Elon Musk’s New Boring Co. Faced Questions Over SpaceX Financial Ties
wsj.comWhoa. So he's diverting employees and equipment from investor backed SpaceX, to a side venture where he owns 90% of the equity?
This is sketchy fiduciary duty. Right up there when he bailed out his brother's SolarCity by having Tesla buy it because every car manufacture needs to get into the rooftop solar business.
You're being voted down by the Tesla brigade, but you are absolutely right. Given the de minimis SpaceX equity in BoringCo, Musk's use of SpaceX resources without compensation by BoringCo is a flagrant violation of his fiduciary duties to SpaceX's investors.
That's why it's been so important to him to keep his boards stocked with friends and family--an actual corporate board of directors would have sent him to the curb long ago.
Could this be tunneling? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunneling_(fraud)
The Boring Company is on really shaky ground after the entrance cave in back on Dec 5th and construction setbacks. It'll be interesting to see if they survive, they're still in live or die startup mode.
We've had a few tunnels built around my city. It transpired through every one of those projects: late, ended up bankrupt, rebought, refinanced, ended up expensive to users. I mean they still made them and they work, well, but $10 a toll :)
The Boring Company is on really shaky ground after the entrance cave in back on Dec 5th and construction setbacks
I didn't hear of any cave in, and googling results in nothing. Care to explain what you're talking about?
Its remained relatively hush hush, but the entrance to the tunnel (not the tunnel itself) experienced some damage from a cave in, delaying the December 10th public opening: https://www.cnet.com/news/elon-musk-pushes-back-opening-of-b...
Presumably everything else is on track, but when it comes to geotechnical engineering, stabilizing earth is challenging, and the engineers appear to want to wait more than 3 or 4 days after the cave-in to see if their method of stabilization (whether they used these neat ground screws, thicker walls, or a pairing) is stable and ready for non-employees to be near.
Its remained relatively hush hush, but the entrance to the tunnel (not the tunnel itself) experienced some damage from a cave in, delaying the December 10th public opening: https://www.cnet.com/news/elon-musk-pushes-back-opening-of-b...
That article mentions absolutely nothing about a cave in. I wasn't disputing the delay thing (definitely an issue with any project of Musk's), but claiming that there was a cave in requires a legitimate source.
I did more research and still came up blank - I saw a number of headlines talking about "boring company caves in" - but they use it as a metaphor for them abandoning plans to extend the tunnel significantly. Not an actual cave in.
I'm glad SpaceX is private. There are legitimate concerns here but let the man build his tunnels!
I'm somewhat horrified by the constant struggles Musk's companies have with ethics.
Why is there a cult following when fraud and employee abuse is common?
Because there have not been any serious reports of fraud and abuse, and the things he built are so important for the future of humanity, that even much more serious accusations won't change the total balance to a negative for Musk.
There have been dozens of articles detailing fraud and abuse at Tesla, quite a few articles about Boring Co's liberties with the truth and its outright lies to the people in the neighborhood where the tunnel is being built. SolarCity's financials were so bad they went through multiple auditing firms before they found one that would sign off on them.
All in all, Musk's companies have an above-average incidence of ethics- and truth-related issues.
I recently traveled to Florida and met with my cousin that has friends at SpaceX. The joke is to call it SlaveX. According to him, it pays quite a bit better than ULA, but there’s huge burnout and turnover.
> Why is there a cult following when fraud and employee abuse is common?
Musk can present an image of a successful multiple entrepreneur who is working towards a vision that many support arrayed against a forces of Big Bad Incumbents who would rather squash him than compete fairly. Thus he is responsible for all the good things, and the bad things are just smear campaigns that should be ignored.
Essentially, it's the same force that fuels the rise of people like Trump, just applied to a different part of the political spectrum.
It's because Musk has cultivated a tech-god image for the last decade.
From cameos in movies and tv shows to projects like SpaceX that were created solely to boost his "genius" image, Musk (or his publicists) have done everything to make him seem like a superhuman.
I mean, its pretty clear he’s building all the tech to colonize Mars. Boring is an important part of that.
Indeed. Underground construction is the most effective way to protect against environmental concerns like meteor strikes and radiation.
On the topic of The Boring Company, is anyone else going to the tunnel unveil event tomorrow?
Wait until Boring Co is bought by another Musk company like Musk did last time with that failing solar company.
Isnt it a subsidiary of SpaceX though?
Nearly $113M raised, wsj article says it owns only 6%
https://techcrunch.com/2018/04/16/elon-musks-boring-co-raise...
https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1737630/000173763018...
un-paywall https://outline.com/RcMRDF
I really believe Tesla, Boring and SpaceX is part of a grand strategy that will give Musk almost insurmountable moat.
Serious question. Do you mean like a physical barrier? Similar to absconding to New Zealand when SHTF and it’s TEOTWAWKI? In a very real sense, Mars is the ultimate gated community.
See also https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2018-rich-new-zealand-doo...
It’s not like Musk hasn’t openly stated that the whole purpose of SpaceX is Martian colonisation.
What do they think The Boring Company is really for? And Tesla, and Solar City for that matter.
Perhaps if they aren’t smart enough to connect the dots they aren’t smart enough to be investing in high risk private companies.
What do they think The Boring Company is really for? And Tesla, and Solar City for that matter.
Uh huh. Sure it is. That would explain why Solar City has thus far failed to account for the significantly reduced amount of solar energy that reaches Mars. Solar cells can't charge EVs fast enough on Earth. With the same panel area, it would take most of a Martian year to charge a single EV on Mars.
But as with the hyperloop, Musk has done a great job of getting people to fall for his half-assed fantasies. Somehow though, whenever you actually try to look into his ideas with more scrutiny, they always fall apart like a house of cards.
That would explain why Solar City has thus far failed to account for the significantly reduced amount of solar energy that reaches Mars. Solar cells can't charge EVs fast enough on Earth. With the same panel area, it would take most of a Martian year to charge a single EV on Mars.
What are you talking about? Solar can charge an electric car just fine. Take desired charge rate in kW, divide by nameplate power output of panel, and that's how many panels you need. If you live somewhere with constraints on solar input (eg reduction due to clouds, distance from sun, or night) then you can increase the panel amount, maybe add some stationary batteries to timeshift the input.
Edit: not meant as a personal attack at all, but noticed your other comments around the thread are loose enough with the facts. Musk could learn a thing or two :)
Your edit is very rude. If you're going to call him out, you should at least take the time to give an example.
Their profile says they don't read comment threads after 4 hours, so I didn't think they will see. But my mention of "being loose with the facts" and "Musk could learn a thing or two" was referring to another post of theirs where they said:
There have been [...] quite a few articles about Boring Co's liberties with the truth and its outright lies to the people in the neighborhood where the tunnel is being built - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18704761
I thought this was, itself, misleading - I follow the Boring Co pretty closely, and I only saw one negative article re: the local neighbourhood around the test tunnel - and said article was mostly raising the plight of the locals with the airport/highway/industrial activity in the area. The Boring Company was only attacked as a bit of a bogeyman.
Combine that with this sentence in their original post, which I did already call out for being flagrantly misleading:
Solar cells can't charge EVs fast enough on Earth. With the same panel area, it would take most of a Martian year to charge a single EV on Mars
The only way I can see that being true is if it's talking only about solar cells on the roof of the vehicle (which no one technically minded should expect to power a car).
https://blog.pickmysolar.com/how-many-solar-panels-does-it-t...
From a pro-Tesla site. It would take 75 solar panels to charge a single Tesla in a day. Max theoretical efficiency on Mars is roughly 1/15th of Earth norm, not taking into account Martian weather, and assuming you are always somehow directly facing the sun the entire Martian day. Take weather and the day-night cycle into account, and it takes about a Martian year to charge one Tesla.
Google is your friend. A single search on Boring Co shows at least a dozen articles about their misrepresentative claims, so I assume the Google personalization filter is effecting both of our search results.
Hey, thanks for the detailed response. My original post was calling out your original point: "Solar cells can't charge EVs fast enough on Earth". It seems you now agree with me:
"It would take 75 solar panels to charge a single Tesla in a day."
So indeed, you can charge EVs with solar panels, you just need more. 75x250W panels can charge a 75kWh model S in one day, on average (equals 135000km/year). Such panels are available at consumer prices of $1/watt including charge controller, so ~$20,000 would buy me the panels I need to fully charge my car daily (4 times as much as I need).
Max theoretical efficiency on Mars is roughly 1/15th of Earth norm, not taking into account Martian weather, and assuming you are always somehow directly facing the sun the entire Martian day.
These variables (martian weather, facing the sun) are similar to the issues faced on earth with solar panels. And the solutions are the same on mars as on earth: increase panels (aka overprovide) and include power storage, or include an alternate power generation system. Ideally both. Where the weather can have longer impacts (eg dust storms), an alternative power gen system (i.e. nuclear) is likely better from a launch mass point of view, but that isn't clear without doing the detailed math on it. That's before even getting into details on how different a vehicle on another planetary body would be (eg the lunar rovers had an 8.5kWh batteries and lasted multiple days - lack of atmosphere and lower speeds and mass make a car much more efficient)
Take weather and the day-night cycle into account, and it takes about a Martian year to charge one Tesla.
(or half a year if you double the panels, or a day if you have 365x the number of panels, or....)
A single search on Boring Co shows at least a dozen articles about their misrepresentative claims
If by "misrepresentative claims" you mean missed deadlines and abandoned ideas - I'd agree with that. Tunnel opening delayed, further extension of test tunnel dropped in favour of full network at undefined future date. But that's par for the course with everything SpaceX has done (eg Falcon Heavy delayed 6 years, Dragon Crew delayed years, BFR changing plans every time it's talked about), and shouldn't be even a bit of a surprise for anyone who follows Musk. As a member of the public who couldn't invest in SpaceX or the Boring Co even if I want to, those things really don't affect me in any way - the goals remain the same, and the progress remains ...progressive.
I assume the Google personalization filter is effecting both of our search results.
Agreed.
We don't agree, but that's probably because I left some assumptions implicit in my earlier comment.
At an average size of 65x39 inches, 75 panels is more panels than most residential properties can fit; you would either need a mansion or a commercial-sized property. I should have been clearer on this, but assuming the number of panels that the average house can support (5-10), you're looking at a week or two to charge an EV by solar panel at the typical Southwest residence (longer, outside of the Southwest). Assuming the same solar panel area on Mars gets you to the Martian year.
As for Boring Co, I'm not referring to the missed deadlines, but to their claims that they wouldn't be tunneling under people's properties, and that it wasn't a backdoor attempt to avoid environmental review, and their liberties with capacity numbers, costs, and numerous other claims they've made in their short corporate lifespan.
> Perhaps if they aren’t smart enough to connect the dots they aren’t smart enough to be investing in high risk private companies.
If they are investing one companies resources they expect equity or payment, regardless of if the tunnels are useful for Mars.