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I don't see Elon as a genius at any kind of engineering. Everything he's done there was pretty easily foreseeable as being physically possible. What he is remar
by ufmace 7y ago
I don't see Elon as a genius at any kind of engineering. Everything he's done there was pretty easily foreseeable as being physically possible. What he is remarkably good at is selecting daring and potentially market-changing business goals, and executing against them consistently and aggressively despite naysayers.
It's easy to say that it's probably possible to land a orbital rocket first stage. But who would bet a multi-billion dollar business on being able to not only do it, but save money by doing it, when nobody had ever done it before?
Similarly, electric cars were far from new. Nobody seemed much inclined to build one that was actually a luxury car, instead of a toy for engineer-types who could put up with driving weird things. Any of the big manufacturers could have done it, and easily absorbed the losses if it failed, but none did. Elon made a wild bet on that, making a company that made nothing else, so the whole thing would go down the tubes if the idea flopped. Instead it seems to have worked. Although it seems to be harder than he anticipated, and maybe outside his skillset, to run an organization that does real mass-production.
- aerovistae 7y agoIf you think what he's done was easily foreseeable as possible, you haven't been paying much attention to headlines the past fifteen years.
- marvin 7y agoIt's only obvious in retrospect. Every step along the way, there has been thousands of people saying "this is impossible" or "this is theoretically possible, but it can't be engineered" or "this is possible in principle, but it will be so costly to develop that it doesn't make sense". When AGI is developed, it will seem obvious in retrospect. Participating engineers will receive middle-brow dismissals saying that this was obviously practically possible, since after all the human brain operates according to the laws of physics.
- aerovistae 7y agoExactly.
- ufmace 7y agoDon't miss the "physically" part, that's critical. Something being physically possible is very different from it being a practical business.
- SalmoShalazar 7y agoJust an aside, Elon did not start Tesla. He was an early investor and part of his deal with the company was to be able to claim to be a founder.