[BobaFloutist]

I think it's that with Tesla he had hardware to sell (and maybe already sold?) to existing customers with the contractual promise that they'd get self-driving as soon as TESLA cracked it. Retrofitting LIDAR into all those already sold cars would have been pretty expensive at the time, and the more he doubles down the more monstrously expensive it'll get.

With Starlink, there was no baseline consumer product to sell before getting it working.

[consumer451]

Yeah, that makes perfectly rational sense to me. But, still disappointing as Musk is one of the few CEOs in a position to admit miscalculations, and pivot. The only thing I am left with is uncharitable, and it involves online ego.