If all the legends about him were true (superhuman BS detector, genius level IQ, laser sharp focus) I'd be happy to be part of the team.
Unfortunately, I think his main talent is the uncanny ability to overhype himself.
He is lucky that a side effect of this ability helped him hire and motivate really good engineers.
Thay might not be sufficient in the long run, the vaporware bubble will pop at some point.
Maybe he’s playing 4D chess, but I don’t know if there’s a lot of superhuman chess behind signing a binding agreement waiving due diligence at a meme price. The man is a walking unforced error.
Given the downturn of access to free money I wonder what happens next for him (and other “innovators” in general , see SoftBank funds)
This is extremely naive. Most people likely use their inner "PR team" when posting.
But with Twitter, there are less checks going on, and... well... some people are good at filtering, some people are less good at it (they might be totally great at other parts of their jobs!).
Of course he didn’t single-handedly do this. Of course other engineers were invaluable in the process. But he forced Tesla and SpaceX into existence when everyone thought it was guaranteed to fail.
We saw people trying with electric cars and new kinds of rockets before him. From General Motors to Burt Rutan, none succeeded. Elon had a viable vision and pushed it like a maniac and now it’s real, and mainstream. It’s incredible.
If I can do this with a single project, I’d consider my life a smashing success.
So valuation comes from speculation of course, but what are people speculating will happen? If Toyota, the biggest car manufacturer in the world, is valued less than Tesla is now, then the end goal of Tesla matching or besting Toyota's operations should see it's real value be... much less than it currently is.
Now incumbent manufacturers are delivering EVs and in brands, form-factors and levels of quality more people can care about, I just don't see how Tesla is differentiated in a way that even remotely justifies it's valuation.
Why?
Because Elon himself is seen as a super-genius and a savior of humanity by a lot of people, including smart dudes like Geohot or Lex Fridman.
Also, Telsa valuation is tied to L5 (full autonomy), and the TelsaBot and the impressive giga factories and the AI hype, and the Solar panels etc.
But most of that will flop...
Lex Friedman is Lex Friedman.
So no, those guys are smart dudes.
Von Braun was a very smart dude but he was making the Nazi salute and fawning over Hitler all the times.
When he moved to the US he was fawning over Eisenhower all the times.
Similarly this Friedman guy has 4 years worth of videos in which he fawns over Putin.
Technical abilities and critical thinking in the social realm are 2 very different sets of competences. It's very rare to find somebody who is extremely technically gifted and is also able to realize that the leader of a big organization is not a god but a regular guy like anybody else who happened to be positioned in the right spot to ride the wave of social consensus.
If the greatest story ever told and 2000+ years of compounding marketing and outreach had no chance of getting god in my brain and heart, I'll let you figure what are the odds for Musk self-promoting himself via bullying and cheap outreach.
> let people's accomplishments speak for themselves
Musk and all the other 2500 billionaires in the world have as much agency over their so called accomplishments as lottery winners.
When I am in SV/SF I have lots of fun acting and pretending that I am a believer brainwashed too. Musk fans especially throw the most bizzarre parties, only second to crypto-guys. Maybe they hope that the cult leader would show up. I got a private jet ride in a G3 because I "believe in Elon" whatever the fuck that means lol.
That still doesn't give them any right to crap over people. At least treat people with basic human decency or in the long run they won't give a crap about you.
If his behaviour continues like this, sooner or later, Musk will find out that history is not kind to him ... or maybe not.
-Tunnels are BS
-Hyperloop is dumb BS
-TeslaBot demos are embarassingly bad
-Neuralink seems to be BS
-Solar Tiles are BS
-The PowerWall is semi-legit but overpriced
-The roadster/semi/cybertruck are suspiciously late
-A lot of the Mars plans are weak/delusional
EDIT: The guy is sending rockets to freaking space and has a fleet of satellites that provide intenet, are you not entertained??
The Spruce Goose is marvelous and innovative too, the Apollo rockets, the ISS, you name it.
All those things had their plug pulled or are about to be because they are giant money sinkholes which failed to pay for themselves or provide any ROI in terms of money or quality of life.
Electric Cars and rockets have not yet graduated to a point where it's safe to say that they won't be just a fad.
If people stop caring about climate then EVs have no reason to exist. Similarly as the population becomes more and more urbanised they will rely on fiber as opposed to Sat-Internet so Starlink has no reason to exist.
All those things you are enthusiastic about are mostly overhyped fads which Musk himself is pumping and self-promoting while the real innovation which is life changing for all of us will come from some small and quiet biotech company, away from all the media fanfare. Oh wait, it already happened with Moderna and people can't even comprehend it because they are busy following the last PR stunt of this fraud.
Everything he has done successfully relied on old/proven technology. I am not saying that this is bullshit or not impressive.
But that does not prove anything about his claims on AI, transportation or Mars colonization.
I would love to see him succeed, but at this stage I am pretty much convinced that he won't, too many red flags.
Rockets are real.
Cars are real, but aren't particularly good given the reports, so he'll likely run into trouble with the competition soon.
Solar panels seem to be doing very so-so, the reports I've heard is that their solar roof stuff is very troublesome.
The tunnels suck. He dug extremely narrow deathtraps that for some reason are driven through in a car, and that will kill people as soon as there's an accident.
All vaporware, all the time.
Musk’s introduction to Tesla was being amazed by a working prototype with awesome acceleration. He took over Tesla when it already had a viable product and business strategy. The company started July 1 2003 and Musk’s early contribution was an early funding round and a board seat. He get’s to call himself a founder based on a lawsuit in 2009 and kicking the actual founders out.
Even if Tesla fails, which seems unlikely given their pile of cash and very popular cars, he has already succeeded in his stated goal of getting the switch to electric cars started.
A big chunk of Tesla’s early revenue was selling drivetrains to over EV companies. The transition was real and Tesla successfully road the wave, props to a successfully executed business strategy but technology wise it really didn’t change much.
People talk about the EV1, but the Toyota RAV4 EV was produced from 1997–2003, and then 2012–2014 the second version was even a collaboration with Tesla. Where it failed was not targeting the sports car market. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_RAV4_EV
Just as an aside, it's not possible to make more than zero cars without developing a hell of a lot of technology; especially if you mass produce them. Even if every aspect of the car is completely old hat, which Teslas aren't.
The initial Roadster was the first production EV to have a range of 200 miles which then sold 2,450 cars. That’s a milestone, but Musk wasn’t even the CEO when it was released. I give him credit for being part of the funding round A though not a seed investor, an actual founder, or really all that critical to the process while acknowledging he very much was part of the process.
He had a larger role when it comes to the Model S, but by that point they had all the elements of a car and it really came down to execution. He helped turn a 100 million dollar company into a 100 billion dollar company, that is impressive. You don’t need to try and exaggerate his importance.
Now that he’s showing his true colors, it’s clear that they are not.
The guy think he is Tony Stark.
The sad news is that nobody is going to Mars yet.
If you trust Karpathy as a source, it seems like working for Elon would be the opposite of working for a bureaucracy.
Honestly, I can’t even imagine running that company worse than what he does right now.
Imo, if you're running a social media business, a key metric to optimize for is traffic and engagement. Elon seems to be doing that well enough at least.
Just because it looks cool doesn't mean they provide quality of life. Saturn V rockets were way cooler and way bigger and sane people had to pull the plug because they were a money sinkhole.
As the global population becomes increasingly urbanised the whole demand for sat-internet will drop even more, as they'll all be using fiber or 5g. Then what? Sat-TV is already dead, what's left? How many GPS satellites are really needed?
The whole space race is something that caused a huge hole in US and USSR budgets without any ROI to show for, and will bankrupt Musk for sure. Maybe Bezos and Branson will avoid the same destiny, ironically thanks to their vices and passion for trophy assets such as private islands, yachts and football teams which at least hold their value, matter of fact they appreciate and produce revenues.
Elon legend is not 100% BS like SBF.
But what about all the undelivered promises?