6 ms·

What are actually Elon Musk's engineering talents? It seems he is not much more than a marketeer. It's not even clear his visions of reusable rockets and electr

What are actually Elon Musk's engineering talents? It seems he is not much more than a marketeer. It's not even clear his visions of reusable rockets and electric cars were original...he is known to take credit for subordinate's ideas and achievements.

thecleaner 7y ago
Cult of personality mostly. However Electric cars are actually useless for the environment without renewable energy. So it probably made sense to save Solar City. This whole thing seems like a long term plan for building an absolute monopoly - like what would happen if oil companies also owned all the cars.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- kelnos 7y ago
  > However Electric cars are actually useless for the environment without renewable energy. Isn't even a modern coal-fired power plant cleaner than the ICE in a car? It certainly isn't perfect to have fossil fuel sources powering the electricity used to charge a car, but I'd much rather isolate and improve CO2 capture at coal-fired plants over having 250+ million polluters spread out over the entire country.
PhilWright 7y ago
Ideas are ten a penny but execution is what counts. When it comes to SpaceX, there was no rocket company/government agency creating a reusable rocket. None. Not only that, but no one thought it was even realistically possible. He was ridiculed by senior managers from ULA when he first started trying to do it. I guess they are not laughing so much now. Tesla is interesting because his innovation was to create an electric car that actually looks nice and had great acceleration making it actually desirable to drive. All the ones before that were butt ugly and sold on their environmental credentials. Not sure if that will be enough to make them profitable in the long run. Oddly, the big car makers are still unable to make an electric car that is not ugly. Baffled as to why. His 'The Boring Company' seems like a non-starter to me as there is no innovation except making smaller tunnels than usual. Cannot see how that is will work out, but time will tell. His 'Hyperloop' idea is not original and seems like a dumbass idea to me. Maybe that is why he has not actually put any money into it and merely encourages others to develop it instead. He is an entrepreneur so some or even most ideas will not work out, but with the occasional hit. His PayPal was a hit and so is SpaceX. If he has no other hits that is still two more than most people.
- WheelsAtLarge 7y ago
  Hyperloop seems to be a great way to move materials. Transporting goods thru a specialized system and getting them out of the highways would help a lot. But it's mostly wishful thinking. BTW, it was Peter Thiel that lead Paypal thru the rough times. Musk was a part of it but he was kicked out before you could say that Paypal was a success.
  - pwinnski 7y ago
    Transporting goods via a purpose-dedicated system via fixed points without using highways would be great. And it is! America's use of trains to move goods around this country is amazing. Come to think of it, moving people efficiently is a largely-solved problem given sufficient population density. Hyperloop is just dumb.
    - asdfk-12 7y ago
      If you are referring to urban areas - what about the crippled subway system and insane traffic congestion in NYC?
      - jcranmer 7y ago
        NYC has 5 4-track trunks moving 10-car trains through its densest core. If that's insufficient, then the only thing that's going to improve throughput is getting everybody out and having them walk. And there are places (hi Times Square!) where that is insufficient to move the demand. NYC has a throughput problem. High speed doesn't improve throughput, it worsens it.
        mschuster91 7y ago
        > NYC has a throughput problem. High speed doesn't improve throughput, it worsens it. With ultra-dense city cores the only way to fix them is proper city planning - meaning: tearing down skyscrapers outright or converting them from offices into affordable housing to reduce the hordes of low-income staff travelling for hours just to get to work. The "free market" has failed here because stuff still works (=people get to work and make money) but the cost is put onto society as a whole (congestion, smog, life quality degradation, hours upon hours wasted being in transit).
WheelsAtLarge 7y ago
His real talent seems to be, "execution of idea". Seems like when he makes up his mind to do something he does not stop until it's done. He plows thru anything that gets in his way. Including people that aren't executing at the level he wants. That's a true talent and extremely rare. Engineering and learning from mistakes maybe less so.
- new_realist 7y ago
  His real talent is finding government funds and creating losses.
woodandsteel 7y ago
Musk is a genius engineer. He is arguably the most brilliant technologist in the world today. Can you point to anyone who has produced as much technological progress, and in two quite different fields?
- new_realist 7y ago
  Steve Jobs: Apple and Pixar. And those were actually successful.
davinic 7y ago
Musk wasn't even the founder of Tesla, he rewrote the history in order to call himself that.
- gnulinux 7y ago
  > Tesla was founded in July 2003, by engineers Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning, under the name Tesla Motors. The company's name is a tribute to engineer Nikola Tesla. In early Series A funding, Tesla Motors was joined by Elon Musk, J. B. Straubel and Ian Wright, all of whom are retroactively allowed to call themselves co-founders of the company. from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla,_Inc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla,_Inc.
  - davinic 7y ago
    Yes, "retroactively allowed to call themselves co-founders".
  - kelnos 7y ago
    Just because you're allowed to rewrite history, it doesn't make your rewritten history true. Musk wasn't involved in Tesla until their Series A (a round which he led as an investor), but soon after became involved in the company's operations. Eventually the original founders were ousted from the company, and later Musk just started calling himself a founder. There was a lawsuit[0], and the eventual settlement allowed this revision to occur. Reading between the lines suggests that the original founder just gave in, thinking that it was better for his reputation just to let it go. We have no idea, of course, what would have happened if the original founders had stayed in charge and Musk hadn't joined. Maybe the company would have failed. Maybe it would be doing even better than it is. Who knows. That's immaterial to the argument. Regardless of what Musk would like you to believe, or what a court settlement allows, he did not actually found Tesla. [0] https://www.cnet.com/news/tesla-motors-founders-now-there-are-five/ https://www.cnet.com/news/tesla-motors-founders-now-there-ar...
zaroth 7y ago
The interviews I’ve seen of Musk subordinates (particularly engineers but also middle management) has consistently included statements to the effect of, “We are always terrified he will walk into a meeting, go way deeper than we are prepared to discuss, come up with a simple solution that evaded us for months, and walk out thinking we are all idiots.” The guy has plenty of flaws, but he’s apparently terrifically good at synthesizing complex technical data in an extraordinarily wide range of topics, and arriving at solutions that others missed but look obvious in retrospect.

thecleaner 7y ago

Cult of personality mostly. However Electric cars are actually useless for the environment without renewable energy. So it probably made sense to save Solar City. This whole thing seems like a long term plan for building an absolute monopoly - like what would happen if oil companies also owned all the cars.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
kelnos 7y ago
> However Electric cars are actually useless for the environment without renewable energy. Isn't even a modern coal-fired power plant cleaner than the ICE in a car? It certainly isn't perfect to have fossil fuel sources powering the electricity used to charge a car, but I'd much rather isolate and improve CO2 capture at coal-fired plants over having 250+ million polluters spread out over the entire country.

PhilWright 7y ago

Ideas are ten a penny but execution is what counts. When it comes to SpaceX, there was no rocket company/government agency creating a reusable rocket. None. Not only that, but no one thought it was even realistically possible. He was ridiculed by senior managers from ULA when he first started trying to do it. I guess they are not laughing so much now. Tesla is interesting because his innovation was to create an electric car that actually looks nice and had great acceleration making it actually desirable to drive. All the ones before that were butt ugly and sold on their environmental credentials. Not sure if that will be enough to make them profitable in the long run. Oddly, the big car makers are still unable to make an electric car that is not ugly. Baffled as to why. His 'The Boring Company' seems like a non-starter to me as there is no innovation except making smaller tunnels than usual. Cannot see how that is will work out, but time will tell. His 'Hyperloop' idea is not original and seems like a dumbass idea to me. Maybe that is why he has not actually put any money into it and merely encourages others to develop it instead. He is an entrepreneur so some or even most ideas will not work out, but with the occasional hit. His PayPal was a hit and so is SpaceX. If he has no other hits that is still two more than most people.

WheelsAtLarge 7y ago
Hyperloop seems to be a great way to move materials. Transporting goods thru a specialized system and getting them out of the highways would help a lot. But it's mostly wishful thinking. BTW, it was Peter Thiel that lead Paypal thru the rough times. Musk was a part of it but he was kicked out before you could say that Paypal was a success.
- pwinnski 7y ago
  Transporting goods via a purpose-dedicated system via fixed points without using highways would be great. And it is! America's use of trains to move goods around this country is amazing. Come to think of it, moving people efficiently is a largely-solved problem given sufficient population density. Hyperloop is just dumb.
  - asdfk-12 7y ago
    If you are referring to urban areas - what about the crippled subway system and insane traffic congestion in NYC?
    - jcranmer 7y ago
      NYC has 5 4-track trunks moving 10-car trains through its densest core. If that's insufficient, then the only thing that's going to improve throughput is getting everybody out and having them walk. And there are places (hi Times Square!) where that is insufficient to move the demand. NYC has a throughput problem. High speed doesn't improve throughput, it worsens it.
      - mschuster91 7y ago
        > NYC has a throughput problem. High speed doesn't improve throughput, it worsens it. With ultra-dense city cores the only way to fix them is proper city planning - meaning: tearing down skyscrapers outright or converting them from offices into affordable housing to reduce the hordes of low-income staff travelling for hours just to get to work. The "free market" has failed here because stuff still works (=people get to work and make money) but the cost is put onto society as a whole (congestion, smog, life quality degradation, hours upon hours wasted being in transit).

WheelsAtLarge 7y ago

His real talent seems to be, "execution of idea". Seems like when he makes up his mind to do something he does not stop until it's done. He plows thru anything that gets in his way. Including people that aren't executing at the level he wants. That's a true talent and extremely rare. Engineering and learning from mistakes maybe less so.

new_realist 7y ago
His real talent is finding government funds and creating losses.

woodandsteel 7y ago

Musk is a genius engineer. He is arguably the most brilliant technologist in the world today. Can you point to anyone who has produced as much technological progress, and in two quite different fields?

new_realist 7y ago
Steve Jobs: Apple and Pixar. And those were actually successful.

davinic 7y ago

Musk wasn't even the founder of Tesla, he rewrote the history in order to call himself that.

gnulinux 7y ago
> Tesla was founded in July 2003, by engineers Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning, under the name Tesla Motors. The company's name is a tribute to engineer Nikola Tesla. In early Series A funding, Tesla Motors was joined by Elon Musk, J. B. Straubel and Ian Wright, all of whom are retroactively allowed to call themselves co-founders of the company. from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla,_Inc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla,_Inc.
- davinic 7y ago
  Yes, "retroactively allowed to call themselves co-founders".
- kelnos 7y ago
  Just because you're allowed to rewrite history, it doesn't make your rewritten history true. Musk wasn't involved in Tesla until their Series A (a round which he led as an investor), but soon after became involved in the company's operations. Eventually the original founders were ousted from the company, and later Musk just started calling himself a founder. There was a lawsuit[0], and the eventual settlement allowed this revision to occur. Reading between the lines suggests that the original founder just gave in, thinking that it was better for his reputation just to let it go. We have no idea, of course, what would have happened if the original founders had stayed in charge and Musk hadn't joined. Maybe the company would have failed. Maybe it would be doing even better than it is. Who knows. That's immaterial to the argument. Regardless of what Musk would like you to believe, or what a court settlement allows, he did not actually found Tesla. [0] https://www.cnet.com/news/tesla-motors-founders-now-there-are-five/ https://www.cnet.com/news/tesla-motors-founders-now-there-ar...

zaroth 7y ago

The interviews I’ve seen of Musk subordinates (particularly engineers but also middle management) has consistently included statements to the effect of, “We are always terrified he will walk into a meeting, go way deeper than we are prepared to discuss, come up with a simple solution that evaded us for months, and walk out thinking we are all idiots.” The guy has plenty of flaws, but he’s apparently terrifically good at synthesizing complex technical data in an extraordinarily wide range of topics, and arriving at solutions that others missed but look obvious in retrospect.