Dear Analysts, Stop Trying To Put Tesla In A Box

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It is well known that Elon Musk and Tesla don’t like to conform to established industry standards or feel limited by them. So trying to measure their performance by established industry standards is like measuring them on a scale of bananas, utterly pointless.

It is one of the biggest mistakes that almost every analyst makes — they try to put Tesla into a box and analytically predict how the company will perform in the near-term and long-term future.

Is it a luxury automaker? Is it a technology company? Is it a solar energy company? Is it a battery company? Can I at least call it an automaker?

Stop it! It’s a sustainable energy company!

Even a sustainable energy company is a box that only mostly fits around the company, but not entirely. In reality, Tesla is Tesla — it’s unique, its boundless, it doesn’t fit in any other box. The company’s stock is not based on how well the company performs; it’s not based on sales numbers, profits, and losses. Every time you try to put Tesla into a box, you will end up being wrong and quite possibly even end up losing.

Imagine trying to put Elon Musk in a box. Is he simply an engineer? A businessman? A visionary? An electric car fanatic? A tech mogul? A pranking overgrown boy having fun with the toys he has produced? No one label comes close to fitting — he’s all of that and more. He’s Elon Musk.

If you do try to put him in a box, make sure never to mix Elon’s box with the box of Schrodinger’s cat, or you will have so many simultaneous quantum states that it will give you a massive headache. Then when you do open the box, you could find out that to escape the confines of the box, he put himself into a simulation. At this point, you would figure out that you are actually a person opening a box inside Elon’s simulation, which he made in revenge for putting him in a box.

(Just a small joke mixing quantum physics with the simulation hypothesis written in the style of Douglas Adams, 3 things Elon loves.)

Tesla’s stock and value is based on 3 very big, deep foundations. The first foundation is the company’s future potential. This is something many of the smart long-term investors seem to understand. The second foundation is the CEO that reportedly falls asleep under employees’ desks and yet still manages to run two multi-billion-dollar corporations successfully, in addition to a few side hustles like The Boring Company, OpenAI, and Neuralink. The third foundation is the company’s vision and mission*. You know it’s that thing that the shorts missed the memo on. No, wait, scrap that — they seem to have missed all of the memos.

In any case, the company’s mission is to “accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable energy.” Shorting Tesla basically equates to shorting the future of your own children. Getting in the way of Elon Musk in any ways is basically doing the same thing, which leads me to part 2 of this opinion piece.

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Why we need to get out of Elon’s way

The rules are there for a reason. Some say rules are meant to be broken, yet in certain cases when there is a lot at stake, the rules simply shouldn’t apply to some people in the first place. I don’t want to get too philosophical here, but in general there are two basic philosophies:

  • The means justify the ends (even if the end is failure or catastrophe)

     or

  • The means (even bad means) are justified by the (good) ends.

Reality is always somewhere in between these two ends of the spectrum. Hold that thought as you read the next part.

Elon Musk is changing the world more than anyone has in centuries. The extent of his contributions is debated. However, in the best case, if all goes well, if people listen and no one interferes, in hindsight we will see that he helped significantly with three main things:

1. Saved the human race on earth by creating a sustainable future that prevented climate change, which potentially could have reduced the Earth’s carrying capacity from 10 billion to just 1 billion people.

2. Ensured the survival of humanity in case something happened to earth by making Mars habitable. First only in domes and underground, but in the future with simple breathing apparatuses and eventually without.

3. Ensured that the human race can integrate, join, or compete with AI rather than being taken over or extinguished — by making sure all AI gets developed safely by backing the Asilomar AI principles and by creating a neural interface that adds a new level of intelligence and access to knowledge directly to our brains.

Potential bonus achievement: helped realize “Universal Basic Income” before the rapid transition phase where AI/robots take over all the jobs and cause mass joblessness and poverty.

If you want to read more about Elon’s three goals, then take a look at “Backing Elon Musk & Tesla Is About Backing Humanity.”

If a man like Elon Musk can make such a difference in the world, shouldn’t anything and everything possible be done to help him and get out of his way? This is exactly the reason why SEC and DOJ investigations about a tweet is all the more ridiculous. Especially since the only people who lost money due to the tweet were the people trying to deprive you of a future in order to profit today. Now, that should be a crime!

Hell, if this were 5 years from now and Elon got tired of all of this, he could literally fly away to Mars, where he can make some rules that are not as controlled by greed and corruption. But don’t worry, once he gets there, he will be sure to send you a nice postcard.

What will make Elon leave earth? Who will Elon send a smug sarcastic “Wish you were here” postcard to? Make your own and let the world know! Just make sure to tag #MarsPostcard and @CleanTechnica on Twitter. Also, I’m @chananbos.

*Related: Tesla Gigafactory 1 — Honestly, What’s The Big Deal? (At Essence, It’s Not The Numbers)


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Chanan Bos

Chanan grew up in a multicultural, multi-lingual environment that often gives him a unique perspective on a variety of topics. He is always in thought about big picture topics like AI, quantum physics, philosophy, Universal Basic Income, climate change, sci-fi concepts like the singularity, misinformation, and the list goes on. Currently, he is studying creative media & technology but already has diplomas in environmental sciences as well as business & management. His goal is to discourage linear thinking, bias, and confirmation bias whilst encouraging out-of-the-box thinking and helping people understand exponential progress. Chanan is very worried about his future and the future of humanity. That is why he has a tremendous admiration for Elon Musk and his companies, foremost because of their missions, philosophy, and intent to help humanity and its future.

Chanan Bos has 118 posts and counting. See all posts by Chanan Bos