China’s crazy car-straddling elevated is reportedly just a giant scam

After first trial the bus has just collected dust. Beijing police have arrested 30 people.

Read the whole story

 

[Statistical]

Faustus Scaevola[/url]":afagectp]People who invested in this basically deserved to get scammed. A promised 12% yearly return?

A 12% ROI on a company with an innovative product is certainly not unreasonable if you think the product will be successful.

A guaranteed return on ANY startup is unreasonable. The vast majority of startups even those with good ideas fail and those that don't may take years or decades before showing a profit. The timeline to profitability can be very hard to predict even for legit companies. Someone offering firm returns is a giant warning sign that you are about to invest in a scam.

If you want a semi consistent return buy a quality corporate bond or maybe invest in a utility which pays a large dividend. Of course there you are looking at maybe 6%.

 

[qazwart]

mrseb[/url]":25e6w83s]

Faustus Scaevola[/url]":25e6w83s]People who invested in this basically deserved to get scammed. A promised 12% yearly return?

Journalists everywhere should feel ashamed though. Way too many hailed this as something revolutionary. Even the original Ars article after noticing all flaws inherent to the concept ended the new story with:

Still, it's an exciting concept. In countries with very specific infrastructure setups—or the wherewithal to make dramatic infrastructure changes to accommodate elevated buses—the TEB could revolutionise public transport.

Of course it couldn't.

I stand by those comments! I still think elevated transport is a pretty good idea. It's cheaper than building tunnels.

You could totally imagine these things on long stretches of straight roads - the kind of roads that lead into major cities that are often congested. Kind of like autonomous lorry convoys. They're very effective - just only useful in quite specific scenarios.

Your original concluding words (excerpt from above):

the TEB could revolutionise public transport

— Apparently, the TEB could revolutionise public transport. To some of us, it was obvious from the start (on cursory inspection), that it couldn't.
Elevated transport? Probably so. The TEB — never, it's an impractical use/configuration of space. It slices & dices the space around it into inconvenient three-dimensional units, as you allude to in part, when you mention that vehicles above a certain size must go around the TEB! There's no way to polish this poo: the TEB is dead: prior technologies (e.g. elevated tramways & railways) are superior in every way (don't forget that trains can have two decks — and for all the metal you might expend building barriers to protect a TEB, you might as well build rails!)

Go to Queens in New York or the El in Chicago and see what an elevated railway is like. It darkens the street and gives a distinctly dystopia feel of the neighborhood. It’s why all El lines in Manhattan were eliminated.

Besides, there’s the cost of building miles and miles of elevated track. What would be the cost per mile?

The TEB solved some of these problems. Building a TEB track is way cheaper than building an El. Apparently, it can turn, but traffic must stop and wait. And height restrictions are quite common. Many Brooklyn and Queens streets with Els have height restrictions on them.

This doesn’t mean this wasn’t some sort of scam. However, you don’t build a working mockup with a scam. You do nothing more expensive than a four colored brochure.

I don’t think the intesntion was to scam. It sounds more likely that this was over promised and way more expensive than the backers realized.

 

[Theinsanegamer]

Faustus Scaevola[/url]":321r5lbn]People who invested in this basically deserved to get scammed. A promised 12% yearly return?

Journalists everywhere should feel ashamed though. Way too many hailed this as something revolutionary. Even the original Ars article after noticing all flaws inherent to the concept ended the new story with:

Still, it's an exciting concept. In countries with very specific infrastructure setups—or the wherewithal to make dramatic infrastructure changes to accommodate elevated buses—the TEB could revolutionise public transport.

Of course it couldn't.

I stand by those comments! I still think elevated transport is a pretty good idea. It's cheaper than building tunnels.

You could totally imagine these things on long stretches of straight roads - the kind of roads that lead into major cities that are often congested. Kind of like autonomous lorry convoys. They're very effective - just only useful in quite specific scenarios.

This chinese bus was just reinventing the wheel again. We already have the proven effective raised monorail/ L-style metro transport, and they work quite well while being more capable then the cave bus.

Kinda like that "autonomous lorry convoy system". It is basically a train, which we already have and works quite well. the "specific scenario" where it makes sense is already well served by railroads, and the areas where trucks are superior do not benefit from the convoy system.

It's just another example of VC investors being willing to invest in some new idea that is just an old one but more high tech for the sake of being high tech.

 

[nbs2]

Scam or not, I think Austin, TX should buy it and run it up and down I35.

If we're talking straight lines, the 35-45-10 triangle is always a popular option for buildout.

 

[BeowulfSchaeffer]

"China’s crazy car-straddling elevated bus is just a giant scam, police say"

Well... duh.

One would hope they choose to move to Hypertube or some other mass transit methodology.

 

[BigAssRat]

Another nail in the TEB's coffin: long, straight, wide roads chock-full of low-occupancy personal vehicles are only common in a few countries (this creates extremely adverse conditions for poor economies of scale and unreliable+expensive supply-chains). Many cities are constrained by topology. The TEB design looks like it can't even handle a variable gradient! So the number of cities where it will work, are inherently very limited. There's no easy way to fix the design, in either of these respects (without substantially narrowing the design and introducing bogeys and buffers/linkages between carriages). Trams, on the other hand, were designed almost from the outset to solve these very problems! Supply chains are established, and the technology is economically available.

I'm not writing this as a retrospective criticism of Mr. Sebastian Anthony, or anybody else. More like, as a way of explaining a methodology of thinking that enabled me to predict from the outset that this was a scam!

I just heard Kansas is looking into the idea.

 

[Theinsanegamer]

mrseb[/url]":38tb3szg]

Faustus Scaevola[/url]":38tb3szg]People who invested in this basically deserved to get scammed. A promised 12% yearly return?

Journalists everywhere should feel ashamed though. Way too many hailed this as something revolutionary. Even the original Ars article after noticing all flaws inherent to the concept ended the new story with:

Still, it's an exciting concept. In countries with very specific infrastructure setups—or the wherewithal to make dramatic infrastructure changes to accommodate elevated buses—the TEB could revolutionise public transport.

Of course it couldn't.

I stand by those comments! I still think elevated transport is a pretty good idea. It's cheaper than building tunnels.

You could totally imagine these things on long stretches of straight roads - the kind of roads that lead into major cities that are often congested. Kind of like autonomous lorry convoys. They're very effective - just only useful in quite specific scenarios.

Your original concluding words (excerpt from above):

the TEB could revolutionise public transport

— Apparently, the TEB could revolutionise public transport. To some of us, it was obvious from the start (on cursory inspection), that it couldn't.
Elevated transport? Probably so. The TEB — never, it's an impractical use/configuration of space. It slices & dices the space around it into inconvenient three-dimensional units, as you allude to in part, when you mention that vehicles above a certain size must go around the TEB! There's no way to polish this poo: the TEB is dead: prior technologies (e.g. elevated tramways & railways) are superior in every way (don't forget that trains can have two decks — and for all the metal you might expend building barriers to protect a TEB, you might as well build rails!)

Go to Queens in New York or the El in Chicago and see what an elevated railway is like. It darkens the street and gives a distinctly dystopia feel of the neighborhood. It’s why all El lines in Manhattan were eliminated.

Besides, there’s the cost of building miles and miles of elevated track. What would be the cost per mile?

The TEB solved some of these problems. Building a TEB track is way cheaper than building an El. Apparently, it can turn, but traffic must stop and wait. And height restrictions are quite common. Many Brooklyn and Queens streets with Els have height restrictions on them.

This doesn’t mean this wasn’t some sort of scam. However, you don’t build a working mockup with a scam. You do nothing more expensive than a four colored brochure.

I don’t think the intesntion was to scam. It sounds more likely that this was over promised and way more expensive than the backers realized.

I was in chicago a week ago. Cannot confirm the dystopia. It was closer to a futurist utopia, in that I was able to travel the city without taxis or my own personal vehicle, and much faster then walking.

The only thought I had was why on earth more big cities dont have such systems. They work quite well.

 

[arcite]

Faustus Scaevola[/url]":3cpf6kpx]People who invested in this basically deserved to get scammed. A promised 12% yearly return?

Journalists everywhere should feel ashamed though. Way too many hailed this as something revolutionary. Even the original Ars article after noticing all flaws inherent to the concept ended the new story with:

Still, it's an exciting concept. In countries with very specific infrastructure setups—or the wherewithal to make dramatic infrastructure changes to accommodate elevated buses—the TEB could revolutionise public transport.

Of course it couldn't.

I stand by those comments! I still think elevated transport is a pretty good idea. It's cheaper than building tunnels.

You could totally imagine these things on long stretches of straight roads - the kind of roads that lead into major cities that are often congested. Kind of like autonomous lorry convoys. They're very effective - just only useful in quite specific scenarios.

Keep your fancy elevated transport; I want TUBES.

 

[puppies]

Go to Queens in New York or the El in Chicago and see what an elevated railway is like. It darkens the street and gives a distinctly dystopia feel of the neighborhood. It’s why all El lines in Manhattan were eliminated.

Besides, there’s the cost of building miles and miles of elevated track. What would be the cost per mile?

The TEB solved some of these problems. Building a TEB track is way cheaper than building an El. Apparently, it can turn, but traffic must stop and wait. And height restrictions are quite common. Many Brooklyn and Queens streets with Els have height restrictions on them.

This doesn’t mean this wasn’t some sort of scam. However, you don’t build a working mockup with a scam. You do nothing more expensive than a four colored brochure.

I don’t think the intesntion was to scam. It sounds more likely that this was over promised and way more expensive than the backers realized.

As I live in Queens and frequently take the 7, I sort of agree? But I would point out these examples were built over a century ago. Design and technology have improved since then and there are urban elevated rail systems that blend much better into their surroundings.

 

[jihadjoe]

So a novel new vehicle concept is supposed to provide better mass transit without needing to spend too much on infrastructure (like elevated rail lines).

But it's defeated because it's use actually requires building new infrastructure (in the form of specifically-wide, perfectly flat and straight roads).

Oh teh irony!

 

[maxp0wer]

The name's Lanley, Lyle Lanley. And I come before you good people tonight with an idea. Probably the greatest—Aw, it's not for you. It's more a Shelbyville idea.

 

[slymenstra hymen]

This kind of thing only made sense if your town planner made multiple, terrible decisions.

 

[puppies]

Vehicles taller than 2.2 metres (slightly over 7 feet) had to find another route around the TEB. When the TEB turned a corner, every vehicle underneath had to wait for the manoeuvre to complete before going around the corner themselves. And no one had really worked out how to solve the issue of cars driving into the "legs" of the bus.

These issues could be solved if driving becomes fully automated. Tall vehicles could be programmed to avoid TEB routes and turning maneuvers could be efficiently co-ordinated by computers. In the world we currently live in though, the TEB is a terrible idea.

 

[Rommel102]

Much more likely that they went the way of the Coolest and simply ran out of money.

 

[DataMeister]

If you're going to scam investors, isn't it kind of a prerequisite that you don't actually go ahead and build the thing?

That's what I was thinking. That is an impressive looking prototype for it to just be a scam. If anything it seems more like getting cold feet after running into the red tape.

 

[Mujokan]

Maybe get people to obey the traffic signals first... Not only would that be necessary for this concept, it'd prevent most of the traffic jams caused by gridlock.

 

[Destructicus]

If you're going to scam investors, isn't it kind of a prerequisite that you don't actually go ahead and build the thing?

I am an expert linguist (not really) and this is all a mistranslation. The perps weren't arrested for scamming their investors. They were arrested for not doing it properly.

 

[isparavanje]

mrseb[/url]":1796oy28]

Faustus Scaevola[/url]":1796oy28]People who invested in this basically deserved to get scammed. A promised 12% yearly return?

Journalists everywhere should feel ashamed though. Way too many hailed this as something revolutionary. Even the original Ars article after noticing all flaws inherent to the concept ended the new story with:

Still, it's an exciting concept. In countries with very specific infrastructure setups—or the wherewithal to make dramatic infrastructure changes to accommodate elevated buses—the TEB could revolutionise public transport.

Of course it couldn't.

I stand by those comments! I still think elevated transport is a pretty good idea. It's cheaper than building tunnels.

You could totally imagine these things on long stretches of straight roads - the kind of roads that lead into major cities that are often congested. Kind of like autonomous lorry convoys. They're very effective - just only useful in quite specific scenarios.

Your original concluding words (excerpt from above):

the TEB could revolutionise public transport

— Apparently, the TEB could revolutionise public transport. To some of us, it was obvious from the start (on cursory inspection), that it couldn't.
Elevated transport? Probably so. The TEB — never, it's an impractical use/configuration of space. It slices & dices the space around it into inconvenient three-dimensional units, as you allude to in part, when you mention that vehicles above a certain size must go around the TEB! There's no way to polish this poo: the TEB is dead: prior technologies (e.g. elevated tramways & railways) are superior in every way (don't forget that trains can have two decks — and for all the metal you might expend building barriers to protect a TEB, you might as well build rails!)

Go to Queens in New York or the El in Chicago and see what an elevated railway is like. It darkens the street and gives a distinctly dystopia feel of the neighborhood. It’s why all El lines in Manhattan were eliminated.

Besides, there’s the cost of building miles and miles of elevated track. What would be the cost per mile?

The TEB solved some of these problems. Building a TEB track is way cheaper than building an El. Apparently, it can turn, but traffic must stop and wait. And height restrictions are quite common. Many Brooklyn and Queens streets with Els have height restrictions on them.

This doesn’t mean this wasn’t some sort of scam. However, you don’t build a working mockup with a scam. You do nothing more expensive than a four colored brochure.

I don’t think the intesntion was to scam. It sounds more likely that this was over promised and way more expensive than the backers realized.

I was in chicago a week ago. Cannot confirm the dystopia. It was closer to a futurist utopia, in that I was able to travel the city without taxis or my own personal vehicle, and much faster then walking.

The only thought I had was why on earth more big cities dont have such systems. They work quite well.

Wait, which big city doesn't have some kind of rapid transit system? At least in the developed world I'd imagine most cities with over 2-3 million people have them.

 

[Destructicus]

Vehicles taller than 2.2 metres (slightly over 7 feet) had to find another route around the TEB. When the TEB turned a corner, every vehicle underneath had to wait for the manoeuvre to complete before going around the corner themselves. And no one had really worked out how to solve the issue of cars driving into the "legs" of the bus.

These issues could be solved if driving becomes fully automated. Tall vehicles could be programmed to avoid TEB routes and turning maneuvers could be efficiently co-ordinated by computers. In the world we currently live in though, the TEB is a terrible idea.

Once driving becomes fully automated, you don't really need this sort of wonkery.

(1) Traffic will be reduced drastically because a lot of the "frictional" causes of traffic will disappear due to improved following distances and reaction time. Heck, you can even restripe most roads to get more lanes.

(2) Sitting in a car in traffic won't be as big of a deal because you can sleep/work/do whatever you want.

 

[Da Xiang]

Bangkok, Thailand and Guangzhou, China are two big cities with many elevated transport routes. Often two and even three layers of overhead roadways and rails. Yes, I agree. It is dark and depressing down at ground level. I live in Nanning, China. The last I checked, it is the 37th largest city in China. They are currently madly at work putting in a 9 line subway system. One line is open and it is awesome. But I probably won't live long enough to see lines 8 and 9 finished and they are the ones that would directly service my neighborhood. Portland, Oregon is the 37th largest city in the U.S. Could any of you imagine the federal government springing to invest the trillions it would take to build subway systems in all the biggest 37 cities in the U.S.?

China is very ambitious when it comes to the future of public transportation. They continue to expand their high speed rail system and I've read about plans to double the speed of the current network. The U.S. spends it's money on war. China is investing in itself.

 

[KGFish]

Another nail in the TEB's coffin: long, straight, wide roads chock-full of low-occupancy personal vehicles are only common in a few countries (this creates extremely adverse conditions for poor economies of scale and unreliable+expensive supply-chains). Many cities are constrained by topology. The TEB design looks like it can't even handle a variable gradient! So the number of cities where it will work, are inherently very limited. There's no easy way to fix the design, in either of these respects (without substantially narrowing the design and introducing bogeys and buffers/linkages between carriages). Trams, on the other hand, were designed almost from the outset to solve these very problems! Supply chains are established, and the technology is economically available.

I'm not writing this as a retrospective criticism of Mr. Sebastian Anthony, or anybody else. More like, as a way of explaining a methodology of thinking that enabled me to predict from the outset that this was a scam!

Congratulations, you got one thing right once.

The real trick is doing it repeatedly.

I'd suggest to be a little bit more circumspect in your faith in your own abilities, but I'm sure you know that overconfidence is one of the personality traits required to get scammed....

 

[MagicDot]

The link to this story will prove invaluable the next time I have to sit through another Agile meeting full of knuckleheads spouting "C'mon guys, no idea is a bad idea."

 

[flatrock]

It looks like a failed business venture rather than a scam to me.

The majority of startups do fail.

Promising 12 percent returns doesn't sound out of character either. Investors in startups expect relatively high returns if the company is successful because of the risk involved.

They have obviously not ended up with a finished working product. But they also obviously invested a lot in R&D and didn't just take the money and run.

Perhaps they were idiots that just charged ahead and built a prototype without figuring out all the engineering problems first. Or perhaps they thought they had solutions, but those solutions didn't end up working out.

Investing in startups is generally very risky, the rewards can be great bu there is a very good chance that they will burn thought their capital before coming up with a workable product.

 

[ootter]

"China’s crazy car-straddling elevated bus is just a giant scam"

WHAT AN ASTONISHING SURPRISE

 

[RickRoyLeonPrisZhoraRachael]

Told you so… 10th August 2016:

• Patented ideas? Wow. I'm fairly sure that Wacky Races has some prior art for cars on stilts…
• Perhaps the straddling bus makes a good "vehicle" for defrauding investors though. How is it going to turn corners? How collision resistant?

The amount of investment poured into this obvious scam demonstrates how rare a thing it is, to think before acting! "Buy in now, before it's too late!" — But for the never-ending, steady stream of such scams; we might suppose that the "investor" class would actually read psychology, marketing, security & criminology; before getting themselves up to their eyeballs in this! This case also demonstrates the fallacy of the idea that "survival of the fittest" leads to the most deserving people becoming wealthy enough to invest (or, getting into positions of power where they can make investment decisions).

In any case, trams on raised tracks (on concrete pillars), are better & more convenient to use, cheaper, and more readily available. There's no practical reason to replace that technology with this bizarre monstrosity!

Indeed!
I'm all for monorails. They are clean, quiet, elevated and convenient. However, costs are hidden in maintenance, access and long-term use.

 

[soulsabr]

... and a promised annualised return of 12 percent.

This goes beyond red flag in my books. This is self destruct klaxons with flashing lights and heavily armed troops levels of beware; I don't even have to see the project. When I first read about this my first thought was corners followed by high, delivery vehicles. Neither of these things seemed to phase the investors, though. Well, this is China so "justice" will probably be quick.

 

[norton_I]

The thing is that every revolutionary public transport system has to beat light rail in speed or buses in cost. That's just very hard.

This. A thousand times this.

I don't doubt that you could find specific locations that would accommodate one of these type of elevated buses. Everyone can see what it would require: a flat, wide, straight road where there is enough traffic to justify driving back and forth all day without turning around. But it would be a "show off piece" -- demonstrating your technical and economic might. It will never compete on economics or practicality.

 

[Tempus --)-------]

If you're going to scam investors, isn't it kind of a prerequisite that you don't actually go ahead and build the thing?

The closer you appear to actually having the thing realized, the more people you can get to invest. Plans on paper, and/or patents will get you only so much. A prototype, or something that looks like a prototype will get you another level. a WORKING prototype, will get you even more potential 'investors' (suckers).

 

[johnwillo]

coolblue2000[/url]":2mmkvb2r]

mrseb[/url]":2mmkvb2r]

Faustus Scaevola[/url]":2mmkvb2r]People who invested in this basically deserved to get scammed. A promised 12% yearly return?

Journalists everywhere should feel ashamed though. Way too many hailed this as something revolutionary. Even the original Ars article after noticing all flaws inherent to the concept ended the new story with:

Still, it's an exciting concept. In countries with very specific infrastructure setups—or the wherewithal to make dramatic infrastructure changes to accommodate elevated buses—the TEB could revolutionise public transport.

Of course it couldn't.

I stand by those comments! I still think elevated transport is a pretty good idea. It's cheaper than building tunnels.

You could totally imagine these things on long stretches of straight roads - the kind of roads that lead into major cities that are often congested. Kind of like autonomous lorry convoys. They're very effective - just only useful in quite specific scenarios.

Just how many of those perfectly straight roads are there? And how long are they? In my experience most are reasonably straight but still have some shallow bends.

Plus surely an elevated rail line would be more suitable as it is not restricted by bends and can therefore be more useful?

Elevated rail line.... Monorail?

It's really more of a Shelbyville idea.

 

[Tempus --)-------]

It looks like a failed business venture rather than a scam to me.

The majority of startups do fail.

Promising 12 percent returns doesn't sound out of character either. Investors in startups expect relatively high returns if the company is successful because of the risk involved.

They have obviously not ended up with a finished working product. But they also obviously invested a lot in R&D and didn't just take the money and run.

Perhaps they were idiots that just charged ahead and built a prototype without figuring out all the engineering problems first. Or perhaps they thought they had solutions, but those solutions didn't end up working out.

Investing in startups is generally very risky, the rewards can be great bu there is a very good chance that they will burn thought their capital before coming up with a workable product.

The question is what happened to the money. If they burned it all up on the prototype and tests and such then yes this could be a simple failure. If a majority of the money just disappeared along with the principles of the venture, then it's a scam.

As with so many other things, follow the money.

In this case they supposedly raised something on the order of over a Billion $ US, which I think would buy a LOT more than that prototype and limited test track..

 

[Dilbert]

They are doing it wrong. If you are going to scam, do so with paper plans of the project and a few patents, rather than spending money on building a working prototype.

 

[Torchwood]

The older I get, the more skeptical I get about alternatives to the automobile, especially those proposed by the anti-car alliance. The TEB is just the latest in these schemes, and admittedly, the most problematic to implement. If TEB was implemented in the typical North America city, for instance, the traffic signals would have to be raised much higher (and potentially out of view the closer to the intersection) in order for the TEB to pass underneath.

Transit systems tend to work best in very urban areas, but alas, most of the urban areas are extremely expensive. As an extreme example, San Francisco is one of the most unaffordable areas to live in the United States, and they have the BART rail system. The BART system isn't self-sufficient to operate, as part of the funding comes from a .5% (half-cent) sales tax that has been in place since April, 1970 for several counties. As a result, people who work in the San Francisco and surrounding bay area (San Jose, Oakland, Santa Clara) end up commuting to work.... from Tracy, CA and Stockton, CA.

A few months ago, I checked into how long it would take to get to work from my home. I'm fortunate in that work is only a 25 minute drive away (one-way). If I were to take transit, it would be over 100 minutes to get to work. There is only one bus that goes by my home, and that bus stops running at 9:30 PM. The other bus that runs by work stops running at 7 PM, and the closest stop is a 20 minute walk away. I get off work at 11 PM.

But, heyyy.... the TEB and high-speed choochoos all look cool and futuristic!

 

[houkoholic]

If you're going to scam investors, isn't it kind of a prerequisite that you don't actually go ahead and build the thing?

That's what I was thinking. That is an impressive looking prototype for it to just be a scam. If anything it seems more like getting cold feet after running into the red tape.

You are talking about a country where people goes to length to make elaborate fake eggs to scam money:
http://www.theepochtimes.com/n3/1964429 ... cial-eggs/

Building a giant car is just another day's work. Also who's to say the factory didn't get scammed too? In an economy that is slowing down with excess production capacity, some factory owners are desperate for work instead of having to close down their factory, sweet talk a few of them to help and you are good to go.

 

[Ulf]

Elevated rail line.... Monorail?

In theory, that's a good idea. In practicality, it sucks to work and especially to live near or under one.

 

[Fatesrider]

Faustus Scaevola[/url]":3259wrva]People who invested in this basically deserved to get scammed. A promised 12% yearly return?

Journalists everywhere should feel ashamed though. Way too many hailed this as something revolutionary. Even the original Ars article after noticing all flaws inherent to the concept ended the new story with:

Still, it's an exciting concept. In countries with very specific infrastructure setups—or the wherewithal to make dramatic infrastructure changes to accommodate elevated buses—the TEB could revolutionise public transport.

Of course it couldn't.

I stand by those comments! I still think elevated transport is a pretty good idea. It's cheaper than building tunnels.

You could totally imagine these things on long stretches of straight roads - the kind of roads that lead into major cities that are often congested. Kind of like autonomous lorry convoys. They're very effective - just only useful in quite specific scenarios.

Yeah... But...

I'd hardly think the specificity was available enough to justify the expense over other more available, and less specific mass transit options. Toss in the "holy shit, this tunnel's MOVING!" factor that you're bound to get and you have an instant, rubbernecking rolling traffic jam.

Inasmuch as sticking to one's guns is thought to be showing "admirable resolve", it's better to say, "Yeah, this should have been spiking our BS meter and we should have done more digging into the financial arrangements behind it" and show much more admirable humility.

People make mistakes, even journalists. I agree that building bridges is easier than building tunnels, but this thing is a rolling disaster waiting to happen in too specific of places to ever be practical or cost-effective and could never be a bridge.

AKA: A scam.

The Ars readers at the time were essentially saying "WFT?!?!?" to the original article, too.

As for what to do with it, they could anchor the thing down in some inland coastal region and use it as a Tsunami shelter. Beyond that, I really don't see many other practical uses for it.

 

[Tempus --)-------]

Spudley[/url]":395q0ved]

Faustus Scaevola[/url]":395q0ved]People who invested in this basically deserved to get scammed. A promised 12% yearly return?

A 12% ROI on a company with an innovative product is certainly not unreasonable if you think the product will be successful.
...

I'm not disputing whether it's a scam or just a failure; I'll leave that argument to the courts; but I do think you're all being a bit too disparaging about the investors. It's easy to mock the product as unworkable now with hindsight, but many things that have succeeded could have been equally mocked if they'd failed ("you invested in Tesla? hah! what made you think they'd be able to compete in the auto industry?"). Investing is inherently risky; that's kinda the whole point -- high risk; high return.

I'm not sure if Tesla is the best example. It has a pretty stratospheric market capitalisation, granted; but...

Does Tesla pay a dividend? Does it plan to?

Tesla has never declared dividends on our common stock. We intend on retaining all future earnings to finance future growth and therefore, do not anticipate paying any cash dividends in the foreseeable future.

And the consensus opinion seems to be that the company is unlikely to turn a full-year profit anytime soon either.

As you say, investing is inherently risky.

Reinvesting and not paying a dividend is not at all uncommon when a company is in a rapidly growing space, or working on rapidly growing it's market. Amazon does this, for the majority of the companies life it has not turned a profit. (that changed about 2 years ago) Microsoft also did this and for a majority of the companies history did not pay a dividend. In the case of Microsoft, only after the stock price stopped climbing and was relatively flat for a number of years did the company start paying a dividend.

I would say that Tesla is following the Amazon model, at least to a degree, I would not expect it to show a profit for years. At least not until their ability to produce product keeps up with demand and rapid growth becomes a lower priority.

 

[Tempus --)-------]

They are doing it wrong. If you are going to scam, do so with paper plans of the project and a few patents, rather than spending money on building a working prototype.

As I and others have pointed out, a working prototype attracts more investors than plans on paper. plans and visualizations only get you so much. A lot more folks will pony up cash if you can say 'look what we've already accomplished'!

 

[Sarty]

I'd hardly think the specificity was available enough to justify the expense over other more available, and less specific mass transit options. Toss in the "holy shit, this tunnel's MOVING!" factor that you're bound to get and you have an instant, rubbernecking rolling traffic jam.

It's faintly possible to imagine the steady-state functioning of a society with these things in use, but fascinated gawkers are another good example of the tremendous activation energy barrier faced by early adoption.

Much as road-straightening and overhead-clearing represent tremendous barriers posed by infrastructure. Sure, maybe we should have built these roads straighter (looking at you, Boston), but... they're already built. They're here, they're not going anywhere.

 

[Ryanrule]

Faustus Scaevola[/url]":3u9pdlck]People who invested in this basically deserved to get scammed. A promised 12% yearly return?

A 12% ROI on a company with an innovative product is certainly not unreasonable if you think the product will be successful.

And honestly, this is in China, where even now with things looking a bit weak, the economy is still growing by around 6 - 7%, so 12% ROI should be considered perfectly reasonable.

The product itself does indeed have some obvious flaws, but it's reasonable as an investor to anticipate that these could be ironed out in development (there are workable solutions to most of the main ones if you stop to think about it), and it does have one major advantage over a roadside monorail on the same track footprint -- floorspace. If you're worried about your trains getting overcrowded, this thing would surely fix that for you.

The other thing that would have made this look a very tempting investment was the rapid expansion of China's infrastructure. There is a *lot* of investment going into metro systems across the country (see https://www.curbed.com/2017/5/22/156732 ... growth-map for a good visualisation of the pace they're building at); a new entrant into that industry would have had a good chance of making big money if they'd managed to get even a single contract to build a real line.

I'm not disputing whether it's a scam or just a failure; I'll leave that argument to the courts; but I do think you're all being a bit too disparaging about the investors. It's easy to mock the product as unworkable now with hindsight, but many things that have succeeded could have been equally mocked if they'd failed ("you invested in Tesla? hah! what made you think they'd be able to compete in the auto industry?"). Investing is inherently risky; that's kinda the whole point -- high risk; high return.

lol 7%