Elon Musk has very ambitious plans, but he also seems to have the money to back up those plans:
Elon Musk was considered by some to be an insane dreamer when he said he was going to start a car company from scratch that made only electric vehicles. He has a history of ignoring the cynics locked in their fixed perceptions and doing the impossible. I wouldn’t put anything past him.
People like Elon Musk, Bill Gates, and Richard Branson ignore the boundaries that keep the rest of us “normal” and dream dreams beyond the vision of normal humans… and then go out and live these dreams. Everything they do amazes me, and I wouldn’t doubt any of the goals of any of them. If any of the other billions of people on the planet said they were going to do the things that these three say they’ll do I’d say they were full of bull, but not these guys. They have their heads in the stars and their feel firmly planted on the ground. All the rest of us can do is watch in amazement.
Go Mr. Musk. May good fortune go with you.
The pace that the Falcon rocket has been built is astonishing. SpaceX didn’t have a customer when they started. If they had one or two, the customers would have slowed development dramatically. The customers, of course, would have been DoD and NASA. I’m not picking on those two agencies, just saying that their usual development cycle has many requirements to verify ands host of design reviews, and these take a lot of time. Sometimes that is a good thing. SpaceX didn’t have to face that gauntlet and could develop the product much faster.
CNN Money had an article on him a little bit ago. The gist was lots of sales but no profits. I can’t believe the investors are not getting a little restless.
I take it @Bing you never heard of Amazon? Amazon didn’t see profits for well over 10 years. Investors saw the potential of it. Same with Tesla.
As for Musk…I hope you’re talking just about Tesla…You do know he founded PayPal?? He made BILLIONS from that venture.
His other ventures like Space-x and solar city are also profitable.
Are you sure you weren’t reading about Donald Trump…5 ventures - 5 bankruptcies.
We can’t predict with certainty what the auto industry will be in 30 yrs. no ICE’s? Electric cars? Hydrogen fuel cells?
In addition to the valid information that MikeInNH provided, I think that Bing is ignoring Musk’s brilliant strategy with the upcoming Model 3 Tesla. Those who are interested in buying this $35k sedan (which probably won’t hit the market for a couple of years) have already plunked-down enough $1,000 reservation deposits to put a cool $276 MILLION (cash) into Tesla’s accounts.
Yes, those deposits are refundable, but they will not draw interest, so this is a massive win-win for Musk in terms of raising further funds for development and–simultaneously–taking a lot of pressure off of his investors.
This site is REALLY screwed-up today, as I have now deleted 3 duplicates of the same post that I did a few minutes ago.
Please, Mike, let’s not turn this into a political debate. There’s enough of that already.
As long as there are rebates and credits for buying electric cars and the Hollywood
Green Establishment" keeps pushing them Musk will capitalize on them. He also has amazing talent in making rich gullible people feel guilty. He does not really care how electricity is generated!
Amory Lovins founded the Rocky Mountain Institute and has been preaching unsustainable “eco” living for years.
His secret initially was to get all those energy saving products for free from the manufacturers and he in turn promoted them in his Rocky Mountain Colorado eco home…
Needless to say his sustainable lifestyle was not repeatable or economically viable in most other parts of the US.
In the 70s this guy promoted WOOD as a renewable source of electric power, which only makes sense for cabin dwellers in the Rocky Mountain forests. Never mind the air pollution and then unknown greenhouse gasses.
I admire opportunists except for the part when they dress themselves in some noble mantle about saving the planet.
Musk made a car that people would want even if it were gasoline… but made it 100% electric.
I think he’s done a prenominal job of making this venture work. We’re already beginning to talk about Tesla as a competitor to the major manufacturers of cars in their price range, and once there are more recharge stations, the $35K model is out, and the new sales model is established the other competitors are going to need to make some serious changes.
If I were his competition I wouldn’t underestimate him. Nor would I think of the Tesla as a “greenie niche” car. That would be a mistake.
It might help too to recognize Europe’s initiatives to ban gas/diesel cars in their cities. Some there have already done so. A Tesla would be the perfect solution, and I’d bet that there’ll be a huge market for them over there in the very near future.
Teslas are too large for the bigger European cities unless you have access to off street parking. This is acceptable for today’s business model of selling to the rich, but smaller cars like Leaf or Bolt would fit much better in Amsterdam, for instance. This doesn’t keep Tesla from building small electric cars, but it would take a while to get them into production.
I agree with jsanders. another point is that Europeans typically drive smaller low powered cars (something I think we should do here, but that’s another thread), and would not know what to do with the massive power available in the Tesla.
Our city is fighting over building billion dollar lrt lines. Fed govt pay 60%? Why not build electric grids in roads to send power to elec cars with radio waves? Or some such design. Sounds good. Than no batteries are required. Or charging stations.
You’ll find far more of the fastest cars in the world made in Europe than in the U.S.
And the largest.
The Tesla makes me think back to the Tucker, which fascinated me when I was a kid. There were advertisements in the newspaper. This would have been the car of the future, but the "Big 3"conspired against Tucker. What makes the situation with Tesla today as opposed to the Tucker of 68 years ago is that GM, Ford and Chrysler are in no position today to sabotage Tesla as they were after WWII,. It’s unfortunate that after WWII the Big 3 didn’t put its efforts into producing really improved automobiles instead of constant styling changes that really didn’t improve the cars.
“t’s unfortunate that after WWII the Big 3 didn’t put its efforts into producing really improved automobiles instead of constant styling changes that really didn’t improve the cars.”
That hasn’t changed. Just look at the ugly headlights and front grills of cars today. I’d upload a photo of a Corolla, but upload doesn’t work.
@Triedaq Tucker was an impractical dreamer; the movie just made him out to be a victim of “conspiracy”. Remember at the end of WW II we had Studebaker, Packard, Nash, Hudson and Willys as “viable” car makers They all disappeared.
It would have been a miracle if Tucker had survived and prospered. The car was not unique enough or technically advanced enough. The Chech-made Tatra had everything Tucker had and it was pre-WW II design !
@“the same Mountainbike”, I agree with what you say, but those vehicles are inaccessible to all but the rich in Europe, no matter where they live. They need a lot of disposable income to buy them, fuel them, and park them in a large city. Is there a point other than the literal interpretation of your post?
@Docnick Tucker was a dreamer like Jobs, Gates and Musk and the movie “Tucker, The Man and His Car” took some liberties. However, some of the Michigan legislators sicced the Security and Exchange Commission on Tucker. The SEC found no improprieties. Tom McCahill wrote an article about his factory road test of the Tucker which I think appeared in Reader’s Digest. McCahill gave a favorable report about the Tucker and was sued by the Big 3 for allegedly making false statements. The allegations made by the Big 3 were shown to be false. The independents–Nash, Hudson, Studebaker and Kaiser did have some innovations that were finally adopted by the Big 3. For example, Nash had its heating and defrosting system called Weather Eye that brought in fresh air from the outside and heated it. Other manufacturers just had a box that contained a small radiator and fan that hung down under the dashboard. Nash introduced the integrated heating and air conditioning system in 1954 with everything under the hood and behind the dash. GM didn’t have such a system until 1957. The GM system before 1957 had the evaporator and blower in the trunk with clear plastic ducts to bring the cooled air into the passenger compartment. After the merger with Hudson forming American Motors, by 1960 the Rambler became the 3rd best selling nameplate in the U.S. Studebaker brought out its automatic transmission in 1951. It had a lock-up torque converter that didn’t appear on other makes until the late 1970s. Mismanagement caused the downfall of the independents. AMC was in fine shape until George Romney left to become governor of Michigan. The new management didn’t follow his plan and decided to build bigger cars to compete with the Big 3. Kaiser decided to build the Henry J. The stripped model had a 4 cylinder engine and no outside trunk lid. For the same price, you could buy a Chevy Standard with a 6 cylinder engine and outside access to the trunk. The money spent on the Henry J should have been used to design a more modern engine. Hudson spent its money on the compact Jet which didn’t sell. That money might well have been spent on updating the design or the drive train. When the Big 3 decided to build smaller cars, it had problems. I suffered with a Ford Maverick when I should have purchased an AMC Hornet. The Hornet had a much better 6 cylinder engine and actually had a glove compartment which the Maverick did not have. I don’t know if the Tesla will survive, but it is great to see innovations.