stopelon All, SolarCity, SpaceX, Tesla

Yes, Elon Musk Is Actually Really Boring

Musk is a serious person, but he can also be something of a loose cannon, making outlandish statements designed to troll the press or simply amuse himself. In a 2015 interview with Stephen Colbert he semi-seriously endorsed dropping nuclear weapons on Mars; last year he implied on Twitter that he’s developing an Iron Man-style flying suit for the Pentagon. Most reporters assumed that the tunnel thing was another one of his jokes.

Musk wouldn’t seem to be in a particularly good ideological position to benefit from Trump’s infrastructure largesse. He’s a climate change hawk who was so closely identified with the Obama administration that Mitt Romney attacked Tesla during the 2012 debates. (Tesla had received a government-guaranteed loan in 2010.) In the next presidential election, Musk supported Hillary Clinton for president, describing Trump, in an interview with CNBC, as a man who “doesn’t seem to have the sort of character that reflects well on the United States.”

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stopelon All, Elon's Empire, SolarCity, SpaceX, Tesla

Elon Musk’s Grand Ambition Is Boring

Master Plans, electric vehicles, artificial intelligence, solar roofs, hyperloops, and space rockets that land on ships…is there anything Elon Musk won’t attempt? Apparently not: it’s time to add tunnel boring to the list.

No, I’m not joking. Saturday morning Musk sent out a series of tweets describing his intent to create a tunnel boring company because “Traffic is driving me nuts.” He then added the following to his Twitter bio: “Tunnels (yes, tunnels).”

There are only two explanations: either A) Musk is joking, or B) Musk is serious. Both scenarios should unsettle Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) investors and Musk supporters.

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stopelon All, Elon's Empire, SolarCity, SpaceX, Tesla

Business ‘Savant’ Andrew Ross Sorkin Gets Elon Musk Very, Very Wrong

Actually, Elon Musk isn’t the Tony Stark of anything.  And the only person behind Tesla and Solar City is a government bureaucrat – writing Musk yet another government check.

So far, Musk has received FIVE BILLION DOLLARS in government money – mostly for his “green energy” business fallacies.  He is arguably the world’s largest welfare recipient.

And Musk’s ridiculous solar panel and electric car companies only serve as just two more totally unnecessary reminders that “green energy” is actually neither green nor energy.

Solar panels cost a ton of (government) money – and produce almost no energy for that money.  You’ll never get back the up-front coin in lifetime energy savings.  And the panels, once spent, have to be disposed of as if they are nuclear waste.

Electric cars also cost a ton of (government) money – and also cost way more up front than you’ll ever make up in energy savings over the life of the car.  Unless you drive the car roughly two thousand years.  And the energy it burns – is electricity.  Which is produced mostly by…coal – an energy source from which the Green Machine is supposedly trying to escape.

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stopelon All, Elon's Empire, SolarCity, SpaceX, Tesla

Cut off Elon Musk’s Government Subsidy Gravy Train

Wednesday, Leonardo DiCaprio made a visit to Trump Tower. The reason? Selling the incoming administration on the creation of “millions of green jobs.” He wants the government to put its thumb on the scale to favor his pet industries. This nonsense must stop, and President Trump’s first one hundred day agenda would benefit from a plan for ending the out-of-control crony capitalism that has made this kind of activity commonplace.

DiCaprio is easy to criticize: a movie star who addresses the UN. He hectors the government to spend money on things that voters do not prioritize as highly as he does…because, you know, he knows best. But this does more than just infuriate voters. It is regulatory capture but on a grand, political scale. It warps capital markets, warps entire sectors of our economy and diverts entrepreneurs from market-driven pursuits.

It is not a theoretical point. Take the case of Elon Musk, who has become one of the more successful entrepreneurs chasing government dollars. In a sense, Musk is a tragic story of how one of the world’s most talented entrepreneurs has become sidetracked by crony capitalism.

We are all aware of President Obama’s obsession with electric vehicles (EVs), for example. In 2011, he pledged that the United States would have one million new generation electric cars on the road by 2015 and pledged billions to do it. He and a bipartisan consensus in Congress wasted gobs of money and warped markets to miss that absurd goal by a yawning margin. Likewise, he threw billions at solar energy with direct and indirect subsidies. Solar power is still not cost competitive.

From that, Musk made billions.

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NYT reporter swoons over Elon Musk

Moreover, Mr. Musk caused a net loss of manufacturing jobs. Suppose the $4.9 billion he wrested from the government had instead been distributed to the private business community through lower taxes. The annual average cost of a manufacturing job in the United States, including pay and benefits, approximates $81,300. That means private businesses would have created approximately 60,000 manufacturing jobs if they had received the same financial support government showered on Mr. Musk. His three lavishly subsidized businesses have thus caused a net loss of 25,000 manufacturing jobs. Sorkin’s effusive praise of Musk as “a prime example of everything we want our business leaders to be” is nonsense on stilts.

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stopelon All, Elon's Empire, SolarCity, SpaceX, Tesla

Tesla: Where’s The Value?

The cherry on the cake is definitely this convoluted attempt by Musk to consolidate his “dreams” with the SolarCity merger. Neither company is financially sound. SolarCity has a hard time making money. Tesla ALMOST never makes money. So where’s the value? The notion that the two will create a solar house that charges your car for almost nothing is grand, but the timelines seem absurd. We can talk all we want about the merit of solar shingles and zero emissions. It very much is the way of the future. That doesn’t mean that Musk and his cohort are going to be the ones to succeed. As shareholders, you need to see a return on your investment. It has been years. Both companies have run up revenues. Both companies have failed to consolidate those gains. This story has Twitter (NYSE:TWTR) written all over it. In many ways both of these firms have been coddled into growth. Between subsidies and “enthusiastic” share pricing (which has allowed for large capital raising through stock sales), Tesla and SolarCity were given the fuel to get the show rolling. Unfortunately this same “incentive” has driven the two companies into complacency. Musk seems convinced that everyone will support his show to the end no matter how long it takes. The longer it takes to deliver some real results, the less likely this will be the case.

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stopelon All, Elon's Empire, SolarCity, SpaceX, Tesla

Elon Musk To Attend Trump Meeting Orchestrated By Musk’s Business Partner

Billionaire Elon Musk is attending President-elect Donald Trump’s tech industry meeting, which is being orchestrated by the tech-entrepreneur’s business partner, The Wall Street Journal reported.

Musk is the CEO of Tesla Motors and SolarCity, and is a close associate of Peter Thiel, the tech investor who backed Trump during his presidential campaign. Apple CEO Tim Cook  and Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg will also appear at the Wednesday meeting.

They were both founders of PayPal — and Thiel’s venture-capital firm Founders Fund also contributes millions of dollars to SpaceX.

SpaceX has been awarded contracts valued at more than $6.5 billion over the past eight years, mostly to delivering cargo to NASA’s primary space station. It’s also working on securing contracts from the Air Force valued at more than $100 million.

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stopelon All, Elon's Empire, SolarCity, Tesla

TSLA Stock: Analyst ‘Increasingly Concerned’ at Tesla’s Ability to Hit Profit Objectives

Despite the broader market closing at all-time highs, shares of electric car maker Tesla Motors(NASDAQ:TSLA) slipped 11 cents on Friday to close at $192.18. TSLA hit an intraday low of $190.81 following a research note from JP Morgan (NYSE:JPM) analyst Ryan Brinkman writing that after meeting with General Motors’ (NYSE:GM) CFO Chuck Stevens and test driving GM’s new Chevrolet Bolt, he expressed concern about Elon Musk’s company being able to achieve its profit objectives.

Commenting on the new Bolt, the analyst said the electric vehicle (EV) represents “solid competition” for Tesla’s upcoming compact luxury sedan Model 3 and that GM is the first automaker to globally market a “modestly” priced battery electric vehicle with a range in excess of 238 miles. Additionally, and to illustrate the importance of Bolt, Brinkman points out that GM plans to extend its EV beyond sales to consumers and into ride-sharing apps, including of the autonomous variety.

Brinkman, who reiterates an ‘Overweight’ and ‘Underweight’ rating on GM ($37.66) and Tesla stock, respectively, also notes that Tesla will find it increasingly difficult to profitably compete in an increasingly competitive market for electric vehicles.

It should be noted that this is not the first time Brinkman has expressed skepticism about Tesla’s ability to hit its objectives. Back in May JPM’s analyst said he was doubtful of Tesla’s production plans for its upcoming Model 3 mass-market to build a total of 500,000 all-electric vehicles in 2018, two years ahead of schedule.

“We previously held some hope that, with improved execution, Tesla could prove relative skeptics such as ourselves wrong, by in fact ramping to 500,000 units by 2020. We think they stood an outside chance of doing this. But these new targets we think standstill less chance of being accomplished within the given more aggressive timeframe,” Brinkman wrote at the time in a note to investors.

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Elon Musk is not the answer for Democrats

Taxpayers also heavily bankroll Musk’s businesses. Last year, the Los Angeles Times reported that Musk’s corporate empire had received a total of $4.9 billion in government subsidies.

For example, the federal government gives each Tesla buyer a $7,500 tax credit. Many states give additional credits as well.

So, yes, Musk has made billions of dollars because taxpayers are subsidizing the purchase of $85,000 dollar sports cars and costly solar panels. I doubt that will sit well with working-class voters.

The only reason Tesla was profitable last quarter stems from the sale of $139 million dollars worth of “clean” tax credits to companies that make money from the sale of traditional, gas-burning cars and trucks.

Undoubtedly, Donald Trump is also a product of coastal elitism. However, Trump was able to overcome this hurdle with working-class voters by channeling their frustrations with elites.

Democrats hoping that Musk will be their billion

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