Musk has since long ago pursued a publically disclosed plan for Tesla, for the company to release progressively more affordable electric vehicles, so the current growth rate in number of vehicles sold could very well be sustained for years to come.
Beyond Tesla's own sales, its success has sparked massive investment by other carmakers to push their electric vehicle manufacturing timetables forward. There is no reasonable case to be made that Tesla has not had a massive impact on pushing the world to replace gasoline vehicles with electric ones. And most people consider that to be good for the environment, even if you now don't.
[1]https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/lifeti...
That's a rather extreme assumption. The article you linked to also gives the more representative figure of 14,800 miles for "U.S. average energy mix (23% coal-fired, plus other fossil fuels and renewables)".
To put things in perspective there are only 12 states that are majority coal powered (according to 2017 numbers[0]):
1. West Virginia - 93.2%
2. Wyoming - 85.7%
3. Missouri - 79.8%
4. Kentucky - 78.2%
5. Indiana - 73.2%
6. Utah - 70.5%
7. North Dakota - 64.5%
8. Nebraska - 59.8%
9. Ohio - 57.2%
10. Wisconsin - 55.1%
11. New Mexico - 54.8%
12. Colorado - 54.3%
[0] https://stacker.com/stories/3356/states-producing-most-elect...
[1] https://electrek.co/2019/10/21/tesla-model-3-100000-miles/
[2] https://www.findmyelectric.com/blog/how-long-does-a-tesla-ba...
[1] https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/lifeti...
Do you have a bone to pick with EVs? This seems cherry-picked/straw man to me.
The 80k+ you refer to assumes electricity is sourced 100% from coal, which happens never in the US.
Even West Virginia, a haven for coal, it’s only 88%. Wyoming is also in the 80s. There are a few in the 50-70 range, but most states are sub-35, with many being 0.
[edit] For our most populous states, CA checks in at 0.1%, NY 0.1%, FL 7%, and TX 16%.
https://www.nei.org/resources/statistics/state-electricity-g...
This article shows how US sources of electricity have changed in the past 20 years or so.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/12/24/climate/how-e...
Contrary to what you state, I would say that EVs are doing a good job at lowering overall emissions from passenger vehicles, and this will become more true as renewables increase their percentage in our electricity production mix.
The “U.S. average energy mix” comparison of 14,800 is much more accurate.
Not to mention the equation gets more and more favourable to EVs with each passing year.
As for mistakes, the company can afford many small to intermediate missteps and still accomplish what I described, because the company's momentum is already pushing it to accomplish these achievements.
The grid has not responded well, that is history. Fast Charging stations are a huge draw, and home recharging raised the bar for substations everywhere. It will take decades to respond.
Battery advances - well that's a crystal ball I don't care to gaze into.
And company momentum is a myth. Cash flow is king - the day you don't make payroll, you close. It's a markov chain with a terminating condition. Play any markov game long enough and you reach that node and its all over. So a gamble every time.
As for batteries, you don't have to bet on battery advances, just the scaling up of manufacturing, which is already underway.
So assuming that most of those two million sales weren't in lieue of the sale, or at least use, of gasoline powered cars, doesn't seem reasonable to me.
But let's be extremely conservative in our praise of Tesla, and say that the company took one million gasoline powered cars off the road and replaced them with electric cars. That is quite the accomplishment if you accept the premise that electric vehicles are better than gasoline-powered ones for reducing the impact on climate.
I don't think it's reasonable to give the benefit of the doubt to [highly debatable claim] based on uncritically accepting other [highly debatable claims].
Regardless, "helping combat climate change" is at best an incomplete description of Tesla, in the same way that Nestle is not perfectly captured by "Good food, good life" ; these are potential side-effects, rather than inarguable core missions.
We should be wary of accepting the slogans of profit-driven organisations as the truth. Wendy's is focused a lot more on selling than locating beef, for example.
[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/timabansal/2021/05/13/how-green...
One can praise Tesla while still acknowledging that it should not be blinded trusted to always work in the public interest, and also while recognizing Tesla's contributions alone are not enough for human civilization to get to zero carbon.
Minimizing how significant Tesla's contribution has been relative to other carmakers', and in fact, the vast majority if not all other companies in general, is not an honest way of addressing these inadequancies and challenges you highlight, and suggests to me a motivation unrelated to environmentalism behind it.
I kinda like A LOT not having tail pipe smoke around me all the time on the streets...
The analogy is about misusing a high minded principle to further selfish - or even morally negative - ends.
It is, indeed, a good analogy.
a. Nothing Musk is doing or wants to do with Twitter is immoral.
b. Even if you disagree the scale is totally wrong, but in analogies the sense of scale matters.
Some fine example of antebellum Southern imagery there.
I love practical joke, keep 'em coming!
Do you mean to say that the majority of people believe this is how private companies should operate? If so, Id love to hear your reasoning for thinking that, because I would disagree heavily.
Saying racist stuff is legal, but its still going to get you kicked out of almost every bar, with few to no complaints from other patrons.
I totally believe that you would do that, I don't believe that Musk would do that, a guy so petty he once cancelled someone's Tesla order after he dared to make a 'rude post' on the internet, with an interesting justification about the nature of private businesses' ability to discriminate:
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/694802955170553861
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/feb/03/elon-musk...
https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-offered-5k-remove-...
It certainly wasn't an attempt to silence a critic, which is the thing people say he'll start doing when he gets control of Twitter.
Would you be happy knowing that all the criminals in your area now have easily accessible information on when you're home or not?
There's nothing stopping someone doing that. It's only someone gathering information that anyone else could and tweeting it. Just because you can do something, doesn't mean you should.
I would gladly accept that in return for hundreds of billions, with which I could afford some former special forces bodyguards. And house guards for when I'm not home.
The data isn't "completely public". It takes non-trivial skill and effort to access this data.
I sure don't know how to do it.
It significantly rises the bar from "a whacko" to "a whacko with technical skills to access FAA monitoring system"
When some billionare buy private jet he is aware about fact that his jet can be easily tracked. If person decide to be a public figure he have to deal with fact that he'll be tracked around.
A lot of people downvoting, so I'll expand; It's fair to give the benefit of the doubt given that Tesla is helping combat climate change and SpaceX is about becoming multi-planetary. These are civilization level problems and solutions.
The idea is to make twitter a TRUSTED public square. He suggests open sourcing the algorithm and making all moderation actions visible to the public. Makes sense as transparency is needed to rebuild trust in the platform.