[wpietri]

Classist sneering aside, your theory that truck-driving hillbillies will buy Teslas is absurd. What they're going to buy is trucks. Which are currently being pioneered by add-on makers:

https://www.greencarreports.com/news/1115487_xl-hybrids-adds...

And which will be made by Toyota in volume:

https://www.equipmentworld.com/toyota-to-offer-electric-powe...

Moreover, even if you were right, that Tesla's real innovation is marketing electric vehicles to non-Prius audiences, there's no particular reason to think he had to spend $15 billion of other people's money building (and rebuilding) factories to conduct some marketing experiments. It would have been much easier to go the add-on/rebuild route, which has been going on in the auto world for decades. Or he could have just done a design/marketing partnership with some carmaker. It would have cost far less and achieved just as much.

The reason he didn't is his enormous vanity. I think it would have been much better to spend $1-5 billion on an approach like that so we could spend another $10-14 billion on other long-term, longshot projects.

[toofy]

Wow you’re very passionate in your dislike of Musk and have clearly put far more thought into him than I have. I really don’t study the guy, I was just trying to give him the benefit of the doubt. I’ll let ya carry on with your anti-Musk crusade. Good luck!

[wpietri]

I'm just working with your argument here. On your own terms, your claimed desire to allocate funds toward big risks and human improvement, Musk falls woefully short.

I'm not particularly anti-Musk. I'd like somebody to succeed in the some of the fields he's hyping. I'm just not convinced he's doing it, and I'm concerned his taste for self-aggrandizement will be the cause of landmark failures in some areas where I think we need progress.