They could also have jumped in with the Supercharger network and profited from the global network that Tesla is building.

Well, lets see how they recover, by now Tesla is way ahead.

This. I sometimes wonder if I'm the only one to notice that villains in popular movies/TV shows increasingly present reasonable positions (even if crooked methods), while it's the protagonists who seem to live by simplistic, populistic, feelings-based morality.

Model 3 production is way behind and currently does not look like it progressing. Musk is blaming Panasonic on the problems with batteries, while reports from the Model 3 factory tell about a lot of manual work.

So yes it is easier to announce a Pickup some years ahead than fix Model 3 production.

Why does it "not matter" since we can't land on them in our lifetimes? It's still interesting.

Personally, I have little interest in driving 600+ miles per day making fast charging minimally useful.

The question is not "whether" but "when."

How is Tesla's supposed claim they solved electrical driving misleading?

Sounds like Google, Microsoft, and pretty much every tech startup between Palo Alto and Vancouver.

The difference is that Musk actually does something. Creates something. 90% of the other "tech" companies are just shoving around bits of other people's information and calling it innovation.

Edit: just to show what I'm talking about, here's what plugshare.com shows for CCS chargers in the middle of the US:

http://mikeash.com/tmp/screenshot_F67FD9DD-D048-43EC-8DDF-9E...

That gap in the Nebraska is 336 miles long. Utah to Colorado is likely to be quite challenging with the mountains. East of St. Louis is another tough area.

I think you could do the trip entirely on DC chargers if you took some of the legs really slow to extend range.

Incidentally I was responding the comment that mentioned there is a lot of hate for Tesla. What I mostly don't like about Tesla, aside from that stupid naming convention, is that they missed all of their manufacturing targets and are about to hit a brick wall with investors, regardless of how "sexy" one thinks the car design is.

Side note: if you know anyone with a Tesla and are in the Bay Area, owners can take three friends with them on a tour of the factory. It's fantastic and I highly recommend it.

How much further can they ramp up? That is the pertinent question.

The misconception I think a lot of Tesla fans have is that great product = great business. How much do you think Tesla's business is worth? A billion dollars? A trillion? Probably not the latter, and if they depended on that valuation to continue to do business (by virtue of access to continued investment), it wouldn't matter how great their cars are.

Their actual market cap is 50 billion dollars, more than Ford, and they will need to raise more money to continue operations. Ford makes 500 times more cars than them (based on some quick Googling, .3% market share of cars vs 15% for Ford). So if you're thinking Tesla is not overvalued, you have to think that Tesla will acquire a truly massive chunk of the car market, at the expense of well funded incumbents who have a head start in many aspects of car manufacturing and branding.

My point is that whether or not Tesla is overvalued is as important as whether or not their cars are great. I think their cars are great, but I'm a Tesla bear because I think expecting them to justify even a tenth of their valuation is unlikely.

The big issue in scaling up is making enough battery packs. Which is a question of ‘when’.

Once they have a monopoly on cheapest battery packs and enough superchargers, a Tesla model 3 is cheaper to maintain, cheaper to run and similar price to an ICE auto, probably better performance.

Unless they fuck it up, BE battery electric is the way to go. Energy to motion, Tesla does more than 100MPG.

The Model S 100D can almost do that already: start in your garage with a 100% charge, drive 300 miles, recharge 80% in 40 minutes, drive another 240 miles. Under ideal conditions it can even achieve it (the EPA range being 335 miles).

Current Superchargers can put out 145 kW, but the cars can only accept 120 kW. So the network already has some future-proofing for when the chemistry catches up.

Of course the old goalpost used to be 300 miles without charging. I have no doubt it will move yet again, and "24 hours of driving with only 5 minutes of charging" will become the new benchmark for practicality. :p

On the flipside, I know that my limit before wanting to murder people and/or feeling bone-weary exhaustion is somewhere between 4-5 hours cumulative in a day, regardless of the number and length of breaks, but overall better with at least one >30-minute break every two hours and/or 15-minute every hour. (For me, EV's are clearly the present. I'm pretty happy within their travel limits.)

There's such a huge range of extremes with what people are comfortable with.

I've also met a lot of people that need more breaks than they actually take, but don't realize that self-care advantage yet. It's possible that forced, longer recharge breaks with an EV could be a good thing for overall road health. More drivers overall with slightly more opportunities to stretch and rest could be an amazingly useful thing for US traffic and calming some long distance road rage, given the chance.

A proliferation of decent, non "ev looking" cars with 200 miles of range will be all it takes for people to realize that they only really drive 50 miles a day, and paying for gas is for suckers.

Edit: Not to discount the idea that it is reckless to do it on public roads...

It's funny because it could be evolutionary pressure back away from the drive-through model. You could even imagine the classic Drive-In model making a big comeback. A Sonic restaurant already looks like a modern EV charger facility from a distance. (Though personally, I don't ever eat in my car, so that has less appeal to me.)

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/945712432416137217

Saw this yesterday when someone threw together a quick article on all of the gushing responses from customers to this tweet.

How can you say someone nicknamed "the real world Iron Man" is bad at PR?

His back of hand calculations on the viability of self-landing rockets, while coming back from a trip to Russia after a failed attempt to purchase a launch vehicle certainly wasn't moonshot.

He is a technology man in and out and knows the capabilities and limits of technology. I remember reading a book about Tesla and I always felt like he saw opportunities in the gaps existing between what is available and what is possible.

That's the main skill of the Iron Butt Rally (www.ironbutt.com), in which I have previously had a podium placing. Because of the structure of the rally (which is not how fast can you go from point-to-point), logistical considerations are your biggest enemy. Can I get from point A to point B, with optional out-of-the-way stops at points X, Y, and Z, and still get to B on time (with heavy penalties if you're late)? Get a ticket, and the organizers find out (and they will), you're out. The organizers try very hard to keep speed out of the rally. As they say, it's a rally and not a race.

But I'll tell you what, when it's just after sunrise in the Panhandle of Texas, there isn't a car on the road, and I need to be in L. A. in twelve hours, well, let's just say legality isn't at the top of my list. The harsh reality is that if time is a consideration at all, then pragmatism says that the faster you go, the more time you have to sleep, eat, or add Point W to your list of stops. That's largely why I quit participating in such events, because unless they want to do it timed rally style (IOW, you must be at fixed points neither early or late), all the platitudes in world aren't going to keep the speeds down.

The speed limit exists partially because "dumb things" are inevitable. A driver who ignores this inevitability is at least as guilty as the driver who did the "dumb thing."

He's a CEO. All the support he needs is to deliver on his promises. From my exceptionally limited point of view, he's at about 35% there:

Space X: 100% (Reusable, self-landing rockets. Fuck yeah!)

Tesla: 40% (Prototype in decent shape, promised production capabilities of model 3 still seems a long ways off)

The Boring Company: 0%

Hyperloop: 0%

Second, there are many promises he still hasn't delivered on: SpaceX targets not met, Tesla still running at a massive loss, Hyperloop being doomed to failure, etc etc. I can definitely see why people say he is mostly talk, even though admittedly he has achieved some successes.

Sure the might have fallen short 30-40% but given the scale of their plan, this seems like a extremly miner problem.

The buissness reality is that there are 100000s of people who want these cars and they have essentially a proven market for years to come. The waste majority of these people are not gone start hating elon because their car is a bit late.

> As far as following a vision: history is full of failed visionaries, and vision alone is not enough to propel mankind forward. Execution is.

Like building a reusable rocket or massivly improving the price and production capacity of batteries?

People need to stop listening to Elon own prediction of things and consider where things would be without him. He has already revolutionised the space and the car industry, that is just a fact.

Whatever are his contributions to the rocket design these days (it's obviously a SpaceX secret), one can't deny that his ideas for future of humanity are the raison d'être and the driving force behind the company. He obviously hires engineers smarter than himself to do the work; his own engineering skills only add to the credibility of the company and its goals.

> B)A CEO 'owns' a company's assets.

Never made the claim nor does it seem relevant here. No one is talking of actual ownership. When it comes to ownership and accounting of a company, there are already well-established metrics and practices to figure that stuff out.

Yes, the rocket is designed by engineers and put together by technicians and mechanics and thousands of souls have come together to achieve this task, and no one is denying their contributions.

But none of that would have existed without Elon. And he is being praised for that vision and steely resolve while others work on their PhDs from Armchair University.

This leadership is not trivial and it is central to something like SpaceX even existing.

Ultimately, focusing on a leader is a shorthand used in everything. We talk about famous generals, and not about their lieutenants. We talk about presidents and kings, omitting the low-level administrative staff that actually does the work and keeps everything from falling apart. Often it's a bad generalization leading to bad conclusions (e.g. most presidents have little influence on the direction of their countries), but I think it's fair in case of Elon Musk, since it's his strong vision that defines the direction of SpaceX and Tesla.

Consider this: if SpaceX went public and Elon decided to step down, the company would lose most of its fanbase for very simple reason - it would most likely turn into a regular company and stop being just the vehicle to get humanity to settle Mars.

https://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/127537/Steve_Jobs_Atari_...

You cannot create the company or products that Steve Jobs did without being technical. That doesn't mean you have to write the firmware on the wifi chip. It does mean you have to understand thousands of deeply technical concepts about computers.

I would call it similar to Space X before they started landing the rockets. Just making digging cheaper much like making rockets cheaper is a basis for a profitable company. A long term goal of 1/10th the price really would be game changing.

PS: Picture even a one way toll road that goes 20 miles under I-66 into DC they could easily charge 10$/ trip an get 100,000+ riders each way per day. So, the real question is how much that tunnel costs. At 20 billion $ that's 20 billion * 6% ~= 1.2 billion per year vs 2 * 10 * 100,000 * 5 * 48 = 480 million so not a win. But, at 1/10th the price or 2 billion that's ~120 million per year break-even vs 480 million and highly profitable. How many places could a 5 mile segment be able to charge say 3 dollars and have 100,000 people per workday?