Despite its CEO railing against Biden, Tesla was more than happy to take the administration’s money.

  • @NuXCOM_90Percent@lemmy.zip
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    22711 months ago

    Stealing this from a comment on the restera threaad

    Internally employees left at Tesla are calling this the “Snap”. My friend was building over 10 new sites and breaking ground on 3 others. Contractors are getting fucked and have no one to contact. Overnight 100’s of sites with 100’s of contractors, design companies and suppliers working on them are just in limbo with not a single person from Tesla reaching out to them and their contact laid off. Lots of layoffs are going to be tied to this.

    Not only does this affect the building of new sites there’s now not a single employee that can perform maintenance at any of these locations.

    This is going to cascade across many companies and industries. Because this is basically taking a massive infrastructure effort and suddenly cutting off the management and production of specialized hardware.

    And, tinfoil, but this very much feels like an attempt to steal the election for republicans. Because this is going to impact the infrastructure efforts of the Biden administration AND cause a lot of layoffs among blue collar workers when they can’t send invoices or get paid because everyone they knew got fired. And you can bet there will be a social media shitstorm over “Biden is trying to steal money from my company” if there is any attempt to recoup the money that is being put into a giant reward package for musk.

    • Ioughttamow
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      15411 months ago

      Maybe it’s time we nationalize our infrastructure. Railroads, telecom, electric grid. The capitalists have jerked us around nonstop

        • @nilloc@discuss.tchncs.de
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          511 months ago

          At least the charging network. We can buy it off Tesla no problem (we already have them a $17 million down payment).

          Then start printing up new stickers to cover the Tesla logos.

          I don’t even own an EV and I support funding this. It’s probably cheaper than the existing charger network plan anyway and would allow actually standardizing around the smaller smarter Tesla plugs too.

      • Obinice
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        1211 months ago

        Woah now, what are you, some kinda red socialist commie? 🇺🇲😠🛻

    • partial_accumen
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      11 months ago

      And, tinfoil, but this very much feels like an attempt to steal the election for republicans. Because this is going to impact the infrastructure efforts of the Biden administration AND cause a lot of layoffs among blue collar workers when they can’t send invoices or get paid because everyone they knew got fired.

      There was a time when I could have thought that level of calculation of Musk. That time is long since gone. His mouth cost him $44 billion when he was forced to buy twitter because of his edgy comments online. Musk’s recent comments about the firings were his version of the criteria of “excellent, necessary, and trustworthy” and did not, apparently include the entire Supercharger team. Any outside observer would say the Supercharger team is absolutely “excellent, necessary, and trustworthy”.

      This latest action by Musk just reeks like a mania episode with a good dose of paranoia mixed it. I don’t think it has anything to do with the election.

      I was holding stock specifically to be able to vote Musk out, but this latest move was the last straw. I sold what I had after the announcement yesterday. Its already down $5/share lower than when I sold mine yesterday.

        • @NuXCOM_90Percent@lemmy.zip
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          2911 months ago

          Yup. Even the twitter stupidity makes a lot more sense if his “friends” were egging him on to destroy one of the most useful tools out there for activists to coordinate and information to spread outside of state outlets.

          • @nondescripthandle@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            2111 months ago

            Same way Candace Owen used to hang around with Kanye and all of a sudden he started saying all his racist shit out loud. It was always there based on some inside stories, but theres a corealtion with his worse public decisions and her influence.

        • SeedyOne
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          2711 months ago

          While odd looking to some of us, they were actually right. That’s 56,000 “millions” or 56,000 x 1,000,000 = 56 billion. A mind blowing amount of cash.

        • @NounsAndWords@lemmy.world
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          3911 months ago

          Or, if you’re trying to make it more directly comparable to 17 million (because humans aren’t great at implicitly comparing that many zeros), that would be 56,000 millions. It’s not how we normally say it, but 17 vs 56,000 feels different than 17 million vs 56 billion.

        • @whotookkarl@lemmy.world
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          311 months ago

          Most of us have no intuition about millions of anything let alone billions, same as we have a good handle on seconds and days and years but start talking about nanoseconds or centuries and most of us have completely lost any meaningful frame of reference.

      • @boogiebored@lemmy.world
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        611 months ago

        He quite literally does not add this amount of value in any way. No single human possibly could. What a joke.

  • Ghostalmedia
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    13211 months ago

    Imagine taking your most strategic asset, and an industry leading product, then doing this to it.

    Musk is this generation’s Howard Hughes. He was always eccentric and weird, but he’s aggressively sliding into his compulsions like Hughes did.

    Hughes ended up locked away, in a dark penthouse, getting yearly fingernail cuts, with a collection of urine filled bottles.

    • Phoenixz
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      1211 months ago

      Nah, Musk is an incompetent idiot who got incredibly lucky and managed to fail upwards. He’s not eccentric, he’s just an asshole

    • @kameecoding@lemmy.world
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      1611 months ago

      I said somewhere that I believe Tesla as a csr manufacturer is fucked but they light pivot into being a charging company and battery provider, it seems big brain musket is hellbent on ruining the good parts of his company too

      • Ghostalmedia
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        3211 months ago

        Dude could’ve owned America’s next generation energy infrastructure if he played his cards right.

        • @generalpotato@lemmy.world
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          1911 months ago

          Provided to him on a silver fucking platter… I mean, it’s astonishing how incompetent he is/was/or is becoming. Holy shit.

          • A Wild Mimic appears!
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            11 months ago

            i believe nowadays the only thing motivating musk that comes on a silver platter is a pile of coke

            e: wtf my grammar had a stroke

    • ME5SENGER_24
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      4911 months ago

      So you’re saying there’s a chance he’s just gonna disappear one day. DON’T YOU TOY WITH MY EMOTIONS IF YOU DON’T REALLY MEAN IT!!

    • @Coreidan@lemmy.world
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      1811 months ago

      He’s another Trump. Musk may have money but he has no idea how to spend it.

      Just like trumps ventures they all failed because he’s a shmuck with zero business clue.

      Inherited mommy and daddy’s money but pisses it all away on shit ideas and terrible execution.

      Soon we’ll hear musk is broke because he spent it all on shit he can’t handle.

  • @inclementimmigrant@lemmy.world
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    12011 months ago

    This is why I fucking hate government grants to corporations. These assholes never put in safeguards to actually force these jackass companies to actually use it as intended.

    • @wizzor@sopuli.xyz
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      911 months ago

      Although I understand the sentiment, the instrument under which the funding has been granted is called NEVI and has pretty strict requirements about what gets built (150kW rated, payment terminal equipped charging stations along major roads) as well as transparency requirements about reliability.

        • @AngryCommieKender@lemmy.world
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          11 months ago

          Looking at the several billion dollars that we gave the telecommunication companies over the last two decades for “nation wide high speed fiber infrastructure,” I would say the answer is not only yes, but we will keep giving them more money for the same damn thing.

    • JustEnoughDucks
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      1511 months ago

      Government grants should come with government share % of the company.

      Or at least with heavy requirements and obligations like every government “grant” for normals people.

    • @Buddahriffic@lemmy.world
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      2111 months ago

      Infrastructure should be public anyways, so instead of giving grants to private for profit companies, it would instead use that money to just fund the infrastructure.

    • @Zink@programming.dev
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      1111 months ago

      Oh I think it’s all going how it was intended. Just not going according to the public justification.

    • @sin_free_for_00_days@sopuli.xyz
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      2511 months ago

      I’m OK with grants for certain things/times/whatever. But it seems like if the owner is worth billions and comes to the gov’t for a handout, the gov’t should just tax them correctly and say,“No you.”

  • @Olhonestjim@lemmy.world
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    1311 months ago

    No executive deserves the kind of money and power he is demanding. The workers deserve it. Executive positions must become democratically elected from within the workforce, exclusively, modestly compensated, with checks and balances, for limited terms representing the company workforce.

    This is our world he’s fucking with.

      • Noxy
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        11 months ago

        You can insult the person and his cronies without resorting to homophobic shit like that.

  • @NightAuthor@lemmy.world
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    1611 months ago

    Had a friend turn down 4 internships when they got one at Tesla, and now, just as the summers coming up, they recinded a bunch of internship offers.

    But they’re crazy, after all that’s gone down w Elon they just bought a Model 3

        • @cole@lemdro.id
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          211 months ago

          wtf is that bullshit. interning is basically required experience in some fields (engineering especially). companies will usually pay for your housing and food even

      • @NightAuthor@lemmy.world
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        111 months ago

        She works part time as a decently paid HR or something like that, has a husband in software dev, and is in the process of changing careers.

    • @laurelraven@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      5911 months ago

      Feels like they should, I’m not exactly thrilled by the idea of my tax dollars going into Musk’s pocket just for the hell of it

  • @Car@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    5111 months ago

    This shit can destroy companies and tank its value

    Leaving hundreds of contacts in limbo with no resolution has the potential to cost more than $17 million in legal fees and termination clauses.

    Where the fuck is the board of directors and why are none of the shareholders revolting?

    • @ElegantBiscuit@lemm.ee
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      1311 months ago

      To give you an idea of who is on the tesla board of directors, it includes Kimbal Musk, his brother, and James Murdoch, of the Murdoch family you’re probably thinking of. Musk himself owns something like 20% of the company, the board owns some, his cult members also have some share. The rest of the shareholders are either institutional or retail investors who are some combination of not willing to rock the boat, don’t have enough voting power, and/or just don’t care.

    • @theangryseal@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      We the shareholders trust Musk completely. He is, after all, a genius.

      Nah, I’m playing! Only thing I ever had shares of was the ex wife, and I wasn’t even aware she was publicly traded until I accidentally dropped in on a shareholder meeting. I gave mine away. :p

  • @Nobody@lemmy.world
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    8811 months ago

    Incredibly speculative, but this could also be Elon’s Saudi investors’ plan to blow up the EV market in America. If the charging infrastructure becomes unreliable, it kills the entire market.

    The “Boring Company” killed light rail in several cities with empty promises. The Saudis bailed out his purchase of Twitter once.

    Again speculative, but Elon and the Saudis working together checks a lot of boxes.

    • @Tinidril@midwest.social
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      911 months ago

      The big oil corporations have been busy buying up all the competing charging networks, so that much tracks.

    • Cethin
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      1211 months ago

      I doubt it actually. My guess is they got the tesla charger adopted for all US electric cars, so now they can just be greedy and have others build infrastructure instead of them. They can invest nothing and still get chargers made for them now. Why would we expect Tesla to continue spending money now?

        • @postmateDumbass@lemmy.world
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          211 months ago

          This just means other companies can hire people that already know the standards better than whoever Tesla ends up with.

          It might give Elon a month or two of added delay before other companies start using the Tesla chargers.

          But it is absolutely more of Elon turning this chapter of his life into a sequel of Brewster’s Millions, and like all sequels - it sucks.

      • @AA5B@lemmy.world
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        311 months ago

        Chargers earn reliable income? They even selll subscriptions. I have no idea whether they are profitable or not but there’s no reason this couldn’t be a nice steady income indefinitely

    • kingthrillgore
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      611 months ago

      He’s not working for the Saudis. Bonesaw showed up and told him what to do. Or else.

  • @BigMacHole@lemm.ee
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    2511 months ago

    I’m HAPPY my Tax Dollars went to Laying People Off INSTEAD of feeding Starving American Children!

  • NutWrench
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    8111 months ago

    Such a “clever businessman.” Embezelling $17 million in taxpayer dollars to enrich himself.

    • @Wrench@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      Which, even if it went directly into his pocket, doesn’t even move the needle for him.

      Like another poster said, his goals are more likely politically aligned. He wants EV infrastructure to fail to show libtards are squandering tax money. Self fulfilling prophecy and all that.

      Why the tesla board hasn’t sent him packing yet is beyond me. There must be some golden parachute clause that would be very expensive, but he’s doing massive harm to their brand that it must be worth it to cut him loose at this point.

      Edit - I also think this ego maniac is sabotaging his own charging infrastructure simply because the government passed a bill (IIRC) that requires the charging stations be accessible to any EV. Not that it needs to provide the connectors on-site - other EV drivers will need to bring their own adapters. Simply that the payment system allows non-tesla owners to use it.

      • kingthrillgore
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        11 months ago

        Why the tesla board hasn’t sent him packing yet is beyond me.

        His board is full of friends, family, and other sycophants.

        Shareholders won’t vote Elon out because he is sadly the one reason its so highly valued, and if he goes, the stock price does with it. They won’t do anything until the company is on fire, and its not yet.

        Given that yesterday’s layoff news did nothing to the stock price, we’re getting there.

        • @Ragnarok314159@sopuli.xyz
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          411 months ago

          Elon isn’t the one reason. Tesla stock skyrocketed in value the moment Bill Gates and other hedge funds announced they are shorting the stock.

          Other hedge funds decided “I will take that bet” and here we are.

      • partial_accumen
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        2211 months ago

        Why the tesla board hasn’t sent him packing yet is beyond me. There must be some golden parachute clause that would be very expensive, but he’s doing massive harm to their brand that it must be worth it to cut him loose at this point.

        He’s stacked the board with his friends and family. They’re not going to raise the chance of it themselves.

        Our only chance is/was actions by activist investors. I suppose I would have been considered one of those until yesterday when I sold.

  • Diplomjodler
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    4811 months ago

    Such a genius move. Us ordinary minds cannot comprehend this.

    • @baru@lemmy.world
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      2211 months ago

      Trickle down economics should result in more jobs. In this case it didn’t. The lesson is that not enough subsidy was given because people were fired instead of hired. Suggest they give Musk more money, that should get the desired result! /s

      • @snooggums@midwest.social
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        1911 months ago

        Trickle down economics should result in more jobs.

        In the mythical land of conservative wish fulfillment, sure. In reality trickle down economics was always a lie to justify tax breaks for the wealthy.

  • @caboose2006@lemmy.ca
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    111 months ago

    There are two things Tesla and Elon has done well. Making EVs mainstream and cool. And the super charger network. Everything else. Bleh