Surely the only ones who don't want dramatically cheaper space launches, cheaper, widely available solar PV installations and attractive, affordable electric vehicles are deeply entrenched incumbents whose continued profitability involves polluting the planet, or those who really hate the environment for whatever reason.
There are valid criticisms you can level at Musk (I wouldn't like to be a direct employee), but taking on the Wall Street quarter to quarter thinking with enormous, risky endeavours that have the potential to completely revolutionise some of the biggest industries out there (energy and transport) takes an extreme type of individual to succeed.
Though I think it's proof the system works! Offer tax incentives for electric cars, get electric cars. Though it seems like Musk isn't making a super sustainable business just yet....
Solar City is arguably "good solar", but that company hasn't done well enough to hold up on its own, getting the Tesla bailout.
Tesla's made the great push for electrics, and that's awesome.
Also, I imagine there are many people who do _not_ want SpaceX to waste its time sending stuff to Mars, but want it to be a successful sattelite launching company. Meanwhile they're a sattelite launching company that blows stuff up more than average
Bith sides are full of shit.
What do you mean? It's not like the oil/petrol car/traditional space launch industries exist without government subsidies... This is basically just levelling the playing field (and ensuring a better future)!
Just that some people out there innovate without taking subsidies, and some people would find that to be a "purer" form of success.
Many of his Detroit competitors wouldn't exist/would be a shadow of their current selves if it wasn't for a massive bailout in 2008. Why is this never mentioned? If this is how low the bar is set (bailing out large, badly-managed companies) then why shouldn't the government provide incentives for exciting new industries that promise to provide huge wealth and employment in the future?
Furthermore, many of Tesla's non-US competitors are given generous subsidies, e.g. German car makers[1]
> Offer tax incentives for electric cars, get electric cars.
Everyone always mentions this also, what about fossil fuel subsidies (a gigantic, highly-profitable, self sustainable industry)? To tune of $5.3 trillion per year globally[2] You could argue that the loan provided to Tesla (now paid off in full, with interest, ahead of schedule) was just leveling the playing field.
What about the devastating human rights impact of backroom dealings with the likes of Saudi Arabia? What is a few hundred million in subsidies compared to cloak and dagger political dealings with with one of the most repressive, backwards regimes on the planet, simply because they are the main oil producer? [3] The funders/supports of Al Qaeda, the Taliban, ISIS, provider of most of the 9/11 hijackers, not to mention the same people who spread their twisted branch of Islam in European countries, by refusing to take Syrian refugees from the conflict they fund, instead funding extremism in Europe through Wahhabist mosques [4] [5]. When the solar PV industry and the EV industry become mainstream and cost competitive with fossil fuels (a process well underway [6]), this backwards regime will collapse in on itself through the lack of funding, and will totally cease to matter strategically. So we get a cleaner environment, and less human rights abuses in the world.
> Though it seems like Musk isn't making a super sustainable business just yet....
Using profit as the only measure of a sustainable business is another classic example of Wall Street short term bullshit. Amazon ploughs most/all of it's revenue into expanding it's operations, withholding profit, and they are currently valued at $390bn[7] Granted, it's still possible that Tesla will fail, but even if it does, Tesla will go down in the history books as the company who finally made the car industry get off it's ass and actually take advantage of lithium ion batteries to mass produce attractive electric cars, getting the world off the oil addiction in the process.
> Also, I imagine there are many people who do _not_ want SpaceX to waste its time sending stuff to Mars, but want it to be a successful sattelite launching company. Meanwhile they're a sattelite launching company that blows stuff up more than average
I suppose the solution is to continue to go with the existing, bloated players, with their fat cost-plus contracts, won by ripping off the government with the help of regulatory capture? [8]
In summary, Musk is attempting to disrupt energy, transport and space launch industries, often against competitors who are heavily subsidised and often have government officials in their back pockets, further tilting that playing field. He's trying to fundamentally disrupt these huge, sometimes corrupt industries, and yet people still shit on him for trying. I really, really don't get this attitude. Even if all his companies fail, he forced the competitors to up their game, so in fact he will have succeeded at most of his goals (perhaps not the multi-planetary goal for mankind if SpaceX fails).
[1] http://theconversation.com/factcheck-do-other-countries-subs...
[2] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/may/18/fossil-f...
[3] http://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2016-05-30/the-untold...
[4] http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/saudi/analyses...
[5] http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/saudi-arabia-...
[6] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kxryv2XrnqM
[7] https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/AMZN?ltr=1
[8] http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-spacex-investigation-2...
"Coffman’s congressional district includes United Launch Alliance’s headquarters. Many of the congressmen represent states where ULA has operations."
You realize that the US is a net oil exporter now, right? The SA regime will collapse because of many factors.
Your comments read like you believe everyone in the world is corrupt except Elon Musk.
I am sure there are few exceptions out there, but as described - few, and exceptions.
Still, for Syria, they are not the sole guilty party.
Electric cars are not something I'm interested in owning at the price Tesla is asking. Or even half what Tesla is asking.
Utility electricity works fine for me, is a small fraction of my monthly budget, and is reliable. I.e. something I never really worry about. Payments for and maintenance of a personal PV system do not interest me.
Space travel? Again if he wants to spend his money there, fine. But I don't see it changing my life.
I am not an entrenched encumbent either. I just drive cheap, old cars and have no interest in visiting Mars. I don't even care for conventional air travel.
However, if everyone was a perfect nihilist, you wouldn't have cheap old cars to drive because nobody would have made cars. You wouldn't have a cell phone, and especially a data connection, if not for the space program. And so on.
So while I don't think it's a problem if some people take your viewpoint, I think it's a problem when everyone does. Somebody has to care enough about the environment to stop rampant capitalism from destroying it so that we have a planet to live on 50 years from now (electric cars, improved public transit.) Someone has to care enough to get humans off the planet so that when it is inevitably destroyed (asteroid, nuclear war, virus, overpopulation) the human race can continue elsewhere.
Nonsense. It is a perfectly reasonable perspective for someone who isn't terribly interested in technological development and wants to live practically with what exists today. There's a place for dreaming about Mars, but most people don't. That's fine, and it has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with cynicism or nihilism.
space - indirect windfall of discoveries and improvements made in materials, manufacturing processes etc - it happened in the past with Nasa, it happens/will happen with them and others.
I drive 13 year old diesel bmw that costed 25% of a new one and probably will never buy a new car, so what? Mankind needs people like him, now more than ever.
It's not perfectly reasonable perspective. It's a perspective of an old, grumpy person who only cares about himself, and the world he lives in. Sure, we have plenty of those, but it ain't the best attitude to say at least.
You seem to be throwing these around as pejoratives, but neither of these terms has anything to do with this topic.
> doesn't care about state of the environment
Nobody but you said anything about not caring about the state of the environment.
> an old, grumpy person
You have no basis to make such remarks. Plenty of people care about the people around them, their immediate environment, and the circumstances they can personally and directly affect without getting caught up in fantasies about the future.
Wanting to send people to Mars for the good of the species is a fine idea, but your enthusiasm about it doesn't make you any more noble than someone who is simply more practically minded or not as optimistic as you are.
This kind of disrespect for the perspectives of others makes it that much more difficult to achieve the political compromises necessary to make any of these dreams a reality.
Given enough time, it would've been invented regardless. You are right that we probably would be further behind technologically if it wasn't for the space race though.
Is that so? Can you give me a source?
You can credit a lot of stuff to the space program if you want, since all tech is built on other tech, and NASA was a big source of R&D in the 1950s onward.
[1] https://www.hq.nasa.gov/alsj/apollo-ic.html [2] http://www.space.com/10635-space-spinoff-technology-cellphon...
The foundations of the web were laid down by Tim Berners-Lee while working at CERN, a huge, expensive physics research organisation funded by European governments: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CERN#Computer_science
Government is usually always involved in nearly everything, because they are spending almost 50% of the GDP, and even 100 years ago they spent 20% or so. Other countries its sometimes as high as 70%.
Saying that computers, the web, satellites would not exist without government is a pretty absurd claim. The idea of satellites, networks and all this stuff was around and would have happened. The US was commercially successful, actually uniquely successful in almost all of world history, during a period when federal government spent only about 2% of GDP. During this time tons of innovation, the most in the world, came out of the US.
Tesla is successful not because of government handouts anymore then many other large companies. It of course helps them, just like with any other large company. Elon would be a idiot if he didn't advocate for tax breaks, you have to play the politics game.
When a government absorbs risks by spending on research it can have businesses do the work on the promise the benefit is shared. Christopher Columbus finding America and the companies that launched Apollo both worked this way. It seems to work well in practice.
It is hard to say that we would definitely be this far without Government spending. It is reasonable to make a case we could never leave the planet without an Apollo like initiative. How would the space industry would have gotten started purely in the private sector? Its not like they could have contracted the launches out, there were no launch companies. I don't hold this extreme view but I can see how it could be held.
To go to the most extreme view I can see possible: It is entirely possible that without that spending humanity wouldn't have GPS. It is also possible a foreign power that was hostile could have GPS and use it in war against us. With a few tech changes like that in the worst of these scenarios there could be enough tech lopsided-ness that MAD never worked and one side could have ruined the planet with nukes during the cold war.
I'm not talking about GPS, which isn't an essential feature of cell phones.
Only a self centered ignoramus thinks reducing need for oil doesn't help them.
The West? I'm going to go out on a limb and say that the people in the Middle East (you know, where the bombs are actually being dropped*) are "certainly" affected.
Are you sure you aren't interested at this price?
The Model S/X are considered some of the safest vehicles on the planet, even breaking testing equipment, while I'm not convinced you'd do as well in that 20 year old del a Sol (or any older vehicle for that matter).
And once you start dealing with kids and safety, it becomes even more important.
[ADDED: The mass-market Tesla is going to still be a premium vehicle relative to other options. There's nothing wrong with that. But it's unrealistic to expect that crunching the numbers the right way will make Tesla the optimal financial decision for everyone.]
Edit: Still a (relative) good deal though, depending on what car you'd otherwise have bought.
One that helps you avoid pollution but doesn't make you look like Bane from the Dark Knight Rises?
Please send me a link, thanks.
This was written 10 years ago:
https://www.tesla.com/blog/secret-tesla-motors-master-plan-j...
In summary the idea was to start with expensive electric cars (roadster, model S, model X which was initially not planned) to fund research on affordable electric cars (model 3 supposed to be first of them). As electric cars are becoming more popular and there are technological advances, we'll get them cheaper and cheaper.
Perhaps not in next 5 years, but what about 20 years? Do you expect that electric cars will never be cheaper than petrol cars? Do you expect to never ride in an autonomous vehicle?
It's delusional to think that Tesla isn't in bed with the big banks and playing all the Wall Street games. In fact, I think they do it more than any prominent company out there.
If they don't play "quarter to quarter" games, what was the big rush to sell all the ZEV credits this quarter to get profitable? Why not just carry on as they were? My bet: there's another capital raise coming, and the argument will be, "See? We can be profitable whenever we want."
But I'm more concerned with TSLA the stock, not the company.
Does it? It makes for a good narrative, but are the burnout-inducing hours and unusall funding sources actually making them more likely to succeed than a company taking a more conventional approach would be, or less?
I also wanted to exploit the solar power that is available in moderate climates like the Bay Area. I did that by "over paying" for my solar install in 2003 but at the same time the creative financing that Solar City brought to the market enabled tremendous volumes (and a price war from the Chinese government helped of course but that is a different story).
I also want to go to space for less than $20M on a 1960's tech space ship to a kludged together of modules. Back when Regan's Star Wars vision was creating capital availability for companies like Rotary Rocket and DC-X I was hoping that would finally be the point where regular commercial access to space was made possible. It died and I spend a couple of decades wondering if we'd die as a species on this planet. Now Bezos and Musk are racing to create a capability that promises to take me to orbit for significantly less cash, I'm all for the product and so I want the companies working on that product to succeed.
It wasn't until the decade of the idle billionaire that this even became possible.
It's unfortunate there's a bit of a reality distortion field around discussion Elon Musk's companies sometimes. Maybe because everyone wants his companies to succeed...
[1] http://www.economist.com/news/business/21709061-entrepreneur...
[2] http://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2016/10/ec...