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Comment by ams6110 | Hacker News Reader

I don't have anything against Musk. I simply don't care much one way or the other because the things he's working on will never affect me.

Electric cars are not something I'm interested in owning at the price Tesla is asking. Or even half what Tesla is asking.

Utility electricity works fine for me, is a small fraction of my monthly budget, and is reliable. I.e. something I never really worry about. Payments for and maintenance of a personal PV system do not interest me.

Space travel? Again if he wants to spend his money there, fine. But I don't see it changing my life.

I am not an entrenched encumbent either. I just drive cheap, old cars and have no interest in visiting Mars. I don't even care for conventional air travel.

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With all due respect, that is the standpoint of a cynic or perhaps nihilist. Which is totally fine, people should have the right to not care about stuff without being judged for it.

However, if everyone was a perfect nihilist, you wouldn't have cheap old cars to drive because nobody would have made cars. You wouldn't have a cell phone, and especially a data connection, if not for the space program. And so on.

So while I don't think it's a problem if some people take your viewpoint, I think it's a problem when everyone does. Somebody has to care enough about the environment to stop rampant capitalism from destroying it so that we have a planet to live on 50 years from now (electric cars, improved public transit.) Someone has to care enough to get humans off the planet so that when it is inevitably destroyed (asteroid, nuclear war, virus, overpopulation) the human race can continue elsewhere.

> cynic or perhaps nihilist

Nonsense. It is a perfectly reasonable perspective for someone who isn't terribly interested in technological development and wants to live practically with what exists today. There's a place for dreaming about Mars, but most people don't. That's fine, and it has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with cynicism or nihilism.

Do you think this comment would be better received without the "Nonsense" intro? It's tough to bring someone around to your way of thinking when you dismiss theirs out of hand.

this is beyond one's personal dreams. only total anarchist/nihilist truly doesn't care about state of the environment where he lives. solarcity - cheap storage of solar energy for daily uses in household - not for everybody, but potentially for billions for sure.

space - indirect windfall of discoveries and improvements made in materials, manufacturing processes etc - it happened in the past with Nasa, it happens/will happen with them and others.

I drive 13 year old diesel bmw that costed 25% of a new one and probably will never buy a new car, so what? Mankind needs people like him, now more than ever.

It's not perfectly reasonable perspective. It's a perspective of an old, grumpy person who only cares about himself, and the world he lives in. Sure, we have plenty of those, but it ain't the best attitude to say at least.

> anarchist/nihilist

You seem to be throwing these around as pejoratives, but neither of these terms has anything to do with this topic.

> doesn't care about state of the environment

Nobody but you said anything about not caring about the state of the environment.

> an old, grumpy person

You have no basis to make such remarks. Plenty of people care about the people around them, their immediate environment, and the circumstances they can personally and directly affect without getting caught up in fantasies about the future.

Wanting to send people to Mars for the good of the species is a fine idea, but your enthusiasm about it doesn't make you any more noble than someone who is simply more practically minded or not as optimistic as you are.

This kind of disrespect for the perspectives of others makes it that much more difficult to achieve the political compromises necessary to make any of these dreams a reality.

> You wouldn't have a cell phone, and especially a data connection, if not for the space program.

Is that so? Can you give me a source?

The integrated circuit came out of Apollo[1], and apparently the cellphone camera came from NASA's work[2]. Not sure about the rest. We wouldn't have GPS, obviously.

You can credit a lot of stuff to the space program if you want, since all tech is built on other tech, and NASA was a big source of R&D in the 1950s onward.

[1] https://www.hq.nasa.gov/alsj/apollo-ic.html [2] http://www.space.com/10635-space-spinoff-technology-cellphon...

To continue this train of thought, the entire reason Silicon Valley exists in the first place is because of Department of Defense spending: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTC_RxWN_xo (aka Big Government spending.)

The foundations of the web were laid down by Tim Berners-Lee while working at CERN, a huge, expensive physics research organisation funded by European governments: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CERN#Computer_science

While this is true, its also not the point. Russia and other places have and had tons of programs like it, but they don't have a Silicon Valley.

Government is usually always involved in nearly everything, because they are spending almost 50% of the GDP, and even 100 years ago they spent 20% or so. Other countries its sometimes as high as 70%.

Saying that computers, the web, satellites would not exist without government is a pretty absurd claim. The idea of satellites, networks and all this stuff was around and would have happened. The US was commercially successful, actually uniquely successful in almost all of world history, during a period when federal government spent only about 2% of GDP. During this time tons of innovation, the most in the world, came out of the US.

Tesla is successful not because of government handouts anymore then many other large companies. It of course helps them, just like with any other large company. Elon would be a idiot if he didn't advocate for tax breaks, you have to play the politics game.

Governments can't innovate but can absorb a ton of risk (like waging war levels of risk), Businesses can innovate but really cannot take large risk.

When a government absorbs risks by spending on research it can have businesses do the work on the promise the benefit is shared. Christopher Columbus finding America and the companies that launched Apollo both worked this way. It seems to work well in practice.

It is hard to say that we would definitely be this far without Government spending. It is reasonable to make a case we could never leave the planet without an Apollo like initiative. How would the space industry would have gotten started purely in the private sector? Its not like they could have contracted the launches out, there were no launch companies. I don't hold this extreme view but I can see how it could be held.

To go to the most extreme view I can see possible: It is entirely possible that without that spending humanity wouldn't have GPS. It is also possible a foreign power that was hostile could have GPS and use it in war against us. With a few tech changes like that in the worst of these scenarios there could be enough tech lopsided-ness that MAD never worked and one side could have ruined the planet with nukes during the cold war.

Eh, so IC was invented and commercialized before Apollo, but Apollo was instrumental in accelerating the development of ICs. That's a far cry from "we wouldn't have cell phones without NASA"...

All satellites for many years were only launched as part of the space race between the US and the USSR. Of course there would be no satellite communication without the space program.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Explorer_1

But cell phones aren't satellite phones. Am I missing something? Do cellular networks rely on satellites indirectly?

I'm not talking about GPS, which isn't an essential feature of cell phones.

Yes, satellites can be used when you're making a long distance calls.

> You wouldn't have a cell phone, and especially a data connection, if not for the space program. And so on.

Given enough time, it would've been invented regardless. You are right that we probably would be further behind technologically if it wasn't for the space race though.

Pollution affects everyone. Terrorist attacks and the multiple wars fought affect most people, certainly everyone in the West.

Only a self centered ignoramus thinks reducing need for oil doesn't help them.

>Terrorist attacks and the multiple wars fought affect most people, certainly everyone in the West.

The West? I'm going to go out on a limb and say that the people in the Middle East (you know, where the bombs are actually being dropped*) are "certainly" affected.

Even if you use none of these things directly, other people's use of them affects you. Electrified transport benefits everyone, even people who never use it. Same for energy storage.

You forgot driverless transportation, which very soon will impact virtually every good sold in the country.

...particularly when a self-driving Tesla slams into it!

Model 3 is going to cost $35k, and like $28k after incentives. It will SAVE about $1500/year on gas and $500 on maintenance. This is cheaper than a Honda Civic.

Are you sure you aren't interested at this price?

That means I have to drive it for 15 years before it's 'free'... That's a long time to go with one car.

Edit: Still a (relative) good deal though, depending on what car you'd otherwise have bought.

How long do you have to drive a Honda Civic before it's free?

You don't need the car to be "free" though. If you were going to buy a Civic in any case, you were going to get the intrinsic value of getting around in a decent car. Now you're getting the same thing and in addition, a little spare change. If the numbers that person quoted are correct, it's a strictly better deal.

And all the other trade offs involved in electric vehicles. e.g. Worse for road trips,

Are you sure about maintenance? Consumer Reports has all of the currently released cars at below average reliability.

Consumer Reports now says Model S is average for reliability -- that's the good news that the LA Times buried in their article.

Really? I have a 20 year old Honda del Sol--which is essentially a 2-seater Civic variant--on which I spend under $500/yr on gas and under $500/year on maintenance. That's not typical I'm sure--and I do have another vehicle--but you can't claim your numbers as general savings.

Can you really compare a 20 year old honda del sol to a new model 3 (when it comes out obvioulsly) though? I don't have anything against used cars, but its apples and oranges. You can totally claim those numbers as savings, in an apples to apples comparison to a similar class car from a close year.

The claim was around saving money vs. a Civic. You're going to have to assume a lot of miles (and make favorable assumptions about long-term maintenance) to make the numbers work. I have nothing against EVs but they're generally not a good purely financial decision for most people today.

[ADDED: The mass-market Tesla is going to still be a premium vehicle relative to other options. There's nothing wrong with that. But it's unrealistic to expect that crunching the numbers the right way will make Tesla the optimal financial decision for everyone.]

When you're what comparing is gas and maintenance, certainly - the main disadvantage of 20 year old cars is that they're worse for both.

Speaking of savings, it's funny how no one is including safety in this breakdown of cost.

The Model S/X are considered some of the safest vehicles on the planet, even breaking testing equipment, while I'm not convinced you'd do as well in that 20 year old del a Sol (or any older vehicle for that matter).

And once you start dealing with kids and safety, it becomes even more important.

Good luck on that 28K price point ... maybe if you're shopping for a Chevy but not a Tesla.

Do you walk around with an effective pollution mask?

One that helps you avoid pollution but doesn't make you look like Bane from the Dark Knight Rises?

Please send me a link, thanks.

> Electric cars are not something I'm interested in owning at the price Tesla is asking. Or even half what Tesla is asking.

This was written 10 years ago:

https://www.tesla.com/blog/secret-tesla-motors-master-plan-j...

In summary the idea was to start with expensive electric cars (roadster, model S, model X which was initially not planned) to fund research on affordable electric cars (model 3 supposed to be first of them). As electric cars are becoming more popular and there are technological advances, we'll get them cheaper and cheaper.

What kind of unconventional air travel do you care for?

I meant, as opposed to space travel. I actually don't care much for travel at all.

Still - the change that he is pushing will affect you. Like it or not he has become a large player in car industry, which by itself affects many economies on the world. Not to mention what looks like a slow, deliberate and imho unfortunate transition from owning a car to being driven somewhere. Do you think you will be allowed to drive your own car in 30 years time? No more than the horses are allowed on streets nowadays. You can take them for a stroll, but you go on highways with them.

> the things he's working on will never affect me.

Perhaps not in next 5 years, but what about 20 years? Do you expect that electric cars will never be cheaper than petrol cars? Do you expect to never ride in an autonomous vehicle?

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