Posted on 07/25/2017 12:15:08 AM PDT by aquila48
Many libertarians seem to love to hate Elon Musk these days. His crime is to live off the public purse.
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I have a more complex assessment of Musk as a figure. I enjoyed listening to his 2015 biography by Ashlee Vance. I tend to look for the positive things in people. One positive quality here is the ability to re-envision products from the ground up in a completely different way. The Tesla is not just the evolution of the car, but a completely new way to think about what a car is. A car is a thing with an engine and a drive train, right? True for a century, but not any more. Musk has done in the fields of cars and rockets, what Steve Jobs did for computers and phones, completely re-envisioned what they could be, how they could be built, and how they could be used.
A second quality is execution under very challenging circumstances. Anyone can have big ideas, but only the few are able to successfully execute on them in the "really existing" world. SpaceX's rocket designs and rocket reuse and the Tesla Model S were almost universally deemed impossible — until the job was actually done. Rocket reuse was just a science-fiction fantasy. SpaceX did it. An electric car "that didn't suck" was also an impossibility — until Tesla built the Model S, which has been assessed by multiple car review magazines as basically the best car in the world, bar none, on both safety and performance. It is not only as good as conventional vehicles, it leaves them all behind, not just on green measures, but on car measures as such.
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He has repeatedly staked recklessly large portions of his personal fortune on bridging impossible-looking financial stretches for his enterprises.
(Excerpt) Read more at mises.org ...
Elon Musk is brilliant.
But I’d like him more if he relied less on taxpayer $$$
“I agree that Musk is guilty of actively seeking to gain from state handouts.”
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The rest of the article is a rationalization hamster for Musk being a looter.
Battery cars are not a new idea.
They have never been economically viable.
Elon is exploiting the global warming scare.
That is his “new” idea.
Sorry. This asshat showed his colors after Nov 9th when he stated that he could no longer be on Trump’s board of advisors b/c of (memory fails me here) immigration and Trump’s emergency Presidential Directive.
Quite the collection of idiotic statements in that small part alone.
Electric cars were some of the first ones. They were replaced by IC engines because of limited range, long recharging times, and ease of use.
That and if you do an energy balance, batteries are not a good choice. You loose efficiency changing the energy to electricity, and the charge to output. You can use other sources than liquid fuel, so there is some value in that, but overall it is not efficient.
“Battery cars are not a new idea.
They have never been economically viable.”
The Tesla Model S is just as “economically viable” as a BMW 750i. Both are high performance, four door, luxury sedans that cost around the same new. Both have about the same range on a “full tank”.
The Tesla is quicker, quieter, requires less maintenance, and has room for more cargo.
The same was said of Amazon. Musk isn't building an electric car....he is building an energy infrastructure. The car is just the first piece. Next... energy storage and generation.
But Musk's main contribution to humanity in the long run will be SpaceX and the reusable rocket booster technology.
Ska-rew the batteries.
There is some genius in the electric drive car, but it's surely not the battery packs....it's the electric propulsion...with electric motors replacing the transmission, transfer case, differentials and brakes.
Build a small displacement/HO powerplant and replace most of the batteries with super-capacitors, and you may well have something.
Oh yeah...and make it look HOT!
...and even with heavy federal and state subsidies, Teslas are produced at a loss. BMW’s without those subsidies are produced at a profit. That’s the difference.
It’s ironic that this rich libertarian is a pig lined up at the welfare table.
But Musk’s main contribution to humanity in the long run will be SpaceX and the reusable rocket booster technology.
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Even without the reusability SpaceX rockets are much more affordable. They already dominate the commercial launch market.
The last launch was SpaceX’s heaviest to date. Not only was it already a great price for the customer, but they got a much higher orbit than contracted, a bonus worth millions. Not bad for a satellite that was originally scheduled for the Falcon Heavy.
And to think that if the Russians hadn’t tried to rip him off, Musk may not have started SpaceX.
After that full tank has been used, how long will it take to refill? When will the BMW’s gas tank need to be replaced, if ever?
Amazon never used government $ for it. 20% of Tesla’s revenue comes directly from taxpayers.
Not to mention for every Amazon, there have been 200+ tech startups with negative cash flow that went belly-up.
"Not to mention for every Amazon, there have been 200+ tech startups with negative cash flow that went belly-up.
Like it or not, the US gov't has ALWAYS subsidized projects that were felt to be of benefit to the nation, starting with Lewis and Clark, through the railroads, thru commercial aviation, and on and on.
Some win, some lose. Libertarian purists get their knickers in a knot about it, but it "does" work. To the point that EVERY federal agency that funds R&D must reserve a percentage of their budget (I think 10%) devoted to pure "blue sky" research projects. The benefit of the "wins" has, historically, far outweighed the cost of the "loses".
I was not aware of that...thanks.
There is a deeper possibility that I have never seen pointed out, and that is that the "reusable booster" technology is needed for development of space-based solar power. I don't know if that is Musk's "deep concept", but it sure is a nice tie-in with the Tesla and earth-based energy storage (battery farms).
Without DARPA we wouldn’t be having this conversation right now.
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