
To Elon Musk and the Model S: Congratulations  - suprgeek
http://blogs.wsj.com/drivers-seat/2012/06/29/to-elon-musk-and-the-model-s-congratulations/
======
nkoren
Footnote, not mentioned in the story: Elon Musk tweets that he'll donate the
$1M to Doctors Without Borders in any case, as though he'd lost the bet:

<https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/218897974242181121>

100%. Class. Act.

~~~
Nevaeh
In addition, Elon said that he had already committed in his will to give away
most of his fortune to charity. <http://i.imgur.com/Mnk7U.jpg>

Elon also experienced near-death back in 2000 during a visit to South Africa.
He almost died from cerebral malaria. (According to an interview) He tweeted
about it here: <https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/152394000857448448>

~~~
mapleoin
_In addition, Elon said that he had already committed in his will to give away
most of his fortune to charity._

Is donating your fortune to charity in your will really altruistic? You're
just giving away something you would no longer need, something which you
wouldn't be able to use in any way after you're dead.

On the other hand, by writing that will now, you get to feel damn good about
yourself and also have a lot of people praise you.

I think the people volunteering their life and their youth for an NGO and
going to work with people in need NOW are the ones who deserve praise, not
billionaires who are pledging to helping the poor without risking anything. I
wish I could be one of the former, yet our society always encourages and
rewards the latter.

NB. I'm not arguing against Ellon Musk, I'm arguing against the way you
phrased that sentence, and what people are sometimes mislead into viewing as a
great deeds. See also Orwell's _Burmese days_.

~~~
Nate75Sanders
Relatively speaking, it is. He could instead use it to have lots of progeny
and make sure they'll be in a great financial position to pass on his genes.

~~~
JanezStupar
I think hes still doing pretty well on both counts.

------
ck2
Now if Top Gear just gives it an honest review and doesn't go for the
entertainment cheap shot of pretending it runs out of power and pushing it
down the road.

I look forward to buying my first used electric car in five to eight years.
Probably a Leaf. Should be lots of hobbyists at that point rebuilding their
own battery packs by hand.

~~~
ams6110
The Top Gear review was somewhat staged for effect, but did point out a real
shortcoming with the vehicle.

Top Gear reviews hardly make a difference anyway, I think anyone who has
watched even a few episodes knows they exaggerate negatives for entertainment
value almost constantly; the Tesla was hardly their only "victim" in this
regard.

~~~
sambe
Top Gear is highly influential both in terms of viewing figures and general
perception. Of all the people I know who saw the episode, they all had genuine
reservations and believed it to be about accurate journalism, not comedy.

Second, as another reply points out, they did not really point out genuine
shortcomings but rather fabricated events and used strawmen. If you analyse
existing usage of sports cars, you will probably find the vast majority are
used for short and medium distance driving on the road, not cross-continent or
highly intensive race track driving. Hence the design and marketing of the
Tesla.

~~~
anothermachine
If they take Top Gear seriously, the people you know surely are not
intelligent enough to amass the resources to by a Tesla roadster.

~~~
jomohke
It's not a matter of intelligence. It may be a comedy, but most of their
reviews are grounded in some level of truth, and for many people the segment
will have been their only exposure to electric vehicles.

~~~
aggie
Not to mention they pulled the same "joke" when reviewing the Nissan Leaf.

------
cheez
Wait. So you mean the guy started PayPal, SpaceX AND Tesla.

Mother of god.

What have I been doing with my life.

~~~
prawn
Could he be a chance at Person of the Year?

~~~
mcdowall
Century more like!

------
Flemlord
Is anybody in LA test driving the Model S this weekend? How did it go?

------
jeffool
Has Elon ever talked about space in the mid-range future? Ten, twenty, thirty
years from now? It's easy to talk about plans they already have for next year,
or hopes we all have for a thousand years for now, but I'd like to hear
someone knowledgeable about the time between point A and B.

I don't need nuanced predictions, just reasonable conjecture.

~~~
waterlesscloud
His 10-20 year timeline is a man on Mars.

I haven't seen the actual roadmap for that anywhere, but I wouldn't be shocked
to learn he has one.

[http://news.discovery.com/space/spacex-elon-musk-mars-
astron...](http://news.discovery.com/space/spacex-elon-musk-mars-
astronauts-20-years-110423.html)

------
MikeCapone
Here is a compilation of "first drive" videos of the Model S, as well as a
list of initial review articles:

[http://www.treehugger.com/cars/jurys-tesla-model-s-
rocks.htm...](http://www.treehugger.com/cars/jurys-tesla-model-s-rocks.html)

------
antonioevans
Can't wait to do a test drive of the car.

~~~
rdl
I don't really even feel a need to test drive it first. I'm just waiting until
I have a place to charge it and my current car dies.

~~~
listic
I wonder, what fraction of households in the US has the electric power
necessary to charge an electric car?

~~~
MikeCapone
240 volt at 40 amps is the same as an electric oven, so I'd say almost all of
them.

~~~
protomyth
The bigger barrier is people living in apartments.

~~~
HeyLaughingBoy
Hardly a problem. As soon as there is demand, apartment buildings will start
offering power outlets along with parking spaces.

Don't live in a building with onsite parking? Parking lots offering charging
spaces will begin to spring up. That's the nice thing about capitalism: if
there's an opportunity to make a buck, someone will jump on it.

~~~
listic
They expect to sell 20,000 cars (Model S) in 2013:
[http://www.detroitnews.com/article/20120509/AUTO0104/2050904...](http://www.detroitnews.com/article/20120509/AUTO0104/205090454/1148/rss25)

It could take quite some time until market demand for power outlets will
become significant.

------
SeoxyS
"It’s better for journalists to write about the story than to somehow become
part of the story."

And yet, this is at the top of Hacker News.

------
dos1
Everything I've read about Elon Musk recently has really made me root for the
guy. He is disrupting two _very_ difficult industries.

This was posted on HN a few months ago, but I really thought this interview
with him was exceptional:
<http://www.wired.com/science/space/news/2008/08/musk_qa>

What's most impressive to me is that this interview was almost 4 years ago,
and he's done exactly as he said. He's focused on results and he's spending
his considerable capital on things likely to make an impact on the world, not
on frivolous applications like social networks.

~~~
vannevar
I'd really like to know how he's doing it. Is it because he's personally a
brilliant engineer, micromanaging the projects to success? Or does he have an
eye for great talent, able to rapidly put together highly productive teams? Or
is he so motivational that he can take ordinary engineers and inspire them to
do extraordinary things? The stuff they're doing is _hard_. A lot of very
talented people have failed in the space and automotive businesses. To succeed
in both to the degree he has is mind-boggling. Tesla and SpaceX still have a
long way to go, but where they've been in a few short years is remarkable.

~~~
bfe
He's extremely smart and extremely hard-working; he has personally,
aggressively recruited others whom he's identified as the key people he wants
working for him, and by all accounts he inspires them to work as hard as him;
he's trained himself into deep domain expertise in both rockets and electric
cars and serves as the chief designing engineer of his companies' products;
but maybe most important, he has really extreme determination. Consider this
exchange after SpaceX had lost its first three launches in a row:

Wired.com: At the end of the day you're still zero for three; you have so far
failed to put a rocket into orbit.

Musk: We haven't gotten into orbit, true, but we've made considerable
progress. If it's an all-or-nothing proposition then we've failed. But it's
not all or nothing. We must get to orbit eventually, and we will. It might
take us one, two or three more tries, but we will. We will make it work.

Wired.com: How do you maintain your optimism?

Musk: Do I sound optimistic?

Wired.com: Yeah, you always do.

Musk: Optimism, pessimism, fuck that; we're going to make it happen. As God is
my bloody witness, I'm hell-bent on making it work.

<http://www.wired.com/science/space/news/2008/08/musk_qa>

Compare Paul Graham:

"I now have enough experience with startups to be able to say what the most
important quality is in a startup founder, and it's not what you might think.
The most important quality in a startup founder is determination. Not
intelligence-- determination."

<http://paulgraham.com/startuplessons.html>

~~~
Heinleinian
There's another key here: both those industries were calcified with few
innovators, so they had large latent pools of super-talented people that had
been previously under-utilized.

By offering a compelling vision, Elon has sucked up much of the top talent in
the space industry who had just been waiting for someone to come along with an
uber-cool program for them to work on. His vision is so cool, in fact, that
they are willing to work for much lower wages than they would make at a big
defense contractor.

Similarly with Tesla, there was a large pool of talented engineers who are
passionate about electric cars, who had just been waiting for the right
company to come along and rescue them from dead-end projects at the big car
companies.

~~~
tryitnow
Honestly, this is by far the best explanation of Musk's success I've seen.
Target calcified industries where great talent is under utilized.

~~~
gwillen
Could he target healthcare next? :-\

Seriously -- it's not glamorous but it could really use an innovator.

(Then again, who would have said an electric car could be glamorous?)

~~~
Nevaeh
Very unlikely according to what Elon said in an interview: Source:
[http://www.gq.com/news-politics/newsmakers/200901/elon-
musk-...](http://www.gq.com/news-politics/newsmakers/200901/elon-musk-paypal-
solar-power-electric-cars-space-travel)

\----------------------------------------------------

Elon: "It's important enough to be on the scale of life itself, and therefore
goes beyond the parochial concerns of humanity," Musk says of our
interplanetary destiny. "We're all focused on our little things that are of
concern to humanity itself. People think of curing AIDS or cancer as being
very important, and they are—within the context of humanity. But curing all
forms of cancer would improve the average life span by only two to three
years. That's it."

"In other words, while eradicating disease is a worthy pursuit, and would
extend the lives of individual human beings, my life's work is extending the
life span of life itself."

\----------------------------------------------------

Elon did talk about some projects he would like to do if he had the time.
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5FESP1h7IZM>

1\. VTOL supersonic electric jet: fast, quiet, low-cost to operate (what he
jokingly referred to in Iron Man 2, IIRC)

2\. Prefabricated metal sections for creating a double-decker/box highway,
that could be﻿ dropped in place like a lego system with minimal disruption to
traffic.

3\. Fusion problem, magnetically-confined fusion, gets easier as you scale it
up.

~~~
snowwindwaves
People of all ages get cancer, including children.

~~~
Nevaeh
Yes.. it was interesting to hear that coming from someone who has 5 kids:
[http://www.forbes.com/pictures/mkm45fjlie/elon-
musk-10/#gall...](http://www.forbes.com/pictures/mkm45fjlie/elon-
musk-10/#gallerycontent)

------
berntb
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.

~~~
powerslave12r
I think both projects are equally important. Arguably, Tesla might be even
more important considering it will affect far more people much sooner.

~~~
ams6110
The Tesla is still an impractical car for 90% or more of average consumers.
It's still mostly a rich person's toy/fashion statement. That's OK though, if
it eventually leads to something that is practical and affordable.

~~~
paulsutter
The original Tesla was only practical for 1% of consumers. If the Model S is
practical for 10%, that's real progress.

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.

~~~
anothermachine
At $50,000 base price, we're not at 10% yet. But yes, progress.

------
mratzloff
Musk seems like a great guy, but a comparable bet for the journalist would
have been closer to $50. $1 million is just not that much to a man worth $20
billion.

~~~
AVTizzle
Where'd you get $20 Billion?

~~~
mratzloff
Whoops, should be $2 billion. Too many zeroes, misread.

