We should be so lucky he's not purely profit-driven. Even on /r/futurology, supposedly a place of boundless imagination and hope for the future, I get attacked for suggesting that maybe it's not a bad idea to at least investigate the potential behind solar roads. Nope, those are stupid and a waste of money, fuck me for being an idealist.

My point is most of society is self-limiting for whatever reason (obsessed with profit, obsessed with status quo, etc). Luckily we've got folks like Musk who don't seem to give a shit and do what they think is right for humans. I'd love some other examples of people like this.

Another example: Zuckerberg took flak for his Internet.org idea, because clearly he's an evil Capitalist that just wants to profit off the advertising clicks of Indian goat farmers.

Solar roads are stupid because they're a terrible use of resources. You could literally build a roof of solar panels over the road for cheaper than you could build a 'solar roadway', and it would be more efficient to boot. It's nothing to do with idealism - if you were being an idealist you'd be backing a less inherently handicapped proposal.

>inherently handicapped

With today's assumptions, sure. Who's to say some material scientist with a trickle of funding doesn't find a way to mix in some cheap leftover metal into an asphalt mix and wouldyalookathat, for some reason you can now plus a USB cable into the road and it'll charge your phone. I'm being silly, but my point is exactly that: we just assume it won't work because yea duh, it won't work if we don't investigate it beyond "huh, if you put a car on a solar panel, it breaks. This is impossible, clearly."

Idealism is a belief in something unrealistic. It doesn't deserve a place on the stage of solutions. Dave Jones from the EEVBlog [0] channel did a bunch of videos explaining why solar roadways are a bad idea.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/user/EEVblog/search?query=roadways

The problem with solar panels is not that we lack a place to put them. Solar roads don't offer anything other than a bad place to put solar panels (under the tires of our cars).

Why is everyone so certain his motivations are noble?

Because so far he's staying true to the motivations as he described them; he's using business to help solve big problems - as opposed to other entrepreneurs, who use big problems to help their businesses. He's done nothing so far to make me personally doubt that his motivations are as noble as he says they are.

I'm not saying that he won't eventually turn into yet another selfish business baron. That would be a very sad day, though. We need more people with noble intentions and means to execute on them - and such people need to be encouraged, not constantly doubted.

To me he seems like a genuinely noble guy, especially among many other successful capitalists.

wouldn't say noble, just consistent and different from your usual businessmen who treat amassed capital and/or net worth as a measure of success.