It doesn't hurt to ask what problems need solving.
Ultimately this just isn't altruism but it is promoted as whilst people are in deep shit all around him.
I'm not really sure what my point is but I suspect it is a new form of hypocrisy.
In addition Tesla is betting big on making better batteries. If they can pull that off then that will end up being their true legacy with the whole car thing becoming a neat historical footnote.
As for SpaceX they'll go down in history as pioneers of commercial space flight and wherever future commercial companies decide to take us, they'll all point back at SpaceX as the company that first showed that it could be done.
If those "microwave weapons" end up enabling the killing of millions of people (like e.g. nuclear weapons can wipe out the whole earth), then those left will be right to say:
"Hmm, maybe we were better off without microwave technology after all. In fact, just because we can make something, probably doesn't mean that we should make it".
On the other hand, if you don't develop technology, you'll never know if it will be used for good, and you'll never see the advantages if it is. And failing to develop something does nothing to prevent someone else from developing it later. If something is possible, you want to be the one making it possible, not the one cowering in fear while someone else forges on ahead.
Ever wonder why what comes out of Silicon Valley seems to augment the Military surveillance effort?
"The Secret History of Silicon Valley": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTC_RxWN_xo
More than anything I think premature, excessive and/or misguided credit is damaging to engineering and entrepreneurship. It shifts the focus from knowledge and creativity to adoration and exceptionalism. Quite opposite the mindset of Musk himself.
I genuinely don't believe we need electric cars though at all. We need less travel and transport and redistribution of facilities and skills. That's a much bigger problem. At the moment, the hub/spoke and centralised model of society has no redundancy and providing ubiquitous cheap transport isn't going to solve that, just make the problem hang on longer by forcing people to remain sitting on their butts on a freeway in a slightly better car rolling into a job they could probably do at home or doesn't need it exist anyway.
Also batteries need to be filled up, recycled, disposed of still. We'll see how that goes shall we...
SpaceX isn't fundamentally changing the model of anything, just packaging the same turd differently. That might be to build capital (customers = capital) but there isn't anything fundamentally different to what they are doing at the 10,000ft level. ESA have had a similar model for a couple of decades.
Of course they are. The whole point of everything they do is to cut down the costs of launching things into space by 2-3 orders of magnitude, which itself is just a step towards their real goal, i.e. Mars. They're pretty straightforward about it.
If he built an electric car for the masses, that would be a big deal for the world.
Of course he's pushing inovation, but he still hasn't done "a great deal for the world".
Maybe he caused some changes in the US, I'm not in a position to see that, but saying he changed the world is quite a stretch
This is exactly Tesla's goal with the Model 3, targeted at $35,000.
I don't think you understand the amount of time and money required to reach mass production scale of affordable vehicles. Tesla was very wise to start with high-margin sports and luxury cars, because it gives them the capital needed to continue re-investing in production capacity and battery technology for more affordable cars in the future.
Tesla is playing a long game, and so far it's working. The popularity of Tesla alone has driven other auto makers to step up their electric car game, which is indeed a "great deal for the world" to help get us all off combustion engines.
Agreed that maybe the luxury car is the right way to start his attempt with a healthy cash flow.
In fact, I'm a big fan of people like him, who have the money and instead of just playing the markets to get more of it, he uses it to build something that can eventually help us.
The main reason for my comment was that some people idolize him like he has cured cancer or erradicated world hunger. These people should to take a step back :)
That's good, and that's sort of the point of getting money, is it not? We should encourage those who are rich to pursue goals beneficial to everyone. They have the ability to achieve things no "democratic" groups (and countries) can, because the latter are plagued with coordination problems.