But...has he? He's CEO of a marginally-profitable electric car company that's propped up by hefty government subsidies, and he's got a rocket company that may or may not eventually make it significantly cheaper to launch things into orbit (and again, gets almost all its funding from government contracts). Oh, and there's the HyperLoop, if that ever happens / is even possible.

I don't want to come off as too much of a hater, because the problems SpaceX and Tesla (note: the companies, not the man) are trying to solve are genuinely extremely difficult[0] but they sure haven't "created solutions" for them yet. From the hype you read, you'd almost think SpaceX had successfully recovered at least one reusable rocket.

Really, Musk's only incontestably successful venture was PayPal.

[0] https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/expeditions/exped...

  marginally-profitable electric car company

_Electric_ is the operative word here. If it were an IC car company then perhaps on a stretch, it wouldn't be stellar.

  propped up by hefty government subsidies

They are competing in an industry (oil/car manufacturing) where the incumbents already get a large chunk of subsidies. So the table is already tilted.

  haven't "created solutions" for them yet

I think on the contrary, in case of Tesla, they have made an electric car practical.

Innovation quite often comes through government subsidies

It's almost like an incentive to build technology better and cheaper so it can be mass-produced and everyone benefits

whoa

Does he though? And are those solutions actually viable?

He is. The biggest thing holding back renewables is storage. Distributed battery storage is one of Musk's projects.