[capableweb]

> The vast majority have never met him and, if they were honest, have probably been positively impacted by him (or not at all).

Why would people most probably been positively impacted by him? He seems to constantly have knee-jerk reactions to things happening around him, and his companies seems to frequently have issues with overworking employees.

[Tepix]

2 examples:

He's accelerated the switch to electric cars.

He's made transport to space a lot cheaper, saving a lot of taxpayer's money.

[rootusrootus]

He didn't create Tesla, though I'll grant him some credit for creating a combination of product and hype that made for a popular EV.

Gwynne gets all the credit for SpaceX IMO. Elon gets credit for letting her succeed.

[adventured]

> Gwynne gets all the credit for SpaceX IMO

It was nice of her to have the idea, pursue that idea through financial hell across many years, bankroll the start of the business top to bottom, use all of her connections to get it outside funded, and sustain it financially personally to the direct threat of personal bankruptcy.

Good thing she did all that and gets all the credit.

[suoduandao3]

Do you think she could have done it without him?

Everyone loves the Teslas and hates the Edisons, but the world does need Edisons.

[inemesitaffia]

Tesla was an idea. The Tesla you see today is his doing. Eberhard would have ended up like Wework without the Newmann payout.

Remember the Tesla deathwatch blog?

[capableweb]

> He's accelerated the switch to electric cars.

Which, in today's industry and world might have been too early as we still haven't figured out if mining all that lithium is better for the world or not, right now.

> He's made transport to space a lot cheaper, saving a lot of taxpayer's money.

Yeah, for ~4% of the world's taxpayers. We'll still see if SpaceX is a net-win for humanity, too early to tell.

[Tepix]

Even ESA member countries are saving money these days.

[ahahahahah]

> He's accelerated the switch to electric cars.

There's not evidence for that. In fact, by being willing to lose so much money on each car Tesla likely discouraged the broader industry from investing in electric cars for many years. Tesla may have, in fact, made the switch to electric cars slower than it otherwise would have been.

[steve_adams_86]

Overworking is subjective. In his opinion that’s just how hard people should work on things that matter and that they care about.

I agree with you. I don’t think it’s worth working that hard for someone else. No one will remember someone who works for Musk. They won’t earn more than they could somewhere else. To each their own, though. I worked incredibly hard on much stupider things in my past.