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I mean the guy said "the rockets will land themselves in 5 years". He might be off a couple of years but he delivered. Same with electric cars. Stands to reason

I mean the guy said "the rockets will land themselves in 5 years". He might be off a couple of years but he delivered. Same with electric cars. Stands to reason he'll deliver on the Mars promise (though I think someone will beat him to the self-driving punch).

elil17 3y ago
You can cherry-pick the promises that have come true. But for every one of those there's a cyber truck, a "self driving mode," etc.
- grecy 3y ago
  > But for every one of those there's a cyber truck, a "self driving mode," etc. Cybertruck is entering mass production soon. Yes, it's late, but it's coming. Same for self driving. It is clearly getting better all the time, and it's coming. Again, he is often late delivering on very difficult and ambitious things. Have a look how the competition are doing with re-usable rockets, mass producing electric vehicles, self driving, etc. None of these things are easy, and they take time.
- autonomousErwin 3y ago
  That's true I'm cherry-picking but you kind of have to when people are making impossible claims. Most of them won't come true (at least, yet) but as long as some of them come true I think that's a net positive.
  - elil17 3y ago
    That's still lying, even if you think it is net positive.
    - autonomousErwin 3y ago
      True. 1. You don't have to believe him. 2. We still get some impossible results in the end which leads to a more interesting future.
      - elil17 3y ago
        And you don't have to care that he's a liar. I care about truth, though.
        autonomousErwin 3y ago
        Fair enough, we could probably both agree that physical results are the best outcome or promises that may/may not be true? If we have self-landing rockets you could argue all day about truth and integrity but we'll still have self-landing rockets.
  - rantingdemon 3y ago
    I agree with you. Musk is a complicated person (smell...?). I kinda put him in the same box as Steve Jobs. They are very crappy in some ways, but you cannot argue with what they have achieved. Would we have a 'space race' like we have now, if it wasn't for Musk? Even Bezos cannot keep up. How long would the EV 'evolution' have taken if Musk didn't make it a priority? There are loads of faults here, and I am not blind to them. However, I think its short-sighted to paint his goals as "lies".
  - FireBeyond 3y ago
    > when people are making impossible claims Making impossible claims in investor calls, in corporate communications, to be clear, to the point where the company has later had to asterisk said claims as "visionary, not targets".
FireBeyond 3y ago
> Same with electric cars. I mean, electric cars were a thing. Not a big thing. But nonetheless. And FSD is to me a lot less impressive than implied. And on FSD, he has repeatedly well, failed to deliver - "this year, coast to coast, no interventions" is something he's said each and every year since 2016. And it still runs in to the back of stationary emergency lighted vehicles. Until last year it could barely handle roundabouts. It saw level crossings as a weird intersection with a light that was red, and then not, and then red again, with a collection of trucks crossing it.
- autonomousErwin 3y ago
  Sure, it's hard to predict if Tesla hadn't been formed whether electric cars would be as big as they are now (perhaps another innovator would've jumped in). I'd agree that he's failed to deliver on the FSD so far, but I mean, it'll be such a shift (when either Tesla or some other group nail it which like I said I think is the most likely) that when we look back on it in 100 years we're not going to care how far their time estimates were out by.

elil17 3y ago

You can cherry-pick the promises that have come true. But for every one of those there's a cyber truck, a "self driving mode," etc.

grecy 3y ago
> But for every one of those there's a cyber truck, a "self driving mode," etc. Cybertruck is entering mass production soon. Yes, it's late, but it's coming. Same for self driving. It is clearly getting better all the time, and it's coming. Again, he is often late delivering on very difficult and ambitious things. Have a look how the competition are doing with re-usable rockets, mass producing electric vehicles, self driving, etc. None of these things are easy, and they take time.
autonomousErwin 3y ago
That's true I'm cherry-picking but you kind of have to when people are making impossible claims. Most of them won't come true (at least, yet) but as long as some of them come true I think that's a net positive.
- elil17 3y ago
  That's still lying, even if you think it is net positive.
  - autonomousErwin 3y ago
    True. 1. You don't have to believe him. 2. We still get some impossible results in the end which leads to a more interesting future.
    - elil17 3y ago
      And you don't have to care that he's a liar. I care about truth, though.
      - autonomousErwin 3y ago
        Fair enough, we could probably both agree that physical results are the best outcome or promises that may/may not be true? If we have self-landing rockets you could argue all day about truth and integrity but we'll still have self-landing rockets.
- rantingdemon 3y ago
  I agree with you. Musk is a complicated person (smell...?). I kinda put him in the same box as Steve Jobs. They are very crappy in some ways, but you cannot argue with what they have achieved. Would we have a 'space race' like we have now, if it wasn't for Musk? Even Bezos cannot keep up. How long would the EV 'evolution' have taken if Musk didn't make it a priority? There are loads of faults here, and I am not blind to them. However, I think its short-sighted to paint his goals as "lies".
- FireBeyond 3y ago
  > when people are making impossible claims Making impossible claims in investor calls, in corporate communications, to be clear, to the point where the company has later had to asterisk said claims as "visionary, not targets".

FireBeyond 3y ago

> Same with electric cars. I mean, electric cars were a thing. Not a big thing. But nonetheless. And FSD is to me a lot less impressive than implied. And on FSD, he has repeatedly well, failed to deliver - "this year, coast to coast, no interventions" is something he's said each and every year since 2016. And it still runs in to the back of stationary emergency lighted vehicles. Until last year it could barely handle roundabouts. It saw level crossings as a weird intersection with a light that was red, and then not, and then red again, with a collection of trucks crossing it.

autonomousErwin 3y ago
Sure, it's hard to predict if Tesla hadn't been formed whether electric cars would be as big as they are now (perhaps another innovator would've jumped in). I'd agree that he's failed to deliver on the FSD so far, but I mean, it'll be such a shift (when either Tesla or some other group nail it which like I said I think is the most likely) that when we look back on it in 100 years we're not going to care how far their time estimates were out by.