
Elon Musk Calls Transit Expert 'An Idiot' and Says Public Transport 'Sucks' - SirLJ
http://fortune.com/2017/12/16/elon-musk-public-transport/
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bkor
"Fake News"

[https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/941496174208466944](https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/941496174208466944)

Elon: "This depressingly misleading & misanthropic article came from a very
brief digression at an AI conf, not from an interview with Wired as is falsely
implied. This is why I stopped following Wired long ago. There are way better
tech pubs out there."

Wired: "To correct the record, the article does not imply Musk made these
comments in a WIRED interview. It states: "he said onstage at a Tesla event on
the sidelines of the Neural Information Processing Systems Conference in Long
Beach, California, in response to an audience question""

Elon: "Good point. It’s just a really bad and fundamentally misleading article
that doesn’t actually represent my point of view at all. Other publications
referred to it as an “interview”."

~~~
tom_mellior
So the "fake news" is the "interview" part, but he _did_ make the comments in
public?

~~~
bkor
> that doesn’t actually represent my point of view at all

I'm guessing he made a brief remark that was changed into an entire article.
If it was an interview he could've explained exactly what he meant.

He further mentions: "that doesn’t actually represent my point of view at all"

So it's not just about not being an interview, it's also about the content of
the article.

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cousin_it
I'm very happy to live in Zurich where most people ride trams, bike, or walk.
To me a good city should feel like a place to mingle, not zoom around in
personal capsules.

(No, it's not exclusive to rich countries. Before Zurich I lived in Moscow and
used public transit daily for two decades. Loved it too.)

~~~
CaptainZapp
I aslo live in Zurich and totally agree.

And yes, it's not exclusive to rich countries. I can also think of Prague,
which has magnificent public transport with a subway rolling in every 90
seconds in peak time.

Buses and trams are less frequent (especially on weekends) but get you to just
about everywhere you want to go.

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dpark
Well, public transit _does_ suck. The alternatives just happen to also suck.

Waiting on a bus in the rain is a pretty terrible way to spend time.
Transferring buses and turning a 45 minute drive into an hour and a half trip
is miserable. Driving in stop and go traffic for 45 minutes is also a pretty
terrible way to spend time. Having no transit would be even worse than either
of these.

There really is no transit option in cities that doesn’t suck if you aren’t in
easy walking distance of your destination (or maybe easy walking distance on
each side of a direct bus/subway). Self-driving cars would be great, but only
for those who can afford them. And they still have all the negative
externalities of cars.

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vuldin
I stopped following Musk after he made this childish remark. Glad to see it's
getting noticed more widely.

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rdiddly
Turns out lucking into a fortune doesn't magically make you an expert in
everything, who knew?

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chmaynard
Elon, raise your hands and back away from the keyboard. No one has to get
hurt.

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bvinc
Twitter is a cesspool.

~~~
swarnie_
Isn't it mainly bots, social media interns and marketing execs? all talking to
each other?

Oh and Trump...

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amaajemyfren
Elon is very tough on Public Transport no?

