Thoughts on Elon Musk?

[Mai72]

I used my credit and bought "Elon Musk" on Audible the other day. I'm digging it so far. I didn't know much of Elon's life story...

*As a child he read an average 10 hours a day.
*Was constantly bullied in middle/high school.
*Learned to program in 3 days!
*Made $500 from a game he programmed.
*Had an abusive father.
*Left for Cabada at 18.
*Dropped out of University.
*Founded Zip2. Sold it for millions.
*CoFounded PayPal w/Thiel. Sold it to eBay for hundreds of millions.
*Thrown out of both companies.
*Founded Space X, Tesla.
*Learned about rockets on his own. By reading books on the subject.
*SpaceX almost bankrupted Musk. Went thru his fortune.
*Was sleeping on the sofa of a friend's house during those last rocket attempts. He had no money.
*Last rocket was a success.
*Worth Billions now.
*Goal is to colonize Mars.
*Goal is to have self driving cars on the road that use ZERO fossil fuel.
*Trips to Mars will be as common as going to Disney. Maybe not in our life-time.
*Wants to save humanity.
*He's only 45!

Is he the most important entrepreneur and inventor of our lifetime? I think so. At least, in the top 3.

 

[agent00f]

Survivorship bias.

 

[Mai72]

Saving the world ain't BS.

 

[disappoint]

Saving the world ain't BS.

The only one that's going to save your world, (change your life for the better) is you.

Having said that, there are far worse expenditures of your time than learning from those who have achieved success. Just be forewarned that he doesn't teach you how to live your life the best, just how he lived his. Your path will be different. The way to find your path is to learn more about yourself than someone else.

 

[luv2liv]

He's a freaking genius.
I think going to Mars is a waste of time though. He should invest in digitizing humanity. Our current bodies are way too fragile. Once our consciousness is digitized we can pretty much live forever. Go anywhere in an instant by uploading to another machine in another location, aka teleportation. Going to Mars won't take 80 days, it would take minutes...assuming his terabit network is up and working

 

[agent00f]

Saving the world ain't BS.

He does have some talent for convincing even less technically inclined people to give him money.

 

[cbrunny]

let him do his thing. Neal Stevenson captured him quite nicely in Seveneves, I thought.

 

[biostud]

Welcome to Rapture!

(Bioshock)

 

[desura]

I really wish and hope that he succeeds, but I wouldn't put my own money on him. I think Tesla has made a series of wrong moves since the Model S, and this is driven by Musk. The Model X and those gull wing doors are the prime example, and the Model 3 having a glass roof and nonexistent trunk are silly. The solar city acquisition especially is ridiculous and probably a bailout for solar city.

If I were in his shoes, after the Model S I would have partnered with Ford or GM to build the Chevy Bolt, and perhaps an electric pickup truck. But the Model S was a pretty brilliant move for when it arrived, I'll definitely say that. But yeah, some serious lack of judgement is going on here IMO.

 

[Kaido]

I think he gets a bad rap for being arrogant. He doesn't come across that way to me, more like a mix of confidence & passionate about what he does. I see all this hate about his Tesla cars & whatnot, and yet up until he did that, I didn't see many other companies trying to reduce out reliance on fossil fuels. NASA isn't working on going to Mars, nor is our government. He's pushing Solar City along to reduce our reliance on the power grid. He has a fun job doing cool things & he obviously enjoys it. More power to him!

Steve Jobs, on the other hand, was obviously kind of a dictator. He had great showmanship & produced awesome, market-leading products, but there are so many horror stories about working for him. You never really know, but based on what I've seen & read about Elon Musk, he seems like a pretty decent dude. The guy is like a real-life Tony Stark haha.

 

[Kaido]

I really wish and hope that he succeeds, but I wouldn't put my own money on him. I think Tesla has made a series of wrong moves since the Model S, and this is driven by Musk. The Model X and those gull wing doors are the prime example, and the Model 3 having a glass roof and nonexistent trunk are silly. The solar city acquisition especially is ridiculous and probably a bailout for solar city.

If I were in his shoes, after the Model S I would have partnered with Ford or GM to build the Chevy Bolt, and perhaps an electric pickup truck. But the Model S was a pretty brilliant move for when it arrived, I'll definitely say that. But yeah, some serious lack of judgement is going on here IMO.

Yeah, but if he had partnered with a gas-driven company, they would have constricted the future plans for him. As far as the 3 goes, looks like it's going to be pretty successful...as of the middle of May, they apparently have 373k pre-orders. At a base price of $35k each, that's just over $13 billion in pre-orders. Seems like they're doing okay...

 

[Kaido]

He's a freaking genius.
I think going to Mars is a waste of time though. He should invest in digitizing humanity. Our current bodies are way too fragile. Once our consciousness is digitized we can pretty much live forever. Go anywhere in an instant by uploading to another machine in another location, aka teleportation. Going to Mars won't take 80 days, it would take minutes...assuming his terabit network is up and working

Yeah, cuz that worked out so well for Johnny Depp

I can't find the article right now, but there was a great technically-written paper about how teleportation is actually suicide every time you do it.

 

[quikah]

He sort of reminds me of Howard Hughes. Little bit crazy, but incredibly talented.

I wonder if he will have the same fate?

 

[Ken g6]

Elon Musk is an alien! Or something like that.

 

[ElFenix]

regardless, he made electric cars cool. the leaf wasn't going to do that. the i3 wasn't going to do that. the imiev wasn't going to do that. the bolt isn't going to do that.

 

[Zee]

after a certain age, he clearly went from genius to nutjob. he lost touch with reality. Mars? yeah ok. you can easily colonize deep sea or antartica at that point. you can take a flat empty stretch of land in Kansas and build that up.

he needs to be reintroduced back into society

 

[Printer Bandit]

He mumbles a lot and has zero presentation skills.

 

[Chiropteran]

He is the hero we need, not the hero we want.

 

[Kaido]

after a certain age, he clearly went from genius to nutjob. he lost touch with reality. Mars? yeah ok. you can easily colonize deep sea or antartica at that point. you can take a flat empty stretch of land in Kansas and build that up.

he needs to be reintroduced back into society

I dunno, we went to the moon 40 years ago using slide rules, simply to beat Russia there. A lot of great things have happened because of the space program, outside of national pride. For starters, it provided a ton of jobs. Today, working on a spaceship to Mars probably beats working on Trump's wall to Mexico. Not to mention all of the technology that has been introduced because of spacecraft. Just a small sampling:

http://www.nasa.gov/50th/50th_magazine/benefits.html

So there's a lot of fringe benefits that happen, it's not just about the destination. Part of the problem is that the space program gets a lot of criticism because there are other problems with the world. But going back to politics, like Trump referenced in the debate when he was giggling about tax avoidance, the politicians don't know how to manage or spend the money they have properly now. Plus, we can't be rulers of the world...globally, we produce enough food to feed 10 billion people, and yet millions die of starvation. But then we have dictators like the guys over in North Korea, so we can't effectively distribute aid as needed. The world is always going to have problems...we still need to make progress in other areas tho.

 

[MrDudeMan]

after a certain age, he clearly went from genius to nutjob. he lost touch with reality. Mars? yeah ok. you can easily colonize deep sea or antartica at that point. you can take a flat empty stretch of land in Kansas and build that up.

he needs to be reintroduced back into society

These types of comments are really dumb. Sorry, but it's true.

http://www.lettersofnote.com/2012/08/why-explore-space.html

 

[Stopsignhank]

I used to like him, then I looked into getting solar for my house. Solar City is way over priced and it really ripping people off. They are not well thought of on some of the solar power forums. My one data point is my boss and I got solar at the same time. His system is smaller, but cost 10K more. 32K versus 42K. It turned me off from even looking at getting a Tesla. Then if you think of how much money he is getting from the government, it is either hundreds of millions or billions depending on who you talk to. Finally ask yourself, why would Tesla have to buy Solar City? There is something going on there behind the scenes we don't know about.

Do I wish I had his money, yes. Am I a fan, not so much.

 

[Printer Bandit]

He doesn't appreciate essays

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QAwiyS5aTcU

 

[desura]

I used to like him, then I looked into getting solar for my house. Solar City is way over priced and it really ripping people off. They are not well thought of on some of the solar power forums. My one data point is my boss and I got solar at the same time. His system is smaller, but cost 10K more. 32K versus 42K. It turned me off from even looking at getting a Tesla. Then if you think of how much money he is getting from the government, it is either hundreds of millions or billions depending on who you talk to. Finally ask yourself, why would Tesla have to buy Solar City? There is something going on there behind the scenes we don't know about.

Do I wish I had his money, yes. Am I a fan, not so much.

Can you link the sites you used to research this?

 

[Mayne]

he seems like a cool dude.

 

[Stopsignhank]

Can you link the sites you used to research this?

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-hy-musk-subsidies-20150531-story.html

New York state is spending $750 million to build a solar panel factory in Buffalo for SolarCity. The San Mateo, Calif.-based company will lease the plant for $1 a year. It will not pay property taxes for a decade, which would otherwise total an estimated $260 million.

The federal government also provides grants or tax credits to cover 30% of the cost of solar installations. SolarCity reported receiving $497.5 million in direct grants from the Treasury Department.

That figure, however, doesn't capture the full value of the government's support.

Since 2006, SolarCity has installed systems for 217,595 customers, according to a corporate filing. If each paid the current average price for a residential system — about $23,000, according to the Union of Concerned Scientists — the cost to the government would total about $1.5 billion, which would include the Treasury grants paid to SolarCity.

Nevada has agreed to provide Tesla with $1.3 billion in incentives to help build a massive battery factory near Reno.

The Palo Alto company has also collected more than $517 million from competing automakers by selling environmental credits. In a regulatory system pioneered by California and adopted by nine other states, automakers must buy the credits if they fail to sell enough zero-emissions cars to meet mandates. The tally also includes some federal environmental credits.

https://www.thestreet.com/story/13692569/1/tesla-and-solarcity-plummet-but-should-you-buy.html

However, Musk is also the chairman and largest shareholder of SolarCity. Plus, a majority of the directors on the boards of both companies are either his blood relatives or financially connected to both businesses.

The whole arrangement has not seemed in the best interest of shareholders.

Nor is the acquisition helped by the fact that neither company has been profitable. Moreover, SolarCity has massive debt.