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> the fleet size increases and becomes a more valuable hacking target.

Tesla has a (IMO rediculous) high market cap and stock value. A severe hack could affect that, which, combined with a short position, would allow attackers to make a large amount of money.

What I'm saying is: Tesla already is a valuable hacking target.



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> Teslas are basically hacked together, according to multiple reports and analyses, teardowns.

I've got a news flash for you my friend: everything is basically hacked together.


> From the standpoint of anyone trying to sabotage Tesla, the risk/reward ratio is extremely high.

Can you show your working in that calculation please?

My understanding is that the reward / risk ratio is extremely high for more than a handful of obvious players.


> of some bad actor sending out code which turns those cars into ungoverned highway missiles

Yes but think of the probabilities that have to happen are:

a) Knowledgeable person

b) Motivated person

c) Evil or mentally unstable person

d) Determination and ability to overcome adversity.

And the person or person who has to decide that Tesla is what they want to exploit instead of another car manufacturer or another object and so on.

Compare this with someone who simply wants to take their car and drive it into a crowd.


>> - Auto revenue grew 10% to $2.4 billion as sales of Model S and X grew. Revenue is at risk, though. Tesla will divert resources from Model S and X to the Model 3.

This is curious. If the S and X are profitable, why divert resources from them? Not enough? Well maybe they should not have just canned a bunch of people?

Yeah I know, the ones they let go may not be the ones they needed for the 3. But it still seems strange all these things taken together.


> combined with a short position

While I don't disagree that Tesla is a valuable attack target, the reality is that for market value security does not matter.

There can be a massive attack on Tesla announced tomorrow, the stock will go down 5% for a few days and recover within a month. Nobody cares. It's a depressing reality.


> I guess it all comes down to how much you believe their margin numbers.

Are you suggesting Tesla commits financial fraud?


> Only possible role I can think of would be if there was some additional evidence (like an email chain or something) that Tesla did this release specifically to cause this stock movement. Seems unlikely.

What if Tesla has press releases that aren't human readable but trolls automated trading systems? Like a spam trap but for trading?


>Can you expand on that?

Are you seroius? Someone says the market cap of Tesla is "somewhat" bounded, and you ask how? Is it totally unbounded? Is what they are doing unprecedented beyond comparison?

Do you think the market cap of Tesla is infinity? It's already multiples of companies that produce a magnitude more cars and infinite more profit. Not good enough for you? What is it that you think Tesla does so well that justifies an unlimited market cap?

This is insane. Wish HackerNews existed during the DotCom bubble. It was bad enough being accused of sexism during the Theranos bubble.


> Tesla is behaving like a company which doesn't realize the competition is catching up fast.

Should their market cap be $600b, higher, or lower given this statement?...


> This isn't bad if you're the only one who can ship self-driving cars with acceptable quality and volume as you'd be disrupting the rest of the industry to fuel massive growth.

Fixing it:

This isn't too bad if you're the only one who can ship self-driving cars with acceptable quality and volume as you'd be disrupting the rest of the industry to fuel massive growth.

But you won't be the only one for long. And then the entire industry will downsize.

And Tesla is (1) the most susceptible to it, since most of the enterprise value comes from expectation of future growth and (2) it lags behind other makers in self-driving tech.


> Tesla's greatest enemy at this point is the cult of Elon Musk, and the cult's leader, Elon Musk.

Huh, well, given that, I strongly suggest you short TSLA, which would be a sure thing, right?


> Then there was the crazy claim from Musk that the cars would be appreciating assets because of the software. LOL.

Not only will they appreciate in value, Teslas will earn you money while you sleep. [1]

[1] https://futurism.com/the-byte/ride-hailing-tesla-elon-musk


> For Tesla shareholders I'd say the risk here is much higher than any possible reward.

I think that's probably right. But do those Tesla shareholders believe it?


> I think Tesla has done remarkably well and I suspect they were able to do it because they were small and nimble when OTA capabilities first became feasible.

I think Tesla have done well for another reason: they are strictly a software engineering company that just happens to make cars on the side. Tesla could easily port their software to any other existing car (Autopilot, mobile app + services, touchscreen OS), but then the Tesla cars would be just another bland electric car offering much like the others. It's the software that defines the Tesla experience, and that's why they have focused on cybersecurity since the beginning.

There certainly were some fun hijinks on the way I'm sure, like the engineer whose NDA expired and explained that the way OTA was done on the first batch of Model S was to have a massive bash script ssh into each car and run apt-get or a similar command.


> Tesla is a giant confidence game - as are most high growth opportunities.

Do you literally mean that Tesla is a scam? (That’s the normal meaning of “confidence game”, i.e. “con game”).


>Why is everything Tesla does always suddenly some sort of competitive advantage

Because the difference between could do and did is massive.


>Due to Elon's damage to the brand, Hyundai and Ford take the lead from Tesla.

That would imply some kind of manufacturing capacity being magicked from somewhere. Or just a complete bottoming out of Tesla sales, despite them currently being higher than ever. Do you think Musk's being-a-dick quotient can get higher? I'm thinking it tops out about now, barring it becoming some kind of superpower.


> No, you'd be insane to make bets on Tesla, for the simple reason that there are a lot of people making crazy bets on Tesla.

Sounds like a Ponzi scheme.


> A lot of Tesla vehicles feel like they value form over function.

As far as I can tell, that would be all of them. And if rumors are true, Tesla might be about to escalate that to the next level with their bread-and-butter cars. Brave, or stupid, ask in a year.

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