How about a sense of proportion?
With due respect for electric cars and their great possible environmental impact, SpaceX is what is important of Musk's projects. It is what might make his name remembered in a few hundred years.
With due respect for electric cars and their great possible environmental impact, SpaceX is what is important of Musk's projects. It is what might make his name remembered in a few hundred years.
Elon's "projects" are all changing the world, while my "projects" have me standing in the middle of Home Depot staring at concrete sealant, dumbfounded as to why one costs 2x the other.
What a depressing dichotomy.
- Very high cost, very low volume car to start off with.
- Moderate cost, moderate volume car (Tesla S).
- Low cost, high volume.
As we can see, they have achieved the first two targets (with surprising success).
If you consider the 'rich people' argument, SpaceX customers are still going to be fewer than Tesla's for the near future at least. (Although, that is not to say the businesses borne from using SpaceX like bringing better satellite based services etc won't affect a LOT of people.)
Also, do you mean worldwide or U.S. consumers in particular?
Low cost and high reliability come from volume production, which creates a chicken and egg problem. Elon started with the very high end, and is working his way down as a method to gradually build volumes and develop experience and technology to eventually build high volume low cost cars for everyone.
Contrast that to the "expensive fat econobox" approaches the other carmakers tried and abandoned.
(Tesla itself is probably headed downmarket as well; the announced strategy has always been to do prestige models first and then ramp up the volume.)
In other words: No, the scenario you describe won't happen.
With electricity, it doesn't matter what the source is. If your electricity comes from wind, solar, hydro, geothermal, nuclear, whatever.. You can generate it where you are. Or you can use local coal/gas/biomass/biogas resources. But electric cars can be run on whatever, while gasoline cars can only run on oil (first generation biofuels used now are now very energy positive, if at all, so they don't count).
I guess a good real-world example of what I'm saying is: Right now, we're not really seeing big crises and wars about electricity, and I expect that it will continue in a similar fashion in the future, with or without EVs on the grid.
Solar panels seem to keep getting cheaper; distribution via the power grid does not. This may lead to property owners with enough land eventually finding an economic incentive to get most of their power from solar panels on their land instead of using the grid.
Hopefully, this will lead to a bit less violence over fuels.
Of course, its also likely that starting fewer wars would lead to a more stable world and fewer problems with the oil supply. But that would not allow conquest and ego and the sale of hundreds of billions of dollars of armaments.
To drastically lower the costs of space launch so that Mars(!) expeditions can be done by "just" billionaires is new. Just add what is happening in drones and the solar system will finally be ours.
[Edit: If it isn't clear:
Electric cars seems to obviously be arriving, if two conditions are fulfilled: (a) better batteries (metal-air, etc) and (b) that solar cell costs continue go down and/or more nuclear power. The time has come, it is so simple...
People have been talking for at least four decades about lowering launch costs, but it has gotten nowhere. Maybe that time has come now, when NASA doesn't have a shuttle to protect and hence no motivation to knife all competition in the cradle by their political clout? Maybe, I just note that this dream finally is successful.]
Spaceflight is immensely cool. Much cooler than cars. But cars had a much bigger impact on humanity than spaceflight. I would predict that trend will continue for quite a few decades.
I did not mention "cool", I mentioned lower launch prices. That is more important.
The usual argument, since decades, is that with low launch costs, there will be new use cases and new markets -- the first private projects has been announced for mining and detecting "dinosaur killers", etc.
(I am not certain if I'm trolled here. Or if I was unclear in the GP?)
If everything he plans works out (and I hope it does) it will be very important and very cool – but cars are the much more pressing issue. Put another way: there is much more potential for doing good there.
If you wanted to do a serious counter arguments, you'd have asked for sources, or something. You're a troll using a new account. Good bye.
I’m also not sure why making electric cars work in the market is any more obvious than slightly cheaper space launch vehicles.
For decades people said they can make electric cars work in the market. They couldn’t. Maybe Musk will.
For decades people said that space launch costs will decrease. They didn’t. Maybe Musk will.
The difference between those two isn’t so big and transportation has the bigger immediate impact on humanity. I mean, both SpaceX and Tesla have many competitors.
(I’m also not sure what sources can tell you here. Comparing two so completely different things is a bit of a fool’s errand, a single source will hardly be valuable. You would have to cleverly combine date to make this somehow work – and much of this is open to interpretation.)