SpaceX and Tesla are both doing amazing things, no doubt. But there is a difference in how they got off the ground. SpaceX did everything it could to collect a

SpaceX and Tesla are both doing amazing things, no doubt. But there is a difference in how they got off the ground. SpaceX did everything it could to collect and leverage what was known about making rockets. They climbed as high as they could onto the shoulders of previous efforts before they started inventing. Remember, Musk started out trying to buy rockets. It was only after he had done all that research that he started to realize that he could make them instead. With Tesla, Musk did less of that. He allowed himself to think that since automakers couldn’t see the obvious opportunity in electric cars, they were hopelessly outdated in everything. Turns out that was wrong; carmakers do actually know how to make cars. This is evident in Tesla mistakes like buying a production line and not proving it before trying to use it in production. Musk is extremely smart and Tesla is full of smart people. They are making huge strides and maybe their manufacturing ops will pass existing automakers someday. But they haven’t yet (despite the hype), and I think they would be in even better shape today if they had been a bit more humble and done a more thorough job of tapping what was already known about automaking.