Pizza hut should be a fucking textbook case study on how to run a much-beloved brand into the ground.
Quiznos might be slightly worse- they were in financial trouble so their brilliant solution was let’s fuck over our franchisees. I’ll give you 3 guesses how that worked out, but you’ll only need one.
This is one of the things that bugs me.
If you’re in Country A, with all your operations in Country A, and what you do is legal in Country A, why should you give a single fuck about Country B’s laws?
Seems to me the appropriate answer is basically to do what The Pirate Bay did with DMCA notices- respond that your laws don’t apply to us as we have nothing to do with your country, and if your citizens use our software that’s between you and them. It’s not our job to enforce your laws on your citizens.
If I wasn’t clear, then allow me to clarify. This is and always was my position and I believe it is supported by facts (which is why it’s my position).
Elon was one of the original cofounders of Tesla. He wasn’t on the registration paperwork because one of the original founders already had an LLC registered and they decided to use that rather than make a new one. The LLC had little activity or money before Elon and others decided to make it happen.
Elon left Tesla largely to Eberhard at that point.
After a lot of transmission failures, Elon concluded that Eberhard was making bad decisions at Tesla. He pushed Eberhard out and took over as CEO.
What followed were objectively good engineering decisions- things like deleting the gearbox and upsizing the electric motor. Under Elon the Roadster design was finished and it shipped, the Model S sedan came out as the first real mass produced electric car to hit the streets, followed by models X 3 and Y. The Y became one of the best selling vehicles in the world. During this time, the engineering decisions made by Elon/Tesla have been proven correct many times over.
Do you factually disagree with any of this?
There were of course other people at Tesla- smart people who made lots of good choices.
I’m simply pointing out that your initial assertion (that other people made most of the good decisions, Elon showed up after those decisions were made and took credit) is demonstrably false, given that pre-Elon the company was proceeding down an ultimately failed engineering path.
As an American I hate to say it but there’s merit to what you’re saying.
If I was outside the US, I’d be looking at the US as an unreliable partner, given how rapidly the message is changing with things like wars and tariffs. I’d conclude that the US does not have a consistent policy (let alone an intelligent one) and therefore it’s in my best interest to ensure my success doesn’t rely on the US anymore.
it’s really too bad :(
This is objectively false. Go test drive one and tell me if you honestly believe that golf carts are better vehicles.
I thought it was just a phrase in general circulation. I’ve actually never once listened to Rush Limbaugh. I find most political content unintelligent and uninteresting and generally prefer to just read facts and draw my own conclusions. My brain seems to work pretty well and I prefer not to have my conclusions drawn for me.
Teslas are some of the safest cars on the road. And guys who want penis extensions buy big noisy trucks not silent electric cars.
That’s fair- I encourage you to always vote with your wallet. I don’t think your analysis of the situation is factually correct and I’d encourage you to do your own independent research on each of your assertions. But you should always back your convictions up with action.
With respect- I have been following Tesla closely since the original Roadster was first in development. Your statement is not correct.
When Tesla started, Elon was one of the first, and biggest, investors. A man named Martin Eberhard was one of the team, he was put in charge of Tesla and wrote a blog that I read religiously. The original Roadster, under Eberhard, had a two-speed gearbox- no clutch, just a synchromesh. This would allow one to select either rocket fast acceleration in first gear, or higher top speed in second gear.
The gearbox however became a significant source of problems. Making a gearbox work at 16,000 RPM is difficult, getting one that shifts under load at 16,000 RPM and will last for 100k miles (without costing a fortune) is a real challenge. And while not impossible, it’s not something that had been done cost effectively for a vehicle before. So Tesla went through several gearbox designs and multiple suppliers trying to make one that was cost-effective and reliable. Demo cars were loaned to reviewers, locked in 2nd gear so they wouldn’t shift.
After the 3rd or 4th attempt at the gearbox and a year plus worth of delays, Elon took over Tesla. Eberhard was pushed out. He was salty about that and for a while wrote a blog called ‘Tesla Founders’ which was critical of Tesla. As I recall there was a small legal dispute, it was solved and Tesla/Eberhard went their separate ways.
Anyway, Elon took over at Tesla, and one of his first orders was delete the shifting gearbox, use a simple non-shifting reduction gear (inexpensive and lasts more or less forever if you keep it lubricated), and make the motor bigger to provide more torque. The result was the Roadster. Model S, the luxury production sedan, followed. Then Model X, luxury production SUV, Then Model 3, mainstream sedan, and Model Y, mainstream SUV. All under Elon, as the company grew from a ‘might not make it’ startup to one of the biggest automakers.
I say you’re incorrect because all the ‘good decisions’ Tesla made in the beginning were under Elon, NOT Eberhard.
Go test drive one and you’ll understand. Seriously.
Cars are pretty much the same, EVs are a different animal. No shifting, instant torque, full torque at all speeds. A Tesla SUV can out-accelerate many gas-driven sports cars. You put the hammer down on the highway and you’ve got instant 1st-gear-level acceleration.
The US govt has a responsibility to keep the PetroDollar in tact since Nixon killed the gold standard, otherwise the global dependency on USD is no longer maintained and other currencies have a chance to replace it.
This 100%.
US Govt is propped up on debt. We have no financial discipline today and none is anywhere in sight. If our currency loses value we’re mega-fucked.
If petrodollar goes away, our currency loses a lot of credibility. And we are doing everything possible to ensure that everyone involved wants nothing to do with us.
Great strategy :)
This is nonsense. Pedophiles are attracted to PRE-pubescent children, like 0-12 years old.
We have a cabal of hebephiles (11-14yo) and ebephiles (15-19yo) running our country. And they don’t bomb poor defenseless countries, they bomb heavily defended countries that have military control of vital trade corridors and nuclear response capability. And they’re not just bombing those countries to distract people from the money they’re stealing, it’s also to distract people from demanding the release of documents proving they all signed up to rape early-teenaged girls.
Trust me, this is MUCH better this way :P
What a bunch of crazy talk. Next I bet you’re going to say something REALLY batshit, like we should stop offshoring all our manufacturing to China and build stuff here in USA, right?
Jokes aside- you’re quite right, but with one issue- making solar panels has a chemical environmental impact. If China wants to trash their environment to build our solar panels cheap, let them. Other than that I 100% agree we should be buying the tech and setting up our own manufacturing lines.
You can’t think that way. Just understand that building clean infrastructure is too difficult and too expensive and will take too long. The electric car is always 10 years away.
(Like the dude or not- this is something you gotta give Elon Musk credit for-- before Tesla the electric car was perpetually ‘10 years away’, Tesla actually went and built one, and a whole fast charging network, with the intended goal of embarrassing other automakers into producing their own EVs and chargers. It worked, and I truly believe without Tesla we’d still be hearing that the electric car is only 10 years away.)
But for real, as a Freedom-loving American- it pisses me off because the sooner we start the sooner we’ll be finished, and then from a national security POV we are MUCH better off as we aren’t depending on shithole sandbox countries with religious dictatorships to provide our fuel.
Oh hi there fellow citizen with no connection at all to the government!
I’m at 123 Fake St, Nowheresville AL, 12345. Feel free to stop by anytime!
Is this where I develop sudden depression and decide that life is so not worth living that I shoot myself twice in the back of the head before driving my car off a cliff?
Wait, you’re saying my Congresscritter who only shows up every few years to demand my vote (because it’s ABSOLUTELY CRITICAL THIS YEAR that we defeat the other party) isn’t actually laser-focused on my needs as a citizen?
That seems unpossible.
:P
It’s a 2023ish car so pre-refresh. The suspension is stiff and it lacks a lot of luxury creature comforts. But it’s FUN AS HELL to drive, tons of chargers everywhere, the nav system is top notch, and the self driving system is light years ahead of anyone else’s. Plus they don’t sell their customers data like GM and some others or show ads on the display like Stellantis.
I bought it back in 2022ish, before Elon’s association with Republican politics.
That said- I’d buy another one in a heartbeat, new or used. The self driving feature is light years ahead of anything else. And unlike other manufactures (looking at GM) they don’t sell their customers driving habits to insurance companies. The security is actually pretty good unlike most automakers who institutionally don’t understand computers so they outsource most of it to their suppliers like Bosch, Delphi, etc.
Apparently if you screw the franchisees and make it impossible for them to make any money, they stop being franchisees and close their stores.
Unfortunately, this outcome could not have been predicted ahead of time.