I generally like what Musk is doing and think that Tesla is doing pretty great work, but he's not perfect and the pain points people are discussing in these threads are in no way unfounded. It's better to listen to the feedback and concerns in order to improve, rather than just fellating God-Engineer Musk and proclaiming his infallibility.
Is that why model 3 production is going so well?
Let's try this perspective instead:
"Decade-old electric car company moves up plan for mass production of new affordable long-range sedan by 2 years"
And then ask ourselves, after moving it up by 2 years, does a 3-month delay mean "things are going badly"?
If I say I'm going to leap 500 feet, and then I leap 450 feet, do you say I failed?
Yes, that's what the word failed means.
I think that's the point the OP above is trying to get at.
The consequence of not living up to an expectation depends on what's riding on that expectation. For a company trying to live up to a valuation higher than companies producing orders of magnitude more vehicles, I think it matters.
does it matter though?
https://seekingalpha.com/article/4122890-tesla-approaches-te...
I think OP is talking about the big picture, there will always be issues like the on with the production.
Amongst Model 3 fiasco Solarcity too currently has issues.
Tesla makes cars. We've known how to make cars for a while now - even electric cars. What was critical for Tesla was the vision: to see that we were approaching a tipping point where battery technology and cost would make a fully- (and only-) electric car feasible, and the strength of mind and purpose to ignore and/or out-think peoples' legacy objections and misgivings - e.g. with the Supercharger network. There are some Musk-ian details that are advances, such as the single integrated computer system, but that's a relatively small part of the whole.
In contrast, yes, SpaceX (just!) makes rockets, and yes, we've known how to make rockets for a long time. But they have done some things that the rest of the rocket industry haven't even got close to. Firstly, they've revolutionised the process and cost of producing a rocket in this class, by insourcing so much of it, and rethinking the necessary components and technology. Secondly, they've taken the concept of re-use and made it orders of magnitude cheaper (versus, what, the Shuttle?) than before, to the extent that it has/will completely turn the industry on its head. And the techniques and technology they've pioneered to facilitate this --not least the ability to land a 70m rocket upright on a robot barge floating out at sea-- are genuinely, truly revolutionary.
Lots of stuff has been test or tried before, but bringing things from idea to production ready with the efficiency required and cheap production is fantastically impressive.
You can claim 'it is not basic research' or whatever, but the reality is that they are pushing the envelop on so many topics at the same time that they are leafing all competition in the dust.
The project got taken over by NASA and the budget cut before being axed. You really do sound a bit too fanatical and should probably question more instead of accepting companies as entirely revolutionary.
Yep, SpaceX has barely innovated at all. Their contributions to space flight are not really of note.
The idea has been arouns for a long time and there have ben dozens of attempts of course, just as flying cars, autonomous cars, real A.I, space elevators.
Concept an execution are vastly different animals, it is at least 1000 times more difficult to achieve resuable rockets than to have the idea and at least 100 times more difficult than to try it.
Do you think you've just pointed out something that never occurred to him? Do you think if you could share your comments with him, he would stop and stare at you blankly and say "Shit. You're right."
You haven't just deflated the plan behind this entire, multi-year undertaking with your 5-minute analysis, as if you know more than all the engineers working at Tesla. The tone you're taking is just ridiculous.