[kumarvvr]

There is so much negativity about Tesla. Watching Tesla reminds of the the quote

"We hoped for flying cars, but what we got was 140 characters"

(or something similar, I don't remember it verbatim)

Every time I think about Tesla, I am reminded of the thousands of brilliant engineers toiling away in Silicon Valley trying to optimize online advertising. Maybe we could be a bit more closer to Fusion energy, maybe we could be a bit more closer to lesser carbon footprints. That small bit really is crucial, especially when we are fighting a losing battle with mother earth. Perhaps the world has too much information. When information flow is cheap, the cost of propaganda is low enough to create legitimate confusion. Imagine a world without Google, FB or Twitter, perhaps there would be concerted efforts by governments towards educating the masses about global warming. Perhaps such efforts could not be subverted by foreign governments or fringe groups. Looking back, the true value addition by SV will be companies like Tesla, Solar City & SpaceX.

Here is a guy who is scarily close to being a real-life Iron Man, doing something that has shown verifiable results and actually progresses humanity far more than FB/Twitter and to some extent Google.

But all I feel is constant negativity. I really feel sorry for Musk. I sincerely admire him for what he is struggling for and I really wish he'd get more support.

Note : I do understand his background and that the seed money for SpaceX was from paypal and all, but even then, paypal was a different business than just online ads.

[hnarn]

It's always been my sincere opinion that even if Musk fails miserably I'll still admire him more than most other "tech idols". There are people that say he's all talk, but I don't care. Even if he's 75% talk and delivers on the rest, whatever he does achieve is still better than a face-detecting smartphone or a social network that makes money by profiling your personality for advertisers. I don't care about the money, I like his vision and in the end that's what makes a leader.

[Klathmon]

Musk isn't a PR guy, and I think a lot of people respect and like him for that.

He makes crazy "moonshots", he has a vision and doesn't tone it down nearly as much as others do, and he's not afraid to be "wrong".

The SpaceX community has a running joke about "elon time" being set to mars time, because his predictions and goals are almost always late (and are often under delivering), but I honestly respect that. Him and his companies aren't taking the "easy way out" of making easily achievable goals and then making them again and again. They are shooting for unlikely and in some cases almost impossible goals, and getting 70-90% of the way there, and they aren't exactly ashamed of it. IIRC there was a reddit thread a while back that was "bashing" Elon and Tesla and SpaceX about only hitting something like 70% of the goals they set, but I read it differently. They set out to revolutionize 3 different industries (cars, space, and now "boring" and public transport), and even if they can only get to "70% revolutionized", it's still a massive win in my opinion!

He's not perfect, I hear lots of bad things from many employees about the work environment, but overall I really respect the man and the companies he has created, and I think he has and will continue to do a lot for humanity.

[jimbokun]

Musk is a genius at PR:

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/945712432416137217

Saw this yesterday when someone threw together a quick article on all of the gushing responses from customers to this tweet.

How can you say someone nicknamed "the real world Iron Man" is bad at PR?

[kinkrtyavimoodh]

I think they meant PR-only guy. His PR genius is in using his fan following for free PR. Tesla or SpaceX hardly need to spend any marketing dollars.

No other tech leader is as charismatic (Steve Jobs came close, but Musk seems more genuine whereas Jobs felt like a salesman) and very few are as personally intelligent and accomplished.

[kumarvvr]

Steve Jobs used way more hyped up adjectives, almost as if talking to a cult following.

[TeMPOraL]

Steve Jobs was basically a salesman. A brilliant one. Nothing bad in that; I just wouldn't call him a "tech leader" - he was involved with technology only incidentally.

[27182818284]

He isn't a PR guy in the traditional sense at all.

He has been anointed as a neo-PR guy now because his style of doing things (like responding to requests on Twitter with "Done,") is breathtakingly refreshing compared to PR from actual trained PR agencies

[kumarvvr]

>He makes crazy "moonshots"

His back of hand calculations on the viability of self-landing rockets, while coming back from a trip to Russia after a failed attempt to purchase a launch vehicle certainly wasn't moonshot.

He is a technology man in and out and knows the capabilities and limits of technology. I remember reading a book about Tesla and I always felt like he saw opportunities in the gaps existing between what is available and what is possible.

[TeMPOraL]

Indeed. Musk is a tech guy. The real tech guy, not the usual CEO of a tech company, who really does mostly marketing and management. He knows his physics and is involved in engineering decisions. For me personally, it's Musk who defines what does it mean to be a "tech CEO", and most companies we discuss here every day don't even qualify.

> I remember reading a book about Tesla and I always felt like he saw opportunities in the gaps existing between what is available and what is possible.

My view is that he focuses on what should be possible from first principles, ignoring whether or not our short-sighted markets find it desirable at the moment. It's a good strategy if you have a non-monetary goal in mind and resources to bankroll the efforts at forcing the markets into accepting your work.

[kumarvvr]

> There are people that say he's all talk

I really wish there is stronger support for him against these sorts of people. How can he be all talk when we see his rockets going up and coming back down.

[wils1245]

How can you look at the valuation of Tesla and think that Musk lacks public support? The company is worth more than Ford, while delivering a fraction of the cars. The difference in output is made up by faith in his promises.

[falcolas]

Why does Elon Musk need popular support? He's not a politician who relies on popular support for his very job. He's not an actor who relies on popular support to bring money to his films.

He's a CEO. All the support he needs is to deliver on his promises. From my exceptionally limited point of view, he's at about 35% there:

Space X: 100% (Reusable, self-landing rockets. Fuck yeah!)

Tesla: 40% (Prototype in decent shape, promised production capabilities of model 3 still seems a long ways off)

The Boring Company: 0%

Hyperloop: 0%

[TeMPOraL]

He doesn't technically need it to run companies day to day, but he needs it to realize his visions. Two main reasons:

- More popular support means his visions resonate, and more people will start pursuing them too.

- More popular support means the market will be more receptive towards those visions.

Note that Musk doesn't care if it's SpaceX or Tesla that are the market leaders long-term. He cares that we go to Mars and get off fossil fuels in transportation, however that happens. Hence e.g. opening up Tesla patents.

RE your % score, I'd give a different breakdown, based on what are Elon's actual goals:

SpaceX: 40% (reusable, self-landing first stage done; Falcon Heavy yet to launch, BFR in the works)

Tesla: 80% (their latest cars might have problems, but they successfully cracked the car market and started a wave of electrification that's unlikely to stop now; Chinese companies alone will carry it forward)

[falcolas]

Fair enough on your popular support points.

WRT Tesla: The company has started a revolution, but to all intents and purposes it feels like its falling behind. The Model 3 was supposed to be in full production already, but it's not. It's also not profitable, which is a major problem for Tesla (and Musk by extension) in the long run.

Not to mention, all of the pre-orders for Model 3's that aren't fulfilled in a timely manner are going to hurt the population's opinions of Elon Musk - and rightly so.

As far as following a vision: history is full of failed visionaries, and vision alone is not enough to propel mankind forward. Execution is.

[nickik]

People are making way to much of a drama about Model 3. You can go 2 years back and find information that they hope to get mass production going by end of 2017.

Sure the might have fallen short 30-40% but given the scale of their plan, this seems like a extremly miner problem.

The buissness reality is that there are 100000s of people who want these cars and they have essentially a proven market for years to come. The waste majority of these people are not gone start hating elon because their car is a bit late.

> As far as following a vision: history is full of failed visionaries, and vision alone is not enough to propel mankind forward. Execution is.

Like building a reusable rocket or massivly improving the price and production capacity of batteries?

People need to stop listening to Elon own prediction of things and consider where things would be without him. He has already revolutionised the space and the car industry, that is just a fact.

[Retric]

I think you could add.

Paypal: 75% (Much hate, still good option for many things.)

Solar City: 75% (Over expanded, not sure if that was a bad thing and was bought by Tesla. Still it installed 870 MW of solar in 2015 alone.)

Steve Jobs had close ties to fewer companies, Pixar, Apple, NeXT and did a similar purchase of NeXT by Apple. However, while dubious Apple greatly benefited from NeXt. So, I am willing to bet Solar City could be a similar net benefit.

The boring company is still to early to judge. Hyperloop is not yet a failure and considering it was simply a short paper I think 0% is overly harsh.

[falcolas]

As someone who has lost money to PayPal, I have a hard time agreeing with the 75%, especially when you consider all the caveats associated with it. That said, I won't argue the point.

I could swear that the rush for solar via Solar City has dropped precipitously. It seems like those who want it have it at this point. Its business model is also heavily dependent on US grants, and has seen some major downturns in terms of litigation and has been operating at a net loss for its lifetime. Let's put it closer to 50%

The boring company is simply trying to make underground highways - a task which makes very little practical sense in a world where highways already exist, and their downsides are well known. Not to mention, no execution or proof of concept exists.

As for the Hyperloop, again with the lack of execution or proof of concept. Anybody can make a whitepaper, but Elon Musk has put his weight behind the concept, to no practical end. But sure, let's remove it because you're right, he made no promises behind it; didn't start a company around it.

We're still only around 40%.

[Retric]

The boring company includes the idea of ~140MPH electric sleds that carry cars. This is part of their goal for 1/10th the price. It may or may not be implemented long term, but it is a novel concept and they are actually digging right now to gain expertise.

I would call it similar to Space X before they started landing the rockets. Just making digging cheaper much like making rockets cheaper is a basis for a profitable company. A long term goal of 1/10th the price really would be game changing.

PS: Picture even a one way toll road that goes 20 miles under I-66 into DC they could easily charge 10$/ trip an get 100,000+ riders each way per day. So, the real question is how much that tunnel costs. At 20 billion $ that's 20 billion * 6% ~= 1.2 billion per year vs 2 * 10 * 100,000 * 5 * 48 = 480 million so not a win. But, at 1/10th the price or 2 billion that's ~120 million per year break-even vs 480 million and highly profitable. How many places could a 5 mile segment be able to charge say 3 dollars and have 100,000 people per workday?

[kumarvvr]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oia53xOLDmw

[andrepd]

Well first of all they're not his rockets. The engineers and scientists did it, he supplies the money, arguably a meritless in ck prison.

Second, there are many promises he still hasn't delivered on: SpaceX targets not met, Tesla still running at a massive loss, Hyperloop being doomed to failure, etc etc. I can definitely see why people say he is mostly talk, even though admittedly he has achieved some successes.

[Strom]

> Well first of all they're not his rockets.

Am I understanding this correctly, that the criticism of Elon Musk being all talk is because he didn't personally perform all the work in achievements like Falcon 9 and Model S?

[nightski]

He is a brilliant business man and gave all of the engineers at spacex the opportunity and freedom to achieve great things. For that he should be commended - we need more business leaders like him in this world! I think at the end of the day though in idolizing Musk you are taking away from the hard work and brilliance of all the other employees at his companies. America has this iron man style obsession with one guy changing the world by himself. But at the end of the day we achieve greatness by working together as a team.

[TeMPOraL]

I think most Elon fanbois implicitly understand that each rocket SpaceX launches involves blood, sweat and tears of hundreds of skilled people.

Ultimately, focusing on a leader is a shorthand used in everything. We talk about famous generals, and not about their lieutenants. We talk about presidents and kings, omitting the low-level administrative staff that actually does the work and keeps everything from falling apart. Often it's a bad generalization leading to bad conclusions (e.g. most presidents have little influence on the direction of their countries), but I think it's fair in case of Elon Musk, since it's his strong vision that defines the direction of SpaceX and Tesla.

Consider this: if SpaceX went public and Elon decided to step down, the company would lose most of its fanbase for very simple reason - it would most likely turn into a regular company and stop being just the vehicle to get humanity to settle Mars.

[kinkrtyavimoodh]

What a ridiculous strawman. Do you want him to insert every last rivet and weld every last joint in his cars and rockets before they become 'his' cars and 'his' rockets?

Tesla I could still grant but you do him great injustice by simply ignoring how much of his personal resolve is responsible for SpaceX even existing.

Feel free to list the number of times a group of engineers have spontaneously teamed up to form a rocket company.

[salawat]

I disagree. It's not a straw man at all.

Your assume that A) big things can only ever get done by companies. B)A CEO 'owns' a company's assets.

I'll give credit to him for creating and acquiring funding for the organization. I'll give him credit for publicizing his vision. Each and every rocket/car however, was massively subsidized by taxpayer dollars, and made feasible by hundreds of people WORKING TOWARD A COMMON GOAL.

The practice of abstracting away hundreds to thousands of people's hard work and financial support, involuntary or not, is disingenuous at best and downright dishonest at worst.

Abstraction is evil. Abstraction is what turns "people" into "human resources".

And before the inevitable "That's not practical!" or "That's unreasonable!": It really isn't. Most people have just gotten so used to credit for their own work being sacrificed to someone else that nobody points out how incredibly screwed up the practice is.

[kinkrtyavimoodh]

It is a strawman because it is reliant on a literalist interpretation that no one is actually arguing for. Of course the rockets are not literally his just as Obamacare wasn't literally Obama's.

> B)A CEO 'owns' a company's assets.

Never made the claim nor does it seem relevant here. No one is talking of actual ownership. When it comes to ownership and accounting of a company, there are already well-established metrics and practices to figure that stuff out.

Yes, the rocket is designed by engineers and put together by technicians and mechanics and thousands of souls have come together to achieve this task, and no one is denying their contributions.

But none of that would have existed without Elon. And he is being praised for that vision and steely resolve while others work on their PhDs from Armchair University.

This leadership is not trivial and it is central to something like SpaceX even existing.

[mmsimanga]

You make valid criticisms. However, you have to bear in mind that nothing in this world is perfect. Not even Linux. I bet every sports person gets on the field intending to win but they don't always win. That doesn't mean that sportsperson is a failure. They just lost some matches.

I do not think that Musk should get a free pass. His companies have taken on some pretty impressive projects. One day someone will make a better electronic car but much like the Wright brothers and Henry Ford, Musk did lead the way.

[icelancer]

Neil Armstrong didn't build the rockets or the shuttle so I guess he's also a bum.

[lmm]

Armstrong made his way up meritocratically on the strength of his piloting skills, to fighter pilot then carrier pilot then test pilot then astronaut. Many reckoned they wouldn't've been able to pull Gemini 8 out of the spin he got it out of, or successfully find a landing spot for Apollo 11 in the boulder field they descended on.

Maybe Musk really is as skilled as all that. Or maybe he was lucky enough to make a lot of money once (with x.com) and hire good people. It's hard to tell since so few people ever get to try having that much money to play with.

[TeMPOraL]

> Maybe Musk really is as skilled as all that.

Whatever are his contributions to the rocket design these days (it's obviously a SpaceX secret), one can't deny that his ideas for future of humanity are the raison d'être and the driving force behind the company. He obviously hires engineers smarter than himself to do the work; his own engineering skills only add to the credibility of the company and its goals.

[kumarvvr]

It's really his push, his vision and his risk. NASA had tremendous resources for decades, with some of the best minds of 21st century working there. They didn't produce self landing rockets, and on top of that, it makes complete business and economic sense too.

[kemiller]

My understanding is that he personally learned a ton about rocket science and actively contributed to the design, as well as providing business context, which is itself no mean feat.

[nickik]

That is just false. Elon is one of the lead engineers of the Falcon 9 rocket, he knows as much about it as anybody. He also came up with the idea, he gathred the people, he gathered the investors and did about 100 other things needed for the success of SpaceX.

Elon is still in control of SpaceX, so the Falcon 9 and FH rockets are his by any reasonable definition.

> Second, there are many promises he still hasn't delivered on:

What matters is overall progress and not progress relative to elons timelines. Also, most of those were not promises but rather announcments.

> SpaceX targets not met

Yeah, he only took like 15 years to launch more rockets then China or Russia. Build the largests commercial launch buissness.

But of course what we should focus on is that he is such a failure because he said 5 years ago that the FH would fly a bit sooner.

You really need learn to evaluate things on its own terms.

> Tesla still running at a massive loss

Poor Elon, 500000 reservations that any other company would kill for. Revenue stream for 1-2 years even without new reservations. What a failure.

> Hyperloop being doomed to failure,

Whitepaper without company behind it not successful. More big news at 8pm.

> I can definitely see why people say he is mostly talk, even though admittedly he has achieved some successes.

Yeah, the guy who revolutionised space launch, landed fucking rockets and created reusable rockets is 'mostly talk, with some success'. Honstly people can't see the trees because of the forest. This is so fucking bizar.

[Already__Taken]

I don't really care either way for the man but something he said to the effect of "Technology doesn't just get better, it takes hard work and will and money" and the general building the future you want to live in.

I mean sentiments like that. It's just right in the feels ya know? It's a reason to go even read the news in the morning.

[awj]

He's arguably already had legitimate and impactful successes. Building a business even remotely capable of commercial spaceflight is a huge deal. What Tesla has done, both in batteries and in getting the major auto makers to put focus on EVs is a huge deal.

Musk arguably does significantly more talking than doing, but his goals are lofty enough that even failing to make it halfway still means significant advancement.

[VeejayRampay]

Even stranger to me: I'm French and we're world-class haters. Like, culturally conditioned to be dismissive of success, always seeing something negative when people achieve big things (they must have been crooked in some shape or form along the way, they exploited others, etc).

There used to be a time where American people were different in that regard. Celebrating success, entrepreneurs, daring mavericks, etc.

Now all I see is jealousy, smirk, poo-pooing. Have you guys turned French?

[nemo44x]

Postmodernism has been en vogue in the USA since the late 1950's. You only need to look to American literature since then and you'll notice much of what is considered the "most important" fiction is Postmodern. Which means it is cynical, ironic and skeptical of all the things you associate with the French.

This is not a fringe philosophical concept bound to popular novel's either. Look to the background of villains in mainstream super hero movies, to our politics (many call Trump the first Postmodern president), and the drive to be "authentic" in every aspect of the self for reasons of self promotion in some kind recursive cynical loop which other view as a perfect specimen of our contemporary irony, nearly perfected!

I'm not an expert on French culture or any culture per-se, but perhaps Americans (of which I'm one) do have a more superficial embrace of sentimentalism and a less critical approach to hero worship and "getting rich" and maybe it isn't driven by cynicism as much as naiveté but that's only one aspect of the culture as a whole. Even still, I'd argue most people are driven by the Postmodern philosophy wether they know it or not; are more cynical then they even know and skeptical of our institutions (universities, churches, etc) on one side or another.

[TeMPOraL]

> Look to the background of villains in mainstream super hero movies

This. I sometimes wonder if I'm the only one to notice that villains in popular movies/TV shows increasingly present reasonable positions (even if crooked methods), while it's the protagonists who seem to live by simplistic, populistic, feelings-based morality.

[ythn]

> Like, culturally conditioned to be dismissive of success, always seeing something negative when people achieve big things

Sounds like HN: "Check out my cool new web app/hardware gizmo!" Army of critics arrive to poop on it

[graphitezepp]

Musk DOES have a lot of support. I personally suspect much of the negativity comes from backlash caused by him having a legion of fanboys. Whenever someone gets idolized like I have often seen Musk as, haters come out in reaction.

[lumberjack]

Tesla's marketing is always misleading. That irks people and from there comes the "negativity". When the Model S came out, they tried to claim that they had "solved EVs". When they introduced their self driving tech, they pretty much implied that keeping your hands on the wheel was only a legal technicality. They are always trying to claim they are two more steps ahead than they really are. I understand that it is their job to do just that, but we don't have to believe them, and if we don't, that is not really "negativity". For example with the Model 3, they achieved just about what what Chevy did with the Bolt, in terms of price and range, which is good, but if you believed their marketing, you'd expect them to be far ahead of their competition.

[sharpercoder]

I think Model S solved electric driving. Car reviewers seem to think so, the industry seem to think so (most manufacturers announced electrical models). Range, comfort, charging locations, safety, all solved problems.

How is Tesla's supposed claim they solved electrical driving misleading?

[lumberjack]

For the past 15 years people had been trying to make the mass market EV. The envisioned future was that the every day man would be driving this basic EV instead of their $15k ICE commuter car. That was the goal, obviously influenced to a great extent by both fuel prices and climate change concerns. All EV car models before the Tesla Roadster were trying to target this market.

The Model S targeted a new market entirely. Nobody had tried to do a luxury sedan EV and kodus to Tesla for spotting that niche, but that was not the goal that everyone else was chasing. It was something else entirely.

From an economics and from a technology point of view, building an $80k EV with decent range is insanely easier than building a $15k EV. Even if it has to be a luxury car and look good. It still gives you that $20k leeway to equip you car with a massive battery.

The misleading part was trying to claim that they had solved the problem that everyone else was working on, when in fact they had not. And they still have not today as evidenced by the $35k price tag of the Model 3.

[mmsimanga]

Perhaps everyone was chasing the wrong goal. Just about all "new" technologies start off being expensive. This is true of the telephone, cellphone, car ... In time when manufacturing processes catch up they become available to the masses. I presume the first devices are expensive to cover the R&D costs.

[username223]

> I think Model S solved electric driving.

Not so much: The actual Cannonball record is a bit over half the EV one -- 28 hours and 50 minutes -- and Roy himself drove it in 31 hours and 4 minutes. I'll be curious how much of their journey was charging time, a figure someone will probably extract from their GPS track soon.

[reaperducer]

>They are always trying to claim they are two more steps ahead than they really are.

Sounds like Google, Microsoft, and pretty much every tech startup between Palo Alto and Vancouver.

The difference is that Musk actually does something. Creates something. 90% of the other "tech" companies are just shoving around bits of other people's information and calling it innovation.

[TeMPOraL]

Your comment strongly reminds me of this comment (and the thread) of 4 years ago:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7885128

Nothing has changed.

To quote 'natural219 from what I just linked, the words I 100% support:

"Godspeed, Musk. (...) I'm behind you 100%. I just hope you can finish your work before our shitty, myopic, destructive society tears you down. Here's to faith."

[thisisit]

Inside that negativity there is some truth too. Tesla for one is leveraged 7:1 and that too in a time of easy and near zero interest rate credit. With Feds changing rates they might be painted into a tight box.

I am sure situation is same for SpaceX too.

And then the whole SolarCity acquisition which didn't go down well.

That said, yes you have to hand it to Musk. Even if these companies go belly up, they have brought in lot of new technology.

[Robotbeat]

Elon Musk always plays pretty close to the line. If Tesla wasn't so leveraged, doubtless Musk would immediately start trying to expand to more and more Gigafactories until it was.

The situation for SpaceX is different. SpaceX got 18 successful launches last year, several of them with reused rockets and most of them recovered afterward (no unsuccessful landing attempts, though a few were intentionally expended for performance reasons).

Their only real domestic competitor ULA which launches Atlas and Delta, long held as the giants in American space launch, only had a total of 8 launches, all expended of course.

Not only does SpaceX have a huge technological moat in the form of operational space launch reuse, but operationally their Falcon 9 (which had complete success in 2017) is out-launching everything else, including both the Chinese DF-5 (which had a failure) and the Russian R7/Soyuz (which also had a failure).

And their future products build tremendously on this already sizable lead:

1) Falcon Heavy, completed pad fit checks by the end of the year and now getting ready for a static fire and launch in a couple weeks, is even MORE reusable (3 cores recovered, counting for 27 out of 28 of the engines) and MORE powerful than any other rocket launching today. Dragon Crew also nearing completion and will be the first (of 3 total vehicles nearing completion) to return Americans to orbit on a domestic vehicle, likely this year.

2) A satellite constellation which is readying satellite prototype launch in the next month or two, has the potential of making SpaceX a telecomm giant. The scale of this constellation would not be feasible without the reusability tech they've developed.

3) And BFR, which will further cement their space launch tech moat, make launching the full version of the potentially-extremely-profitable satellite constellation WAY cheaper, and potentially open several new markets.

SpaceX is like Tesla after a full ramp-up of the Model 3 selling as many cars as Toyota does but in a world where no one else has an electric car for sale. So understandably (for Musk), he's leveraging this position to make things like BFR a reality.

Both companies are in extremely good positions compared to 2008 when both companies nearly went under. SpaceX in particular. And given the fact that Elon was able to save both, it means a market down-turn is something he has seen before and he has some powerful strings to pull in case the market has some major problems.

[nickik]

SpaceX is so far ahead that they are hardly playing the same game anymore.

[jimbokun]

"But all I feel is constant negativity. I really feel sorry for Musk."

The negativity is so bad, his car company is worth more than Ford, with a minuscule fraction of the sales.

Elon will be just fine.

[Fej]

The negativity is because Tesla has some truly abhorrent business practices. For me, it's out of love, not hate. Of course, there's a lot of people who stand to gain from Tesla failing.

[ianai]

I’ve heard he doesn’t pay well. It would be a lot easier to support a “visionary” if they believed in treating their employees well. Henry Ford did it a century ago. We probably got a golden age (of sorts) out of that.

[kinkrtyavimoodh]

The negativity precedes the talks of low pay etc.

And it might sound callous but plenty of companies have similar practices (and are not creating anything of earth-shattering value), so judging Tesla more than the others is a bit unfair.

[indescions_2018]

$TSLA will sell a lot of cars this year, irrevocably altering the EV game. Price target $350 by Jan 2019.

But it pales in comparison to the watershed moment SpaceX and the entire spaceflight community will have. There is a real possibility for 28 launches, including two Falcon Heavy's. NASA TESS on track to discover an explosion in habitable zone exoplanets. Vector, Electron, TechShot and other private space data leading a push for commercial apps in space, including pharma, stem cells and materials foundries. And there is decent chance of someone landing on the moon for the first time in 45 years ;)

Will we Go Back to the Moon in 2018?

https://audioboom.com/posts/6573043-dec-29-2017-will-we-go-b...

69TH International Astronautical Congress Bremen 1-5 OCT 2018

https://www.iac2018.org/

[reaperducer]

> NASA TESS on track to discover an explosion in habitable zone exoplanets.

Not a factor. Until we can travel many multiples faster than light, it doesn't matter how many things we can see far, far away.

You and I will both be centuries dead before that happens.

[arcticfox]

> it doesn't matter how many things we can see far, far away.

Why does it "not matter" since we can't land on them in our lifetimes? It's still interesting.

[cornholio]

The GP meant to say "it doesn't matter for SpaceX that we find new planets, since no rocket company will send anything there in the forseeable future". The GGP was pointing out that TESS itself is launched by SpaceX.

[dmode]

A lot of negativity towards Elon comes from the fact he has taken on a lot of deeply entrenched interests and conventional wisdom. I know a "car guy" who deeply hates Elon and hopes for Tesla's collapse, because he has invested his whole life learning about the "beauty" of the Internal Combustion Engine, how to tune it, how to improve it etc. And here comes a guy who wants to disrupt all of that with an engine that is much much simpler and challenging 100 years of research and development. Then there are people who believe electric and solar are for "greenies" and have been trained to viscerally react against anything that is related to renewable energy. He has also taken on the dealership model, the fossil fuel industry, utilities, launch companies etc. You get the picture.

[mikrosift]

>There is so much negativity about Tesla.

We must live on different planets, because I can't go a single day without hearing about some product they may or may not build at some point in the future. This is one of the most hyped up companies I've ever seen (mostly deservedly).

>Here is a guy who is scarily close to being a real-life Iron Man

Really? Scary close? I'd say not remotely close.

>I really feel sorry for Musk.

Really?

>Looking back, the true value addition by SV will be companies like Tesla, Solar City & SpaceX

SpaceX for sure. Tesla, maybe. SolarCity? What did they do except destroy a bunch of investor's money?

Edit: Downvoted before I could even fix a typo. This place is embarrassing to read sometimes..."Real life Iron Man", "feel sorry for Elon Musk".

[DesiLurker]

everytime someone says that to me I say.. He's the dude that landed a freakin rocket back to earth and then again! most other things he's done can be termed as ruthless execution but to attempt stuff he's doing with SpaceX requires real vision and strong faith in that vision. This is real engineering.

I do feel that his critics often lose perspective. for instance he gets a lot of heat for not ramping up M3 production as fast as promised but in the grand scheme of things I fail to see what impact that has whether EVs ramp up to a million cars a year a few quarters earlier or later. only thing that matters is tesla/spacex/etc lives to fight another day.

That said I would never invest my money in tesla stock. Its simply because I dont think its His ultimate goal to make money & that will always reflect in the decisions he make.

[zerohm]

You are sort of getting into "we would be better off without the internet" territory, which is a very difficult argument to make for either side. Tesla and Space X engineers would not have been able to achieve what they have without Google. The Arab Spring might not have happened without Twitter. But yeah we can just throw FB in the trash...

[gibasmaciej]

Where does information about negativity come from? It's not negativity if other people don't care about topic.

[tgarma1234]

One thing that put me off about tesla, if you overlook all of the manufacturing issues that pretty much every analyst says will doom the company, is that for some bizarre reason the models were intentionally named in order to spell out S3XY. After Harvey Weinstein I think we all need to take a good hard look at the men who are in charge of things and ask, "why?" People don't get a free pass on being creeps just because they are blowing a lot of money anymore.

[timmonsjg]

>People don't get a free pass on being creeps just because they are blowing a lot of money anymore

The man wants his car designs to evoke an image of being sexy and you consider him a creep? That's a way over-dramatic interpretation.

[tgarma1234]

Yes, if you overtly sexualize something for which there is no real reason to take the conversation in that direction then you are very likely a creep. They could have been cool cars but I just don't like that.

Incidentally I was responding the comment that mentioned there is a lot of hate for Tesla. What I mostly don't like about Tesla, aside from that stupid naming convention, is that they missed all of their manufacturing targets and are about to hit a brick wall with investors, regardless of how "sexy" one thinks the car design is.

[sgc]

I don't know where you are from, but it worth remembering that the use of the term "sexy" is much more commonplace for inanimate objects and has different connotations in the English speaking world outside the United States. And the CEO of the company in question was raised outside the US.

[arcticfox]

I think this is true even in the US, at least as far as my American English takes me.

[recrof]

I think that you're misinterpreting this easter egg. It's meant to be clever joke, if you're trying to find something creepy in that, it's on you.

[arcticfox]

"Sexy" has long been used to describe something visually attractive, not remotely related to sex. Here's Jonathan Ive talking about sexy computers: https://blog.kissmetrics.com/sexy-design/. Do you think they're actually sexually attracted to these machines? Or implying other people will be? I think you need to revise your word connotations.

[zzz157]

What you just said is far more creepy than "S3XY".

>informal exciting; appealing. "I've climbed most of the really sexy west coast mountains" synonyms: exciting, stimulating, interesting, appealing, intriguing, slick, red-hot "a sexy sales promotion"

[TFortunato]

Did they? This is the first I've heard of it, and when I click models on their site, I see "S, X, 3, Roadster" (on mobile site), so I guess I never made any connection there.

(Also, is there a model Y in the works?)

[tzahola]

Congrats! Elon could have got away with it, but you connected the dots. He will be forced to resign any day now.

[cornholio]

He's the last technology patriarch. Practically a dinosaur from the age where women were not allowed to study STEM. AND HE MARRIES ONLY SUPERMODELS, how's that for a smoking gun of oppression?

[Robotbeat]

The President (i.e. the highest position other than Elon himself) of SpaceX is Gwynne Shotwell; please tell me how Elon is all about oppression of women.

[cornholio]

sheesh... take a joke people

[Robotbeat]

Poe's Law.

[dmalik]

Lol, how is that being a creep? I can see how the word sexy may put some people off but that is a LARGE leap to Harvey Weinstein.

The vehicles are sexy... to me at least.

[matt4077]

Please don't undermine the (very real) fight against sexual harassment by conflating it with such nonsense issues.

It only gives ammunition to the chauvinists claiming that sex will be outlawed, or the idiots calling for politicians to resign for having sex out of wedlock.