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Elon Musk is like the cat who tried to jump from the sofa to the top of the bookcase, fell to the floor in a tangle of wildly gyrating limbs, and is now sitting

Elon Musk is like the cat who tried to jump from the sofa to the top of the bookcase, fell to the floor in a tangle of wildly gyrating limbs, and is now sitting there quietly licking its paw like it was intending to do that all along. Even with his brilliance he's fooling no one into thinking the SolarCity merger was actually in his plan- there are some synergies, sure, but they're easily outweighed by the added corporate complexity. But I mean, he's Elon Musk. He could still pull it off. His biggest problem by far (excepting, perhaps, Model 3 production targets) will be regulations. It makes a nice story when you talk about the relative risks rationally, but there's no chance whatsoever American politics will deal with the issue in a rational fashion. Autopilot may retroactively become illegal in places people currently get away with it; cars driving themselves around is a different and titanic can of worms. What if a terrorist gets their hands on a Tesla and stuffs it full of explosives?

swalsh 10y ago
I don't completely buy into the idea it was intentional, but I think there's a really good possibility. Especially at the beginning, people questioned if electric cars were better for the environment or just shifting the source of the pollution. His response was that electric is a flexible energy source that can be generated from many different processes, many of which are very environmentally friendly including solar. I think SolarCity is part 2, now that cars are running on electricity, it's time to make the electricity clean.
tokipin 10y ago
The specifics probably weren't in his plan, but in various interviews he's talked about the consumption of energy (vehicles) and the generation of energy (solar) as being two sides of the same coin. Elon is the one that told his cousins to start a solar company after all. IIRC he originally saw three major fields to move forward on: the Internet, Transportation/Energy, and Space. By the sounds of it he was thinking of these as early as high school, to at the latest some time after he sold his first company (Zip2). He did the Internet thing pretty well, now he's working on the other two. This is someone who does think on these scales. Keep in mind, as the article itself points out, that you're an idiot if you think starting a car company is a good idea. Energy was the whole point all along. A company for its own sake isn't in Elon's DNA. That would probably just be too boring for him. Whether this specific merger is a good idea or not is a different question. And I also don't think the emergence of cheap supercomputers in the form of geek-subsidized graphics cards and their applicability to a particularly effective machine learning genre would have been predicted by anyone.
tdy721 10y ago
There are Nepotism conflicts between the boards of the two companies... Not a plan? If anything, it swings/stinks too far to the other side. IMHO... http://fortune.com/2016/06/22/tesla-elon-musk-solarcity/ http://fortune.com/2016/06/22/tesla-elon-musk-solarcity/
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moeamaya 10y ago
Slightly confusing and elaborate position based on https://www.tesla.com/blog/secret-tesla-motors-master-plan-just-between-you-and-me https://www.tesla.com/blog/secret-tesla-motors-master-plan-j.... Do you mind expanding?

swalsh 10y ago

I don't completely buy into the idea it was intentional, but I think there's a really good possibility. Especially at the beginning, people questioned if electric cars were better for the environment or just shifting the source of the pollution. His response was that electric is a flexible energy source that can be generated from many different processes, many of which are very environmentally friendly including solar. I think SolarCity is part 2, now that cars are running on electricity, it's time to make the electricity clean.

tokipin 10y ago

The specifics probably weren't in his plan, but in various interviews he's talked about the consumption of energy (vehicles) and the generation of energy (solar) as being two sides of the same coin. Elon is the one that told his cousins to start a solar company after all. IIRC he originally saw three major fields to move forward on: the Internet, Transportation/Energy, and Space. By the sounds of it he was thinking of these as early as high school, to at the latest some time after he sold his first company (Zip2). He did the Internet thing pretty well, now he's working on the other two. This is someone who does think on these scales. Keep in mind, as the article itself points out, that you're an idiot if you think starting a car company is a good idea. Energy was the whole point all along. A company for its own sake isn't in Elon's DNA. That would probably just be too boring for him. Whether this specific merger is a good idea or not is a different question. And I also don't think the emergence of cheap supercomputers in the form of geek-subsidized graphics cards and their applicability to a particularly effective machine learning genre would have been predicted by anyone.

tdy721 10y ago

There are Nepotism conflicts between the boards of the two companies... Not a plan? If anything, it swings/stinks too far to the other side. IMHO... http://fortune.com/2016/06/22/tesla-elon-musk-solarcity/ http://fortune.com/2016/06/22/tesla-elon-musk-solarcity/

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moeamaya 10y ago

Slightly confusing and elaborate position based on https://www.tesla.com/blog/secret-tesla-motors-master-plan-just-between-you-and-me https://www.tesla.com/blog/secret-tesla-motors-master-plan-j.... Do you mind expanding?