Elon Musk’s New Boring Co. Faced Questions Over SpaceX Financial Ties
wsj.com
wsj.com
This is sketchy fiduciary duty. Right up there when he bailed out his brother's SolarCity by having Tesla buy it because every car manufacture needs to get into the rooftop solar business.
That's why it's been so important to him to keep his boards stocked with friends and family--an actual corporate board of directors would have sent him to the curb long ago.
I didn't hear of any cave in, and googling results in nothing. Care to explain what you're talking about?
Presumably everything else is on track, but when it comes to geotechnical engineering, stabilizing earth is challenging, and the engineers appear to want to wait more than 3 or 4 days after the cave-in to see if their method of stabilization (whether they used these neat ground screws, thicker walls, or a pairing) is stable and ready for non-employees to be near.
That article mentions absolutely nothing about a cave in. I wasn't disputing the delay thing (definitely an issue with any project of Musk's), but claiming that there was a cave in requires a legitimate source.
Why is there a cult following when fraud and employee abuse is common?
From cameos in movies and tv shows to projects like SpaceX that were created solely to boost his "genius" image, Musk (or his publicists) have done everything to make him seem like a superhuman.
Musk can present an image of a successful multiple entrepreneur who is working towards a vision that many support arrayed against a forces of Big Bad Incumbents who would rather squash him than compete fairly. Thus he is responsible for all the good things, and the bad things are just smear campaigns that should be ignored.
Essentially, it's the same force that fuels the rise of people like Trump, just applied to a different part of the political spectrum.
All in all, Musk's companies have an above-average incidence of ethics- and truth-related issues.
https://techcrunch.com/2018/04/16/elon-musks-boring-co-raise...
https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1737630/000173763018...
See also https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2018-rich-new-zealand-doo...
What do they think The Boring Company is really for? And Tesla, and Solar City for that matter.
Perhaps if they aren’t smart enough to connect the dots they aren’t smart enough to be investing in high risk private companies.
If they are investing one companies resources they expect equity or payment, regardless of if the tunnels are useful for Mars.
Uh huh. Sure it is. That would explain why Solar City has thus far failed to account for the significantly reduced amount of solar energy that reaches Mars. Solar cells can't charge EVs fast enough on Earth. With the same panel area, it would take most of a Martian year to charge a single EV on Mars.
But as with the hyperloop, Musk has done a great job of getting people to fall for his half-assed fantasies. Somehow though, whenever you actually try to look into his ideas with more scrutiny, they always fall apart like a house of cards.
What are you talking about? Solar can charge an electric car just fine. Take desired charge rate in kW, divide by nameplate power output of panel, and that's how many panels you need. If you live somewhere with constraints on solar input (eg reduction due to clouds, distance from sun, or night) then you can increase the panel amount, maybe add some stationary batteries to timeshift the input.
Edit: not meant as a personal attack at all, but noticed your other comments around the thread are loose enough with the facts. Musk could learn a thing or two :)
There have been [...] quite a few articles about Boring Co's liberties with the truth and its outright lies to the people in the neighborhood where the tunnel is being built - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18704761
I thought this was, itself, misleading - I follow the Boring Co pretty closely, and I only saw one negative article re: the local neighbourhood around the test tunnel - and said article was mostly raising the plight of the locals with the airport/highway/industrial activity in the area. The Boring Company was only attacked as a bit of a bogeyman.
Combine that with this sentence in their original post, which I did already call out for being flagrantly misleading:
Solar cells can't charge EVs fast enough on Earth. With the same panel area, it would take most of a Martian year to charge a single EV on Mars
The only way I can see that being true is if it's talking only about solar cells on the roof of the vehicle (which no one technically minded should expect to power a car).
From a pro-Tesla site. It would take 75 solar panels to charge a single Tesla in a day. Max theoretical efficiency on Mars is roughly 1/15th of Earth norm, not taking into account Martian weather, and assuming you are always somehow directly facing the sun the entire Martian day. Take weather and the day-night cycle into account, and it takes about a Martian year to charge one Tesla.
Google is your friend. A single search on Boring Co shows at least a dozen articles about their misrepresentative claims, so I assume the Google personalization filter is effecting both of our search results.
"It would take 75 solar panels to charge a single Tesla in a day."
So indeed, you can charge EVs with solar panels, you just need more. 75x250W panels can charge a 75kWh model S in one day, on average (equals 135000km/year). Such panels are available at consumer prices of $1/watt including charge controller, so ~$20,000 would buy me the panels I need to fully charge my car daily (4 times as much as I need).
Max theoretical efficiency on Mars is roughly 1/15th of Earth norm, not taking into account Martian weather, and assuming you are always somehow directly facing the sun the entire Martian day.
These variables (martian weather, facing the sun) are similar to the issues faced on earth with solar panels. And the solutions are the same on mars as on earth: increase panels (aka overprovide) and include power storage, or include an alternate power generation system. Ideally both. Where the weather can have longer impacts (eg dust storms), an alternative power gen system (i.e. nuclear) is likely better from a launch mass point of view, but that isn't clear without doing the detailed math on it. That's before even getting into details on how different a vehicle on another planetary body would be (eg the lunar rovers had an 8.5kWh batteries and lasted multiple days - lack of atmosphere and lower speeds and mass make a car much more efficient)
Take weather and the day-night cycle into account, and it takes about a Martian year to charge one Tesla.
(or half a year if you double the panels, or a day if you have 365x the number of panels, or....)
A single search on Boring Co shows at least a dozen articles about their misrepresentative claims
If by "misrepresentative claims" you mean missed deadlines and abandoned ideas - I'd agree with that. Tunnel opening delayed, further extension of test tunnel dropped in favour of full network at undefined future date. But that's par for the course with everything SpaceX has done (eg Falcon Heavy delayed 6 years, Dragon Crew delayed years, BFR changing plans every time it's talked about), and shouldn't be even a bit of a surprise for anyone who follows Musk. As a member of the public who couldn't invest in SpaceX or the Boring Co even if I want to, those things really don't affect me in any way - the goals remain the same, and the progress remains ...progressive.
I assume the Google personalization filter is effecting both of our search results.
Agreed.
At an average size of 65x39 inches, 75 panels is more panels than most residential properties can fit; you would either need a mansion or a commercial-sized property. I should have been clearer on this, but assuming the number of panels that the average house can support (5-10), you're looking at a week or two to charge an EV by solar panel at the typical Southwest residence (longer, outside of the Southwest). Assuming the same solar panel area on Mars gets you to the Martian year.
As for Boring Co, I'm not referring to the missed deadlines, but to their claims that they wouldn't be tunneling under people's properties, and that it wasn't a backdoor attempt to avoid environmental review, and their liberties with capacity numbers, costs, and numerous other claims they've made in their short corporate lifespan.