Ashlee Vance Trolls Elon Musk — Misleads For Entertainment & Drama
Ashlee Vance hit the Tesla enthusiast scene with a big splash when he published Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future. I was turned off by his Bloomberg article announcing the book because it twisted the history (including the timing of various matters) in a misleading way that seemed 100% about creating more drama than reality had delivered — as if reality hadn’t delivered enough!
But drama sells, right? A new Vance article published this week and sent my way by Bloomberg‘s PR team again goes a step or two too far, in my opinion. It triggered me to write this short piece, in which I’m highlighting 10 problematic sections of the article.
Yes, I’m a Tesla (TSLA) and SolarCity (SCTY) investor, and I support Tesla’s acquisition of the solar giant (just like other leaders in the solar industry), but that’s not at all what this article is about. I’m writing this article because I get really irritated when people distort the truth and mislead others, especially regarding matters that greatly influence the future of humanity.
Here are my issues with the new Vance article:
1. The first yellow flag flew up in the second paragraph (italics added by me): “He’s part techno messiah—a being sent here from the future to save mankind from itself—and part charlatan—a slick businessman dragging foolish investors along on ever grander, cash-burning bets.“
Charlatan? Really? Tesla has delivered the safest car ever tested by the NHTSA; a car that Car and Driver magazine called “Car of the Century;” a car that shatters the acceleration of every production car in history except for a couple of limited-production, million-dollar sports cars; a car that consistently takes the #1 spot in US consumer satisfaction rankings; a car that broke the Consumer Reports rating system with what was effectively a score of 103/100; a car that Motor Trend named one of the top 10 American cars of all time. That car was simply Tesla’s/Elon’s first attempt to build a functioning production electric car from the ground up.
SpaceX, meanwhile, has drastically cut the price of space transport for a very happy NASA and has demonstrated a rocket that can go into orbit and then return and land without exploding. That’s not to say the company hasn’t seen some unwanted explosions — but what serious rocket ship team hasn’t?
SolarCity is far-and-away the most popular rooftop solar installer in the US and has thousands and thousands of happy customers. It dominates one of the fastest-growing markets in the country (sometimes the fastest-growing market) year after year.
Elon has delivered, and continues to deliver. So, how can Ashlee Vance claim that he is “a person falsely claiming to have a special knowledge or skill” (which is the definition of a charlatan)?
2. “Every time one of his companies stumbles, Musk seems to have another spectacular thing to announce—a new mode of transportation, the space internet, or a Martian colony—to thrill and confuse.”
Well, this is pure speculation on motive that I think is completely unwarranted. It is not expressed as a hypothesis, but as a fact. And that’s a pretty shitty thing to assume about a person. Elon has three huge companies that are routinely announcing new products, products they’ve been working on for many months or years before the announcement. The products often exceed expectations. Yet Vance claims it is all just to “thrill and confuse.” Like I said, that’s a shitty thing to say, and I don’t see evidence for it.
3. “By any measure, his companies are in trouble.”
That is insanely false. I’m already losing my patience, so I’m not even going to venture into a long discussion about SpaceX and SolarCity ($2 billion market cap), but here are a few obvious points regarding Tesla: It has a market cap of nearly $30 billion despite not being profitable. If it were in trouble “by any measure,” I’m pretty sure it wouldn’t have a market cap anywhere close to that amount.
The Tesla Model 3 is so desired that >100,000 reservations were put in before it was even shown! It was such a stunning offer that the number rose to ~370,000 in a short period of time. Very few people (no one I can think of), and not even top people at Tesla, expected so much demand. Tesla’s “trouble” now is to ramp up production quickly in order to satisfy the insane demand. Mmm … I have a feeling this is not a source of nightmares for Elon Musk or JB Straubel.
4. Vance brings up the one, single, lone fatal Autopilot crash. The media and some regulators have absolutely blown the story out of proportion, imho. Apparently, among other things, it seems they don’t understanding where the term “Autopilot” comes from, don’t recognize the net safety benefits of the tech, and are fond of proposing or setting up hurdles to slow society’s progress toward safer transport.
Sure, it’s been a bit of a media and regulator headache, but the technology is still being used, sold, and hugely valued. Some people buy a Tesla specifically for Autopilot. Tesla isn’t scaling back its focus on the tech. The tech is here to stay and numerous engineers and drivers are making it better by the day. Elon sends out happy tweets highlighting this.
I think Vance is just one of those media personalities blowing this story out of proportion for dramatic effect and, unfortunately, creating more societal fear over a technology that improves our safety.
5. “At a more basic level, the automaker quite often struggles to manufacture cars at expected rates.”
Err, yeah, like every automaker in the world, Tesla has missed some production targets. Let’s note an obvious point that Vance is taking for granted, though: Tesla busted onto the scene as a Silicon Valley startup 13 years ago. It’s hardly even a teenager. In that time, it has gone from not knowing how to produce a car to producing 25,185 in the third quarter of this year (274 per day, on average). Two or three years ago, few people had faith Tesla would be able to produce so many by this time. The people (like Vance) who focus on a few of Tesla’s missed targets are the same people who 2–3 years ago were convinced Tesla would never get to the scale it has gotten to today.
But Vance seems to miss all of that. Tesla missed some production targets as it learned how to produce cars on a large scale, and that somehow means that Tesla is in massive trouble and Elon is a charlatan. Yeah, right … check in again in 3 years and remind us how much trouble Tesla is in. Hey, maybe just go and write another sensational, dramatic book about it.
6. “In Silicon Valley, Musk is admired, beloved, and idolized, but people are starting to wonder whether he’s finally taken on too much.”
Finally? If you know anything about his history (which Vance obviously does), you know that people have long been wondering if he has taken on too much. He has proven thousands and thousands of people wrong — in some ways, he has even proven himself wrong. He has shown that he and his companies can actually deliver on these grand ideals and targets. He basically achieved the Secret Tesla Master Plan in approximately 10 years, and so had to publish a new one. I guess that was just a PR stunt according to Vance.
Just as before, many people are claiming the long-term plans are impossible. They are claiming Elon is a crazy person who can’t deliver. They’ve forgotten that they were making such claims a few years ago about things Tesla has now accomplished and surpassed.
There’s nothing really new here — if Musk isn’t pushing the boundaries of possibility, he isn’t living, he isn’t working, he isn’t Elon. Remember, Tesla’s market cap is now ~$30 billion. Some people may think he has taken on too much, but the market certainly thinks this profitless company has a bright future. I wonder why.
7. “For too many years, the company has struggled to fine-tune its manufacturing operations. Time and again, Tesla is late to market with its new products.”
Vance comes back to this point about manufacturing. As indicated above, Tesla had to learn how to build a production car — that was the record-shattering Model S (late to market, but who pays any attention to that now). Then Tesla brought the Model X to market. It’s an extremely complicated vehicle to produce and some auto industry leaders even said it was impossible. Despite the challenges and excessively innovative features (which Elon and JB have recognized publicly several times), Tesla has brought it to market and people are loving it. Furthermore, Elon & JB said that they learned their lesson from that and the Model 3 has been developed using the “design for manufacturing” approach. But it would have broken with the drama for Vance to point that out, so let’s just pretend Elon & JB haven’t learned anything about efficient mass production in the past few years — even though insanely efficient manufacturing is apparently Elon’s new chief focus at Tesla.
8. “As these issues persist, Tesla has moved forward with its expensive battery factory in Nevada, while struggling to find a way to post a profit.”
Err, yeah, Gigafactory 1 is an essential part of Tesla’s vision. A battery production gigafactory is at the heart of the Tesla Model 3 initiative and its potential. This hasn’t been a casual side note from the past couple of years — it has been obsessively highlighted. And the gigafactory isn’t just a tool — in a sense, it is Tesla’s most significant product! Vance characterizes it as “expensive” when the obvious point of the giant facility is that it’s going to make Tesla (and Panasonic) a lot of money. Hey, buying clothes can be labeled “expensive,” but it’s hard to make money if you’re going to job interviews naked. (No offense to any naked bloggers who are reading this right now.)
Tesla hasn’t been turning a profit because it’s investing massively in rapid growth in an effort to get to a production capacity of 500,000 cars a year by the time it’s 15 years old, and 1 million cars a year by the time it’s 17 years old. What did you achieve by your 18th birthday?
9. “The short sellers that were burned during Tesla’s great run following the launch of the Model S have returned in full force; some have declared with certainty that the company is hurtling toward a grisly demise.”
Cool, so they can get burned again for not learning their lesson. Maybe they’ll do their homework next time. Or maybe they’ll keep assuming the avenue isn’t wide open for Tesla to keep dominating this market (as well as other nascent but fast-growing markets, like solar energy and energy storage).
10. “As someone who has spent years studying Musk, though, I find such a future unlikely and also find the cynicism that surrounds Musk somewhere between depressing and ignorant.”
Ah, really? So you strung us along by dishing out ignorant anti-Elon talking point after ignorant anti-Elon talking point to unceremoniously tell us we should probably ignore the implied conclusions in the 13 paragraphs above? Mmkay, thanks for your time, buh-bye.
I guess it was all in the name of drama. But how many people got misled along the way?
By the way, Vance also took a shot at Tesla’s PR efforts to counter negative media coverage. Hmm, I wonder why Tesla is having so much difficulty with the media. Maybe it’s because dramatized hit pieces have become all too common? (The thing about being on top of the world is that many people want to pull you down.)
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