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    Ludicrous: The Unvarnished Story of Tesla Motors
    Ludicrous: The Unvarnished Story of Tesla Motors
    Ludicrous: The Unvarnished Story of Tesla Motors
    Audiobook8 hours

    Ludicrous: The Unvarnished Story of Tesla Motors

    Written by Edward Niedermeyer

    Narrated by Roger Wayne

    4/5

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    About this audiobook

    Tesla Motors and CEO Elon Musk have become household names, shaking up the staid auto industry by creating a set of innovative electric vehicles that have wowed the marketplace and defied conventional wisdom. The company's market valuation now rivals that of long-established automakers, and, to many industry observers, Tesla is defining the future of the industry. But behind the hype, Tesla has some serious deficiencies that raise questions about its sky-high valuation, and even its ultimate survival.

    Tesla's commitment to innovation has led it to reject the careful, zero-defects approach of other car manufacturers, even as it struggles to mass-produce cars reliably, and with minimal defects. While most car manufacturers struggle with the razor-thin margins of mid-priced sedans, Tesla's strategy requires that the Model 3 finally bring it to profitability, even as the high-priced Roadster and Model S both lost money. And Tesla's approach of continually focusing on the future, even as commitments and deadlines are repeatedly missed, may ultimately test the patience of all but its most devoted fans.

    In Ludicrous, journalist and auto industry analyst Edward Niedermeyer lays bare the disconnect between the popular perception of Tesla and the day-to-day realities of the company-and the cars it produces.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherAscent Audio
    Release dateSep 3, 2019
    ISBN9781469076072
    Ludicrous: The Unvarnished Story of Tesla Motors

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    Reviews for Ludicrous

    4/5

    38 ratings3 reviews

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    • 5/5
      The book goes through the different stages of Teslas life and how Musk managed to survive everytime dispite the odds. The author focusus on the problems of Tesla, but is not unfair. Despite being about the technical snd manufacturing aspects of the car industry the book is above all a window into 21st American culture. He convincingly reveals Tesla to be more of a cultural pgenomenon then a car.
    • 4/5
      Full of interesting info particularly on Elon Musk but also Tesla and its competition. Particularly worth listening too if you are on the waiting list for a Tesla.
    • 4/5
      From 2018. The book’s main thesis is that Tesla has always faced challenges delivering on Musk’s outsized promises, but that luck and bravado have enabled it to maintain a soaring stock price. Focuses on production/engineering issues, like whether they actually had the claimed fast chargers or chargers that operate on solar power, rather than on treatment of workers, etc. Unfortunately, the book undercuts its own thesis, which is that Musk has been definitively exposed as unreliable, because after every exposure documented, enough people shrug or cry fake news to keep Tesla stock high. Still, it’s hard to think the party can last forever; as Niedermeyer points out, the legacy car companies are not shy about investing in competing cars and can actually make a lot of cars that work, something that Tesla has not shown. Also, the future of electric cars is probably not mostly in high-end, luxury brands, but in basic production configurations that can be built into cheap cars as well as a few high-end models, again something that the big makers can do and Tesla can’t. Of course, the market can stay irrational longer than you or I can stay solvent. So I guess we’ll see.