• thejml@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    Incase anyone wanted to know the timeline:

    Tesla was incorporated in July 2003 by Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning as Tesla Motors. The company’s name is a tribute to inventor and electrical engineer . In February 2004, via a $6.5 million investment, Elon Musk became the company’s largest shareholder. He became CEO in 2008.

    • jagged@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      There’s some irony that a company named after an overlooked inventor was founded by two overlooked inventors…

    • dan1101@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      $6.5 million

      For $6.5 million he became CEO of what became an $800 billion dollar company? That’s not bad.

  • DFTBA_FTW@lemmy.fmhy.ml
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    1 year ago

    There are a lot of reasons to dislike Musk, this is not one of them.

    When Elon came on board Tesla their business plan was to buy existing super cars and an existing electric drive train and then convert the super cars.

    This was all going to be done by hand in a workshop. They would do dozens of cars a year.

    Without Elon that’s what they would be doing, he was behind the transition to building their own vehicles on their production lines and volumes comparable to normal manufacturers.

    That’s why he won his lawsuit to be listed as a founder.

    • foobaz@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      No, that’s not how it went down. Watch this interview with them: https://youtu.be/eblPwXFb7TE

      They had the full plan laid out (start with expensive sports cars, then step by step move into mass market) and got Musk involved using it as a proposal.

    • toasteranimation@lemmy.worldOP
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      1 year ago

      The reason to dislike him in this instance is that he takes ALL the credit for the company’s success, never mentioning these two or Tesla’s beginnings

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        1 year ago

        By the sounds of it all they brought to it was the name and maybe some technical knowhow. Because everything else about their business seems to have been abandoned. The only way to get further off from “we’ll make electric conversions with preexisting parts” is to abandon electric cars as a whole.

        He may not deserve all of the credit, but it sounds like he deserves something north of 90% of it.

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      1 year ago

      On top of that, they’re both very rich now because of Tesla’s success. There’s really no reason to pity these guys.

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    1 year ago

    Muskrat just takes the credit and drums up some hype. I wonder what his newest unfeasible project will be? I bet it’s something safe and reliable!

    • elskertesla@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Musk has consistently proven himself to be a driving force behind the sustained success of every company under his leadership. Disparaging attitudes towards Elon seem to follow popular opinion rather than fact. While there’s plenty of justifiable criticism, the points frequently echoed here don’t contribute meaningfully to constructive discourse.

      Edit: The prevalence of downvotes simply underscores my argument. How does this platform distinguish itself from Reddit, when it harbors a similar degree of negativity and concerted downvoting targeted at individuals participating in earnest conversation?

      • mikeboltonshair@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Honestly though who gives a shit about Musk though? Do you personally admire him? He’s a rich guy that is good at managing, if that’s something to admire then I understand your comment, otherwise it’s just ball riding

        • Hawke@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          good at managing

          About that, have you seen twitter lately?

          It seems like his best management decisions have been to not touch anything.

          • mikeboltonshair@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            Lol it is pretty funny, Twitter is a garbage can anyway so it’s got the right guy at the helm

            But the person I replied to does have a point he has been good at what he’s got involved with minus twitter I’m just curious if that makes him admirable to that person

          • elskertesla@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            If you’ve followed Musk for some time you’d know there is a lot of noise around whatever he does. The Twitter saga is far from over and we don’t really know what the outcome will be for quite some time. It took Tesla 10 years to prove people wrong. Is Elon a saint? No. But he is good at letting the right people work toward a vision of the future that he sees possible.

            • elskertesla@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              I don’t admire his tweets or latest shenanigans, but I do admire his work in engineering and AI. In those specific fields, he is quite the visionary, knowing how to position the right people in the right places with a clear future goal in mind. More often than not, his foresight proves accurate. Specific examples of the engineering decisions and designs manifested in SpaceX or Tesla include innovations such as the Octovalve, Gigacasting, FSD computer, the reusability of Falcon 9 with landings, Merlin and Raptor rocket engines, and the general software architecture in Tesla cars. The list goes on for technology enthusiasts like me.

              You don’t have to appreciate everything about him — I certainly don’t — but as someone who loves technology, I can’t help but recognize how his vision has propelled America further into the future.

              Part of me wishes he had delved into nuclear science to solve fusion instead of purchasing Twitter. Perhaps, though, he’s past his prime.

            • bastion@lemmy.fmhy.ml
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              1 year ago

              Someone else here, but eh… …he’s ok. Like any human, he had some decent qualities and some crappy ones.

              People with obvious power show their flaws obviously, but nobody’s really fit to replace them, either. What you mostly get is ‘If i was rich, I would…’ …but the reality is, most of those people would cave, and the institutions they led would either fall apart or become rudderless and decay.

              Some people lead, and they do it until they crack, then they start to fall apart and others take over. Other people removed, and shove wedges in the cracks and say ‘we all knew he was an asshole all along!’ then elevate someone else that they’ll tear down later.

              The leaders are by no means golden, but they aren’t worse than the raise-up tear-down crowd, that’s for sure.

          • Viking_Hippie@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            You’re mistaking deserved scorn and ridicule for hate, a common tactic amongst people trying to defend ridiculous people.

      • Viking_Hippie@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Spouting absolute horseshit and then declaring that people not liking it is proof that you’re right is exactly what Alex Jones does. Please be better than Alex fucking Jones.

      • bastion@lemmy.fmhy.ml
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        Yeah, the reddit hate train is here. Choo Choo! We can’t hang people anymore because that’s not PC, but we sure as hell still have the hate for it! Let’s worship people one day and then burn them the next, blaming our disillusionment on someone else rather than on our own illusions!

      • Feweroptions@sh.itjust.works
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        1 year ago

        Salty Elon anti-simps are everywhere and will always downvote things. That isn’t really this platform’s fault.

        Big differences between reddit and here are:

        • The points don’t matter (and the rules are made up)
        • You don’t get banned from communities for wrongthink
        • Fuck u/spez

        Those are all great reasons for using Lemmy instead. Oh, plus the relative privacy.

      • really@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        I think this is the most reasonable take on musk that I have seen in a long time.

        Thanks.

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    1 year ago

    I hate elon as well but I have to give it to him, not everyone with money can scale a company like he did. People say elon’s dad was rich and he bought all the companies, this might be true but there are many people with rich dad’s but not everyone can take a company to a level where Tesla, spacex and others are.

    • RedditWanderer@lemmy.world
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      You’re saying that like he scaled it with profits. This is all taxpayer money and grifting.

      Tesla exploded during the start of EVs, and has only devalued since. SpaceX is run by crazy engineers, not Musk, and is all paid for by taxpayers and carbon offsets.

      Twitter is an example of a company where Musk is left at the helm, alone.

      • whereisk@lemmy.world
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        Elon maybe have done too many drugs because his discourse is completely different to a decade ago.

        He may always have been an asshole but he had some sense of proportion, in his public pronouncements at least.

        He either dropped the mask, or he has fucked himself up somehow. Possibly a bit of both.

        • givesomefucks@lemmy.world
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          Nah, it’s the result of “yes man” culture.

          He thought he was always right, because he thinks he’s smart.

          So if an employee disagreed with him, it’s because they weren’t smart. So he got rid of them and promoted people who would agree with them.

          After a couple years that means everyone around him would just agree and tell Elon he was a genius.

          With no constructive criticism, he’d start making wilder plans, and everyone would still call him a genius. And it just spirals.

          He went full Kanye, never go full Kanye.

        • asexualchangeling
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          I always figured it was a social networking addiction, combined with his fans replying to him and agreeing with everything he said constantly, some of whom are Nazis

        • Venomnik0@lemmy.world
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          I like to always think that it started because of that PewDiePie meme review he did. Random but it just felt like the start of all this.

    • Noughmad@programming.dev
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      This is all true:

      Not everyone with money could build two huge successful companies (and let’s face it, while he didn’t found Tesla, the company wouldn’t be this successful without him).

      Someone without money (as in, at least multiple millions) could never do this, no matter how talented.

      Elon Musk has repeatedly beaten the odds when everyone was telling him that it’s impossible or stupid. He did this at least 3 times. But this breaks a man. He starts to think that every idea of his is a good one, especially when everyone else is telling him it’s stupid. A good example is George Lucas, prequels and sequels were the way they were because he didn’t have to listen to anyone, so he didn’t.

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      1 year ago

      “and others” implying that you actually include twitter in that list?

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      “and others” implying that you actually include twitter in that list?

  • Lemmylaugh@lemmy.fmhy.ml
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    1 year ago

    In June 2009, Eberhard brought a lawsuit against Elon Musk for libel, slander, and breach of contract, alleging that Musk pushed him out of the company, publicly disparaged him, and compromised Tesla’s financial health.[16] In August 2009, Eberhard dropped the lawsuit for undisclosed reasons

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    Wait, I thought it was the same guy who invented Twitter and brought back free speech!?

  • Martineski@lemmy.fmhy.mlM
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    1 year ago

    I will be stepping down in ~7-14 days any suggestions on how to find someone that could take care of this community better than me? Thank you.

  • Kofu
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    1 year ago

    Me and all my homies hate elon…

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    The must be rolling in there… …Prius?

  • SpezBroughtMeHere@lemmy.world
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    So what you’re really trying to say is Elon bought a company, skyrocketed it’s profits and made the founders very rich. Sounds like a stand up guy.

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    And you dumbasses probably have a problem with them too because they have more money than you.

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      No, it’s not that. But also I want free stuff because I’m not cutting it in a dog eat dog world, man! Let’s eat the people who actually make anything happen, cause they own more widgets and floombozzles than me!

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    Anyone who thinks Mark and Martin deserve any credit for Tesla needs their head examined. They were nothing more than yes-men for Elon’s brilliant ideas. True innovators like Elon don’t need anybody else to help them succeed

    • LukeMedia@lemmy.world
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      So true! My dick sucking appointment for Elon is scheduled later today, seems you already got to it!

    • Alcor@slrpnk.net
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      I’m trying to be unbiased here, Mark and Martin from my reading deserve some credit for the initial creation of the company and vision but I’d agree that they have very little to do with where the company is now.

      Elon does play a big role, I don’t like his grandstanding and arrogant behaviour as much as the next person but to suggest otherwise would be foolish, I’m not sure how far beyond just his money and determination that contribution goes but it’s there.

      It is however also foolish to not mention people like Jb Straubel, Franz von Holzhausen and many others when talking about Teslas success, if there’s one thing Elon is good at it’s getting talented people excited about hard problems.

      One of the many problems with Elon is that he actively supports his portrayal as the lone technical genius who does most of the work instead of a guy who is very good at motivating (or sometimes threatening) talented people into working 80 hour weeks and also has a bit more technical understanding than the average CEO

      • RemembertheApollo@kbin.social
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        One of the many problems with Elon is that he actively supports his portrayal as the lone technical genius who does most of the work instead of a guy who is very good at motivating (or sometimes threatening) talented people into working 80 hour weeks and also has a bit more technical understanding than the average CEO

        This is the crux of it. Fanboys treat him like he does it all. Is he an educated person who has a far deeper knowledge of his company’s works than most CEOs? Unarguably, yes. He’s good at getting investors and he’s good at extracting work from employees. That’s what he does. He’s not here to save the world, he doesn’t build cars or spacecraft. He’s plainly here to be successful and make money, and if he could do it making something like an iPhone competitor or whatever it would be no different to him.

      • fuklu@lemmy.fmhy.ml
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        Thank you for posting a nuanced comment on this topic.

        Elon Musk strikes me a lot like Steve Jobs, a micromanager that is terrible to work for but gets shit done. Seeing him flail around with twitter definitely makes me question how he was successful with Tesla. He isn’t afraid to take risks, but I wonder what or who was able to counter balance him at Tesla to make that more successful. Maybe his ego was just not as big then.

      • fuklu@lemmy.fmhy.ml
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        I’m sad to see that group think is alive and well on lemmy, like on reddit, maybe even worse on some topics. On Elon Musk people just upvote hate and downvote anything that may even superficially seem counter to it. I wish downvoting was disabled so people can’t just mash it angrily but need to think more.

        People write that lemmy is full of “tankies”, which seems at least partially true to me? So dishonest right wing rich people get extra hate? I’m trying to get a feel for the community and was hoping it would be less emotional and tribal.