• Optional@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    “However, in 2024, I do believe it’s well past time to Elon to step aside. The lack of focus on the core business is hurting the company’s long-term prospects, especially in China, where there is a huge amount of competition, and those companies are redesigning products every two years,” Abuelsamid said.

    . . . Just don’t expect it to happen. “Unfortunately, Tesla has effectively no corporate governance from its board full of Musk cronies, and he will never acknowledge when he has made a mistake and will thus not step aside,” Abuelsamid said.

    Death it is, then.

    • inclementimmigrant@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      And it’s be okay with that honestly.

      Sure he’s an asshole, always was, but his money got the electric car competition started and now there’s actually viable cars and a somewhat competitive market that could survive the loss of Tesla.

      • lemmyvore@feddit.nl
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        8 months ago

        That’s like saying that Apple started the home computer competition going.

        There’s a big difference between bucking trends and skipping steps for the sake of being different, and actually moving the industry forward.

        Under a non-sociopathic leadership Tesla battery and engine tech would have been in most Western car brands by now.

        Instead, let’s look at what Tesla has really brought us:

        • electric tech that’s today just one (rather unremarkable) version among many;
        • failing cruising tech (I don’t even want to use “self driving” because that’s pure marketing drivel);
        • abysmal build quality and customer support;
        • rising car and insurance prices;
        • lots of car tech moved from hardware into software, which means surveillance, lower quality, lower usability and ergonomy;
        • and last but not least a whole lot of shirking responsibility.

        That’s the Tesla legacy that the car industry has inherited.

        • captainlezbian@lemmy.world
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          8 months ago

          Tesla’s biggest move was that they were willing to actually compete with an EV. GM released one in the 90s and seriously go look into it. Everyone who bought it fucking loved the thing. But gm killed the project and destroyed the vehicles.

          Tesla actually took sales away from ices. That forced them to actually sell evs

      • 1984@lemmy.today
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        8 months ago

        I agree with that. He started the entire thing and that’s great, but now he should move on.

        • atrielienz@lemmy.world
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          8 months ago

          GM made an electric car in 1996 (the EV1). It even has a random cult following to this day. Tesla’s original founders sort of re-jumpstarted the electric car with new branding but we’ve been making electric cars for a long time. Range, cost, and infrastructure is what held us back not competition. Now we have the infrastructure (which I will say is what Tesla has largely given us, and what should be the way forward for their business model). The Nissan Leaf was the best selling electric vehicle of all time when Tesla launched the roadster (that same year). The problem really is that most car companies are bad at marketing electric cars to this day. In 2012 Ford launched an all electric Ford Focus. Just about nobody knew about it.

          He did not start the entire thing and I’m sick of hearing people say that. He took a company from other people and ran it into the ground both by hemorrhaging money and with poorer and poorer build quality and I am quite literally sick of his face.

    • protist
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      8 months ago

      That last sentence stuck out to me too, a simple summary of all this mess. The other interesting part was at the end of the article, where they talk about the potential for the NHTSA requiring a recall fix for the “autopilot” feature that would be so expensive as to seriously damage the company:

      The scenario there is if the government is really serious about Autopilot, and frankly, I don’t remember the last time NHTSA investigated the efficacy of a recall remedy… he knows that NHTSA is insisting on a hardware fix for Autopilot and FSD," Niedermeyer said, referencing the auto safety regulator’s unusual decision to apply extra scrutiny to Tesla’s 2-million-car safety recall, announced last week.

      With 2 million affected cars on the road, any fix that requires hardware—adding back radar, perhaps, or infrared gaze-tracking driver monitoring, wouldn’t be cheap or quick to complete. “If NHTSA demands a level of remedy to problems that can’t simply be done affordably… then it’s a negative margin business with no way out. And that’s a problem you can’t just spend your way out of,” Niedermeyer said.

      • Optional@lemmy.world
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        8 months ago

        Right! Like he knows the jig is up so he’s pulling out all his capital now to let the memestock fanbois take the fall. God forbid anyone rich ever suffer consequences.

    • APassenger@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      Someone with deep pockets needs to buy the super charging network.

      Rebrand and keep building.

      I’m pretty sure there’s a path to wealth in that idea. I have neither the means nor the skill. But some does. Just not Musk.

      • barsquid@lemmy.world
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        8 months ago

        Someone needs to eminent domain the super charging network and run it as a service or at worst a utility.