5 ms·

Musk's track record is more hype than substance.

kcplate 4y ago
True. Watching him shoot rockets into space from my backyard 3-4x a month and seeing a half dozen Teslas on the road every time I drive a few miles isn’t very substantive at all.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- slaw 4y ago
  I think SpaceX and Tesla succeeds despite Musk actions.
- root_axis 4y ago
  What about FSD? Boring Company? Robo Taxies? Solar? Cybertruck? Neurolink? Mars colonies? Elon has had some amazing successes, that's just a fact, but judging what he will accomplish based on what he says is almost always a losing bet.
  - Phlarp 4y ago
    You forgot roadster 2.0 and the mannequin robot
    - viraptor 4y ago
      And hyperloop.
  - jlmorton 4y ago
    Boring Company is right up with Tesla and SpaceX on the success trajectory by lots of measures. This is a company that just started from nothing a few years ago, and it’s already building a massive transit project, and is in final bidding in several other major projects. They’re already building their own tunnel boring equipment. The company raised $675 million at a $5.65 billion valuation, putting it ahead of several S&P 500 stocks in market cap, closest to Alaska Airlines. To say this is unusual is an understatement. At this point in SpaceX history, the company had yet to launch Falcon 1. I think a whole lot of people are going to be mightily shocked at how successful this company will turn out. In ten years, when it’s clear how successful it is, everyone will pretend the idea was stunningly obvious and was only successful through public financing, or something like that.
    - hobs 4y ago
      Getting a project to use typical tunnel boring machines via renting tunnel boring machines is not anything special. Raising money is just a con man thing, the boring company has achieved nothing new at all, like, nothing. We're still waiting on all the other promises that just keep not coming, so no, I don't think we'll be surprised.
    - root_axis 4y ago
      Boring Company is all hype, it's current trajectory is failure. > it’s already building a massive transit project It's only massive in terms of wasted taxpayer funds. The Vegas tunnel is a boondogle, and per Elon's signature style, completely unlike anything that he promised, their next tunnel will be the same. > In ten years, when it’s clear how successful it is, everyone will pretend the idea was stunningly obvious and was only successful through public financing, or something like that. I won't. If boring company has built any noteworthy tunnels within the next ten years, feel free to come back and have yourself a dropbox moment with my comment.
      - jlmorton 4y ago
        > It's only massive in terms of wasted taxpayer funds I'm confused, because you called-out the Vegas tunnel, but are you claiming a 30-mile, 55-station tunnel is not a massive project? Or are you referring to the already-built 1.7 mile LVCC Loop? Beyond that, there are no taxpayer dollars used in the project. It's entirely privately financed. In fact, the system pays a concession fee to Las Vegas. > If boring company has built any noteworthy tunnels within the next ten years Well, TBC is already constructing the 55-station Las Vegas Loop as we speak. It's scheduled to open in 2 years, at least partially by Super Bowl LVIII in Vegas in February 2024. The entire system will not be done, but enough of it will be to be noteworthy. > feel free to come back and have yourself a dropbox moment with my comment. I will try to remember to do that! Don't worry, you won't be the only one who got this wrong.
    - tomarr 4y ago
      I would love to agree but it's simply not correct. They are buying existing tunneling machines and there is nothing yet to suggest a step change. The radical proposals in terms of stripping out safety equipment for operational tunnels may prod some development, but ultimately any gains here are not going to be captive and will just result in revised client expectations (outside Boring funding & delivering projects worth $10bn+ individually themselves, with no public involvement).
  - HyperSane 4y ago
    All excellent examples of how much hot air Musk spews.
  - HyperSane 4y ago
    And the cybertruck and the electric semi that was announced 5 freaking years ago.
  - squokko 4y ago
    What about Sun King? Dig It? Don't Bother Me? Boys? Flying? (all terrible Beatles songs) When you have successes like Tesla and SpaceX and PayPal it doesn't really matter how many failures you have. This isn't like being an airline pilot where you're judged by your worst outing.
    - HyperSane 4y ago
      "it doesn't really matter how many failures you have" The thing is that they are not just honest failures, they are outright lies.
      - fallingknife 4y ago
        You want to make the accusation that the business failures of someone who has had legitimate successes on the scale of Elon Musk are con jobs then the burden of proof is on you. And I don't see an proof. Not from you, and not from anyone else who says it.
        HyperSane 4y ago
        Hyperloop is very much a con job. "Full Self Driving is just a year away" is very much a con job. The cybertruck is a con job. The Tesla Semi is a con job. The tesla robot is a con job. https://www.mediaite.com/opinion/elon-musk-is-pathologically-full-of-sht/ https://www.mediaite.com/opinion/elon-musk-is-pathologically... https://insideevs.com/news/580787/elon-musk-tesla-private-tweet-false-judge-says/ https://insideevs.com/news/580787/elon-musk-tesla-private-tw... https://usishield.com/36376/news/steve-wozniak-accuses-elon-musk-tesla-of-telling-lies/ https://usishield.com/36376/news/steve-wozniak-accuses-elon-... https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2022/04/elon-musk-twitter-terrible-things-hes-said-and-done https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2022/04/elon-musk-twitter-te... https://www.bloomberg.com/news/videos/2021-11-12/carson-block-on-elon-musk-he-lies-a-lot-video https://www.bloomberg.com/news/videos/2021-11-12/carson-bloc... Mark Spiegel: Elon Musk is ‘a pathological liar’ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=msxq2OkCXnE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=msxq2OkCXnE The Fake Futurism of Elon Musk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5OtKEetGy2Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5OtKEetGy2Y DEBUNKING ELON MUSK Pt1 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c-FGwDDc-s8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c-FGwDDc-s8 The HYPERLOOP Will Never Work, And Here's Why https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQJgFh_e01g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQJgFh_e01g
  - kcplate 4y ago
    > but judging what he will accomplish based on what he says is almost always a losing bet. He is literally the richest man in the world. Do you think he isn’t a successful gambler because of a few $1 bets that haven’t paid off (yet on many) vs the several $1000 bets that have?
    - HyperSane 4y ago
      "He is literally the richest man in the world. " Only because Telsa stock is insanely overvalued. Due in large part to Musk's overhype of FSD.
- georgeg23 4y ago
  He had help from the government, specifically Mike Griffin: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_D._Griffin#Career https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_D._Griffin#Career The rocket landing stuff largely borrow from DC-X and the spinoff work at NASA (+Lars Blackmore), all originally Strategic Defense Initiative development. He used all that money from Mike as collateral for loans to Tesla
  - ksidudwbw 4y ago
    Rome wasn't built in a day and were all standing on the shoulders of giants. However you need trailblazers to cut through and push the threshold. Elon is a hacker and disruptor and entrenched interests would like to just keep things they way they were, thereby pumping money into PR firms to talk down disruption and innovation. You're either a paid talk downer or a victim of that.
  - underdeserver 4y ago
    All that is true and yet nobody else got EVs on the road and reusable rockets in the sky at scale.
  - tomp 4y ago
    You do realize that everyone had those benefits? In particular dinosaur rocket companies. Yet Elon's the only person/company who put those privileges to good use
- hbarka 4y ago
  - wutbrodo 4y ago
    You're not familiar with Henry Ford and his reputation? People whose personality solely consists of embarrassingly irrational hatred of Musk are as cringeworthy as those who worship him.
    - HyperSane 4y ago
      It isn't irrational to hate Elon Musk.
      - karencarits 4y ago
        Hate is a very strong feeling. The threshold for hating a co-human should be quite high. Most people "hating" Musk have not met him and have not been assaulted, wronged or harmed by him, and he has only had minor impact on their lives (depending on how much credit you give him personally for products such as Tesla) I find it difficult to understand the level of aggressiveness he awakes in some people. Are they actually feeling hate or just camouflaging some other feelings? Envy? Injustice? Are they hating him on the behalf of others?
        HyperSane 4y ago
        I hate anyone who lies as much as Musk does.
        concordDance 4y ago
        He's mostly not lying, he's just delusionally optimistic.
      - mpweiher 4y ago
        It is. By definition. (Look up what "hate" means and what "rational" vs. "irrational" mean). It is just as irrational to love him.
- HyperSane 4y ago
  This is exactly what I mean. Musk had very little to do with actually designing rockets. Much like Thomas Edison his main skill is getting credited for the work of other people.
  - snovv_crash 4y ago
    I keep seeing people say that Musk had little to do with SpaceX's technical side, and I wonder where this meme (in the original Dawkins sense of the word) is coming from. If you watch the EverydayAstronaut interviews with Musk it shows that he has a deep understanding of the engineering tradeoffs and design reasons for many components of the rocket, and in fact is being quite careful with what he can share due to not wanting to leak company secrets. In fact, some of the questions that were asked in the earlier interview were re-referenced in a later interview as having been considered and leading to design changes. I think Musk is a smart engineering type who sees finance, PR, politics etc as just another engineering problem, with all the pros and cons that creates. He's had a ton of success in hard-tech fields just by not being an idiotic pointy-haired-boss in a world where finance and political people are repeatedly being put in charge of projects and companies whose tech they don't understand. This doesn't mean he is likeable, or someone you'd want to have a beer with, or moral, or anything else. But it does mean he is capable of managing a tech company better than most, if we use the success of the company as our capable-of-managing-a-company metric.
    - HyperSane 4y ago
      Musk sounding smart in a friendly interview is not the same as actually designing rockets.
      - snovv_crash 4y ago
        I'm happy to see information to the contrary, but so far this is the closest I've seen to actual human/work style interactions with him. What would you suggest as alternative data sources which could be used to build a more accurate opinion?
- jeffreygoesto 4y ago
  Go out and see the world. You are living in a biased bubble.
  - kcplate 4y ago
    Well I have seen the world, and I am not biased or frankly even a Musk fan, despite finding myself defending him as of late here on HN. I don’t own a Tesla (find them ugly vehicles), don’t use or care about Twitter, but I’ll admit that I think the SpaceX stuff is pretty exciting mainly because I can see it. I said this on another thread but I will say it here too. Musk’s genius and value is not his engineering skill but his willingness to think about big possibilities and then be fearless and patient enough to make what many others think are risky (and stupid) bets on those possibilities. We need folks like that. They move the needle far more than the random HN engineers who feel that the Musks and Edison’s of the world aren’t relevant because they “didn’t design or engineer” the technologies they made viable to the masses. Musk and Edison’s roles—were not as the engineers of technology, but as the facilitators of the engineers.
- HyperSane 4y ago
  This is absolutely despicable. There is no way Musk doesn't know that what he posted is a lie. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/oct/30/elon-musk-twitter-baseless-conspiracy-theory-paul-pelosi-attack https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/oct/30/elon-musk...
eru 4y ago
That might or might not be true, but it doesn't matter much for the argument about the length of the leash.

True. Watching him shoot rockets into space from my backyard 3-4x a month and seeing a half dozen Teslas on the road every time I drive a few miles isn’t very substantive at all.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
slaw 4y ago
I think SpaceX and Tesla succeeds despite Musk actions.
root_axis 4y ago
What about FSD? Boring Company? Robo Taxies? Solar? Cybertruck? Neurolink? Mars colonies? Elon has had some amazing successes, that's just a fact, but judging what he will accomplish based on what he says is almost always a losing bet.
- Phlarp 4y ago
  You forgot roadster 2.0 and the mannequin robot
  - viraptor 4y ago
    And hyperloop.
- jlmorton 4y ago
  Boring Company is right up with Tesla and SpaceX on the success trajectory by lots of measures. This is a company that just started from nothing a few years ago, and it’s already building a massive transit project, and is in final bidding in several other major projects. They’re already building their own tunnel boring equipment. The company raised $675 million at a $5.65 billion valuation, putting it ahead of several S&P 500 stocks in market cap, closest to Alaska Airlines. To say this is unusual is an understatement. At this point in SpaceX history, the company had yet to launch Falcon 1. I think a whole lot of people are going to be mightily shocked at how successful this company will turn out. In ten years, when it’s clear how successful it is, everyone will pretend the idea was stunningly obvious and was only successful through public financing, or something like that.
  - hobs 4y ago
    Getting a project to use typical tunnel boring machines via renting tunnel boring machines is not anything special. Raising money is just a con man thing, the boring company has achieved nothing new at all, like, nothing. We're still waiting on all the other promises that just keep not coming, so no, I don't think we'll be surprised.
  - root_axis 4y ago
    Boring Company is all hype, it's current trajectory is failure. > it’s already building a massive transit project It's only massive in terms of wasted taxpayer funds. The Vegas tunnel is a boondogle, and per Elon's signature style, completely unlike anything that he promised, their next tunnel will be the same. > In ten years, when it’s clear how successful it is, everyone will pretend the idea was stunningly obvious and was only successful through public financing, or something like that. I won't. If boring company has built any noteworthy tunnels within the next ten years, feel free to come back and have yourself a dropbox moment with my comment.
    - jlmorton 4y ago
      > It's only massive in terms of wasted taxpayer funds I'm confused, because you called-out the Vegas tunnel, but are you claiming a 30-mile, 55-station tunnel is not a massive project? Or are you referring to the already-built 1.7 mile LVCC Loop? Beyond that, there are no taxpayer dollars used in the project. It's entirely privately financed. In fact, the system pays a concession fee to Las Vegas. > If boring company has built any noteworthy tunnels within the next ten years Well, TBC is already constructing the 55-station Las Vegas Loop as we speak. It's scheduled to open in 2 years, at least partially by Super Bowl LVIII in Vegas in February 2024. The entire system will not be done, but enough of it will be to be noteworthy. > feel free to come back and have yourself a dropbox moment with my comment. I will try to remember to do that! Don't worry, you won't be the only one who got this wrong.
  - tomarr 4y ago
    I would love to agree but it's simply not correct. They are buying existing tunneling machines and there is nothing yet to suggest a step change. The radical proposals in terms of stripping out safety equipment for operational tunnels may prod some development, but ultimately any gains here are not going to be captive and will just result in revised client expectations (outside Boring funding & delivering projects worth $10bn+ individually themselves, with no public involvement).
- HyperSane 4y ago
  All excellent examples of how much hot air Musk spews.
- HyperSane 4y ago
  And the cybertruck and the electric semi that was announced 5 freaking years ago.
- squokko 4y ago
  What about Sun King? Dig It? Don't Bother Me? Boys? Flying? (all terrible Beatles songs) When you have successes like Tesla and SpaceX and PayPal it doesn't really matter how many failures you have. This isn't like being an airline pilot where you're judged by your worst outing.
  - HyperSane 4y ago
    "it doesn't really matter how many failures you have" The thing is that they are not just honest failures, they are outright lies.
    - fallingknife 4y ago
      You want to make the accusation that the business failures of someone who has had legitimate successes on the scale of Elon Musk are con jobs then the burden of proof is on you. And I don't see an proof. Not from you, and not from anyone else who says it.
      - HyperSane 4y ago
        Hyperloop is very much a con job. "Full Self Driving is just a year away" is very much a con job. The cybertruck is a con job. The Tesla Semi is a con job. The tesla robot is a con job. https://www.mediaite.com/opinion/elon-musk-is-pathologically-full-of-sht/ https://www.mediaite.com/opinion/elon-musk-is-pathologically... https://insideevs.com/news/580787/elon-musk-tesla-private-tweet-false-judge-says/ https://insideevs.com/news/580787/elon-musk-tesla-private-tw... https://usishield.com/36376/news/steve-wozniak-accuses-elon-musk-tesla-of-telling-lies/ https://usishield.com/36376/news/steve-wozniak-accuses-elon-... https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2022/04/elon-musk-twitter-terrible-things-hes-said-and-done https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2022/04/elon-musk-twitter-te... https://www.bloomberg.com/news/videos/2021-11-12/carson-block-on-elon-musk-he-lies-a-lot-video https://www.bloomberg.com/news/videos/2021-11-12/carson-bloc... Mark Spiegel: Elon Musk is ‘a pathological liar’ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=msxq2OkCXnE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=msxq2OkCXnE The Fake Futurism of Elon Musk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5OtKEetGy2Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5OtKEetGy2Y DEBUNKING ELON MUSK Pt1 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c-FGwDDc-s8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c-FGwDDc-s8 The HYPERLOOP Will Never Work, And Here's Why https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQJgFh_e01g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQJgFh_e01g
- kcplate 4y ago
  > but judging what he will accomplish based on what he says is almost always a losing bet. He is literally the richest man in the world. Do you think he isn’t a successful gambler because of a few $1 bets that haven’t paid off (yet on many) vs the several $1000 bets that have?
  - HyperSane 4y ago
    "He is literally the richest man in the world. " Only because Telsa stock is insanely overvalued. Due in large part to Musk's overhype of FSD.
georgeg23 4y ago
He had help from the government, specifically Mike Griffin: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_D._Griffin#Career https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_D._Griffin#Career The rocket landing stuff largely borrow from DC-X and the spinoff work at NASA (+Lars Blackmore), all originally Strategic Defense Initiative development. He used all that money from Mike as collateral for loans to Tesla
- ksidudwbw 4y ago
  Rome wasn't built in a day and were all standing on the shoulders of giants. However you need trailblazers to cut through and push the threshold. Elon is a hacker and disruptor and entrenched interests would like to just keep things they way they were, thereby pumping money into PR firms to talk down disruption and innovation. You're either a paid talk downer or a victim of that.
- underdeserver 4y ago
  All that is true and yet nobody else got EVs on the road and reusable rockets in the sky at scale.
- tomp 4y ago
  You do realize that everyone had those benefits? In particular dinosaur rocket companies. Yet Elon's the only person/company who put those privileges to good use
hbarka 4y ago
- wutbrodo 4y ago
  You're not familiar with Henry Ford and his reputation? People whose personality solely consists of embarrassingly irrational hatred of Musk are as cringeworthy as those who worship him.
  - HyperSane 4y ago
    It isn't irrational to hate Elon Musk.
    - karencarits 4y ago
      Hate is a very strong feeling. The threshold for hating a co-human should be quite high. Most people "hating" Musk have not met him and have not been assaulted, wronged or harmed by him, and he has only had minor impact on their lives (depending on how much credit you give him personally for products such as Tesla) I find it difficult to understand the level of aggressiveness he awakes in some people. Are they actually feeling hate or just camouflaging some other feelings? Envy? Injustice? Are they hating him on the behalf of others?
      - HyperSane 4y ago
        I hate anyone who lies as much as Musk does.
        concordDance 4y ago
        He's mostly not lying, he's just delusionally optimistic.
    - mpweiher 4y ago
      It is. By definition. (Look up what "hate" means and what "rational" vs. "irrational" mean). It is just as irrational to love him.
HyperSane 4y ago
This is exactly what I mean. Musk had very little to do with actually designing rockets. Much like Thomas Edison his main skill is getting credited for the work of other people.
- snovv_crash 4y ago
  I keep seeing people say that Musk had little to do with SpaceX's technical side, and I wonder where this meme (in the original Dawkins sense of the word) is coming from. If you watch the EverydayAstronaut interviews with Musk it shows that he has a deep understanding of the engineering tradeoffs and design reasons for many components of the rocket, and in fact is being quite careful with what he can share due to not wanting to leak company secrets. In fact, some of the questions that were asked in the earlier interview were re-referenced in a later interview as having been considered and leading to design changes. I think Musk is a smart engineering type who sees finance, PR, politics etc as just another engineering problem, with all the pros and cons that creates. He's had a ton of success in hard-tech fields just by not being an idiotic pointy-haired-boss in a world where finance and political people are repeatedly being put in charge of projects and companies whose tech they don't understand. This doesn't mean he is likeable, or someone you'd want to have a beer with, or moral, or anything else. But it does mean he is capable of managing a tech company better than most, if we use the success of the company as our capable-of-managing-a-company metric.
  - HyperSane 4y ago
    Musk sounding smart in a friendly interview is not the same as actually designing rockets.
    - snovv_crash 4y ago
      I'm happy to see information to the contrary, but so far this is the closest I've seen to actual human/work style interactions with him. What would you suggest as alternative data sources which could be used to build a more accurate opinion?
jeffreygoesto 4y ago
Go out and see the world. You are living in a biased bubble.
- kcplate 4y ago
  Well I have seen the world, and I am not biased or frankly even a Musk fan, despite finding myself defending him as of late here on HN. I don’t own a Tesla (find them ugly vehicles), don’t use or care about Twitter, but I’ll admit that I think the SpaceX stuff is pretty exciting mainly because I can see it. I said this on another thread but I will say it here too. Musk’s genius and value is not his engineering skill but his willingness to think about big possibilities and then be fearless and patient enough to make what many others think are risky (and stupid) bets on those possibilities. We need folks like that. They move the needle far more than the random HN engineers who feel that the Musks and Edison’s of the world aren’t relevant because they “didn’t design or engineer” the technologies they made viable to the masses. Musk and Edison’s roles—were not as the engineers of technology, but as the facilitators of the engineers.
HyperSane 4y ago
This is absolutely despicable. There is no way Musk doesn't know that what he posted is a lie. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/oct/30/elon-musk-twitter-baseless-conspiracy-theory-paul-pelosi-attack https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/oct/30/elon-musk...

eru 4y ago

That might or might not be true, but it doesn't matter much for the argument about the length of the leash.