Elon Musk and his $55 BILLION dollar gamble

[bloomen]

I wonder what possible use anyone would have for 55 billion dollars. I guess you can send everyone on Earth an Amazon gift card.

Anyway when it comes to Tesla I think many a detractor is underestimating the Apple effect. If you can turn your customers into fanatical zombies as Apple has then your future is unlimited.

There's never really been a car manufacturer that's tapped the brand fanaticism that tech has. Tesla is getting there.

[anonymous-user]

bloomen said:

I wonder what possible use anyone would have for 55 billion dollars. I guess you can send everyone on Earth an Amazon gift card.

Anyway when it comes to Tesla I think many a detractor is underestimating the Apple effect. If you can turn your customers into fanatical zombies as Apple has then your future is unlimited.

There's never really been a car manufacturer that's tapped the brand fanaticism that tech has. Tesla is getting there.

Cars are an essential, when the Model 3 hits the mass market, if the after sales or product quality and reliability isn't there, it will take the company under. There is no place for cool in a mass market essential product that doesn't deliver.

I know what you are saying, but in the car market, you cant get away with it the way you can with relatively low cost low impact tech.

[anonymous-user]

bloomen said:

I wonder what possible use anyone would have for 55 billion dollars. I guess you can send everyone on Earth an Amazon gift card.

Anyway when it comes to Tesla I think many a detractor is underestimating the Apple effect. If you can turn your customers into fanatical zombies as Apple has then your future is unlimited.

There's never really been a car manufacturer that's tapped the brand fanaticism that tech has. Tesla is getting there.

It’s OK to be a ‘fanatical zombie’ with products costing typically a few hundred pounds.

Not so likely when they cost many tens of thousands and, more importantly, an awful lot more than the alternatives.

[RobDickinson]

This deal could see his personal worth at $200 billion dollars.

And today he test fired his privately owned heavy lift rocket, biggest (in real terms) since saturn v.

Like he could give a flying fk what you care about him.

[bloomen]

REALIST123 said:

It’s OK to be a ‘fanatical zombie’ with products costing typically a few hundred pounds.

Not so likely when they cost many tens of thousands and, more importantly, an awful lot more than the alternatives.

Every existing Tesla costs more than the equivalent and is a far less practical proposition for many. There's a charging point near me. I can see the madness in the owners' eyes. If they continue to multiply Tesla has it in the bag.

[anonymous-user]

RobDickinson said:

Like he could give a flying fk what you care about him.

Why do you have to keep putting this kind of comment at the end?

This is a discussion forum, go somewhere else if you don't like seeing other peoples opinions expressed.

[Chainsaw Rebuild]

jsf said:

RobDickinson said:

Like he could give a flying fk what you care about him.

Why do you have to keep putting this kind of comment at the end?

This is a discussion forum, go somewhere else if you don't like seeing other peoples opinions expressed.

Hear hear.

[RobDickinson]

😂 a bunch of no ones crying its all fake, he's accomplished nothing on the day he test fires the falcon heavy.

Doing a pay deal that is actually 100% geared to the companies performance is a confident move and one more ceo's should do rather than getting huge payouts for poor performance

[Cold]

If his pay was subject to Tesla's financial performance up until now he'd owe them money.

[4x4Tyke]

What is laughable is the idiots that think Musk is some sort of genius yet cannot fathom that what makes projects like these success are those faceless scientists and engineering working away in obscurity, not Musk.

All his big ideas actually originated with other people, there are at least a couple of dozen private space companies just getting on with things, and some launching vehicles without resorting to hype. This includes Ariane Space with half of all launches. Hyperloop is a renaming/repackaging of Robert Goddard's vacuum-train concept. You know the NASA scientist engineer that is so successful they named a space port after him, the Goddard Space Center. The Renault-Nissan Alliance is by far the largest manufacturer of EVs.

[eharding]

4x4Tyke said:

What is laughable is the idiots that think Musk is some sort of genius yet cannot fathom that what makes projects like these success are those faceless scientists and engineering working away in obscurity, not Musk.

Undoubtedly SpaceX and Tesla would be nothing without the engineering talent that Musk has assembled and inspired, but do you think that without Musk's vision all of those engineers and scientists would have somehow gathered together by some form of collective osmosis and spontaneously been able to equal the achievements of those two companies?

Difficult to understand some the anti-Musk sentiment here. Is it an electric-car thing, giving rise to some internal combustion inadequacy angst? I've enjoyed high-displacement internal combustion vehicles as much as the next PHer (4 litre Tuscan, 4.5 litre Rangie, 5 litre Griffith, 6 litre Pitts, 9 litre Yak) but the concept of a Telsa S doing 0-60 in 2.3 seconds just leaves me in awe.....and as for Space X - truly astounding.

Edited by eharding on Wednesday 24th January 22:28

[4x4Tyke]

eharding said:

4x4Tyke said:

What is laughable is the idiots that think Musk is some sort of genius yet cannot fathom that what makes projects like these success are those faceless scientists and engineering working away in obscurity, not Musk.

Undoubtedly SpaceX and Tesla would be nothing without the engineering talent that Musk has assembled and inspired, but do you think that without Musk's vision all of those engineers and scientists would have somehow gathered together by some form of collective osmosis and spontaneously been able to equal the achievements of those two companies?

Read the second paragraph, which explains why you are talking nonsense.

[Justices]

I thought it was all primarily to build and charge other companies for the car charging infrastructure? That and battery tech.

Good on him for just going for whatever idea pops into his head and making it into a reality. Build a kit car from scratch, not an easy task. Now think about the sheer scale of what he has achieved with bringing a brand new, innovative car company to the market. Deeply impressive.

Oh and the rockets

[eharding]

4x4Tyke said:

Read the second paragraph, which explains why you are talking nonsense.

What, that there are other companies in the same market with less vision, less energy and less success?

Musk's genius is founded in his ability to inspire and enable brilliant technicians, engineers and scientists.

What do you not understand about that?

[Yipper]

jsf said:

Leithen said:

Visionaries frequently crash and burn. Would we progress so quickly without them? Critics and aholes etc..

What is visionary about Tesla?

Its not a new idea, he has just managed to pursued enough people with money to back his company.

If it crashes and burns that money will be gone with it. If that happens could that money have been better utilised investing in a company that doesn't go tits up but made progress less quickly?

Quite.

There is nothing "visionary" about copying the Chinese and spunking billions of dollars of other people's money up the wall while swanning around acting like Jesus.

Something like 6 of the world's 10 biggest electric vehicle companies are Chinese.

The Musk and Tesla hype is ridiculous.

[eharding]

Yipper said:

The Musk and Tesla hype is ridiculous.

Well, if you wanted a reason why the anti-Musk sentiment is misplaced, there it is.

Having Yipper trying to support your case is like relying on a chlamydia infection as a contraceptive.

[wst]

4x4Tyke said:

What is laughable is the idiots that think Musk is some sort of genius yet cannot fathom that what makes projects like these success are those faceless scientists and engineering working away in obscurity, not Musk.

No-one is saying that LEGO bricks are not fantastically well made, but the person who puts them all together and builds the LEGO Millenium Falcon deserves a bit of credit for the effort. No, it's nothing actually new, but it still took a lot of work to get to this stage.

The pace of development compared to the Scaled Composites / Virgin Galactic effort is quite something to behold as well. I figure a lot of that is due to careful targeting of priorities. Unmanned, SC/VG could have moved a lot faster, I reckon.

[Too Drunk to Funk]

Yipper said:

jsf said:

Leithen said:

Visionaries frequently crash and burn. Would we progress so quickly without them? Critics and aholes etc..

What is visionary about Tesla?

Its not a new idea, he has just managed to pursued enough people with money to back his company.

If it crashes and burns that money will be gone with it. If that happens could that money have been better utilised investing in a company that doesn't go tits up but made progress less quickly?

Quite.

There is nothing "visionary" about copying the Chinese and spunking billions of dollars of other people's money up the wall while swanning around acting like Jesus.

Something like 6 of the world's 10 biggest electric vehicle companies are Chinese.

The Musk and Tesla hype is ridiculous.

The first working EV was built in the States in 1891, New York had electric taxis a few years later. EVs were even quite popular until the 1920s, when the widespread availability of petrol killed the market. What exactly has changed?

It’s a tried and failed technology.

[Too Drunk to Funk]

Leithen said:

Visionaries frequently crash and burn. Would we progress so quickly without them? Critics and aholes etc..

EV dork feels he can insult the non-believers shocka!

[anonymous-user]

Too Drunk to Funk said:

The first working EV was built in the States in 1891, New York had electric taxis a few years later. EVs were even quite popular until the 1920s, when the widespread availability of petrol killed the market. What exactly has changed?

It’s a tried and failed technology.

An EV from today is not simply the same thing as an EV from a century ago. It has evolved and the technology and capability is something else entirely!
I agree that there's a lot of hype involved with Musk, but that's marketing and it's powerful. I also agree there are others out there who are producing more, and in some ways better, EVs but which companies are producing EVs with the same desirability as Tesla? Perhaps once Renault-Nissan do this (Infiniti ,imminent, watch this space) then Tesla will have bigger problems.