Other tidbits (only now recovered from meeting and trip home) / After reading thirty pages, y'all deserve a megapost
- I wouldn't drive 450 miles for an hour's meeting. But add in the lunch and it becomes worth it. Also add chatting in line before the meeting, chatting with neighbors at the meeting, and as a special this year, a new supercharger site and more "meetings after the meeting", all this makes it worth it.
- I got to meet ecarfan (since he advertised his location). Missed AlMc even though we were both at the lunch (there's always the chance I talked to some folks without knowing who they were). TEG said he wasn't coming the lunch but I was too dumb to realize that he might still be at the meeting. There's always next year. And then one guy who started mentioning Hawaii--yes, it was Papafox!
- We were late to lunch because JB was hanging out at the new Superchargers. Makes sense, since that's E.E. stuff, but that didn't occur to me at the time. Anyway, I had to choose between lunch and listening in; not certain I made the right choice, but of course the food was yummy.
- Locals misusing Supercharging: For Tesla to say, "We're watching you, so please think twice about how you use it" is a firm but polite approach. This is about keeping the facilities available for those who need them. It is never going to be about how much Tesla spends for electricity. Though I can tell you, if you hit 'em up for a buck every time they plugged in, they would instantly disappear. I saw this with our local Blink (Level 2 provider) stations. When they went from free to a fee, suddenly nobody needed them. They all went home and plugged in.
- SpaceX IPO: Just happened to read a memo sent by EM to all SpaceX employees (an Appendix in the new Vance book) explaining in detail all the bad things that would happen if they were suddenly accountable as a publicly traded company. I noted a parallel to a speech given by Neil deGrasse Tyson wherein he explains NASA's biggest enemy is "the quarterly report"--their funding from Congress is dependent on a continuous stream of cool stunts, and does not support the idea of a long research project that may take a long time to produce anything (if it does at all).
- Model X introduction: Please remember that EM explained (conference call) that he does not want a long rollout, with six this week and ten the next. He is holding it back until they are certain (as much as possible) that the first batch of vehicles won't be coming back for continuous warranty repairs. Instead, the goal is to verify they are good and kick production into high gear almost immediately. So, you'll see the first one later than you'd like, but you'll see good production numbers sooner than you'd expect. If I'm right (and no particular reason I should be), the design is done and they are only fixing flaws at this point, and running cars down the production line for verification. You don't go crashing cars until you're pretty confident no more changes need to happen.
- Model 3: I suspect this car will be waiting for the Gigafactory to be producing batteries in useful quantities, and so there's still time to get the car designed right without holding up the overall schedule.
- Autopilot: I liked how Elon related that each week he is evaluating the latest firmware. So really, he could answer all those questions with, "Well, I have it in
my car"
- Questions and Answers: We aren't going to win this one if 80 percent of the audience isn't associated with TMC. Because they "don't get the memo". I'm also not certain to what extent Tesla does us a favor by taking on questions at this meeting. Are they eager to inform us, or are they just willing to tolerate us for sixty minutes a year? If they have a genuine interest in providing something extra for their most ardent supporters, then it's not unreasonable that [somebody, somewhere, somehow] could negotiate an additional "meeting" for this purpose. We could propose good questions, which would be put through an approval process (this has been suggested in various forms). Then we could submit them, and they could answer them thoughtfully, without them being put on the spot. It would be off line, and not an improv meeting. The press certainly gets to abuse the question/answer thing all year long. I think we as an organization could get a little bit of love once a year. And leave the shareholder meeting thing alone and let whatever happens there happen. Because we aren't going to be able to fix that one.
