When assessing Musk's success, note that Tesla has singlehandedly pushed the entire auto industry towards electric vehicles. Before Tesla, electric vehicles were funny experimental things for hipsters. Very few people bought electric cars, and when they did it was usually only as a second car that could drive 100 miles around town. Virtually no major manufacturer were planning on changing that.
After Model 3, all major car manufacturers are changing their product development and production lines to make electric vehicles. It's now clear to everybody involved that in a number of years, it will only, or almost only, be electric vehicles.
Even if Tesla were to end up being a company that only sells a few hundred thousands cars per year, their impact will have been several orders of magnitude bigger. At the end of the next decade, tens of millions of electric cars will be produced every year and Tesla is the company that not only showed the way but forced an entire industry to go in that direction.
Now, why on Earth would Musk not be interested in promoting mass transit? Tesla is unlikely to produce 50 million cars yearly anyways, and - so far - electric vehicles are more expensive than ordinary cars and not much more suitable for dense city traffic than ordinary cars (although the cost is going down and although self-driving capabilities may change that a bit). But for many years to come, it's unlikely that the Boring Company or the Hyperloop is going to cannibalize on Tesla's market.
You're forgetting the biggest competitor to all-electric, the oil industry which lobbied against all-electric cars. GM had an all electric car in the 90's but people were only allowed to lease them.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_Killed_the_Electric_Car%3F
Telsa is what changed the industry. It wasn't subtle, it rattled every car maker into action. They demonstrated the technology was ready, such that you could build a full, proper replacement EV vehicle. A car people actually wanted to buy and drive. Further, the Model S being reviewed as one of the greatest cars ever made, made it clear that you could actually build an extraordinary EV vehicle. Not a hybrid, not a 30 or 60 mile battery joke, a full replacement. GM restarted their EV program entirely because of Tesla.
And then they still aren't good enough for electric cars to make much sense to people spending their money carefully. But that happens in years not decades.
Hyperloop is envisioned to run in 100Pa of pressure. According to the Wikipedia page on vacuum, that is considered "medium vacuum." It's also quite close to the region where offgassing and vapor pressure is going to be a major component of the ambient pressure, which is where you start needing complex vacuum pumps.
No, it hasn't. First, because the long-term arc was in that direction anyway, and second because the whole industry hasn't adopted that as the short-term arc.
Tesla has single-handedly raised the near-term prominence of battery-powered all-electric vehicles, sure.
The main competitor German car manufacturers see (internally) is Tesla. This is what they fear right now.
This does not comport with reality. The Nissan Leaf, for example, came out a full 7 years before the first Model 3. The only thing unique about Tesla's electric vehicles is their willingness to lose many billions of dollars producing them.
I would say they led the industry by 2-3 years because of capabilities of making losses (actually not, Chevy bolt came before model 3).
What made electric cars possible is cheap batteries, otherwise they'd have built model3 right out the gate. And Tesla didn't make batteries cheap, consumer electronics did. Tesla doesn't even make battery cells, they buy them from panasonic
Or that Apple didn’t innovate because they merely used known technologies like phones, batteries, and touch screens.
Tesla made cars at loss, which others really couldn't.
But at the core of it, Tesla has the hype of Elon musk, and no other car manufacturer can pull that off.
What is the Gigafactory doing then? I thought it was all about batteries.
Musk is brilliant at this kind of marketing. Did you know he actually didn't found either Tesla or SpaceX himself?
Whether hyperloop is feasible, he's pretty clearly gunning for future, unproven technologies, and very much on purpose.
There's nothing wrong with wanting to spend your billions on trying to find new technologies.
Musk's Tesla package is performance based. He only get 'paid' by stock if he meets some ridiculously hard performance benchmark (ie, literally have to make Tesla the the most valuable company in the world). Not only that we won't get stock options if he doesnt meet those goals, he can't sell stock for a long period of time to make sure the stock valuation is not a temp spike. Also he doesnt get paid a single penny even if tesla stock performs somewhat better or even stays the same.
Frankly, even just delivering one innovation of this magnitude is impressive, being able to do it again and again deserves respect and admiration.
Wait satellite internet business is new? What have you been smoking? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satellite_Internet_access
So we’re all in agreement then, very good.
However, what he's actually done is make slightly better rockets and slightly better electric cars. He's not working on hyperloop, he's working on the more certain stuff.
It isn't unreasonable for a tech billionaire with civilization defining aspirations to want to make better cars, build better batteries, and improve public transit all at once.
No, you’re just a run-of-the-mill conspiracist, and cynic.
To note, he actually hasn’t thrown in with hyperloop, he open sourced he idea for people to iterate. He literally just thinks he can build a cheaper tunnel, and I haven’t seen any serious proposals to run hyperloops through them.
May be those are not really bad. We are living in a time where stuff that conspiracist, and cynics have been saying for years turning out to be true...
Also, while you accuse them, are you sure you are just not being a true believer of the cult of Elon Musk
In a time where just being skeptical of Musk gets you attacked, I am not sure you have the authority to say anybody else is run-of-the-mill. He may be a cynic, but the mainstream sentiment towards Musk is almost church-like, so generally people outside of that are not in the majority.
Look, I get it, nobody else seems to be doing exciting tech lately and Musk is certainly not doing CRUD apps, so I see where the excitement is coming from, but I also see a lot of fanaticism and PR bullshit around Musk, so I'd say some amount of skepticism is well placed.
> Look, I get it, nobody else seems to be doing exciting tech lately and Musk is certainly not doing CRUD apps, so I see where the excitement is coming from, but I also see a lot of fanaticism and PR bullshit around Musk, so I'd say some amount of skepticism is well placed.
Skepticism is always healthy, but dropping false facts like this is not: "He making his money on cars with lithium batteries, and chemical rockets. That’s where he’s spending and making his billions. He’s dropping 3.8% of his recent $2.6 billion award on this project"
Also, aren't we getting infinite streams of what Google, Amazon, FB, Apple, Microsoft are up to? Count how many articles on HN about Tesla vs. Google?
Even people blaming/skeptical or even hating on Elon Musk is doing good PR for Musk and his companies.
What something like Musk cannot afford is indifference from people. So the important task for something like Musk is to get people talk about them. It does not really matter if it good or bad.
We also live in a time where stuff that conspiracists and cynics have been saying for years is absolute bullshit. Don't fall victim to confirmation bias.
We are also living in a time where things like ubeam and Theranos can get millions in funding..and various nefraious schems that intend to take the naive public for a ride...
May be, don't fall for that..
When I'm worth $20Billion+ from building technologies that have already impacted the world, then maybe people will take me seriously!
No car company, particularly in the US, is in even the same league as Tesla when it comes to advancing electric cars. “Oh, but it’s just a niche”... the Model 3 is already outselling the Bolt, and the Model 3 has a lower base price and is just at the beginning of the ramp up curve.
It doesn’t have to be this way. Other car makers are perfectly capable of building EVs & the associated infrastructure. Musk isn’t magic, but empirically no one else really seems to care. So of course people just tear down the only company actually doing something significant here, because modern intellectual discourse is primarily about “deconstruction” and cynicism.
Assuming you're not fixated on "car company" per se (because why should corporate form matter), then Janette Sadik-Khan and NYCDoT have probably made a bigger difference in greening US transport than Tesla to date. And worldwide, of course, there are countless contenders.
"Greening" is only half the battle: the other half is liveable cities and streets. Personal motor transport makes that worse, whether electric or internal combustion. If Musk delivers on better public transport then Tesla can claim some credit there, but as yet there's nothing to show.
Seriously, put a bigger battery in an old Prius, add a charger, and hack the firmware to keep the engine off (and enable higher speed electric), and you have a full EV at even highway speeds. So why didn’t they do it but Tesla has? It’s amazing how much crap Tesla gets even though they’re the only ones with the guts to go full electric (and thus potentially zero emissions... already better than Priuses without being, you know, Priuses).
Because fanboys don't buy vehicles if somebody else sells it, just look at Chevy bolt. They need the futuristic hype of full self driving and the patented saving the planet. And also, Tesla can afford selling at a loss, nobody else can.
But suppose you’re right, that the only way Tesla has been able to sell so many EVs is by fanboyism, by Musk’s hype machine. But that then deserves your praise not derision, as Musk has been able to make EVs cool to the masses. If EVs must be hyped to gain traction, and Musk successfully hyped them, then Musk deserves the credit even more.
For lies about self driving, for horrible working conditions, for the endless stupid statements about v automation/ai in general, and for causing an obnoxious fan base, there is criticism.
Just because Tesla made cars cool doesn't mean they get to create the narrative that no one else wants to make electric cars
Tesla isn't creating that narrative, their competitors are. None of the major US car makers really do want to make electric cars, that's just a fact. And few others do, with the exception of maybe BMW, chinese firms, and nissan, but even there you have slow-rolled updating to EV. Porsche is serious about it, but also are not trying to make a mass market anything.
Now you'll see that dozens of electric cars will roll out in 2018-2022. But you'll come out and tell me that Tesla showed these guys that electric cars were possible.
Ever wonder why Nissan leaf always had a small range and wasn't "fun" to drive? because batteries and motors are costly.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WFn1WEaYY3A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TIjnmVkzOM4
And Telsa, whilst more innovate than a Prius seems to have created latest generation of smugness (at least it seems that way on Twitter and their new model 3).
as opposed to you, who very rationally spews the cult of musk kool-aid.
Cars are not efficient machines. The engine is limited to around 50% efficiency, the heat is wasted. And you're typically propelling 1600+kg of mass which is almost purely overhead.
If you do the calculations similar to those done in http://withouthotair.com/ you'd see your first worldly habits put your heating and cooling at the top, and probably your diet at the second place.
That's why the call it a 'loop' rather then a 'hyperloop'.
The tunnels however could letter be used for the hyperloop if the tech pans out.
As someone who closely follows Tesla, I would love to hear your critique of its current state and likely fate.
Metros, suburban light rails, BRT sound good in Urban areas.
Better than building thousands of underground tunnels.
I wasn't thinking the engineering of the tube, more the vehicles operating within. Assuming that there's a desire to have plain-clothed passengers.
On mars or the moon you might have separated habitats connected by rail, the cars themselves could utilize the mature tech from that old hyperloop thing we've been relying on for decades and millions of passengers use every day, etc..
There is still regular air pressure in a HSR. My question is why run something in vacuum when you can just run it in the regular low pressure
Couldn't have said it better. Another real life manifestation of this is the vertical rocket landing thing. People are flabbergasted when they see one landing, despite the fact that we regularly employ control systems that are as sophisticated (or more) than required to land a rocket vertically.
When they see them landing. they "feel" like they are witnessing sci fi, for real, and they worship the man behind it as their new (false?) prophet.
And then there is the mars thing, and space tourism. But the most blatent display of this I have yet seen is the 'bio weapon defense mode' [1] in Tesla cars.
[1] https://www.theverge.com/2015/9/30/9421719/tesla-model-x-bio...
Do you have examples of equally sci-fi looking control systems?
Engineering students build inverted pendulum control systems all the time for fun and for class projects: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWJHcI7UcuE
If it helps, bear in mind that John Carmack's Armadillo Aerospace was landing rockets vertically about 17 years ago. And that was a garage operation of about 5 people.
If he was serious about mass transit there are existing, proven technologies he could get behind with his billions, rather than hyperloop. Instead he proposes a technology that is entrancing to people who don’t know enough about engineering and physics, and that is exciting. Unfortunately the tech isn’t workable, it’s just exciting, but it could take a decade or more for that to become apparent to most people.
Wikipedia has an excellent article which lays out the history of the concept going back to the 18th century. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vactrain
I love the understatement of “prohibitively expensive” too, very droll. Any experimentalist who has worked with strong vacuums knows how absurd the idea of a hyperloop is at this point. The expense, the maintence costs, the airlocks, the pumps, all would be an incredible expense that could never be recouped in the builder’s lifetime. The actual tunneling would have to be totally revolutionary too, with incredibly long, nearly straight sections. The turning radius would have to be on the order of of a commercial airliner’s turning radius, which is absurd.
Credit to the man though, it hits that sweet spot requiring specialist knowledge to see through the hype, much like promises of nuclear fusion as a major power source within a couple of decades. The big idea is so attractive, and the problems all involve technical details. It’s not quite a con, but it’s close.