[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?

[falcolas]

Consider this comparison: buses carrying 50 people each on I-66 going 60mph. Which is going to carry more people into DC, at what cost? Think of the station wagon filled with hard drives vs. gigabit internet.

Cars, unless going ungodly fast (140mph is not enough), are inefficient at throughput.

[Retric]

You can design a bus for these tunnels fairly easily. However, 140mph under a city vs 3 mph at street level and buses lose unless they have 47+ passengers but a 50 passenger bus costs 2-3 car slots easily so it's a wash.

PS: I-66 really does have 3mph traffic as it will take 30+ minutes to travel 10 miles. As in I was happy if that part was under 30 minutes, and not surprised if it took 40 minutes as the average was well over 30.

[imron]

> Consider this comparison

Rendered moot by the fact that large numbers of people prefer the privacy and convenience of a car.

Musk's solution takes the human condition in to account.

[kumarvvr]

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