4 ms·

I wish we had more people who under-deliver the way Elon Musk does.

by patrec 5y ago

arcticbull 5y ago
So far he's... - planning to dig tiny tunnels with no ventilation or emergency egress for cars instead of, you know, trains [1] - [edit](as if the only reason we have traffic is because lanes are uncovered? maybe just put a roof over the highway as a beta test?) - he's walked back the whole hyperloop thing almost entirely [2] - some electric cars where he tried to overthrow the government of Bolivia to source lithium [3] - at a company which produces a single digit percentage as many cars as say Toyota, but is valued at the entire rest of the car industry put together - [edit] and a publicly available beta of an autopilot system that seems hell-bent on murder (including having tried to off me, a few times - btw, super fun when it's not) - some very expensive space internet [4] cat heaters [5] (although after reading this article I assume the cats are being slowly roasted in some sort of bandwidth trial) - built rockets that aren't actually less expensive than competitors - they hope to be, but presently are not, and tbh, I don't see a path (but would be happily proven wrong) [6] - and tortured a bunch of monkeys to death. 11/10. Nailed it. [1] https://techcrunch.com/2019/05/22/review-of-elon-musks-dc-to-baltimore-loop-system-reveals-safety-concerns/ https://techcrunch.com/2019/05/22/review-of-elon-musks-dc-to... [2] https://www.thedailybeast.com/elon-musk-hyperloop-dreams-slam-into-cold-hard-reality https://www.thedailybeast.com/elon-musk-hyperloop-dreams-sla... [3] https://www.yahoo.com/video/elon-musk-becomes-twitter-laughingstock-214435631.html https://www.yahoo.com/video/elon-musk-becomes-twitter-laughi... [4] https://www.pcmag.com/news/starlinks-new-premium-tier-is-fast-but-super-expensive https://www.pcmag.com/news/starlinks-new-premium-tier-is-fas... [5] https://www.kiro7.com/news/trending/cozy-kitties-spacexs-self-heating-starlink-satellite-dishes-attracting-cats/P65JOWFNRNDQTETOH3Q2UFKCXE/ https://www.kiro7.com/news/trending/cozy-kitties-spacexs-sel... [6] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4TxkE_oYrjU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4TxkE_oYrjU
- ovi256 5y ago
  I think that you'll learn that besides haters, nobody cares about the failures. Or hit rate. Only about the successes. And Elon's had such huge ones that he can keep trying for more.
  - arcticbull 5y ago
    He made some electric cars. They're pretty cool when they're not trying to murder. And some low-orbit satellite internet that should help connect some remote areas. The successes are genuinely massively overstated. He's a marketer, and a good one. A P.T. Barnum type.
    - ericd 5y ago
      “Some” electric cars? They made roughly 1 million of them this past year, 80% more than the previous year.
      - ashwagary 5y ago
        Wasn't most of the hard work done by the two actual founders of Tesla? They achieved something almost equivalent to the modern day Tesla before Elon contributed anything (funding excluded).
        ericd 5y ago
        No. They hadn’t even gotten the hand-built roadster working properly before he took over (iirc the two speed transmission was still shredding itself before they switched to single speed), let alone launching the Model S, X, 3, Y, and then scaling up the manufacturing (the real hard part). Credit to them for the idea and the initial prototypes - the idea that EVs could not only be decent cars that people could stomach, but actually lustworthy sports cars that hold their own with the best ICE cars was key to their success, and it was the founders’. But the company building and keeping it alive was solidly Musk.
        ashwagary 5y ago
        Easy to build a company out of a genius product/IP some other intelligent team built. I grant that Elon is a decent salesman (even though all the false promises are chipping away at that title), I haven't seen proof of much else.
- xupybd 5y ago
  And made billions doing all of it. Perhaps his success is as a salesman.
- ericd 5y ago
  Can you tldr #6? Because readability very clearly makes things cheaper for SpaceX (they pass only a small fraction on to the customer, because I don’t think customers have any other alternative at that price point anyway, but for things like Starlink launches, it’s a huge help to them).
  - ericd 5y ago
    Whoops, that should read “because reusability”

I wish we had more people who under-deliver the way Elon Musk does.

by patrec 5y ago

I wish we had more people who under-deliver the way Elon Musk does.

So far he's... - planning to dig tiny tunnels with no ventilation or emergency egress for cars instead of, you know, trains [1] - [edit](as if the only reason we have traffic is because lanes are uncovered? maybe just put a roof over the highway as a beta test?) - he's walked back the whole hyperloop thing almost entirely [2] - some electric cars where he tried to overthrow the government of Bolivia to source lithium [3] - at a company which produces a single digit percentage as many cars as say Toyota, but is valued at the entire rest of the car industry put together - [edit] and a publicly available beta of an autopilot system that seems hell-bent on murder (including having tried to off me, a few times - btw, super fun when it's not) - some very expensive space internet [4] cat heaters [5] (although after reading this article I assume the cats are being slowly roasted in some sort of bandwidth trial) - built rockets that aren't actually less expensive than competitors - they hope to be, but presently are not, and tbh, I don't see a path (but would be happily proven wrong) [6] - and tortured a bunch of monkeys to death. 11/10. Nailed it. [1] https://techcrunch.com/2019/05/22/review-of-elon-musks-dc-to-baltimore-loop-system-reveals-safety-concerns/ https://techcrunch.com/2019/05/22/review-of-elon-musks-dc-to... [2] https://www.thedailybeast.com/elon-musk-hyperloop-dreams-slam-into-cold-hard-reality https://www.thedailybeast.com/elon-musk-hyperloop-dreams-sla... [3] https://www.yahoo.com/video/elon-musk-becomes-twitter-laughingstock-214435631.html https://www.yahoo.com/video/elon-musk-becomes-twitter-laughi... [4] https://www.pcmag.com/news/starlinks-new-premium-tier-is-fast-but-super-expensive https://www.pcmag.com/news/starlinks-new-premium-tier-is-fas... [5] https://www.kiro7.com/news/trending/cozy-kitties-spacexs-self-heating-starlink-satellite-dishes-attracting-cats/P65JOWFNRNDQTETOH3Q2UFKCXE/ https://www.kiro7.com/news/trending/cozy-kitties-spacexs-sel... [6] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4TxkE_oYrjU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4TxkE_oYrjU

ovi256 5y ago
I think that you'll learn that besides haters, nobody cares about the failures. Or hit rate. Only about the successes. And Elon's had such huge ones that he can keep trying for more.
- arcticbull 5y ago
  He made some electric cars. They're pretty cool when they're not trying to murder. And some low-orbit satellite internet that should help connect some remote areas. The successes are genuinely massively overstated. He's a marketer, and a good one. A P.T. Barnum type.
  - ericd 5y ago
    “Some” electric cars? They made roughly 1 million of them this past year, 80% more than the previous year.
    - ashwagary 5y ago
      Wasn't most of the hard work done by the two actual founders of Tesla? They achieved something almost equivalent to the modern day Tesla before Elon contributed anything (funding excluded).
      - ericd 5y ago
        No. They hadn’t even gotten the hand-built roadster working properly before he took over (iirc the two speed transmission was still shredding itself before they switched to single speed), let alone launching the Model S, X, 3, Y, and then scaling up the manufacturing (the real hard part). Credit to them for the idea and the initial prototypes - the idea that EVs could not only be decent cars that people could stomach, but actually lustworthy sports cars that hold their own with the best ICE cars was key to their success, and it was the founders’. But the company building and keeping it alive was solidly Musk.
        ashwagary 5y ago
        Easy to build a company out of a genius product/IP some other intelligent team built. I grant that Elon is a decent salesman (even though all the false promises are chipping away at that title), I haven't seen proof of much else.
xupybd 5y ago
And made billions doing all of it. Perhaps his success is as a salesman.
ericd 5y ago
Can you tldr #6? Because readability very clearly makes things cheaper for SpaceX (they pass only a small fraction on to the customer, because I don’t think customers have any other alternative at that price point anyway, but for things like Starlink launches, it’s a huge help to them).
- ericd 5y ago
  Whoops, that should read “because reusability”