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macrocephalic ,

Imagine if they had instead hired 500,000 people on $100,000 each. They could have bought the entire city of Detroit and had it making Teslas, instead they’ve got one coked up narcissist.

Aux ,

Musk is not getting billions worth salary. You can’t hire 500,000 people using his package. Unless you believe that these workers should be eating shares instead of food.

asdfasdfasdf ,

Once the shares vest then he can get the money. The point still stands, just not immediately.

Aux ,

The point doesn’t stand, because you can’t get 500,000 people.

technocrit ,

Why not? People once believed that you couldn’t get $56b just for one person.

Aux ,

Ok, imagine the following scenario. Tesla decides not to pay Musk and hire all these people instead. Would you join the workforce? They will give you share options with a three year vesting period and zero salary. Go on, join them on these conditions!

PersnickityPenguin ,

There is currently a huge labor shortage in the united states, particularly for engineers and skilled craft and trades people. There’s no fucking way they would be able to hire 10,000, let alone 500,000 people. Hell, my company has had two engineering positions open for 2 years and we have had zero applicants. Zero!

Everybody just wants to be retired or be a social media influencer these days, with that amazing side hustle as a door dasher.

sugar_in_your_tea ,

It is a hard labor market, but we’ve been able to hire engineering positions. If you’re not getting applicants, get a better recruiter.

The real issue is our backwards immigration system. We should be expanding immigration when labor is short, not talking about restrictions. If they wanted, they could lobby for better immigration with that $56B instead of giving it to someone who already has hundreds of billions.

Also, many Teslas aren’t built in the US anyway, so there’s not much stopping them from looking elsewhere for labor.

tankplanker ,

You can offer shares to employees to supplement salary, its very common. It could be used to attract or retain staff by offering less salary but a larger overall package than their rivals and tie in the employees for a period of time till the shares vest.

Aux ,

Yeah, but not 500,000 of them.

technocrit ,

Much more than one though.

MataVatnik ,
@MataVatnik@lemmy.world avatar

Even if the shares drop by 90% of their value after distribution and liquidation, that’s still 50,000 people you could pay 100,000.

Aux ,

Lol, ook.

ShepherdPie ,

Bruh, it’s just basic math.

Aux ,

facepalm

Venator ,

It’s still incredibly stupid to dilute your own votes and give him more votes…

They could also sell shares to raise money to hire more people…

Aux ,

Moving goalposts now?

Venator ,

youtu.be/q_1yJFP4jjs

PersnickityPenguin ,

I’ve read that all they’re doing is diluting the current shares, so in essence the current shareholders are screwing themselves over by devaluing their own shares.

Pretty dumb

dependencyinjection ,

How is this company still so valuable.

I would buy literally any other electric car than a Tesla.

madcaesar ,

They have a huge head start. And their battery tech is top notch even if the rest of the vehicle is poorly build.

I’d personally never buy one either, for multiple reasons, but most people don’t care/know about the shitty build quality, the shitty ai and the scummy locking features down remotely when you sell the car.

dependencyinjection ,

Is the battery tech that good though? Genuinely don’t know.

Seems other manufacturers have a huge head start in every other area of manufacturing cars and even if they still lag behind on battery tech, it won’t be long before they catch up on this one metric, whereas Tesla would have to catch up on every other metric.

madcaesar ,

It is. Their cooling / heating system along with the battery is top notch. Others are catching up though.

And yes in terms of fit and build quality most actual car manufacturers are ahead.

Of course you also have Ford an ICE manufacturer that’s been building cars for centuries and still manages to produce shit with awful QA and constant recalls.

icedterminal ,

The battery is sourced from Ganfeng Lithium, CATL, Panasonic, and/or LG Chemical. The majority actually comes from CATL. The world’s leading EV battery manufacturer. Various automakers work with them. The cells arrive at the automakers manufacturing and all they do is pack it into a case. The statement they have leading battery tech is disingenuous. No matter which automaker you look at, they’re using the same cells from the same sources.

Due to a bunch of political mess with China, both CATL and automakers are trying to get around it. reuters.com/…/catl-talks-with-tesla-global-automa…

Lastly, Tesla isn’t ahead. China is. It’s why automakers are going to them. Credit where it’s due, Tesla did push for EV adoption outside of China. But that’s about it.

dependencyinjection ,

Hey OP here, thanks for pointing this out to me as I had no clue if the other person was right or not.

Jakeroxs ,

I don’t think it’s as cut and dry as you’re saying insideevs.com/…/batteries-tesla-using-electric-ca…

Audacious ,

Most battery tech is just lithium ion batteries wired in series, like 80 laptop batteries. They regulate the temps so that the batteries don’t degrade too fast. Battery tech hasn’t changed much in decades, so you will see the same problems on your phone battery on car batteries. So, no, Tesla battery tech isn’t special.

I recently heard china is the first to manufacture sodium ion batteries for their consumer EVs. Sodium is supposed to be better, but I forget why.

dependencyinjection ,

Thanks for providing these details.

I guess Tesla really has nothing going for them now, other than investors want to get their money back and so the MSM isn’t going to portray the truth.

PersnickityPenguin ,

That’s not true, Tesla has figured out manufacturing and does so profitably. Unlike any other American based car manufacturer, Tesla is making a profit per unit and they do not rely on legacy ice vehicle sales to prop their balance sheets up.

dependencyinjection ,

Pretty much every Tesla has issues with the quality control.

Twista713 ,

IIRC, the reason sodium batteries would be better is we have abundant stocks of sodium, whereas the raw materials for most other batteries are limited and require more destructive mining. John Oliver just covered some of this on his show last Sunday. If that tech can be improved, hopefully there won’t be any deep sea mining for more raw materials!

MataVatnik ,
@MataVatnik@lemmy.world avatar

Really dubious on the sodium ion batteries. Last I saw there were still issues with the technology, primarily battery life. Unless there were some breakthroughs thay went under the radar.

PersnickityPenguin ,

Sodium ion batteries are actually currently in production, and are in production vehicles by catl and other companies. There is an American and European company also commercializing the technology.

They are offering roughly 3,000 charge-discharge cycles, which is on par with lfp.

Battery technology for electric vehicles is moving super fast right now.

electrek.co/…/volkswagen-backed-ev-maker-first-so…

ShepherdPie ,

Sodium batteries are cheaper and less volatile I believe but they’re also much less energy dense meaning you need a heavier pack to get a similar amount of range (which also reduces range from the extra weight). I think they’re better suited for stationary applications like solar banks and other energy storage solutions.

PersnickityPenguin ,

EV batteries are actually significantly different than the batteries in your laptop or phone, and are designed to have minimal degradation over many many years of use. The coolant loops also help to moderate the temperature between cells, which eliminates problems of hot spots and the heat stress that a phone battery will experience.

For instance, my car has over 300 battery cells in it, which results in say a 100 MI Drive will only use each cell draining by about 1/3. The much lower cyclic rate on these cells results in a much longer lifespan, and the battery conditioning using liquid coolant is how they achieve that.

frezik ,

It was 5 years ago. Other companies are catching up.

One place they aren’t catching up is non-SUV EVs. There are a few, but if you want an EV that isn’t an SUV with over 250mi range, and cross Tesla off the list, your options become real thin.

A7thStone , (edited )

Options were really thin to begin with. Muricans love their huge ugly boxes. The options are getting much better now. With a quick search I found ten sedans shapeable in the states and crossing off Tesla removed three.

frezik ,

But a lot of those sedans have range around 120mi, like the Mini EV or BMW i3. Many of the one’s that remain are luxury brands with luxury prices, like the BMW i7 or Porsche Taycan.

A7thStone ,

I specifically did a search for EVs with over 250 mile range, because that was your qualifier.

PersnickityPenguin ,

I’m sure there are more than 10 sedan models available in the united states, did you look at Mercedes and bmw? They should have a few models.

PersnickityPenguin ,

Kia, Hyundai, BMW, Porsche, Volvo, Mercedes, VW, Polestar, to name a few.

A7thStone ,

And you don’t consider tesla a luxury brand with luxury prices?

frezik ,

Compared to Porsche, or BMWs over an i3 size? No.

Poem_for_your_sprog ,

Isn’t it just a standard Panasonic 18650? And aren’t they changing their batteries to a Chinese brand?

ShepherdPie ,

Looks like only the S and X still use 18650s. The 3 and Y are using larger 2170 cells and apparently they’re also buying from LG not just Panasonic.

PersnickityPenguin ,

Some use the larger cells, but not all. They apparently are a bust and don’t offer increased energy density like they had originally claimed.

The lfp cells come from China, and are now being heavily taxed.

jubilationtcornpone ,

There’s a big difference between the market capitalization and book value. Tesla’s stock is probably way overvalued but I can’t say for sure since I don’t own any of their stock and haven’t looked into their financials.

PersnickityPenguin ,

They have the premier charging network in the United States.

Unfortunately, nothing else comes close and probably won’t for a few years… Like 10 years at least. The US is probably a decade behind Europe’s electrification at this point, and about 75 years behind it’s rail electrification.

Kolanaki ,
@Kolanaki@yiffit.net avatar

I’ve never even seen a Tesla Supercharger in the same state they build these things in, other than around the plant in Fremont when I worked there. Plenty of non-Tesla ones, though.

ulkesh ,
@ulkesh@lemmy.world avatar

Insane. No one person should have, or deserve, 56 billion dollars. And especially this piece of shit.

SirEDCaLot ,

You’re acting like this was his standard salary. It wasn’t. His contact, approved by shareholders at the time, basically offered him a King’s ransom for an impossible miracle, defined with metrics like sales and stock price. Elon delivered the miracle. Love him or hate him, the conditions were met.

ulkesh ,
@ulkesh@lemmy.world avatar

I never once said it was his standard salary nor did I allude to such.

Elon did nothing. The workers at Tesla did everything. Such a sad state of the world when people like him are so revered for one thing — having money. And it’s even sadder that people equate that to having intelligence or actually producing anything. The reason the shareholders approved this is because they see him as a way for themselves to make more money. It’s pure greed all around.

So I reiterate just in case it was confusing the first time around — Insane. No one person should have, or deserve, 56 billion dollars. And especially this piece of shit.

P1nkman ,

This is exactly what capitalism is: someone who’s idle makes more money than the actual workers. Fuck capitalism!!!

SirEDCaLot ,

If you really think he did nothing at all, then you have absolutely no understanding of how business works or how Tesla works. It’s like saying the ship doesn’t need a captain because the captain doesn’t personally operate or clean a part of the ship.

You are right that it is greed. But that is the very point. That is how our economy works. That is how our government works too. The whole point of checks and balances in the US Constitution is that people are expected to be greedy. Rather than rely on a king to be altruistic, it is expected that people at every level will be greedy so their greed is balanced against the greed of others. Same thing is true with our economy, the whole point of capitalist economy is it harnesses the greed of everybody to move things forward. Investors provide capital because they are greedy and want a return on their investment. Their greed is harnessed and put to work, This benefits all by providing a rich market of investment capital for businesses to use. And because they are greedy, because those investors have partial ownership of the company, they affect its direction.

It’s not always perfect. Lately far too many business decisions are made based solely on next quarter results at the cost of long-term success, and that is driven by short-term investors. Boeing is a perfect example of that.

But to write the whole system off and say it’s all greed and it all sucks and it’s all stupid reflects a fundamental lack of understanding how the economy works.

If you want an economy without greed, the best you’re probably going to find is communism. That’s been tried, it doesn’t usually work so well because without a greed incentive pushing things forward, there isn’t incentive to innovate or to work at maximum efficiency.

And as for Elon’s windfall, I think it’s fair to say nobody needs $56 billion. I definitely support a much higher tax rate for the extreme upper income brackets. If you are making more than 50 or 100 million a year income above that should be taxed at a pretty high rate. I am extremely against the extreme income inequality that has happened in this country. When the CEO is making hundreds of millions and the guy mopping the floor relies on government assistance to afford food, something is seriously fucked up. But I think the solution to that is to bring up the lower guy, raise the minimum wage by a fairly significant amount. I think in most places minimum wage should be ¢15 or $20 an hour. And I also favor a prohibition that if any of the companies employees rely on government assistance the company loses all tax breaks and government benefits.

ulkesh ,
@ulkesh@lemmy.world avatar

No I understand economy just fine. I understand that I’m spending double (or more) on groceries than what I spent a mere five years ago which vastly exceeds inflation. I understand that businesses don’t actually need a captain as you describe, but that is a concept difficult for most to realize. And I also understand that there exists multiple businesses that have such captains that actually do hard work and do provide more than just dividends and interest to a shareholder.

Musk is a parasite on the world.

And it’s okay if you don’t like what I say. :)

SirEDCaLot , (edited )

Please don’t take what I said as a suggestion that what we have right now is great. Like anything, capitalism requires checks and balances. In my opinion the heyday of modern capitalism was the mid to late 1900s, because industry was operating at full efficiency but regulation also insured that the average person was able to benefit from that. All three factors of production, land labor and capital, all had a seat at the table.

We have moved a good distance away from that. Capital dominates the conversation, land has made some advances in the form of environmental protection, but labor still takes a distant back seat. And so you get ridiculous situations like a company gets hundreds of millions in tax breaks and subsidies while the CEO gets paid hundreds of millions and the guy who mops the floor is on food stamps. I don’t see this as good capitalism. Labor needs a bigger seat at the table. If a business cannot afford to survive without paying ALL their workers a living wage that allows upward mobility, that business does not deserve to survive. As I see it, that is part of the very base of capitalism.

That said, your suggestion that businesses don’t need a leader is a ridiculous socialist/communist fantasy that doesn’t actually work in reality. Take an established business like McDonald’s. From where you sit it probably looks like it doesn’t need a leader, it just keeps going on its own. But who decides how much the burgers cost? Who decides when to introduce new menu items? Who decides what the promotions will be? Who decides what market segments will they focus on? Who decides whether their next new product will be a salad or a triple cheeseburger? And if you’re going to say middle managers can make these decisions, who decides who those middle managers are?

For what it’s worth, I’m a big fan of employee owned corporations. That doesn’t always work in every segment, but I wish there were a lot more of them. But even an employee own corporation has a CEO, the CEO is just selected by the employees.

As for Elon, your suggestion that he has done nothing shows that you are uninformed. The reason he is not listed as an original founder of Tesla is because of the handful of people who founded it, one already had a business registered and it was cheaper for everybody to buy into that than pay to have it dissolved and pay again to register a new business. I have actually been following them very closely more or less since they started, so I know this better than most. In the early days Tesla was headed by a guy named Martin Eberhard and Elon was just an investor. Eberhard insisted on a design with a two-speed gearbox. This is extremely difficult in an electric car because of the high amounts of torque and extremely high RPMs involved. They went through a couple different versions of this, trying to get one that would last the life of a car, and burned a year or so trying to make it work. If you dig through the archives, you’ll find several news articles of journalists who got to drive the original Roadster, but it was locked in second gear because the shifting didn’t work. Eventually, Elon realized this wasn’t going to work so him and the other investors pushed Eberhard out. There was no love lost, Eberhard fought back, eventually they came to a settlement and Elon became CEO. Please understand I’m not saying this because I like Elon, I’m saying it because I was literally reading the blogs of both sides as it happened. The two-speed gearbox went right in the trash, they went to the one speed reduction gear Tesla uses today, and upsized the motor to give better acceleration. Elon was right about that decision, and he was the one who made that decision, all EVs today use that design.

As for SpaceX, Elon basically started that from the ground up. As I recall the guy who designed the Merlin engine was his first hire. I personally know people who worked for SpaceX and worked directly with Elon. Everyone I’ve talked to says the same thing- Elon is kind of an asshole to his employees, he has absolutely no sense of work-life balance and he wants employees who are 120% committed to the cause and will work late nights and weekends without complaint, he is opinionated and stubborn but in the end he’s right more often than not, but however hard he pushes his people, he pushes himself even harder. Most people don’t last very long in that environment, they put in a handful of years and when their stock options vest they quit, or if they don’t have equity they work until they have a family and can’t put in 60 hour weeks anymore then they quit.

So you want to say Elon is an asshole, you want to say he treats his employees badly, you want to say he doesn’t create a positive environment at his company’s, I will probably agree with all of these things. But you say he doesn’t do anything of value, that is just uninformed.

ulkesh ,
@ulkesh@lemmy.world avatar

You seem quite passionate about this and I’ve moved on. But yes, Musk is a parasite on this world because he takes and literally does nothing to give back.

Again, it’s cool you think I’m misinformed. I’m not, but no worries. Have a good one!

SirEDCaLot ,

There is no one so ignorant, as someone who is quite sure they know all they need to.

I would encourage you to study the writings of your enemies as well as your friends. I have found it most useful.

Have a good one!

ulkesh ,
@ulkesh@lemmy.world avatar

I know quite enough about Musk. I also know myself and calling me ignorant is rather presumptuous. But I get the sense that you like to attempt to correct others a lot, especially those you think are less learned when we simply don’t require it because we’re not actually wrong or misinformed. What you see as ignorance is simply that one can be both learned, and also hold a strong opinion about someone based on evidence of their behavior and their actions or inactions.

Just because you don’t agree with such an opinion does not mean we somehow are less educated about a subject.

It really is okay. You can continue on thinking I’m dumb :)

This will be my last reply to you. I appreciate your passion.

FreakinSteve ,

Every bit of that is completely insane whether accurate or not. Musk is 100% fraud and gas no accomplished anything. All he did was put up money and name himself founder, and all this dies is further prove that stocks are a complete fucking sham amd have nothing at all to do with company performance.

SirEDCaLot ,

Please see my reply to ulkesh here

answersplease77 ,

is it his yearly bonus? I can’t seem to understand it because of so he is leeching and crippling the shit out of tesla

ulkesh ,
@ulkesh@lemmy.world avatar

I don’t think so. I think it’s a one-time compensation package at present, but I could be wrong.

I don’t understand it because that money could go to the actual people doing the actual work — and I’m quite sure they deserve it and could use it far more than Musk.

muntedcrocodile ,

The primary purpose of a company is to make the shareholders happy if he’s doing that then i guess what’s there to complain about

Sterile_Technique ,
@Sterile_Technique@lemmy.world avatar

When a dragon hoards the people’s gold, the solution isn’t to give it more gold.

MyOpinion ,

A terrible choice by investors, but it is their money they are wasting and they are welcome to do so.

demizerone ,

I def voted no with my three shares.

Serinus ,

You mean your 1.5 shares. Wait, no, it’ll still be three shares, they’ll just be worth 1.5 current shares.

demizerone ,

Facts!

kokesh ,
@kokesh@lemmy.world avatar

Great thing to do when they have to fire people, because the company goes to shit.

ripcord ,
@ripcord@lemmy.world avatar

Mothergodfuckingdammit what is wrong with people

answersplease77 ,

his followers are a celebrity cult. same ones who used to worship steve jobs balls

pHr34kY ,

That’s like, a million people’s wages. Absurd.

ripcord ,
@ripcord@lemmy.world avatar

It’s far, far more money than all the people he just laid off because he “had no other choice”

RedditWanderer ,

I like to compare these amounts as time.

1 million seconds is about 11 days. 1 billion seconds is almost 32 years.

Buffalox , (edited )

according to a social media post by Musk himself

Very few in the comments seems to have noticed this pretty crucial part.
Let’s wait and see the actual result.

Edit:

Ah well, they actually went ahead and did it. Good for Musk I guess, I doubt it’s good for anybody else.

Nougat ,

Musk owns more than 20% of Tesla stock.

While some investors remained silent on their voting position, Tesla's largest shareholders, including Vanguard Group, BlackRock, and State Street, collectively holding roughly 17% of Tesla's stock, abstained from public comment. The full voting breakdown will be revealed during a Tesla shareholder meeting in Austin.

One, what an AI-written paragraph: "While some ... remained silent ... [others] abstained from public comment." Aren't those the same thing?

Two, this is all just a bunch of rich motherfuckers deciding how much of an insane amount of wealth to give to one of them. Where'd they get that money? Customers.

Imagine how competitive an electric car company could be if it wasn't just a front for shuffling vast sums of money around between people who already have more money than they could ever spend.

Eggyhead ,

One, what an AI-written paragraph: "While some ... remained silent ... [others] abstained from public comment." Aren't those the same thing?

Yes, but it works. The emphasis is that all of the richest were silent instead of just some, which was the case for the rest of the shareholders. We hate repeating words in general English (which is why we have such a ridiculous amount of vocabulary), so “silent” was replaced the second time.

Still awkwardly worded, though, so you might be right with the AI thing.

Tarquinn2049 ,

It depends if “public comment” is akin to going on the record. Then staying silent means they didn’t say anything, and not making a public comment means they said something to us that we promised not to make public.

Saying something not on the record is actually pretty common. And is most of what private sources are about and for. They might be able to point a reporter to someone or something that would be able to be reported on. Trust is a super important difference between an established reporter and a new reporter.

barsquid ,

This company is doomed lol. Fucking dimwits.

DarkThoughts ,

German & Chinese car makers will be happy.

dogslayeggs ,

I’d love to hear from anyone at all who can give me a reason why the shareholders would vote for this. The stock value has been going down for both the 1 year and 3 year time frames, so he’s not doing great things today. The company only made a profit of $18B last year, so this is like wiping out 3 years of profitability in one step. This package is over half of the company’s total revenue!! In what world do investors think it’s a good idea to say one guy deserves almost as much as the entire company brings in for a year?

barsquid ,

Nepo babies understand each other’s need to suck money from people who produce the value.

circuscritic , (edited )

I’ll wait for the financial analysts that I both trust, and I know hate Musk, before I have any confidence in answering that question.

But… my best uninformed guess is that it’s less fanboy worship, and more fear that Musk is the only thing propping up the insane stock valuation.

I’m assuming that Musk has a complex web of possibly illegal and highly engineered financial instruments that keep that stock pumping, or at least, not crashing - yet.

Maybe those who voted to approve might be aware, or involved, in that house of cards and believe removing Musk would be akin to blowing on it.

But I’m just pulling all of this out of my ass, so who knows…

It might be as simple as the majority of Tesla shareholders who voted to approve, including the institutional ones, are really just submental morons.

dogslayeggs ,

This is probably the right answer.

Thunderbird4 ,

As the holder of roughly $45 worth of Tesla stock, I voted against his pay package and every other shady, bullshit proposal on the ballot. My vote counted for almost nothing and I’d probably be considered an “activist shareholder” anyway, but it was worth the money I’ve lost to get to click that button anyway.

https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/90c30151-9d25-4b40-b870-a3629db7f343.png

brucethemoose ,

Because it makes the line go up?

Sustainability doesn’t matter. Musk’s hype holds the market value up (in the short term), and kicking him out could tank it from the controversy alone. That’s all that matters.

I like to think many investors are buy and hold, long term institutional, Warren acolytes or whatever, but in reality the outlook is just so short for so many people now. What matters is the next day and the next quarter, and they can just bail out after that.

nondescripthandle ,

At this point it may as well be a ritual sacrifice of money

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