Musk makes Jobs and Gates look like under-achievers.
The staff at Spacex impress the hell out of me. Likewise at Apple. Sure, Jobs, Musk, et al are catelising figures, but please ...
I don't know how many people have this skill, and you first require to have a ton of capital at hand to make use of it, but of the people in the world who have that capital this skill seems rather rare.
The leaders at the top of these companies get way too much credit for "having the vision". The vision too mostly likely came from many individuals who are not in the limelight and don't have the connections nor the cash.
Musk otherwise comes across as vulgar and insecure.
Look, we all know Musk and other CEOs didn’t invent these products/ideas on their own but storytelling is a big part of leadership.
> Tesla cars -- truly helping humanity move from fossil fuels
It would be much more effective to use bicycle and trains wherever possible, and drive small cars otherwise. But wait ... that's not luxurious enough. Saving the world is just an excuse for cool cars.
> and now StarLink
... to make the last corner of the world addicted to the internet and pay money to Musk.
The development costs for Falcon 9 v1.0 were approximately US$300 million, and NASA verified those costs. If some of the Falcon 1 development costs were included, since F1 development did contribute to Falcon 9 to some extent, then the total might be considered as high as US$390 million.[14][2]
NASA also evaluated Falcon 9 development costs using the NASA‐Air Force Cost Model (NAFCOM)—a traditional cost-plus contract approach for US civilian and military space procurement—at US$$3.6 billion based on a NASA environment/culture, or US$$1.6 billion using a more commercial approach.[15][14]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falcon_9_v1.0
Cited from https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/files/Section403(b)...
Most space startups died without ever reaching orbit. One of the reasons why SpaceX has such a reputation is precisely that it stands so far apart from its competition.
We'd be waiting another 10 years for what we have today.
Thats just plain wrong
I mean...it's hard to prove a negative, but just to mention one of the tens of critical moments along the way, I have a hard time seeing how someone less ruthless than Musk would have saved them from bankruptcy in 2008.
Another obvious juncture was the whole thing about building a battery factory costing more than the company's market cap a few years prior, doubling the world's battery production capacity...
Musk simply led all funding rounds up to series C, was employee number 4, chairman of the board and took an extremely active role in the company before becoming the CEO. He and the first five employees are "co-founders" agreed to in court by Eberhard which is the one of the guys you are talking about.
A lawsuit settlement agreed to by Eberhard and Tesla in September 2009 allows all five (Eberhard, Tarpenning, Wright, Musk and Straubel) to call themselves co-founders.[11]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Tesla,_Inc.#The_beg...
I absolutely agree he has been instrumental to Tesla’s success since he joined as employee number 4 and then took over, but he didn’t start the company and the statement that nobody was interested in or working on electric cars is factually untrue though nobody else managed to bring them to the mass market before Musk.
Do you think Tesla would be where it's at today if Musk didn't get involved? How many times did Tesla almost die?
If you need to me to clarify it: the scale and rate of progress in EV was severely accelerated by Tesla. ICE auto companies had no incentive to develop electric. The space was unprofitable, had many technical challenges.
At least Biden seems to be a supporter of the railway. But it could go faster if you'd build tracks instead of tunnels with Teslas.