5 ms·
The tone of the article is surprisingly hostile. Maybe I'm just used to Canadian media.
by snowwindwaves 8y ago
The tone of the article is surprisingly hostile. Maybe I'm just used to Canadian media.
- yborg 8y agoIt felt completely neutral to me. Admittedly, the reporter didn't genuflect before the altar of Elon, which some of his fans might interpret as implicit hostility.
- npunt 8y agoIt felt a bit persnickety - focusing on some minor details of the event that weren’t perfect, probably as a proxy for author’s larger skepticism. Skepticism is warranted given the big claims & article wasn’t too bad overall.
- carlivar 8y agoSome journalists have become openly cynical about Musk, probably now that so many promises have failed to materialize.
- Isinlor 8y agoHe may have delays, but what have he failed to deliver? Everything is either work in progress or delivered. - internet payment platform, check - first privately founded company to do orbital launch, check - reusable cheap rockets, check - biggest rocket available + it's reusable, check - Dragon spacecraft, check - crew spacecraft, check (still needs testing, starting early next year) - Model S, check - Model X, check - Model 3, check (work in progress on 35 000$ version) - Boring Tunnel, check (work in progress on scaling up) - Starlink, check (test satellites are flying over your head, work in progress on full deploy) - Big Falcon Rocket, work in progress
- nickik 8y agoSome people have a hard time keeping relative and absolutes apart. There are lots of people, even on this site who often claim that he is 'not even an engineer'. People emotions simply get the better of them in situation that are so public, every little detail gets blown out of proportion in either direction. The plain fact that he controls and builds multiple US based billion dollar companies seems to get lots AT THE VERY MOMENT when US based manufacturing has been on of the prime political debates is astonishing for me as an outsider.
- User9991 8y agoMusk isn't an engineer. What is controversial about that statement? You don't call yourself a doctor because you're interested in health care.
- garmaine 8y agoI'm a Musk fan, but literally 90%+ of the things Musk say never actually happen, or happen very late, or have so radically changed in the process as to be something different. You're just quoting the successes, not all the things that he's claimed to be working on in the history of his career. I suspect one of the reasons journalists are so unfairly critical of him is that the story keeps changing. As an engineer I know this is because he is adapting to circumstance and the reality is that we ought be thankful that he is showing us early glimpses at all. But a journalist looks at that and says "wtf? if I report on this then it's my credibility on the line when next year it's morphed into something else."
- nickik 8y agoThese 'journalists' are the ones who make a choice to comment and report on him. If they want to report news that is known and understood by everybody to be a best case, its their own fault. Musk is interesting in the first place because he is not a typical boring CEO. So they want to use him as clickbait, but then they get shitty if its not 'polished' like what they get sent from the PR departments of other companies.
- User9991 8y agoHalf of the items on your list have "failed to materialize". Like this tunnel, you seem to completely discount these ideas being uneconomical. Reusing rockets is pointless if it isn't cheaper. Building electric cars isn't hard;mass producing by them to high quality standards, cheaply is. Every time one Musks projects comes around, his super fans talk about how nice it is he's working on the issues, blissfully unaware that smart engineers the world round are working on the same problems.
- zimpenfish 8y ago> - first privately founded company to do orbital launch, check To be fair, if you gave me ~$6bn from the Government, I could probably have a bloody good go at it too. > - internet payment platform, check Sure, he created x.com but who ever heard of that?
- carlivar 8y agoYou mentioned the $35k Model 3, which I think is the worst since so many deposits were collected on this promise. This spring it will be 3 years since those deposits were collected, including mine (since refunded at about the 2-year anniversary). He also keeps pushing back the timeline for deposit holders. It has been 3-6 months away for over a year now. And there are anecdotes (which I know aren't data) of difficulty lately getting deposits refunded. Other things: Battery swap - https://www.tesla.com/videos/battery-swap-event https://www.tesla.com/videos/battery-swap-event (interestingly, NIO in China has this approach working). Coast to coast autonomous drive by 2018: https://futurism.com/elon-musk-teslas-autonomous-car-will-drive-coast-to-coast-by-2018/ https://futurism.com/elon-musk-teslas-autonomous-car-will-dr... FSD (Full Self Driving) option in general is looking like vaporware. I'm wondering if Tesla is going to need to refund the money people paid for that option. It's no longer offered. Here's the latest promise, about Summon mode with Tesla: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1057871356367269888 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1057871356367269888 It was promised for ~6 weeks, ~6 weeks ago. So that should be out any day now, right? He was also going to fix Flint's drinking water. To his credit, he recently made a charitable donation instead, but it was originally phrased as engineering help. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/jul/12/elon-musk-flint-fund-clean-water-contamination https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/jul/12/elon-musk-fl... And of course there's the whole Thai cave torpedo thing which was just... weird. Edit: oh can't believe I forgot the solar roof. That one is perhaps the closest to outright fraud, since it was unveiled on a Hollywood set with FAKE shingles! https://mansionengineer.com/2018/08/10/elon-musk-tesla-and-the-solar-roof-tile-fraud/ https://mansionengineer.com/2018/08/10/elon-musk-tesla-and-t... I get that we want people like Musk to push boundaries, but I think it's a fine line between what Musk does versus The Simpsons monorail guy.
- rohit2412 8y agoThai cave tor-pedo. Unintentional wordplay
- porpoisely 8y agoI think it has more to do with musk's criticism of journalists that sparked the hate they have for him. https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/999374720368689153 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/999374720368689153 Earlier this year, the media put out hit piece after hit piece on musk after musk criticized them. Seems like years ago though.
- noobermin 8y agoI suppose finally reading something that isn't native content can be surprising.
- grecy 8y agoAmerican culture has shifted in the last decade to be extremely critical and scathing towards anyone or anything that attempts to change the status quo - even if it's an attempt to make things better. See all the negative comments in this thread, for example. Instead saying "Jeez, this looks interesting. I'm happy some billionaire is trying to fix the horrible traffic problem instead of just buying more McMansions and yatchs. It seems complicated and I'm not sure it will work because of reason x, y and z, but it will be cool to watch!" The collective American voice is now: "Stupid! Will never work! Waste of time!". (And angrily at that) It's a real shame, because people who genuinely try to make life better for others are rare, and America needs all of them they can get!