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I'm growing somewhat tired of the endless shade thrown at Elon across the internet. People believe Elon when he promises something absurd because he's done it b

I'm growing somewhat tired of the endless shade thrown at Elon across the internet. People believe Elon when he promises something absurd because he's done it before. Twenty years ago there were no electric cars. Fifteen years ago the idea of a mass-market electric vehicle was considered a joke. Ten years ago people talked about the chicken-and-egg problem of cars and chargers and how you can't have one without the other, and no one was building chargers. Today, Tesla has some of the best selling vehicles worldwide, as an EV only company; other companies are adopting their standard on charging; the idea of them building a charger network, originally seen as completely ridiculous, has ended up as the premier way to charge your vehicle and is being opened to other companies' cars. I'd be tempted to guess that they've had a larger impact on reducing emissions than any other single company on the planet. Twenty years ago, private spaceflight was considered impossible; this was the domain of governments alone, and the various x-prizes and the like had done nothing to change this matter. Fifteen years ago, reusable rockets was considered impossible (NASA and their contractors can't even do it, how could anyone else?) Ten years ago, SpaceX cut the costs of delivering stuff to space by what, 10x? 20x? Now they're casually demolishing all players in the satellite-ISP space single-handedly, and are looking at reducing delivery costs another 5-10x; the EU's current rockets and space orgs are collapsing under the weight of their lack of competitiveness. I don't have to agree with the man's recent decisions around Twitter or politics to credit his past accomplishments, many of which were promised years before they became reality, and it boggles me to see all the people that are incapable of doing so.

Auracle 3y ago
You could see the online public opinion shift against him in real time on Reddit the second he started mentioning some politically conservative viewpoints. I bet someone smarter than me could figure out a way to graph it.
- Dah00n 3y ago
  You mean his anti-Semitism comments?
  - Auracle 3y ago
    Yeah, your comment on it is a perfect illustration, thank you. Most Jewish people in the US are Democrats, and it's pretty much been the party platform the last ten years to push "hatred against whites" and to immigrate "hordes of minorities." Apparently the latter is a conspiracy theory against Jewish people as a whole, though I've certainly never heard it. Perhaps Elon hadn't either. To call him affirmatively replying to that tweet antisemitic is a huge stretch. Should someone in his position be commenting on stuff like that? Probably not, but I think it's insane it's as big of a deal that it is. For what it's worth I just unsubscribed to a particular Patreon because the guy running it was clearly pro-Hamas/anti-Israel from what he's been posting on Twitter. I'm in no way an antisemite myself. To your comment as whole - no, I was referring to perhaps...5 years ago?
FirmwareBurner 3y ago
>I'd be tempted to guess that they've had a larger impact on reducing emissions than any other single company on the planet. I need to remember the name of the book where I read that, but statistically the people who buy Teslas produce more global emissions than others, simply on the fact that manufacturing a Tesla vehicle produces nearly 2x emissions as manufacturing an equivalent ICE, and the class of people who can easily afford Teslas engage in a lot of environmentally damaging activities like excess consumerism, lots of traveling, etc. versus the people who can only afford to keep using their ICE car instead of throwing them away to buy a Tesla. It's one of the reasons why despite the boom in EV adoption, global emissions are also skyrocketing with them. So EVs alone won't save this planet. In fact, according to that book, if we were to replace all ICE cars on the road with EVs, the manufacturing, materials and the mining necessarily to extract all the materials necessary for that to happen, would cause such an increase in emissions that would be catastrophicall to the planet. So the solution is actually less cars for earth, not more cars except Teslas instead of ICEs. It was an interesting analysys that I need to find. Self driving cars in the form of fleets of autonomous robo-taxis that you hail on demand, would solve that "too many cars on earth" problem since most cars stay idly parked all day anyway, but we're very far away from actually achieve that level.
- kwhitefoot 3y ago
  > he fact that manufacturing a Tesla vehicle produces nearly 2x emissions as manufacturing an equivalent ICE, And those extra emissions are paid for before the car reaches half its lifetime.
  - FirmwareBurner 3y ago
    The point was that EV manufacturing is definetly not free of emissions. And all car owners switching to EVs is resposible for a lot of upfront environemtnal damage, not just "saving the world" as they like to tell themselves.
    - vel0city 3y ago
      Raising and rebuilding most cities in the US to reduce car usage is also definitely not free of emissions.
callalex 3y ago
How far into this timeline of promises do you get before coming to the realization that nobody is this stupid, so the only other option left is lying for profit? https://motherfrunker.ca/fsd/ https://motherfrunker.ca/fsd/
thfuran 3y ago
>Twenty years ago there were no electric cars But there were electric cars before the model T.
- rndmize 3y ago
  Surely you aren't misinterpreting what I said as "electric cars literally didn't exist" instead of "electric cars existed in inconsequential numbers"? That would be a tad disingenuous.
  - thfuran 3y ago
    It's not disingenuous to assume that you meant what you said.
vel0city 3y ago
The charger/car chicken/egg problem was largely just a matter of "who's going to shell out the capital to make it happen" kind of problem, not really a question of "is this even technically possible given what we have in the next 10 years of development". IIRC the idea of reusable rockets was mostly considered possible just risky and pointless when the only real customers (at the time) tend to have seemingly infinite budgets if you drag it out of them. SpaceX bet on the reusable rockets and the gamble paid off handsomely, and showed there is quite a market for things when you bring the launch costs down 5-10x. It turns out a lot of people would like to put things in to space at that price point. A lot of these big achievements are largely having the willingness to throw capital at a potentially risky but otherwise technically seemingly possible ideas. Self-driving cars are not in the same category as EV chargers when it comes to a "can we do this" kind of thing.
tzs 3y ago
> Twenty years ago there were no electric cars Uhm...what? First of all there were Chevy EV1s then. In fact it was Chevy cancelling the EV1 in 2003 that was part of the inspiration for Tesla's founders to found Tesla. (Musk was not yet involved). Second there was AC Propulsion's tzero. The Tesla founders had a test drive in one before they founded Tesla and urged AC Propulsion to start manufacturing them, but AC Propulsion wanted to be a designer and licensor of electric car technology for others rather than a car maker. The Tesla founders than founded Tesla. Musk came into the picture when he test drove a tzero, and also urged AC Propulsion to go into manufacturing. Instead AC Propulsion directed him to to Tesla where he became an investor and then chairman. What Tesla did was become the first modern car company to go all in on electric cars that were intended for ordinary car buyers (although it first it was just luxury sports car buyers). I think they were also the first to go with lithium batteries.
the_third_wave 3y ago
> I don't have to agree with the man's recent decisions around Twitter or politics to credit his past accomplishments If Musk had been a "good leftie" he would have been carried on arms both here as well as in the media because of his work in furthering the electrification of transport. Bezos does play that role and as such is not targeted like Musk is even though his companies have had a detrimental effect on retail employment opportunities, even though working conditions in Amazon warehouses are know to be less than optimal. It is also why there is no criticism on Bezos buying the Washington Post since he runs it as a "good leftie" would. Here's a thought experiment: Imagine Musk buying the New York Times and changing the editorial board to use it as a counterweight to Bezos' WaPo. He'd bring back the likes of Bari Weiss, get rid of the identity politics crowd and see to it that the clear left-wing bias the NYT has been burdened with is would be undone. All the news that's fit to print would again be the motto. No more 'DEI' nonsense, nothing of the sort, back to basics. Now there would be the Bezos-owned WaPo doing the whole DEI/oppressor/oppressed/identity-politics thing versus a NYT which attempted to critically [1] report on the state of the city/country/world. What would the reaction to such a take-over be, who would get the support of the like of CNN/MSNBC, who would you support? [1] as in the 1980's dictionary sense of the word 'critically', not as in the 'critical theory' deconstruction-type criticism.

Auracle 3y ago

You could see the online public opinion shift against him in real time on Reddit the second he started mentioning some politically conservative viewpoints. I bet someone smarter than me could figure out a way to graph it.

Dah00n 3y ago
You mean his anti-Semitism comments?
- Auracle 3y ago
  Yeah, your comment on it is a perfect illustration, thank you. Most Jewish people in the US are Democrats, and it's pretty much been the party platform the last ten years to push "hatred against whites" and to immigrate "hordes of minorities." Apparently the latter is a conspiracy theory against Jewish people as a whole, though I've certainly never heard it. Perhaps Elon hadn't either. To call him affirmatively replying to that tweet antisemitic is a huge stretch. Should someone in his position be commenting on stuff like that? Probably not, but I think it's insane it's as big of a deal that it is. For what it's worth I just unsubscribed to a particular Patreon because the guy running it was clearly pro-Hamas/anti-Israel from what he's been posting on Twitter. I'm in no way an antisemite myself. To your comment as whole - no, I was referring to perhaps...5 years ago?

FirmwareBurner 3y ago

>I'd be tempted to guess that they've had a larger impact on reducing emissions than any other single company on the planet. I need to remember the name of the book where I read that, but statistically the people who buy Teslas produce more global emissions than others, simply on the fact that manufacturing a Tesla vehicle produces nearly 2x emissions as manufacturing an equivalent ICE, and the class of people who can easily afford Teslas engage in a lot of environmentally damaging activities like excess consumerism, lots of traveling, etc. versus the people who can only afford to keep using their ICE car instead of throwing them away to buy a Tesla. It's one of the reasons why despite the boom in EV adoption, global emissions are also skyrocketing with them. So EVs alone won't save this planet. In fact, according to that book, if we were to replace all ICE cars on the road with EVs, the manufacturing, materials and the mining necessarily to extract all the materials necessary for that to happen, would cause such an increase in emissions that would be catastrophicall to the planet. So the solution is actually less cars for earth, not more cars except Teslas instead of ICEs. It was an interesting analysys that I need to find. Self driving cars in the form of fleets of autonomous robo-taxis that you hail on demand, would solve that "too many cars on earth" problem since most cars stay idly parked all day anyway, but we're very far away from actually achieve that level.

kwhitefoot 3y ago
> he fact that manufacturing a Tesla vehicle produces nearly 2x emissions as manufacturing an equivalent ICE, And those extra emissions are paid for before the car reaches half its lifetime.
- FirmwareBurner 3y ago
  The point was that EV manufacturing is definetly not free of emissions. And all car owners switching to EVs is resposible for a lot of upfront environemtnal damage, not just "saving the world" as they like to tell themselves.
  - vel0city 3y ago
    Raising and rebuilding most cities in the US to reduce car usage is also definitely not free of emissions.

callalex 3y ago

How far into this timeline of promises do you get before coming to the realization that nobody is this stupid, so the only other option left is lying for profit? https://motherfrunker.ca/fsd/ https://motherfrunker.ca/fsd/

thfuran 3y ago

>Twenty years ago there were no electric cars But there were electric cars before the model T.

rndmize 3y ago
Surely you aren't misinterpreting what I said as "electric cars literally didn't exist" instead of "electric cars existed in inconsequential numbers"? That would be a tad disingenuous.
- thfuran 3y ago
  It's not disingenuous to assume that you meant what you said.

vel0city 3y ago

The charger/car chicken/egg problem was largely just a matter of "who's going to shell out the capital to make it happen" kind of problem, not really a question of "is this even technically possible given what we have in the next 10 years of development". IIRC the idea of reusable rockets was mostly considered possible just risky and pointless when the only real customers (at the time) tend to have seemingly infinite budgets if you drag it out of them. SpaceX bet on the reusable rockets and the gamble paid off handsomely, and showed there is quite a market for things when you bring the launch costs down 5-10x. It turns out a lot of people would like to put things in to space at that price point. A lot of these big achievements are largely having the willingness to throw capital at a potentially risky but otherwise technically seemingly possible ideas. Self-driving cars are not in the same category as EV chargers when it comes to a "can we do this" kind of thing.

tzs 3y ago

> Twenty years ago there were no electric cars Uhm...what? First of all there were Chevy EV1s then. In fact it was Chevy cancelling the EV1 in 2003 that was part of the inspiration for Tesla's founders to found Tesla. (Musk was not yet involved). Second there was AC Propulsion's tzero. The Tesla founders had a test drive in one before they founded Tesla and urged AC Propulsion to start manufacturing them, but AC Propulsion wanted to be a designer and licensor of electric car technology for others rather than a car maker. The Tesla founders than founded Tesla. Musk came into the picture when he test drove a tzero, and also urged AC Propulsion to go into manufacturing. Instead AC Propulsion directed him to to Tesla where he became an investor and then chairman. What Tesla did was become the first modern car company to go all in on electric cars that were intended for ordinary car buyers (although it first it was just luxury sports car buyers). I think they were also the first to go with lithium batteries.

the_third_wave 3y ago

> I don't have to agree with the man's recent decisions around Twitter or politics to credit his past accomplishments If Musk had been a "good leftie" he would have been carried on arms both here as well as in the media because of his work in furthering the electrification of transport. Bezos does play that role and as such is not targeted like Musk is even though his companies have had a detrimental effect on retail employment opportunities, even though working conditions in Amazon warehouses are know to be less than optimal. It is also why there is no criticism on Bezos buying the Washington Post since he runs it as a "good leftie" would. Here's a thought experiment: Imagine Musk buying the New York Times and changing the editorial board to use it as a counterweight to Bezos' WaPo. He'd bring back the likes of Bari Weiss, get rid of the identity politics crowd and see to it that the clear left-wing bias the NYT has been burdened with is would be undone. All the news that's fit to print would again be the motto. No more 'DEI' nonsense, nothing of the sort, back to basics. Now there would be the Bezos-owned WaPo doing the whole DEI/oppressor/oppressed/identity-politics thing versus a NYT which attempted to critically [1] report on the state of the city/country/world. What would the reaction to such a take-over be, who would get the support of the like of CNN/MSNBC, who would you support? [1] as in the 1980's dictionary sense of the word 'critically', not as in the 'critical theory' deconstruction-type criticism.