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