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How about a sense of proportion? With due respect for electric cars and their great possible environmental impact, SpaceX is what is important of Musk's projec
by berntb 14y ago
How about a sense of proportion?
With due respect for electric cars and their great possible environmental impact, SpaceX is what is important of Musk's projects. It is what might make his name remembered in a few hundred years.
- powerslave12r 14y agoI think both projects are equally important. Arguably, Tesla might be even more important considering it will affect far more people much sooner.
- falling 14y agoI think it's stupid to compare the importance of such projects, that can and will be done only by the people in the future, when they will see the effects of what we are doing now.
- ams6110 14y agoThe Tesla is still an impractical car for 90% or more of average consumers. It's still mostly a rich person's toy/fashion statement. That's OK though, if it eventually leads to something that is practical and affordable.
- powerslave12r 14y agoFrom one of his talks, they have planned their roadmap in three phases: - Very high cost, very low volume car to start off with. - Moderate cost, moderate volume car (Tesla S). - Low cost, high volume. As we can see, they have achieved the first two targets (with surprising success). If you consider the 'rich people' argument, SpaceX customers are still going to be fewer than Tesla's for the near future at least. (Although, that is not to say the businesses borne from using SpaceX like bringing better satellite based services etc won't affect a LOT of people.)
- mahyarm 14y agoI'm getting an impression that Tesla's low cost high volume car will basically be a nissan leaf, which nissan has on the market already.
- kalleboo 14y agoWhy do you say 90%? Also, do you mean worldwide or U.S. consumers in particular?
- paulsutter 14y agoThe original Tesla was only practical for 1% of consumers. If the Model S is practical for 10%, that's real progress. Low cost and high reliability come from volume production, which creates a chicken and egg problem. Elon started with the very high end, and is working his way down as a method to gradually build volumes and develop experience and technology to eventually build high volume low cost cars for everyone. Contrast that to the "expensive fat econobox" approaches the other carmakers tried and abandoned.
- anothermachine 14y agoAt $50,000 base price, we're not at 10% yet. But yes, progress.
- rst 14y agoTesla's also doing drive trains for Toyota, for the electric RAV4. Which isn't exactly cheap (about $50k), but clearly not aimed at the status-symbol market. (Tesla itself is probably headed downmarket as well; the announced strategy has always been to do prestige models first and then ramp up the volume.)
- rkalla 14y agoThe use of the word "projects" in this sub-thread made me smile. Elon's "projects" are all changing the world, while my "projects" have me standing in the middle of Home Depot staring at concrete sealant, dumbfounded as to why one costs 2x the other. What a depressing dichotomy.
- anothermachine 14y agoCreating something beautiful, fixing something broken, these are improving the world.
- njharman 14y agoMore people remember Ford, than remember Goddard.
- berntb 14y agoElectric cars have been done before, for over a century, and would be done without Musk. To drastically lower the costs of space launch so that Mars(!) expeditions can be done by "just" billionaires is new. Just add what is happening in drones and the solar system will finally be ours. [Edit: If it isn't clear: Electric cars seems to obviously be arriving, if two conditions are fulfilled: (a) better batteries (metal-air, etc) and (b) that solar cell costs continue go down and/or more nuclear power. The time has come, it is so simple... People have been talking for at least four decades about lowering launch costs, but it has gotten nowhere. Maybe that time has come now, when NASA doesn't have a shuttle to protect and hence no motivation to knife all competition in the cradle by their political clout? Maybe, I just note that this dream finally is successful.]
- mkaltenecker 14y agoAnd Ford didn’t invent the car. Industrial car production would most certainly have been done by someone else if he hadn’t done it. It’s not like industrialization was something new during Ford’s time, it had been done for a century before him, just not with cars. (This is not to diminish Ford’s accomplishments. I just want to demonstrate that you can talk any achievement small if only you want to.) Spaceflight is immensely cool. Much cooler than cars. But cars had a much bigger impact on humanity than spaceflight. I would predict that trend will continue for quite a few decades.
- berntb 14y agoAnd toilet paper have a bigger impact than cars. I did not mention "cool", I mentioned lower launch prices. That is more important. The usual argument, since decades, is that with low launch costs, there will be new use cases and new markets -- the first private projects has been announced for mining and detecting "dinosaur killers", etc. (I am not certain if I'm trolled here. Or if I was unclear in the GP?)
- mtgx 14y agoI think spearheading the move to all-electric cars and ending our reliance on oil and the need to start wars over that oil, is a pretty big one, too.
- philwelch 14y agoYeah, get all our energy from the power grid and then we'll get to start wars over coal, or natural gas, or thorium, or even sunshine.
- MikeCapone 14y agoThe power grid has coped with much bigger changes than the gradual switch to electric car will do. Just the advent of computers, big screen TVs, air conditioners, etc.. Had put a lot more load on the grid than EVs, especially since most will charge at night, off peak. In other words: No, the scenario you describe won't happen.
- philwelch 14y agoMy point isn't that electric cars would shift a lot of energy consumption onto the grid. They will, but that isn't the problem. The problem is that there's nothing special about petroleum that leads us to start wars over it. The wars are over energy, and whatever energy source you use, politics and warfare will follow close behind.
- MikeCapone 14y agoI believe that is incorrect. There is something special about oil, and it is that you can't find it everywhere (at least not as cheaply as you can in Saudi Arabia and Iraq) and it is pretty much the only thing that we run our transportation sector on right now, so it is needed everywhere. With electricity, it doesn't matter what the source is. If your electricity comes from wind, solar, hydro, geothermal, nuclear, whatever.. You can generate it where you are. Or you can use local coal/gas/biomass/biogas resources. But electric cars can be run on whatever, while gasoline cars can only run on oil (first generation biofuels used now are now very energy positive, if at all, so they don't count).