Lets say you made billions at company A and then left (pushed out/fired whatever you want to call it) but still love company A. It would stand to reason that since you still love company A, you would do everything in your power to still support company A when you purchased and started to run company B.
Nope. If Apple products would make my basketball operation perform better I would use Apple products.
That is a big if.
If I were Ballmer I would let the organization, coaches and players use what products suit them the most effectively. But I don't blame him for not wanting to let them use Apple gear. He is a Microsoft guy. That is my point.
While I agree with you that BMW is a well-managed company and such: BMW is not for sale. You would have to buy out the Quandt family. Good luck with that.
Interesting. I was not aware of that family, I thought BMW was a regular publicly traded company.
Perhaps Apple can license the i3 platform from them and if not, it will take more time for Apple to go it alone.
I still think that the BMW i3 is overall the most innovative electric car out there and it took a lot of "Apple like" out of the box thinking to make it.
Apple will soon have:
The best GPS technologies with Coherent Navigations/Iridium Satellites,
The best 3D sensors with PrimeSense, Metaio,
The best Speech Interpretation & Recognition Interface with SIRI, Novauris, Vocal IQ, Perceptio.
The most advanced Car OS with power management and not to mention the best Maps.
One thing is certain, the car industry is about to be revolutionized.
If I were Ballmer I would let the organization, coaches and players use what products suit them the most effectively. But I don't blame him for not wanting to let them use Apple gear. He is a Microsoft guy. That is my point.
He's being silly then. 100% of his attention should be focusing on winning a CHAMPIONSHIP. If it means using Apple products who cares. Sound like he's a 15 year old girl who's holding a grudge.
Again if he was a founder of Microsoft I would understand. But they FIRED him.
To be fair Steve Wozniak was a founder of Apple.
Yet if he ever does or says anything that is outside of what Apple people want to hear, he gets railed against and takes flack like there is no tomorrow.
Maybe Woz should give up his 6 figure stipend (which isn't even the dust on the dust of peanuts) from Apple so when he says anything that stipend will not be used as a talking point.
I'm talking numbers. I don't think there's a way to measure fandom person to person.
I think before Tesla can gain the cultish fanbase Apple has built since the 80's, they'd have to have the media hate them and then have crazy anti-tesla fans like the fandroids and Windows people are. I don't think they'll ever have the cultish fanbase the biggest company in the world has.
Beats just joined Apple(who have their "cult"), Apple Music is gonna be huge and Of course ?Watch is just getting started and when this ?Car comes, expect the fanbase to expand and eat into the tesla "cult". Heck it already is expanding, look at iPhones record breaking sales every year.
Tesla has a long way to go before it has its own cult of fans. Elon Musk, OTOH has an instant and irrational cult of personality around him: people who slavishly label him "a real life Tony Stark."
You might say the same of Steve Jobs, but Apple, Inc. has a legitimate cult of fans: ordinary users who line up for the next big thing, and these are separate from those who quote Steve as a disciple.
if you're being snarky, my point still stands -- no engineering degree. nowhere could I find he's personally engineering anything at SpaceX or Tesla. so the claim that he is an engineer while Jobs was just a salesman remains bunk.
if you care to take down this point, please do.
No I'm agreeing with you. I liked the part where the Russian engineer spat on him, even if it was just figuratively.
I guess his BS in economics may have paid off. He basically turned $20K borrowed money into $13 Billion in personal net worth.
Balmer worked for Microsoft. He was not a founder. If he was founder you would a point. IN fact Microsoft FIRED him.
OK, but to totally nitpick, you can be a founder AND be fired by your board of directors, once you give up controlling interest in the company you founded.
Better milage, fewer emissions, 10,000 miles between oil changes . . . All these are internal combustion engine issues. They are immaterial to the discussion. The other technologies, Apple can easily acquire them by hiring knowledgeable engineers, just like Tesla did.
I respectfully disagree that it is immaterial to the discussion.
There are external costs regardless if it is an internal combustion or electrical mode of transport. The energy has to come from somewhere and until we are not mining lithium for the batteries for example, and burning coal, oil, natural gas for the electricity to run these cars I think its absolutely material up for discussion. The "miles per gallon", efficiency, pollution etc. all depend on the source of energy. Those are some problems to be solved by the tech folks.
Things will still need servicing like batteries, brakes and rotors, tires, wheel bearings, suspension components etc.
What about range and refueling? Will that battery pack and electric motor still deliver the same sort of range in say 5, 10 or 15 years? I have a vehicle that is over 15 years old and it still gets the same exact mileage as advertised on the sticker the day it was purchased. And it takes about 5 minutes to refuel the tank to go another 350+ miles. How much is your time worth to wait 30 minutes at a super-charging station, if you can find one, to eke out another 100 miles of travel? Or mentally planning your driving life around charging? Your time and worries are another cost. Meanwhile there is a gas station just about anywhere you look. So those are more problems to be solved by the tech folks.
Things like fit and finish in the overall quality, ride and handling, style also all apply equally to both internal combustion and electrical cars. If over 100 years of very skilled engineers and designers haven't figured it out already I doubt the tech guys will.
I think these kinds of things are completely material and germane to discuss.
Listen, I am not against electric vehicles. I want better, more efficient modes of transportation that suits my needs. I just think that it is fair to discuss ALL of the costs involved.
Lots of opinions here.... some really ignorant... it's just .... noise....
Yes, Elon might not be Steve on stage... so what??? I would love to see all of you criticizing him going on stage... It's not as easy as it seems..Steve was a natural... Also Elon has managed to create companies that like Steve are changing the way we think about things....again...it's easy to come here and say a lot about a guy that nobody here knows.
I admire this Elon as much as I admire Steve. They are examples of positive change, they drive people and create new products. You can say whatever about Tesla, but I see a lot of those cars here in US and in Europe. Eventually they will come out with a cheaper more accesible product... Some of you seem to forget that when the iPhone came out (before you even cared about Apple) most people believed nobody would buy such an expensive phone. And look where it is now...
I think Tesla is a disaster in the making. The company is run by engineers running around like chickens without heads.
Apple should partner with BMW or even buy them.
BMW is well managed with adult supervision, they know how to make cars and they already have dealers and service centers all over the world.
BMW is much more like Apple than Tesla will ever be. I think Steve Jobs would choose BMW.
<video1>
<video2>
Thanks for the videos. The second video was very informative (and long).
There have been some posts about Tesla innovations. Tesla uses laptop cells (and lots of them) to make their battery pack. This is not conventional nor innovative. This was done for cost, as these cells were a commodity when Tesla began using them. My opinion is that Tesla's complicated battery management system (BMS) is the only innovation here. Let me explain.
Tesla's unconventional approach let them sell a high-end car quickly, but my guess is that the industry (GM, BMW, Audi, etc.) will catch up using the conventional "large format" (=physically larger cells=less number of cells) battery pack approach and seriously challenge Tesla on battery pack cost, especially for cars in the US$30k range (GM/BMW are practically there already). The Gigafactory in collaboration with Panasonic implies says that Tesla will continue to use this same approach for future (IMO, high-end only) vehicles.
Having worked in electronics manufacturing, I cringe when I see something with 7000 parts; that means 14000 electrical connections (for 2-terminal parts) or 14000 opportunities for defects. That is an insane (ludicrous?) issue to deal with in the field, but that underlies the complexity of their BMS to route around bad or disconnected cells (that is 30x to 70x more cells to manage than anyone else!).
What about Tesla's open patents? My guess is that at least a few of them describe their non-conventional battery pack approach, and other companies are now free to use it - with, I'm guessing, the hook that all the cells will be sourced from the Gigafactory.
Better milage, fewer emissions, 10,000 miles between oil changes . . . All these are internal combustion engine issues. They are immaterial to the discussion. The other technologies, Apple can easily acquire them by hiring knowledgeable engineers, just like Tesla did.
Originally Posted by TechLover
I respectfully disagree that it is immaterial to the discussion.
There are external costs regardless if it is an internal combustion or electrical mode of transport. The energy has to come from somewhere and until we are not mining lithium for the batteries for example, and burning coal, oil, natural gas for the electricity to run these cars I think its absolutely material up for discussion. The "miles per gallon", efficiency, pollution etc. all depend on the source of energy. Those are some problems to be solved by the tech folks.
Things will still need servicing like batteries, brakes and rotors, tires, wheel bearings, suspension components etc.
What about range and refueling? Will that battery pack and electric motor still deliver the same sort of range in say 5, 10 or 15 years? I have a vehicle that is over 15 years old and it still gets the same exact mileage as advertised on the sticker the day it was purchased. And it takes about 5 minutes to refuel the tank to go another 350+ miles. How much is your time worth to wait 30 minutes at a super-charging station, if you can find one, to eke out another 100 miles of travel? Or mentally planning your driving life around charging? Your time and worries are another cost. Meanwhile there is a gas station just about anywhere you look. So those are more problems to be solved by the tech folks.
Things like fit and finish in the overall quality, ride and handling, style also all apply equally to both internal combustion and electrical cars. If over 100 years of very skilled engineers and designers haven't figured it out already I doubt the tech guys will.
I think these kinds of things are completely material and germane to discuss.
Listen, I am not against electric vehicles. I want better, more efficient modes of transportation that suits my needs. I just think that it is fair to discuss ALL of the costs involved.
They are immaterial to the discussion of whether Apple can just go into electric cars without any prior experience and successfully compete with incumbent electric cars. As to whether electric cars sucking juice from the existing grid is really the environmental boon that some people think it is, that's a different discussion. As to whether electric cars, with the drawbacks you stated can successfully supplant ICEs that's still another discussion. Actually, that's why I'm rooting for fuel cells to nudge batteries aside. Frankly, it's great that your 15 year old car exhibits the same MPG as the day you bought it is great. But that's more the exception than the rule in the real world, so it's not that relevant either. And besides if you care about the environment, you need to replace that car now and stop spewing so much toxins into the air. :-)
As a matter of complexity, I think ICEs are just a notch, probably more, above all the other technologies that go into an automobile. Partly because there are government mandated standards on fuel economy and emissions that they need to fulfill so they're really pushing the envelope. As to "fit and finish, ride and handling, and style" -- if small outfits like Lotus and other specialty builders are able to figure these out on their small budgets, Apple should be able to do it just by hiring the right people or signing up the right component supplier. But ICE's? As I said, totally different level of complexity. You're talking vast amounts of institutional proprietary knowledge here locked up in the data archives and collective stock of knowledge held by the engineers at Toyota, VW, GM and all the other car companies. Knowledge on combustion chamber design, metallurgy, fuel chemistry, engine control systems, etc. this is a big chunk of knowledge that takes years to amass and catch up to. Look how long it took the Koreans to get up to speed.
Couple points 1) Regardless of what you think of Tesla the company or its cars, the comments by Musk show no class. It will not improve his reputation, and comes across as very defensive. As is most often the case, it will likely have the opposite effect of what is intended. Poor move.
2) If Apple introduce a car in a few years, I don't expect it will compete directly with what Tesla has on the market today. I don't see sports cars as their angle.
They are immaterial to the discussion of whether Apple can just go into electric cars without any prior experience and succeed. As to whether electric cars sucking juice from the existing grid is really the environmental boon that some people think it is, that's a different discussion.
As a matter of complexity, I think ICEs are just a notch, probably more, above all the other technologies that go into an automobile. Partly because there are government mandated standards on fuel economy and emissions that they need to fulfill so they're really pushing the envelope. As to "fit and finish, ride and handling, and style" -- if small outfits like Lotus and other specialty builders are able to figure these out on their small budgets, Apple will be able to do it just by hiring the right people or signing up the right component supplier. But ICE's? As I said, totally different level of complexity.
And how do any of us know if Apple is getting into manufacturing cars specifically? Just because they hired some engineers?
And how do any of us know if the supposed Apple car will indeed be electric?
Interesting. I was not aware of that family, I thought BMW was a regular publicly traded company.
Perhaps Apple can license the i3 platform from them and if not, it will take more time for Apple to go it alone.
If I'm not mistaken, less than half of BMWs shares are publicly traded. The Quants hold ~ 46% of the shares, a controlling stake.
Anyway, I agree that BMW is taking an interesting approach, which certainly didn't go unnoticed in Cupertino. I wouldn't mind them teaming up, but it would be in a kind of partnership.
my guess is that Musk's asking price was higher than Apple thought they would spend doing it themselves.
Irrelevant. If you want to buy a public company you offer to buy all the outstanding shares plus a typical 20% premium. As soon as the offer is announced the share price will most likely run up quite a bit. Once the offer is received then the board of directors considers the offer and if they think it is a good deal they put it to a shareholder vote. The offer could involve both cash and exchange of shares, but you don't just call up Musk on the phone and ask him how much he wants for it.
That said, they really wouldn't need to ask Musk anyway because Apple can do the calculations themselves so you might be right, the price could be higher than they want to pay.
Irrelevant. If you want to buy a public company you offer to buy all the outstanding shares plus a typical 20% premium. As soon as the offer is announced the share price will most likely run up quite a bit. Once the offer is received then the board of directors considers the offer and if they think it is a good deal they put it to a shareholder vote. You don't just call up Musk on the phone and ask him how much he wants for it.
That said, they really wouldn't need to ask Musk anyway because Apple can do the calculations themselves so you might be right, the price could be higher than they want to pay.
Comments
Lets say you made billions at company A and then left (pushed out/fired whatever you want to call it) but still love company A. It would stand to reason that since you still love company A, you would do everything in your power to still support company A when you purchased and started to run company B.
Nope. If Apple products would make my basketball operation perform better I would use Apple products.
That is a big if.
If I were Ballmer I would let the organization, coaches and players use what products suit them the most effectively. But I don't blame him for not wanting to let them use Apple gear. He is a Microsoft guy. That is my point.
While I agree with you that BMW is a well-managed company and such: BMW is not for sale. You would have to buy out the Quandt family. Good luck with that.
Interesting. I was not aware of that family, I thought BMW was a regular publicly traded company.
Perhaps Apple can license the i3 platform from them and if not, it will take more time for Apple to go it alone.
I still think that the BMW i3 is overall the most innovative electric car out there and it took a lot of "Apple like" out of the box thinking to make it.
Apple will soon have:
The best GPS technologies with Coherent Navigations/Iridium Satellites,
The best 3D sensors with PrimeSense, Metaio,
The best Speech Interpretation & Recognition Interface with SIRI, Novauris, Vocal IQ, Perceptio.
The most advanced Car OS with power management and not to mention the best Maps.
One thing is certain, the car industry is about to be revolutionized.
That is a big if.
If I were Ballmer I would let the organization, coaches and players use what products suit them the most effectively. But I don't blame him for not wanting to let them use Apple gear. He is a Microsoft guy. That is my point.
He's being silly then. 100% of his attention should be focusing on winning a CHAMPIONSHIP. If it means using Apple products who cares. Sound like he's a 15 year old girl who's holding a grudge.
Again if he was a founder of Microsoft I would understand. But they FIRED him.
To be fair Steve Wozniak was a founder of Apple.
Yet if he ever does or says anything that is outside of what Apple people want to hear, he gets railed against and takes flack like there is no tomorrow.
Maybe Woz should give up his 6 figure stipend (which isn't even the dust on the dust of peanuts) from Apple so when he says anything that stipend will not be used as a talking point.
Tesla has a long way to go before it has its own cult of fans. Elon Musk, OTOH has an instant and irrational cult of personality around him: people who slavishly label him "a real life Tony Stark."
You might say the same of Steve Jobs, but Apple, Inc. has a legitimate cult of fans: ordinary users who line up for the next big thing, and these are separate from those who quote Steve as a disciple.
if you're being snarky, my point still stands -- no engineering degree. nowhere could I find he's personally engineering anything at SpaceX or Tesla. so the claim that he is an engineer while Jobs was just a salesman remains bunk.
if you care to take down this point, please do.
No I'm agreeing with you. I liked the part where the Russian engineer spat on him, even if it was just figuratively.
I guess his BS in economics may have paid off. He basically turned $20K borrowed money into $13 Billion in personal net worth.
OK, but to totally nitpick, you can be a founder AND be fired by your board of directors, once you give up controlling interest in the company you founded.
Better milage, fewer emissions, 10,000 miles between oil changes . . . All these are internal combustion engine issues. They are immaterial to the discussion. The other technologies, Apple can easily acquire them by hiring knowledgeable engineers, just like Tesla did.
I respectfully disagree that it is immaterial to the discussion.
There are external costs regardless if it is an internal combustion or electrical mode of transport. The energy has to come from somewhere and until we are not mining lithium for the batteries for example, and burning coal, oil, natural gas for the electricity to run these cars I think its absolutely material up for discussion. The "miles per gallon", efficiency, pollution etc. all depend on the source of energy. Those are some problems to be solved by the tech folks.
Things will still need servicing like batteries, brakes and rotors, tires, wheel bearings, suspension components etc.
What about range and refueling? Will that battery pack and electric motor still deliver the same sort of range in say 5, 10 or 15 years? I have a vehicle that is over 15 years old and it still gets the same exact mileage as advertised on the sticker the day it was purchased. And it takes about 5 minutes to refuel the tank to go another 350+ miles. How much is your time worth to wait 30 minutes at a super-charging station, if you can find one, to eke out another 100 miles of travel? Or mentally planning your driving life around charging? Your time and worries are another cost. Meanwhile there is a gas station just about anywhere you look. So those are more problems to be solved by the tech folks.
Things like fit and finish in the overall quality, ride and handling, style also all apply equally to both internal combustion and electrical cars. If over 100 years of very skilled engineers and designers haven't figured it out already I doubt the tech guys will.
I think these kinds of things are completely material and germane to discuss.
Listen, I am not against electric vehicles. I want better, more efficient modes of transportation that suits my needs. I just think that it is fair to discuss ALL of the costs involved.
I think Musk should be compensated by all the Apple blog and rumour sites for generating page clicks.
Lots of opinions here.... some really ignorant... it's just .... noise....
Yes, Elon might not be Steve on stage... so what??? I would love to see all of you criticizing him going on stage... It's not as easy as it seems..Steve was a natural... Also Elon has managed to create companies that like Steve are changing the way we think about things....again...it's easy to come here and say a lot about a guy that nobody here knows.
I admire this Elon as much as I admire Steve. They are examples of positive change, they drive people and create new products. You can say whatever about Tesla, but I see a lot of those cars here in US and in Europe. Eventually they will come out with a cheaper more accesible product... Some of you seem to forget that when the iPhone came out (before you even cared about Apple) most people believed nobody would buy such an expensive phone. And look where it is now...
I think Tesla is a disaster in the making. The company is run by engineers running around like chickens without heads.
Apple should partner with BMW or even buy them.
BMW is well managed with adult supervision, they know how to make cars and they already have dealers and service centers all over the world.
BMW is much more like Apple than Tesla will ever be. I think Steve Jobs would choose BMW.
<video1>
<video2>
Thanks for the videos. The second video was very informative (and long).
There have been some posts about Tesla innovations. Tesla uses laptop cells (and lots of them) to make their battery pack. This is not conventional nor innovative. This was done for cost, as these cells were a commodity when Tesla began using them. My opinion is that Tesla's complicated battery management system (BMS) is the only innovation here. Let me explain.
To highlight the unconventional Tesla approach:
Tesla Roadster: 6831 cells
Tesla Model S (85 kWh pack): 7104 cells
first gen Chevy Volt (not a pure EV): 288 cells
second gen Chevy Volt (not a pure EV): 192 cells
forthcoming Chevy Bolt (pure EV with 200 mile/320 km range): ?? cells
Nissan Leaf: 192 cells
BMW i3: 96 cells
Tesla's unconventional approach let them sell a high-end car quickly, but my guess is that the industry (GM, BMW, Audi, etc.) will catch up using the conventional "large format" (=physically larger cells=less number of cells) battery pack approach and seriously challenge Tesla on battery pack cost, especially for cars in the US$30k range (GM/BMW are practically there already). The Gigafactory in collaboration with Panasonic implies says that Tesla will continue to use this same approach for future (IMO, high-end only) vehicles.
Having worked in electronics manufacturing, I cringe when I see something with 7000 parts; that means 14000 electrical connections (for 2-terminal parts) or 14000 opportunities for defects. That is an insane (ludicrous?) issue to deal with in the field, but that underlies the complexity of their BMS to route around bad or disconnected cells (that is 30x to 70x more cells to manage than anyone else!).
What about Tesla's open patents? My guess is that at least a few of them describe their non-conventional battery pack approach, and other companies are now free to use it - with, I'm guessing, the hook that all the cells will be sourced from the Gigafactory.
Better milage, fewer emissions, 10,000 miles between oil changes . . . All these are internal combustion engine issues. They are immaterial to the discussion. The other technologies, Apple can easily acquire them by hiring knowledgeable engineers, just like Tesla did.
Originally Posted by TechLoverI respectfully disagree that it is immaterial to the discussion.
There are external costs regardless if it is an internal combustion or electrical mode of transport. The energy has to come from somewhere and until we are not mining lithium for the batteries for example, and burning coal, oil, natural gas for the electricity to run these cars I think its absolutely material up for discussion. The "miles per gallon", efficiency, pollution etc. all depend on the source of energy. Those are some problems to be solved by the tech folks.
Things will still need servicing like batteries, brakes and rotors, tires, wheel bearings, suspension components etc.
What about range and refueling? Will that battery pack and electric motor still deliver the same sort of range in say 5, 10 or 15 years? I have a vehicle that is over 15 years old and it still gets the same exact mileage as advertised on the sticker the day it was purchased. And it takes about 5 minutes to refuel the tank to go another 350+ miles. How much is your time worth to wait 30 minutes at a super-charging station, if you can find one, to eke out another 100 miles of travel? Or mentally planning your driving life around charging? Your time and worries are another cost. Meanwhile there is a gas station just about anywhere you look. So those are more problems to be solved by the tech folks.
Things like fit and finish in the overall quality, ride and handling, style also all apply equally to both internal combustion and electrical cars. If over 100 years of very skilled engineers and designers haven't figured it out already I doubt the tech guys will.
I think these kinds of things are completely material and germane to discuss.
Listen, I am not against electric vehicles. I want better, more efficient modes of transportation that suits my needs. I just think that it is fair to discuss ALL of the costs involved.
They are immaterial to the discussion of whether Apple can just go into electric cars without any prior experience and successfully compete with incumbent electric cars. As to whether electric cars sucking juice from the existing grid is really the environmental boon that some people think it is, that's a different discussion. As to whether electric cars, with the drawbacks you stated can successfully supplant ICEs that's still another discussion. Actually, that's why I'm rooting for fuel cells to nudge batteries aside. Frankly, it's great that your 15 year old car exhibits the same MPG as the day you bought it is great. But that's more the exception than the rule in the real world, so it's not that relevant either. And besides if you care about the environment, you need to replace that car now and stop spewing so much toxins into the air. :-)
As a matter of complexity, I think ICEs are just a notch, probably more, above all the other technologies that go into an automobile. Partly because there are government mandated standards on fuel economy and emissions that they need to fulfill so they're really pushing the envelope. As to "fit and finish, ride and handling, and style" -- if small outfits like Lotus and other specialty builders are able to figure these out on their small budgets, Apple should be able to do it just by hiring the right people or signing up the right component supplier. But ICE's? As I said, totally different level of complexity. You're talking vast amounts of institutional proprietary knowledge here locked up in the data archives and collective stock of knowledge held by the engineers at Toyota, VW, GM and all the other car companies. Knowledge on combustion chamber design, metallurgy, fuel chemistry, engine control systems, etc. this is a big chunk of knowledge that takes years to amass and catch up to. Look how long it took the Koreans to get up to speed.
1) Regardless of what you think of Tesla the company or its cars, the comments by Musk show no class. It will not improve his reputation, and comes across as very defensive. As is most often the case, it will likely have the opposite effect of what is intended. Poor move.
2) If Apple introduce a car in a few years, I don't expect it will compete directly with what Tesla has on the market today. I don't see sports cars as their angle.
They are immaterial to the discussion of whether Apple can just go into electric cars without any prior experience and succeed. As to whether electric cars sucking juice from the existing grid is really the environmental boon that some people think it is, that's a different discussion.
As a matter of complexity, I think ICEs are just a notch, probably more, above all the other technologies that go into an automobile. Partly because there are government mandated standards on fuel economy and emissions that they need to fulfill so they're really pushing the envelope. As to "fit and finish, ride and handling, and style" -- if small outfits like Lotus and other specialty builders are able to figure these out on their small budgets, Apple will be able to do it just by hiring the right people or signing up the right component supplier. But ICE's? As I said, totally different level of complexity.
And how do any of us know if Apple is getting into manufacturing cars specifically? Just because they hired some engineers?
And how do any of us know if the supposed Apple car will indeed be electric?
Could be a hybrid, could be gas. Non of us know.
Again if he was a founder of Microsoft I would understand. But they FIRED him.
Yeah but he has 333 million shares of MSFT so he still has a dog in this race.
Why doesn't Apple just buy Tesla?
my guess is that Musk's asking price was higher than Apple thought they would spend doing it themselves.
Interesting. I was not aware of that family, I thought BMW was a regular publicly traded company.
Perhaps Apple can license the i3 platform from them and if not, it will take more time for Apple to go it alone.
If I'm not mistaken, less than half of BMWs shares are publicly traded. The Quants hold ~ 46% of the shares, a controlling stake.
Anyway, I agree that BMW is taking an interesting approach, which certainly didn't go unnoticed in Cupertino. I wouldn't mind them teaming up, but it would be in a kind of partnership.
my guess is that Musk's asking price was higher than Apple thought they would spend doing it themselves.
Irrelevant. If you want to buy a public company you offer to buy all the outstanding shares plus a typical 20% premium. As soon as the offer is announced the share price will most likely run up quite a bit. Once the offer is received then the board of directors considers the offer and if they think it is a good deal they put it to a shareholder vote. The offer could involve both cash and exchange of shares, but you don't just call up Musk on the phone and ask him how much he wants for it.
That said, they really wouldn't need to ask Musk anyway because Apple can do the calculations themselves so you might be right, the price could be higher than they want to pay.
Irrelevant. If you want to buy a public company you offer to buy all the outstanding shares plus a typical 20% premium. As soon as the offer is announced the share price will most likely run up quite a bit. Once the offer is received then the board of directors considers the offer and if they think it is a good deal they put it to a shareholder vote. You don't just call up Musk on the phone and ask him how much he wants for it.
That said, they really wouldn't need to ask Musk anyway because Apple can do the calculations themselves so you might be right, the price could be higher than they want to pay.
He is the chairman of the board.
http://ir.teslamotors.com/directors.cfm
He is the chairman of the board.
So he gets one vote. Sometimes the Chairman only votes in order to break ties. Plus he only holds 75 shares.
Yes. And I don't mean that as a compliment. But then again I don't consider Elon Musk Jobs 2.0.
Of course not. He's frikkin' Iron Man 2.0...
