When I look at this, I cannot how complicated it must be to build a world class automobile. Its all the more impressive that this is the first ground up(vs the roadster being an electric Lotus) car from a start up. Impressive indeed!
Both SpaceX and Tesla are largely built on skimming the superstars out of the entrenched players. There are plenty of people that are really really good at their jobs at Boeing, Lockheed, Ford, General Dynamicsm, etc. They are generally underpaid, undervalued, and given little freedom relative to their skillset. But they stick around in those companies because that's where you have to be in order to work on really cool stuff like the Ford GT 40 or a space rocket.
Tesla and SpaceX offer the same cool stuff to work on, without the crappy low-value coworkers that never get fired, legacy systems holding you back, and the opportunity to do things as you believe they should be done.
This is part of why the old companies will have a hard time noncompeting. Not only are SpaceX and Tesla disrupting their business, but Elon Musk is stealing from their top tier talent pool that could defend against disruption.
1) Spend 6 years at an insanely high burn rate with zero revenue for research and development to create a marketable car
2) Have enough brand loyalty to delay delivery to your high-earning clientele multiple times
3) Hustle Daimler into investing to do payroll at the height of the financial crisis, with Daimler themselves having no money
4) Hustle the DOE into funding your fully electric sedan while having only a taped together basic model to show for it, with your competition (Toyota) being granted billions just to refit a factory
Step 2: Remove all barriers stopping them from being awesome at what they do. Pay them well. Appreciate them.
Step 3: Profit
I wish them well, but the "profit" part still remains to be seen for both SpaceX and Tesla Motors.
When I worked for Ford, I would overhear conversations like this:
Manager: Customers are complaining, the pedal is to hard to press on the Town Car.
Engineer: The pedal is too fucking soft as is. If we make it any softer, people won't know if they are even pressing it.
Manager: Just make it softer. It is showing up as a problem on the TGW report.
Or Sindelfingen, hopefully.
I suppose this must be what owning a car in California is like.
Maybe when 3D printers get better...
What you see in the hobbyist 3d printing world is about 10-15 years behind the commercial world.