[philwelch]

I know Elon Musk has a lot of goodwill around here, but is no one else cynical about the notion of a smart, ambitious automobile CEO coming up with some plausible-seeming science-fictional FUD to torpedo a high speed rail project that may very well compete with his interests?

[jdminhbg]

The California HSR project hardly needs extra FUD, it's managing just fine on its own. And I'm not sure that it's really a competitor to owning a Tesla anyway -- people don't own cars in order to drive back and forth between LA and SF (or Modesto and Stockton), but for local commutes and errands.

[craftkiller]

I'd argue the two synergize. Electric cars have a limited range and while there's going to be plenty of charging stations that's still time and effort. Seems much more likely to me that his end-game is hyperloop for longer travel and then a self driving fleet of teslas in an on-demand service at each station.

[mulmen]

You're suggesting Musk is so concerned with the success of Tesla that he is willing to torpedo alternate projects to drive up sales of his own product. If that is true why did he release the patents for those products into the public domain where someone could build a directly competing product?

[rqebmm]

Because electric cars need a critical mass in order for charging stations to reach a critical mass in order for electric cars to become ubiquitous.

[nandhp]

> automobile CEO

I'm not sure he's any more "automobile" than he is "rocketry" or "PayPal".

[_lbaq]

Cynical theory #2: Elon thought that HSR projects in America needed a serious alternative ? How is that Californian HSR coming along ?

[api]

In his case I sort of doubt it since he doesn't seem to operate that way.

In any case Tesla sales are not going to be impacted much by rail.

[drzaiusapelord]

>In any case Tesla sales are not going to be impacted much by rail.

Says who? I have light rail/uber/bus/cabs in my city and if I had HSR to neighboring regions I could just give up my car entirely with no anxiety.

[dragonwriter]

The HL paper wasn't FUD to torpedo the HSR project, as I see it, it was leveraging existing skepticism (and also quite a bit of irrational opposition) with HSR to draw attention to HL. I don't think Musk cares one way or another about HSR, I think he cares about getting people to work on realizing HL so its ready for his Mars colonies, which is the real point of the technology.

[ericd]

Not many people are buying Teslas to primarily commute between SF and LA. Also, the HSR project is a disaster - it's incredibly expensive and it's slow.