If you don't see a post about other rich people using jets to travel, you could be the first to be the change you criticize others off not being.
What good has he actually done?
Tesla was never founded by him, nor has Tesla been the driving force of adaptation of the ev, since the industry has been having its ups and downs for over 100 years.
He has hyped up evs for sure, that he deserves all the credit for.
My point with "founding" was that a common rebuttal is "Tesla was founded by Elon, he sacrificed so much for EVs!", when in reality the foundation of Tesla was already built and Elon instead did a take over.
It's similar to how people see Bill Gates or Steve Jobs as the "fathers of computing" while in reality they impacted the industry in profound ways, yes, but never would they eclipse the entire industry.
That is wildly incorrect, or at least is inconsistent with the consensus opinion of Wikipedia. Martin and Marc had done zero design or engineering work prior to Elon Musk's involvement. All they had was notions of commercialising work already done by other people — namely AC Propulsion with their tzero prototype — something which Musk also wanted to do. In fact this parallel interest was what connected Musk with Tesla in the first place.[0]
Musk was the first and most significant investor in Tesla, which is to say that it was his personal wealth which allowed a functioning company called Tesla to exist in the first place. In its formative years, Musk continued to pour more of his personal wealth in to stave off Tesla's bankruptcy.[1]
While Musk wasn't involved in the day-to-day running of the company until around 2008, he had some involvement in engineering work from the earliest moments that the company started doing any engineering work.[1]
> It's similar to how people see Bill Gates or Steve Jobs as the "fathers of computing"
I think it would be reasonable to describe Gates and Jobs as the "fathers of personal computing". It's an apt metaphor when one considers the relative involvement of a biological mother and biological father in the formation of a new human person.
Other than as a straw man constructed by detractors, nobody claims that Gates, Jobs or Musk did anything of significance single-handedly. But to the extent that any one person can possibly impact an industry such labels are reasonably applied to persons like Gates, Jobs and Musk.
I appreciate that it's easy to overstate the role of inspired leadership, but it has become very fashionable to understate it. Yes, Apple had many incredible engineers. Without the return of Jobs to Apple, would those brilliant engineers have done anything like the iPod? More likely they would have executed with technical excellence on a new Apple LaserWriter printer motherboard or another iteration of the Newton MessagePad.
Everyone stands on the shoulders of giants. Did Jobs personally make the iPod? No. Did the skilled engineers at Apple make the iPod? Well, they didn't make micro hard disks, LCD screens, invent semiconductor photolithography or develop the MP3 audio codec either... What we can say for sure is that the iPod wouldn't have existed in 2001 without Jobs' vision and execution.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AC_Propulsion_tzero#Lithium-io...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Tesla,_Inc.#The_beg...
Literally the most important part, proving they were sufficiently advanced that governments could confidently begin phasing in bans of new combustion vehicle sales, dragging legacy auto to EVs as well. Who cares who the founder is? And what about JB!?
Something that has been in the making as I said, over 100 years for EVs.
Elon has done the advertisement part, but he's only 1 person not an entire industry.
Who cares if tesla was founded by someone else, he saw potential and executed the growth to what it is today. Tesla is also just one of the several great companies he has founded or been an early part of that does amazing things.
What companies have you been a key player in that has made great technical progress or reduced our environmental impact? Stop the hate man, be mature.