Elon Musk Running Wild | “He’s awesome! Inspiring / motivating / etc.”

The Securities and Exchange Commission has opened a case against Tesla Inc. Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk, according to a docket entry in Manhattan federal court, Bloomberg News reports.

By Mangoverboard Go To PostWonder if anyone went big on a short

By Laboured Go To PostEasiest short to predict since the 2008 recession.

Under the deal, Musk and Tesla would have had to pay a nominal fine, and the CEO would not have had to admit any guilt, the sources said. However, the settlement would have barred Musk as chairman for two years and would require Tesla to appoint two new independent directors, CNBC's David Faber, citing sources.

Securities and Exchange Commission officials were understandably taken aback on Thursday morning when Tesla’s board — and its chairman, Elon Musk — abruptly pulled out of a carefully crafted settlement.

After the S.E.C. responded by accusing Mr. Musk, but not the company that he had co-founded, of securities fraud, the board further defied regulators, issuing a provocative statement saying that the directors were “fully confident in Elon, his integrity, and his leadership of the company.”

It was a stunning reversal: The board had rejected a settlement that was extraordinarily generous — it would have allowed Mr. Musk to remain as chief executive, and required him to step down as chairman for only two years. Now, the company was at risk of losing Mr. Musk as chairman and chief executive if regulators prevailed in court.

“What it tells us is this board, as a strategic plan, must be using the Jim Jones-Jonestown suicide pact,” Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, a professor at the Yale School of Management, said Friday on CNBC. “They are drinking the Kool-Aid of the founder. It is completely as self-destructive as Musk is.”

But Mr. Musk had given the board little choice: In a phone call with directors before their lawyers went back to federal regulators with a final decision, Mr. Musk threatened to resign on the spot if the board insisted that he and the company enter into the settlement. Not only that, he demanded the board publicly extol his integrity.

Threatened with the abrupt departure of the man who is arguably Tesla’s single most important asset, the board caved to his demands, according to three people familiar with the board’s decision.

The next day, Tesla’s lawyers were back at the S.E.C., all but groveling for a second chance — this time with Mr. Musk’s grudging approval.

One factor in Mr. Musk’s change of heart: Tesla’s stock plunged Friday morning as investors absorbed news of the rejected settlement and the possibility that the S.E.C. would force Mr. Musk to step down. It would finish down almost 14 percent on Friday.

On Saturday, the company and Mr. Musk finally agreed to settle the matter, ending a crisis that began with Mr. Musk’s now-infamous Twitter post saying that he had “funding secured” for a buyout at $420 a share.

Mr. Musk’s 48 hours of obstinance came at a significant price to him and the company. They had passed on Thursday’s generous offer, and the S.E.C. felt compelled to extract greater concessions. The ban on Mr. Musk’s serving as chairman went from two years to three, and his fine doubled to $20 million. Tesla will also pay a $20 million fine, and Mr. Musk agreed to personally buy the same amount in Tesla stock.

The S.E.C. is also requiring the company to add two independent directors and to elect an independent director as chairman.

“Rejecting such a favorable settlement is proof that he needs monitoring,” said John C. Coffee Jr., a professor at Columbia Law School. “He didn’t have a legal leg to stand on, and I’m sure his lawyer told him that. But he got very touchy about not being able to proclaim his innocence.”

From Mr. Musk’s view, that had been a crucial problem with a settlement from the beginning. Mr. Musk neither admitted nor denied guilt as part of the agreement, and he cannot publicly contest the S.E.C.’s allegations. He cannot say, as he did on Thursday, that “I have always taken action in the best interests of truth, transparency and investors” and “the facts will show I never compromised this in any way.”

Tesla’s stock has rebounded this week, reflecting investors’ relief that Mr. Musk will remain as chief executive while the company puts mechanisms in place to curb his increasingly impulsive behavior. The board will closely watch Mr. Musk’s communications with investors, and establish a permanent committee responsible for, among other things, monitoring disclosures.

But it remains to be seen how effective the board can be, given Mr. Musk’s erratic temperament and his dominant role in the company.

People involved in the board’s deliberations this week told me that some directors have proposed their fellow director, James Murdoch — the chief executive of 21st Century Fox, most of which is being sold to the Walt Disney Company — as chairman. But Mr. Murdoch hasn’t volunteered for the post nor has he discussed it with any other director. And another person close to the selection process said the board hadn’t yet engaged in any “serious” discussions of who should be chairman. The people spoke on the condition of anonymity because the board discussions were private.

Under terms of the settlement, the board has 45 days before Mr. Musk must resign. Whether it is Mr. Murdoch or another similarly qualified candidate who takes over as chairman, managing Mr. Musk will be no easy challenge.

Independent directors frequently face difficulty asserting themselves in any company with an outsize figure like Mr. Musk, whether it be a founder, controlling shareholder or powerful chief executive, said Lucian Bebchuk, a professor at Harvard Law School and an expert in corporate governance. Such people can often replace any director who crosses them, he said.

“Adding two independent directors can be expected to help, but its impact is likely to be limited,” Professor Bebchuk said. “As courts and governance researchers have long recognized, the presence of a dominant shareholder is likely to reduce the effectiveness of independent directors as overseers of the C.E.O.’s decisions and behavior;"

In the end, it took legal action by the S.E.C. to accomplish what had been increasingly obvious to most Tesla observers, including many of Tesla’s own directors: For all his brilliance, Mr. Musk’s reckless impulses must be kept in check.

Foremost among those should be threats to quit if he doesn’t get his way

By Mangoverboard Go To Post

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1047998560782827520?s=19

Ya Musk not liking the shorts

By DY_nasty Go To PostLighting up LA. Safest car all time NA

https://electrek.co/2018/10/07/tesla-model-3-lowest-probability-of-injury-nhtsa/

BBB x Musk collab coming soon

WASHINGTON — Tesla claimed its Model 3 electric car has the lowest risk of occupant injury of any vehicle in U.S. government tests, but the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration on Tuesday said the claim goes beyond the scope of its analysis.

"NHTSA does not distinguish safety performance beyond the star rating with five stars being the highest safety rating a vehicle can achieve. Thus, there is no NHTSA 'safest' ranking within the five-star category," the agency said.

In November 2013, NHTSA blocked automakers from promoting vehicle safety ratings of more than five stars, three months after Tesla touted the score on its Model S.

Tesla said in August 2013 that the Model S had achieved a score of 5.4 stars, a figure based on Tesla's independent analysis of NHTSA data. Three months later, NHTSA explicitly barred companies from promoting safety scores higher than five stars.

By rvy Go To Post

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dWAEQ_yM1Ek

By Shanks D Zoro Go To PostWhy are the curtains different colours?

By FortuneFaded Go To Post(((Soros)))

By Laboured Go To Post

https://twitter.com/guardiantech/status/1066726114033250305

Menial Tasks, Slurs and Swastikas: Many Black Workers at Tesla Say They Faced Racism
African-American workers have reported threats, humiliation and barriers to promotion at the plant. The automaker says there is no pattern of bias.

Between June 2016 and February 2017, Mr. Lambert sent at least a dozen text messages, emails, photos and videos to human resources, copies show.

The evidence sent by Mr. Lambert included a 58-second cellphone video, punctuated by repeated racial slurs, in which an unidentified narrator walking the factory floor says it’s “DeWitt’s” phone and threatens to “cut you up … so everybody can have a piece of you, nigger.” He said it had been recorded by co-workers who took his phone and meant it as a threat.

Mr. Lambert, who declined the settlement offer in favor of a chance to take the claim to trial and argue for higher damages, was put on paid administrative leave.

In June, after Tesla succeeded in moving the case to arbitration, Mr. Lambert received a letter terminating his employment, saying the company had discovered acts “inconsistent with Tesla’s values.” Tesla said Mr. Lambert himself had been involved in “instigating use of the ‘N-word.’” He conceded that he had used the epithet at times, but only with other African-Americans.

Speaking with CBS's 60 Minutes, founder and CEO Musk said it was "not realistic" to think new chairwoman Robyn Denholm, who replaced Musk in October as part of a multi-million settlement with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, could hold him to account as group CEO. He also said his Twitter account, the catalyst for both the stock's recent volatility and the ultimate SEC settlement, was not being monitored by company executives.

"It's not realistic in the sense that I am the largest shareholder in the company," Musk said when asked if his role in the company he founded would be subject to oversight from Denholm. "I can just call for a shareholder vote and get anything done that I want."

Musk also noted that his Tweets are only reviewed by the company if there is a "probability of causing a movement in the stock," adding ""I want to be clear. I do not respect the SEC."

The comments suggest that key conditions of the group's SEC settlement, which was reached in October, are not being met, raising questions about corporate governance at the Palo Alto, Calif.-based carmaker just as it appeared to be putting the tumult of Musk's Twitter account behind it with improving production and profitability figures.

By reilo Go To PostThis guy

By Smoke Dogg Go To PostI wasn't really an Elon Musk stan before I saw Sunday's episode of 60 Minutes interviewing him, but now I totally am, because I too want to be clear and state that I do not respect the SEC.

And did you know that he open-sourced Tesla's patents? Amazing.

And did you know that a Tesla can go 0 to 60 in three seconds? Amazing.

Dude is legit in my book.

By Laboured Go To PostWhen I see Smoke Dogg post I feel like I am in the presence of a higher power.

By Laboured Go To PostWhen I see Smoke Dogg post I feel like I am in the presence of a higher power.

By YungMagus Go To PostI too feel like some crusty old fuck's gonna unmask and yell, "ITS ME AUSTIN, IT WAS ME ALLL ALLONG AUSTIN"

The young Tesla engineer was excited. Ecstatic, in fact. It was a Saturday in October 2017, and he was working at the Gigafactory, Tesla’s enormous battery manufacturing plant in Nevada. Over the previous year, he had been living out of a suitcase, putting in 13-hour days, seven days a week. This was his first real job. And now a colleague had tracked him down to say that Elon Musk—Elon Musk!—needed his personal help.

At about 10 o’clock on Saturday evening, an angry Musk was examining one of the production line’s mechanized modules, trying to figure out what was wrong, when the young, excited engineer was brought over to assist him.

“Hey, buddy, this doesn’t work!” Musk shouted at the engineer, according to someone who heard the conversation. “Did you do this?”

The engineer was taken aback. He had never met Musk before. Musk didn’t even know the engineer’s name. The young man wasn’t certain what, exactly, Musk was asking him, or why he sounded so angry.

“You mean, program the robot?” the engineer said. “Or design that tool?”

“Did you fucking do this?” Musk asked him.

“I’m not sure what you’re referring to?” the engineer replied apologetically.

“You’re a fucking idiot!” Musk shouted back. “Get the fuck out and don’t come back!”

The young engineer climbed over a low safety barrier and walked away. He was bewildered by what had just happened. The entire conversation had lasted less than a minute. A few moments later, his manager came over to say that he had been fired on Musk’s orders, according to two people with knowledge of the situation. The engineer was shocked. He’d been working so hard. He was set to get a review from his manager the next week, and had been hearing only positive things. Instead, two days later, he signed his separation papers.

He wanted to start production in July 2017, almost four months ahead of plan. Musk was excited by a particular notion: He had recently had a dream, people in the room recall him saying, in which he had seen the factory of the future, a fully automated manufacturing plant where robots built everything at high speed and parts moved along conveyor belts that delivered each piece, just in time, to exactly the right place. He said he had been working on such ideas for a while. “This thing will be an unstoppable alien dreadnought,” he told his colleagues, causing some of them to pull out their phones and Google the phrase. (It returned disturbing images of sci-fi armored spaceships that looked like copulating squids.)

Musk “would say ‘I’ve got to fire someone today,’ and I’d say, ‘No you don’t,’ and he’d say, ‘No, no, I just do. I’ve got to fire somebody,’ ” one former high-­ranking executive told me. (A Tesla spokesperson disputed this but added that Musk makes “difficult but necessary decisions.”) At one meeting Musk, agitated, broke a phone. During another, he noticed that an executive was missing and called him. The man’s wife had recently given birth, and he explained that he was taking time off as she recuperated. Musk was angry. At a minimum, you should be on phone calls, Musk told the man. Having a kid doesn’t prevent you from being on the phone. (A Tesla spokesperson said that while Musk “was once upset that a particular executive did not dial into an important conference call several days after his child was born,” the company would not penalize an employee for taking paternity leave.)

Elon cares a lot about humanity, but he doesn’t really care about individual people all that much.” (A Tesla spokesperson said Musk “very much cares about individual people.”)

Our Tesla had been modified with an additional set of alignment wheels — sticking out in front like a pair of ears. Those lined up with the edges of the tunnel, transforming the SUV into a kind of rail-guided train. It’s similar to running your car through an automated carwash, but much faster.

The ride was turbulent. The car jostled with many bumps in the concrete along the bottom of the tunnel, even though our top speed reached just 49 miles per hour. (The proximity to the tunnel walls made it seem like we were going faster.) It wasn’t rocky enough to lose your lunch, but it wasn’t an experience you’d tolerate from a public subway service.

Another question: Is Boring just creating private tunnels for rich Tesla owners? Musk said other kinds of cars could be outfitted with the needed guide wheels. But they’d have to be electric vehicles to avoid filling the tunnels with exhaust. And the cars would also require autonomous capabilities to safely navigate at high speeds, entering the tunnels at a rate of about 1 per second.