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> My point was Elon has an incredible track record of success which follows a formula of overhype, delays, and eventual achievement if not overachievement. His
by ClumsyPilot 3y ago
> My point was Elon has an incredible track record of success which follows a formula of overhype, delays, and eventual achievement if not overachievement.
His biggest success is the rocket industry. Let's examine top competitors - corrupt ULA which flies rockets on 50 year old engines and does cost+ contracts, his other competitor was Russia, a corrupt kleptocracy that stopped innovating when USSR fell apart. Russia would sell engines physically made in USSR to ULA.
This market literally had no competition and no innovation for like 40 years.
So yes, his great achievement is that he could march finance into an industry that no-one would consider for investment. But results in other industries were not so great.
Tesla had a head start on electric, but they could not take advantage of this. Once other manufacturers woke up to the threat, it became clear Tesla has nothing on them, and car industry is fiercely competitive. His leadership was not good enough to take advantage of the head start he had and extremely high level of finance that he had.
Where is cybertruck? Other automakers are already selling electric trucks. VW and even Chinese automakers are eating Tesla's lunch.
Elon's boring company is an abject failure, as is hyperloop.
- mensetmanusman 3y agoCybertruck is delayed because people are still buying other high margin vehicles.
- pmorici 3y ago“ Tesla had a head start on electric, but they could not take advantage of this. Once other manufacturers woke up to the threat, it became clear Tesla has nothing on them, and car industry is fiercely competitive.” Is there any other car company in the world selling electric vehicles at a profit besides Tesla? Everyone else is losing money on their EVs most are losing a lot of money. Not only is Tesla profitable but they have better margins than many companies have on their gas cars.
- what-the-grump 3y agoIf you are looking to buy a car in 2023 and you are not looking at a model y or a model 3… Tesla is the only car to drop prices in 2023, and the only car that doesn’t feel like you are paying 50% more for whatever you got 3 years ago. Anything else at the 40-50k usd range is simply a joke compared to model y, and Tesla is simply eating the market right now.
- throw9away6 3y agoNah Tesla is just goosing the government subsidies hard. The ioniq5 is a great car just doesn’t qualify for inflation increase act subsidies
- shushpanchik 3y agoIf that's the case, why Tesla easily beats any other opponent overseas as well? Here, in Australia, they do not get any subsidies. Model 3 and Y sales are leaving all others, including Ioniq, far behind.
- KyeRussell 3y ago[dead]
- throw9away6 3y agoOther manufacturers haven’t had time to scale up production. Also the direct you consumer model has been a real winner in preventing dealer price gouging due to shortages
- throwawayadvsec 3y agoIf someone built a dozen companies, and like a third of them succeeded and made him one of (if not the) richest man in the world, I think you could say that that person "has an incredible track record of success" and I don't even like this guy, but this is just dishonest from you
- ClumsyPilot 3y agoWhat was successful after Tesla and SpaceX?
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- dizhn 3y agoParent might be including PayPal too. Though it's not clear what Musk's involvement in their success was. By the way, if you or I owned either one of the companies you mentioned it would be considered a great success. Your question itself is putting Musk in a league of his own. I don't care that he's an asshole. If someone asked the three of us to eject into space a car that we built, only he could comply.
- fakedang 3y agoI would say that PayPal was a success because of the mafia (which mostly consists of Thiel and Levchin's team by the way). I would argue that Musk actually hampered PayPal in many ways (pushing Windows as the dev environment, as one example, when the rest of the team wanted Linux). That being said, SpaceX and Tesla are successful, even if they took government subsidies to get started. There are many more companies which took a lot of government money yet managed to return nothing except fat bonuses for their executives. Or the number of large companies which have stopped innovating now (IBM and Intel for instance).
- dotancohen 3y ago> What was successful after Tesla and SpaceX? Is Tesla and SpaceX not enough of a track record? Seriously, if that is not a track record of success, what is a track record of success by your measure?
- abletonlive 3y agoYour bias against elon is showing and it's not a good look. You're not being very rational.
- ClumsyPilot 3y agoI used to be a fan, then he showed up to the cave rescue operation with half a submarine, and in responce to crtiticism he called rescue divers pedoes. So I started wondering, can he be a good leader when he can't take criticism? How does he retain best pepple if his ego is this fragile? I am quite happy to see more people reassess him as he demonstrates capricious and callous behavioir, for exanple the Twitter aquisition whoch he first wanted then tried to get out of. I think you will come around when he targets something yoi carw about.
- abletonlive 3y agoNo, I won't, because I don't think he's a faultless person. In fact, I think he's quite an asshole, but I can rationally separate who he is from his long list of accomplishments. Just because you want him to be a failure or a con-artist or whatever doesn't mean he actually is.
- birdyrooster 3y agoElon's biggest accomplishment is how he optimizes for capital growth by any means necessary and is willing to throw norms to the wind and think very big. Elon never had to be a good people person to succeed here. It is why successful companies allow brilliant jerks... they are so brilliant it makes up for their asshole nature. Elon is this, as much as it pains me to say it.
- TylerE 3y agoJerk is not a synonym for bigoted asshole. Increasingly the cruelty (to his employees mainly, but hardly exclusively) seems to the point.
- freejazz 3y ago
- DennisP 3y ago> Tesla had a head start on electric, but they could not take advantage of this. The Model Y is currently the world's best-selling car. I think that counts as Tesla taking advantage. https://www.motor1.com/news/669135/tesla-model-y-worlds-best-selling-car-q1-2023/ https://www.motor1.com/news/669135/tesla-model-y-worlds-best...
- firecall 3y agoAgreed on some points. Although I do think Tesla did take advantage of their head start. But it’s clear that the pandemic and issues with China and supply chains are hampering them globally. And sure, Tesla launched successful Electric cars and woke the market up when they realised consumers actually really would switch. But it’s not like other manufacturers couldn’t do it, they just chose not to. The biggest thing Tesla did was actually making it happen with vehicles that were significantly differentiated and looked like the future! In a market where companies stopped selling sedans in favour of SUVs, Teslas came along with the model 3 and then model Y, and showed people will choose electric tech over SUV form factor. People weren’t buying ICE sedans because they were largely garbage!
- dotancohen 3y ago> The biggest thing Tesla did was actually making it happen with vehicles that were significantly differentiated and looked like the future! Tesla also invested in charging infrastructure - taking care of both the chicken and the egg.
- sssilver 3y agoI think it would be fair to state that every single electric car on the market today would have been radically different if Tesla didn’t exist.