Elon Musk Fireside Chat Video
spaceindustrynews.com
spaceindustrynews.com
And the douchebag remark was directed at Eberhard? No, it was Randall Stross. http://techcrunch.com/2009/04/10/teslas-elon-musk-grows-a-pa...
Thiel and he riding in an F1? I thought it only had one seat. No, three seats: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mclaren_f1
I loved Elon's response to it though. It sounded a bit like he was implying that he doesn't mind running public companies because he doesn't cook his books in the first place.
Can't wait...
I think that's important to keep in mind if you want to belittle guys building Web 2.0 apps like Flipboard, reddit, ect.
But I still wish more smart and driven people did more important things than photo-sharing apps. It might be impossible to jump directly into capital-intensive industries unless you can join an existing startup (go work for someone like Musk?), but there are also lots of non-capital intensive ways to do very important things that would move our civilization forward more rapidly than one more Web 2.0 company. Same for all the brainiacs who go into investment banking rather than in engineering or biology or whatever. Totally up to them, but it doesn't change the end result.
Yesterday, at the doctor's office, there was a young kid there (college age). He was writing out a receipt for my copay. He had a hard time spelling out "fifteen", and wrote "fifthteen" after several attempts. Yes, English was his first language. And the fact that he's working in the doc's office means he must be at least average.
What I think would be more beneficial would be not only healthcare - but the health insurance market.
We need to commoditize hospital services while paying a great wage to nursing and physician staff and make for an easy payment protection plan.
This was ostensibly the basis for the health ins industry - but when they realized they could easily get evil/greedy they farked everyone.
The better model would be ubiquitous clinics with hospital services deployed via low-cost modular modality units. Think "MRI in a shipping crate" "OR in a shipping crate" "Davinci OR in a shipping crate with recovery attached - lower cost nursing staff on-site but the actual surgeon is remote from their home in Boston/SF/Dallas"
You build these modality modules like legos. You then take these legos and deploy them to places like walmart, target and malls.
You pay a set scale for physicians and offer STOCK and recruit med staff students to be lead by higher paid leaders who are the first generations mentors.
You then provide an insurance plan through this service that is a set stepped payment scale based on income that is much more competitive than modern insurance.
You have a fixed fee, transparent schedule of services.
So, you have a known cost for the modules. You have a set fee schedule, pay schedule and premiums schedule.
Make all this COMPLETELY transparent and partner with walmart, target and other entities to place these modular, full service, clinics.
The common questions that will come up will be: how do you provide ICU, ER, Acute etc.. care.
These services could be provided - but the truth is that this overall model is needed to disrupt the current failure of the US health system.
We are building multi-billion-dollar hospitals EVERYEWHERE - but have you seen a reduction in cost of services ANYEWHERE?
There is a clear way to disrupt US health, but it takes a multi billion dollar commitment over 10 years.
This is the type of problem Elon is perfect to get moving...
(Disclaimer: I design hospital systems, consult on healthcare operations for opening these new facilities and do technology consulting for the design of very large hospital networks - although at the very moment I am focusing on enterprise infrastructure consulting.)
That was raised in the questions. Mr Musk basically said that Sebastian Thrun and Sal Khan are doing the right thing for education already.
Also think his dismissal of fuel cells is a bit disingenuous - Nissan apparently have them down to $50/kW (volume production estimate) which, given the low cost of energy storage ($/kWh), means they could be entirely viable at least as a range extension option.
But still, overall, admire the hell out of the guy. Legend.
When he says there's a physics problem with fuel cells he's not being flippant. They're less efficient than batteries, have lower volumetric power density, and cars using off-the-shelf batteries already match the range of gasoline cars (so there's no energy density problem to solve). The only problem with batteries currently is cost, and fuel cells are no help there.
Pretty much the only attractive thing about fuel cells is that they can run on energy-dense liquid fuels like methanol, which can do greater power fluxes than last-mile grid. But battery swaps are even better. Ultimately, lithium and gasoline have about the same energy density, methanol half as much, and compressed hydrogen about 1/10 as much. And there are good reasons why hydride storage is unlikely to become practical in cars any time soon.