Tesla’s Dangerous Sprint into the Future
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
Imagine Tesla didn’t exist, Steve Jurvetson told me. “What would the world look like? I have this sinking suspicion it wouldn’t look that different than 10 years ago. A bunch of hybrid cars. A bunch of noise about hydrogen vehicles. You know, I don’t think the world would look anything like today — where entire nations are saying, ‘We’re going to stop making gas cars.’ ”
The last thought is the really compelling one for me, what would the world look like if Elon Musk hadn't started SpaceX and Tesla?
Either way, its often worth a good shot, hence the need to try radically worthwhile stuff like space travel and transitioning to sustainable energy.
If I were betting it all on disrupting the nail polish industry I doubt I would have the commitment to see it through. Being committed to something that will change the outcomes for my children's children will naturally gather a lot more effort from me.
Every car company is working on electrics, and they have been for quite a while. The limitations were battery technology and cost, and battery technology with laptops and cell phones made electric cars practical.
NASA was talking about fostering commercial space launch companies before SpaceX was founded, and the two of them have been in close cooperation (other commercial companies too of course). If SpaceX didn't exist, that strong partnership would have existed with a different company but would likely look similar.
There's a tendency to think that the world would be different without "revolutionary" people or companies, but usually what ends up happening is just being at the right place at the right time. Excellence is required to succeed, but take one specific revolutionary out of the picture and another would have taken their place.
Einstein is a great example of this. A brilliant man, no doubt, but he is famous for discovering things which were ripe for discovery. The pieces were all in place waiting for someone to put them together. Doing so, and before anyone else, was an accomplishment, but he wasn't unique in his ability to make things happen, he was just first. Like a marathon, somebody always finishes first but there are many others running behind them.
If I understand your argument it is that the current state of affairs would exist with or without the key individuals we call out in history, because the environment would have created those changes anyway, and the individuals named would simply be other individuals who happened to be the ones to catalyze the change.
If I have characterized your argument incorrectly please help me understand it better.
The reason I disagree with that argument, as I see it, is that it implies a sort of 'fate' or destiny aspect of change and advancement. Which would be like saying that exhaust fumes from a car will eventually convert into water and co2 even without the platinum catalyst. Too often I have seen organizations and fields which were stably stagnant until an individual or group created a sea change that was, in hindsight, pretty obvious but it had resisted being detected for years.
You find all sorts of examples of people independently discovering things at the same time, and this isn't just coincidence. Maybe most famously is Leibniz vs Newton creating calculus. The pieces were all in place for the mathematical study of change. The outcome wasn't predestined, each man's creation was quite different in ways, but they accomplished something that was ready to be accomplished.
Whether it's physics or technology, nature abhors a vacuum. Unexploited niches get filled. Sometimes in significantly different directions, but very often the outcome is strongly influenced by the opportunity.
In biology, this is a bit like convergent evolution. The implementation details aren't predestined, but general solutions to environmental problems _are_. Eyes and legs are very useful things to have, and they're nearly ubiquitous.
With Tesla, the deal is that we know we're going to run out of oil, and pollution sucks. Developing an alternative has been a big talking point since the 90s, and there are a whole lot of players in the game. Lots of companies are making lots of attempts and have been trying many different technologies. Lithium batteries are winning the technology race, they developed because of other consumer electronics and the environment is best for them. It's just evolution. Many other companies are trying different things and the same thing, it's not driven by copying Tesla (the competition helps though) it's driven by the niche need for a solution expanding and becoming more and more possible.
The variables are implementation details (fuel cells? lithium batteries? something else?) and timing. There can be quite a lot of uncertainty with "how" and "when" but quite a lot less with "if".
I think we can all agree there is a time and place for certain technologies but I think those variables are a lot broader than you are giving them credit for.
Let's assume your hypothesis is correct, then given the population of practitioners for a given technological space, we should be able to find examples of catalyzing change in the technology space that was initiated by what would otherwise be an 'average' practitioner in that space right? Given that I would expect to be able to identify people that are considered 'average' by their peers prior to their making some large catalyzing change.
That is hard looking back as most biographers will call out all sorts of details that made someone special with the benefit of hindsight, but I'm looking for people more current who were considered 'ordinary' and yet they were the catalyst for a huge change.
Finding such examples would help me with your argument.
The best illustration of this I think could be learned from studying the development of physics between ~1850 to 1950. It becomes more and more difficult to think that each step wasn't inevitable as you learn about the sheer number of exceptional people and catalyzing changes. Each set of questions led to a new breakthrough and each breakthrough led to a new set of questions. It's hard to imagine the whole web falling apart for the loss of a single person. It was a great network of people and accomplishments influencing each other both average and exceptional.
A key that might make the big picture difficult to see is focusing on biographies which by name are focused on individuals instead of systems of people.
I also agree physics is a good example as it draws in many exceptional people and each provide pieces of the puzzles.
Using physics as a metaphor, I also believe that there is a sort of "activation energy" which grows, perhaps exponentially higher, the further away an idea is from the common set of ideas that are considered 'canon' in the space. So the idea that private companies can build rockets profitably without government subsidy is a 'small' distance away from the canon that without the government's help the "business" of building and launching rockets is a money losing proposition. And the idea that you could 'land' a rocket after launching it in some way was clearly identified as a workable, not necessarily practical, idea back in the 60's. And it was certainly considered in the DC-X days of the 80's and 90's. But the idea that someone was going to make a profitable business out of launching rockets and recovering the boosters by landing them, was an idea that few people in the industry really considered. It had very high 'activation energy'.
My hypothesis is that without an individual or group that has the necessary level of "activation energy" to get an idea from the pool of the possible to make it the new way to do things, those ideas do not happen even if there are people who recognize that they "could" happen.
When I look at the electric car market I see the General Motors EV-1 which was almost exactly the same idea of the Tesla but done with insufficient activation energy to convert the entire auto industry into that mode of thinking. So I ask what did Elon bring to the problem that the CEO of GM didn't? Why did Elon have the runway to prototype, build, redesign, build again, and then build again into a market changing car, when GM already had all the expertise in the world about building electric cars and the connections to do everything Elon did in probably 1/3 the time it took Tesla? Why didn't someone in GM pop out of the woodwork and make Electric cars happen? What was different?
GM has some of the worlds best vehicle designers and engineers. Some of whom left GM to go work at Tesla. I believe Elon was the catalyst, and had he not started what he did I don't think we would be driving GM Model S equivalents today. That is the difference in people who catalyze change and the elements of change being available in my opinion.
Worth watching.
It is an essential element of this discussion that there are ideas that are brought up discarded, used, re-used, and remixed. But a more interesting question is not the origin of a particular idea, but how these implementations are "catalyzed" into the mainstream by different individuals. And much like chemical reactions where the components are already in abundance around the catalyst, the elements of these ideas are already floating around.
My hypothesis is that some individuals have a way of looking at the world and thinking which allows them to live in a world of many possibilities that are not currently possible. And, when given the opportunity, to pull the rest of us into there version of the universe with astonishing results.
The NY Times article reminded me of that when the question of what the world might look like today if Tesla hadn't been started was reminder of that sort of change.
Of the two I consider SpaceX to be the more important and less replaceable company.
NASA had a very precise plan to create a commercial spaceflight industry in a similar way that it was instrumental in creating the commercial atmospheric flight industry in the 20th century. They want to get out of the business of launching things so it's less of a distraction from the doing things in space business.
Here are the goals from NASA's "2nd Generation Reusable Launch Vehicle" program:
* Investment in technology development and other activities needed to enable a full-scale development decision by 2006 and operations by early next decade of a space transportation system that will be safer, more reliable and less expensive than today's system.
* A coordinated approach that enables development of flexible, commercially-produced, reusable launch vehicles. This approach ensures that NASA unique hardware, developed by and for NASA unique missions-such as crew transport and planetary exploration-is compatible with commercial capabilities.
* Purchase of cargo re-supply services for the International Space Station - using commercial launch vehicles - to serve as backup for primary vehicles such as the U.S. Space Shuttle and international vehicles such as the Russian Progress rocket.
That's from April, 2002. SpaceX was founded May, 2002.
https://www.nasa.gov/centers/marshall/news/background/facts/...
I mean... they are still arguing that reusability is not economically viable. I get the sense that they didn't think it was going to work and now they're in shock and it's slowly sinking in just how far behind they are.
It's not very likely for any aerospace contractor to turn down work because it's structured in a way that avoids risks. The NASA contract isn't for only the final results, they pay the R&D costs. The first round might be a competition to design a reusable launch system. You get paid for designing, it's NASA's ambition, you're just implementing it (and trying to implement it better than the other guy).
ULA might not have ever taken the initiative itself, but if NASA wants to pay them to design a flying pig, they'll be happy to do it.
This is how government programs work contracting to the public sector, the motivation for cheaper reusable launches has existed for a very long time. Reusability was a primary design motivation that led to the space shuttle. Lessons learned pointed in a different direction than a space plane for the next iterations and difficulties developing things in house led to the commercial motivation.
The business model of established auto manufacturers is threatened by replacing chemical engines with electric motors. Tesla's arrival is not merely "executing faster on the production of electric motor+battery design" because they also serve as a disruptor for the business model here. They are just selling cars.
Christensen's work after Innovator's Dilemma indicates that disruptive innovations include a new 'Core Technology' or 'Core Business Process'.
It is not yet clear that Tesla has either of those.
At present, Tesla is building and selling cars in a manner basically indistinguishable from competitors, excepting (so far) scale.
Some of Tesla's Tech (advanced automation) and Business Processes (especially the lack of dealerships, possibly their vertical integration) could be disruptive; we will have to wait and see if they can exploit these at scale.
As a comparison, look at Toyota in the 80's to the 00's. Through continuous improvement, they made their small, simple cars the best on the road. This could be thought of as disruptive; but then they went up-market to achieve better margins. As they did this, they became a lot more like their competitors. The competition started taking notice and adopted variations on the Toyota Production Method.
At this point, Toyota and their competitors (excepting Tesla) share basically all of the core technology and business processes.
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If you want to think about what Tesla will do in the future, and what advantages they have in the future, that's fine. Just realize that the future is another country.
Did you seriously miss the part where they removed the internal combustion engine? Because that does seem like something of a new "core technology".
It's "new" in the sense of Tesla being the first to successfully use it at that scale.
To be sure, the technologies used in the propulsion system of a battery electric vehicle are very different from the technologies of an internal combustion engine drive train; however the electric propulsion system is basically a straight replacement of the ICE drivetrain.
The vehicle still performs the same job, in basically the same way.
A new Core Technology would be self-driving cars, or a completely automated manufacturing plant - both things that Tesla may have in the future
The factory has a different set of machines and builds a different power train, but the fundamentals of the business are not any different.
Usually what ends up happening? That comment would be credible if you have some kind of ability to re-run reality removing historically key players to see what would happen.
Personally, I've seen software development organizations flounder and some succeed dramatically despite their having similar equipment, availability of resources, snacks in the break room, etc. The difference all came down to a few key developers who drove things forward.
Well right, except in that scenario "commercial space flight" was them continuing to hand dump trucks full of cash to ULA. Which wasn't really commercial in the sense we're all talking about commercial at all. It was a giant government contractor who essentially acts as an extension of the government who was interested in maximizing profit, not innovating. It looks, and would have looked, absolutely nothing like SpaceX. No signs indicate they're even ABLE to provide the same relationship.
Battery powered vehicles and fully featured pocket computers were inevitable due to the progress of technology. Musk and Jobs deserve a lot of credit for being the most responsible for birthing them, and for the revolutionary DNA they imparted.
In a way, both Elon Musk and Steve Jobs seem warp the social consensus reality -- by being willing to see through it and substitute a harder first-principles reality for it.
The world may have decided to reluctantly drag itself to electric the "Nissan Leaf" way, leaving the rich people brags about their high power ice cars.
Tesla has made electric car looks cool, so sure the bulk of the electrification will come from uncool car like the Leaf or the Bolt, but Tesla made people dream of going electric. Thanks Elon, probably sped up electric adoption by a decade.
But Musk had a vision, and the money, and the motivation to show the world what an electric car could be, at a time when most people's concept of an electric car was something closer to a golf cart than a real automobile.
Speeding things up by a decade sounds about right to me.
I disagree about dieselgate though. Much ado about nothing. There just aren't enough diesel cars in the USA for it to really make a difference. GM destroyed the US consumer interest in diesel cars in the 1970s with their abysmal offerings.
Diesel is king in Europe and that crisis shook the public trust in the technology. So the various other numerous complain about the diesel suddenly became more visible. Diesel-bashing became fashionable and it has had a visible effect on diesel car sales. This drop in popularity lead to various city banning diesel (in the future).
The timing of it all makes me think that Germany saw the Dieselgate as the last drop marking the end of the golden age and rather than wait for the industry to figure it out, they decided to force them forward.
In short, we don't know.
Without Tesla's competition incenting them to compete, we'd be at least 10 years behind.
It reminds me of the stories of the half arsed efforts by American car MFGs to make compact gas economic cars during the 70s gas crisis. They could make them, did they give it a good effort? No, and it took them decades to reorient that ship.
The EV adoption leader, China, was under Tesla's competition pressure. Hmm, don't know why Tesla did not get a AAPL valuation...
As one Tesla executive involved in its design told me, the goal here was not only to minimize the movement of materials like lithium and cobalt but also to shorten the path of every molecule that moves through the plant. “Because the further a molecule needs to travel,” he said, “the more cost gets added into it. We actually think of it in terms of molecular distance.”
It's things like these, where obvious truths are packaged as some sort of insight that really get my goat.
No talk about molecules necessary - just don't do stuff you don't need to do. Sure it takes a lot of planning to achieve but its been a standard concept around getting the job done for, I would say, millennia...
There's a lot of wisdom in the trades! I guess you care more for efficiency when it's your own energy you're spending, instead of some random computer's.
But that is a massive difference from traditional manufacturing and many assembly plants.
So it is an insight in terms of Tesla manufacturing philosophy.
Where do people get this stuff from? Have you ever been in a modern manufacturing facility?
They think they are lean but they are not. Many inefficiencies and waste.
L4, sure, map easy suburban spaces carefully and wake up your driver if things get weird. But L5 is intended to be human-parity, or at least have well-defined boundaries. It can give up and park until the snow stops, but if you're taking out the steering wheel it had better not stop more than humans do - and offer a "chance it anyway" button for if the snow isn't stopping.
I think if the AV part had been cast more clearly into the future, we could have seen more energy and capital behind fixing the EV problems. For instane, we didn't get battery swap. Why? Its obviously the most immediate path to faster charge problems. Relying on future chemistry of batteries to make it possible to fix the charge time problem is praying for rain. Relying on altering out perceptions of what travel time is, by making the stop "fun" is yanking my chain. Making the batteries ephemeral and swapping them out would have made charge delay a non-problem.
EV alters more immediate problems. batteries are more immediately interesting. AV is being tackled in the mining industry and other restricted vehicle contexts.
A recurring overlooked point of EVs: minimal exceptions aside, you begin every day with a full charge, and with 300+ mile batteries you're unlikely to run out most days. You almost never have to "fill up" like with gasoline; a 5 minute gas "recharge" every few days loses to never having to "recharge" at all (park for the night, plug in, charged by morning). In this context, swapping the entire battery seems distressing overkill. Trying to explain this paradigm shift to people who never drove EVs is...difficult.
Taking you at your word, a vehicle capable of battery swap could also charge. It's not either-or. The value of the battery is mutable and would be less than $20k in an economy driven by swaps. But it would be a high value exchange. Bad batteries would have to be driven out of the system because lemons would kill it. It's more than a perception problem,you are right. What's the barrier to AV? Legislative and technology. Big problems, both with long-term high cost shape. Driving the market to EV+AV feels like a bad play. Feels like Newton driving to pass and handwriting recognition and that worked well for pads.. but not for Newton.