So Elon has this new square ugly cyberbruck, that has bullet proof glass. So to demonstrate, they drop a metal ball on a regular piece of glass and it breaks; they drop it on Tesla glass and it doesn’t break. Cool.
Then Elon says “hey, throw it at the car window”. It shatters.
The Elon says “well, maybe you threw it too hard”, so his engineering guy gently lobs the metal ball at the back window, and it shatters too.
Awesome!
You can read all about A Physics Analysis of Tesla’s Shattered Cybertruck Windows if you want to learn more, but that’s not the point.
I get it. I’ve done presentations before. I’ve had my PowerPoint slides not work. Sometimes the computer dies, or the projector doesn’t work. I bring a back up projector and laptop with me, and carry an extra copy of the presentation, and hope it works.
That’s different than demonstrating that your car is bulletproof. If you are going to say it’s bulletproof, you should probably actually test it first.
It would appear that Elon did test dropping a metal ball on a piece of glass laying on the ground, and it didn’t break. Good, but there’s a difference between a piece of glass on the floor, and a piece of glass mounted upright in a car. It’s not the same at all. And dropping a ball is different than throwing a ball.
Now perhaps Elon did test it 100 times, and it worked every time, but those tests weakened the glass, so by the time he did the live demonstration the glass was so weak it couldn’t withstand a gently tossed ball.
That’s possible.
A more likely scenario is that he had his workers, in a tent, finish the prototype 10 minutes before the demo, nothing was tested, and the result was inevitable.
If this was the first time this happened we could write it off to bad luck, but this guy has had a series of mistakes.
Tesla cars catch on fire and people die. Many times. They aren’t safe. Yes, I know that a gasoline powered car can actually catch on fire, in a crash, but it happens much more frequently with Tesla’s, and it happens when they are parked, so that’s a problem.
Jaguar and Mercedes now have electric cars, as do many other manufacturers, so there is nothing unique about a Tesla.
So why has the stock not crashed?
Good question.
Looking at a four year chart, there is an obvious resistance level around $390. Tesla can’t seem to crack the $400 level, even though Elon famously said “funding secured” at $420. (I wrote about this in August 2018: Tesla: You can lie about Funding Secured and suffer no consequences).
The crash to $180 in July did not spell the end, and it had a remarkable run back up to over $360 this month, before the little “our bulletproof windows can’t stop a metal ball” episode of this week. But that correction is just a blip on the chart; no big deal.
I was short this week, so I made a few bucks on some puts, but I am out of Tesla now, and don’t plan to play again, because there are still too many believers out there.
Why would Elon do a demo that wouldn’t work? Because he needs to keep pumping the stock. If he stops creating news, people will get bored, and may actual focus on Tesla’s dismal finances, and the stock is done. He needs the hype to keep raising money to keep this game going. So he rushes to do demos that don’t work.
Will it matter? I have no idea. At some point the game will be up, but I don’t know if it will be tomorrow, or five years from now.
I am tempted to buy some long dated puts, perhaps around the $250 level, and place a bet just in case.
We’ll see.
That’s the update. See you next week.
Tesla: How is this still a thing?
by JDH on November 23, 2019
So Elon has this new square ugly cyberbruck, that has bullet proof glass. So to demonstrate, they drop a metal ball on a regular piece of glass and it breaks; they drop it on Tesla glass and it doesn’t break. Cool.
Then Elon says “hey, throw it at the car window”. It shatters.
The Elon says “well, maybe you threw it too hard”, so his engineering guy gently lobs the metal ball at the back window, and it shatters too.
Awesome!
You can read all about A Physics Analysis of Tesla’s Shattered Cybertruck Windows if you want to learn more, but that’s not the point.
I get it. I’ve done presentations before. I’ve had my PowerPoint slides not work. Sometimes the computer dies, or the projector doesn’t work. I bring a back up projector and laptop with me, and carry an extra copy of the presentation, and hope it works.
That’s different than demonstrating that your car is bulletproof. If you are going to say it’s bulletproof, you should probably actually test it first.
It would appear that Elon did test dropping a metal ball on a piece of glass laying on the ground, and it didn’t break. Good, but there’s a difference between a piece of glass on the floor, and a piece of glass mounted upright in a car. It’s not the same at all. And dropping a ball is different than throwing a ball.
Now perhaps Elon did test it 100 times, and it worked every time, but those tests weakened the glass, so by the time he did the live demonstration the glass was so weak it couldn’t withstand a gently tossed ball.
That’s possible.
A more likely scenario is that he had his workers, in a tent, finish the prototype 10 minutes before the demo, nothing was tested, and the result was inevitable.
If this was the first time this happened we could write it off to bad luck, but this guy has had a series of mistakes.
Tesla cars catch on fire and people die. Many times. They aren’t safe. Yes, I know that a gasoline powered car can actually catch on fire, in a crash, but it happens much more frequently with Tesla’s, and it happens when they are parked, so that’s a problem.
Jaguar and Mercedes now have electric cars, as do many other manufacturers, so there is nothing unique about a Tesla.
So why has the stock not crashed?
Good question.
Looking at a four year chart, there is an obvious resistance level around $390. Tesla can’t seem to crack the $400 level, even though Elon famously said “funding secured” at $420. (I wrote about this in August 2018: Tesla: You can lie about Funding Secured and suffer no consequences).
The crash to $180 in July did not spell the end, and it had a remarkable run back up to over $360 this month, before the little “our bulletproof windows can’t stop a metal ball” episode of this week. But that correction is just a blip on the chart; no big deal.
I was short this week, so I made a few bucks on some puts, but I am out of Tesla now, and don’t plan to play again, because there are still too many believers out there.
Why would Elon do a demo that wouldn’t work? Because he needs to keep pumping the stock. If he stops creating news, people will get bored, and may actual focus on Tesla’s dismal finances, and the stock is done. He needs the hype to keep raising money to keep this game going. So he rushes to do demos that don’t work.
Will it matter? I have no idea. At some point the game will be up, but I don’t know if it will be tomorrow, or five years from now.
I am tempted to buy some long dated puts, perhaps around the $250 level, and place a bet just in case.
We’ll see.
That’s the update. See you next week.