a smart guy, but he’s no VonBraun. Still, it takes ego and balls to pull off what he is trying. I was hoping to see him dump his Tesla shares after the IPO and focus on SpaceX.
Ha! Talk to some of the engineers at SpaceX sometime. They’ll tell you that they’re happy Elon takes credit for designing the rockets because they would have done it much much differently. Some large proportion of those I have spoken to still think the Falcon Heavy will never get off the pad. When it does, there will be cheers and admiration for a man who throws the rule book out the window.
That’s an interesting comment…”much differently.” Could one really design the Falcon 9 “much differently” within that payload class and basic design strictures (2-stage LOX/hydrocarbon rocket)? If memory serves, it is just a friction stir welded aluminum lithium pressure vessel with gimballed gas generator rocket engines on the bottom. Sounds pretty standard to me, very similar to what ULA is doing. The SpaceX magic would appear to be in the manufacturing and cost areas.
Hint: 9 engines.. 27 on the Heavy, with three hold down systems that have to open simultaneously or the vehicle will rip apart on the pad.
I know I have cringed at times listening to Musk talk about the rocket that “he” designed, or some technical problem “he” solved.
Do you have a link for that?
My first memory of it is from the second F9 post flight press conf. when he was sleep deprived and highly caffeinated. The second was the F9 heavy press club interview. I’ll try to find the clips and watch them again.
Again, I wish him and SpaceX well. Just sayin excess ego can unbalance something as delicately brutal as spaceflight.
My boss talks the same way. I’ll hear him tell a customer, “I can print this here, then I can perf it there, then I can number it, etc.”
He probably can do those things, but in actual practice it’s us employees who do it.
Sadly, this is the same crony capitalism done by both parties but with media cover done more often by democrats that have no ideological objection.
Ironically, class warfare acts as a smokescreen that allows it to continue.
It’s interesting to me that Tesla started with the expensive vehicle where SpaceX went with the less expensive vehicle first. Both choices make perfect sense. Now Telsa will have to execute well with a more popular vehicle. Hopefully they will do well, but the government shouldn’t be involved.
People can pooh pooh his ideas and designs all they want, but no one is getting us closer to settling this solar system. Others will hopefully follow his lead once he shows there’s profit in it.
The next lunar buggy is going to be a Telsa Roadster!
I hope you are right Ken. I don’t know enough to pooh pooh his designs, his or not his, but the criticisms that seem to stick the most are more the systems design choices. (i.e. a 27 engine Heavy), and the aggressive marketing hype for so many new concepts. (re-usable 1st & 2cd stage, vertical powered landing of the capsule, Red Dragon, etc. F9 heavy) I hope these concepts do not distract SpaceX from the extremely important COTS flight coming up, and the need to get 10 or so successful commercial F9 launches behind them. The other stuff can wait. However I think SpaceX deserves generous slack on the marketing hype. You gotta not hate on the player, but hate on the game. SpaceX is unavoidably caught up in the need to tweak the massively inefficient NASA vendor base, as budget outlays for the next decade are being defined for the SLS, and DOD flight manifests are sole sourced to ULA.
It is definitely true that he’s trying to win in a rigged game. We worry because it has to be played so close to the edge but overall he’s seems to be able to do that.
He has his manifest, current profits, but also his burn rate. That burn rate is in anticipation of a breakout which will come when he get’s through the current log jam and gets his flight rate to overtake the burn rate.
It’s bold and risky. He could have gone the route of others and took a less risky path …we wouldn’t have the F1, F9 or Dragon. We might not even have the Merlin.
But here he now is with over 1500 employees and lots of infrastructure (he needs more to handle his manifest which will balloon once he starts executing.)
We can all hold our breaths but I feel good about his chances.
Ken, you said “crony capitalism” in a comment about SpaceX. The thread is doomed! Pray that he who shall not be named didn’t sense the disturbance.
Reality is a bitch. Our govt. runs on cronyism. This is why we need to elect twice as many tea party representatives as we actually need since the system is sure to corrupt a large percentage of them.