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...