[snarf21]

I don't think domain knowledge is issue. The issue is that SAAS apps or Twitter or w/e scale infinitely in an extremely short time. What is the time horizon for drilling geothermal all over the world? There are environmental factors to consider, etc. It is fairly trivial for 4B people to be on FB but getting 4B people to get their energy from geothermal doesn't scale the same way.

[XorNot]

The other issue is the margins are razor thin. Energy has to be cheap: so the issue is $1 billion going into this (1) might not be enough to have enough scale to make any money at all and (2) is competing with anything else you could do with $1 billion.

Which is why you need government subsidy if you want something to happen: but the you are also betting that you've picked either the right technology (it works at all) or at least you're accepting you're probably going to overpay.

[aredox]

Drilling and tunnelling is a huge industry with tons of markets.

If Elon was the one to do this, tech bros and investors would be all over it with ad-hoc rationalisations ("this is the tech we need to build a mars colony!"). Instead he used his "boring company" to kill public transportation, and you are here dismissing Quaise Energy - people who actually have put up the work to try something groundbreaking (literally) and whose future is not assured yet.

[Tagbert]

But they are capital intensive with long timelines and a high risk of failure. It's hard to get investment in projects like that.

[sanderjd]

This is, in my view, the biggest bummer about (what I see as) Musk's descent into madness in the last few years.

It's absolutely true that this stuff is capital intensive, slow, and risky, and thus hard to get investment for. But Musk had solved that problem using showmanship and a series of successful (whether through genius or luck, it doesn't matter!) risky bets to back it up. So I think it just really is the case that because of Tesla / SpaceX / Starlink, that he could easily get however much funding he wants in private or public markets to take a giant risky bet on something like geothermal energy.

But instead he got bored of doing useful things and lost himself in petty social media drama. Tragic.

[robertlagrant]

He's got solar things already. How many companies do you want one guy to run? The more stuff he does, it doesn't mean the stuff he doesn't do he's somehow to blame for.

[sanderjd]

I didn't blame him, I said that he's a tragic waste of potential at the moment.

If he were throwing himself into any of his impressive companies, sure, I'd be singing a different tune. But that's not what he's doing, he's either ignoring or actively sabotaging those, so that he has more time to be a social media influencer. He can do what he wants, but it's not admirable.

[robertlagrant]

As far as I remember he was always constantly tweeting.

[imtringued]

He doesn't. His solar city acquisition was nothing but a bailout and solar city was gutted down to nothing. Tesla hardly does any solar installations except on their own factories.

[kolinko]

The issue is with the lack of good quality startups than with financing really. Long-term is not a big issue, because funds can exit before the startup’s exit through secondaries. Also some of the funds in this field are ok with long term investments.

(src: I tried setting up a climate tech venture builder / seedfund 2 years ago.)

[hoseja]

Kill public transportation? Kill? More like tries to build something upon its corpse.

[telotortium]

Elon Musk didn't kill public transportation - how could he have? the Boring Company has only drilled a few tunnels in Las Vegas.

[aredox]

https://daringfireball.net/linked/2022/11/30/boring-co-vapor...

[telotortium]

If unserious cities didn’t have Boring Company, they’d just choose another gadgetbahn.

[_aavaa_]

I don't think it's exactly a scaling issue, its that you can't turn the screws on your users and bill them monthly, siphon their data, and show them ads.