Elon Musk Will Usher In the Era of Electric Cars 336
pigrabbitbear writes "There's a reason why Elon Musk is being called the next Steve Jobs. Like Jobs, he's a visionary, a super successful serial entrepreneur, having made his initial fortune with a company he sold to Compaq before starting Paypal. Like Jobs, he saved his beloved baby Tesla Motors from the brink of oblivion. Like Jobs, [he has] a knack for paradigm-shifting industry disruption. Which means he's also demanding. 'Like Jobs, Elon does not tolerate C or D players,' SpaceX board member and early Tesla investor Steve Jurvetson told BusinessWeek. But while Jobs was slinging multi-colored music players and touchable smartphones, Musk is building rocket ships and electric-powered supercars. It's why his friends describe him as not just Steve Jobs but also John D. Rockefeller and Howard Hughes all wrapped in one. His friend Jon Favreau used Musk as the real-life inspiration for the big screen version of Tony Stark. Elon Musk is a badass."
If somebody compared me... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:If somebody compared me... (Score:4, Insightful)
Ditto for Jobs
Can people be just people ? (Score:4, Insightful)
Do they have to be compared to others?
I mean, Elon Musk is Elon Musk, whatever Elon Musk does, or doesn't do, is his business - as long as it does not interfere with the life of others.
Comparing Elon Musk to Jobs or Rockefeller or Hughes is just silly - and in fact, TFA is a totally meaningless article.
I know Slashdot has fallen, but even I, a long time visitor, hadn't realized that Slashdot has fallen into such a deeeeep abyss that it had to carry useless article that does nothing but sing hosannas and heap praises to Mr. Elon Musk.
Re:Can people be just people ? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Can people be just people ? (Score:5, Funny)
Creases pants, jeans and shirts,
Hold it right, else it hurts.
Look out, here comes the iron man!
Re:If somebody compared me... (Score:4, Insightful)
If somebody compared me to that slimebag Rockefeller, I'd shoot them.
You do realize that the comparison refers to things like "influence on the world"/success and not on personal qualities?
From what I understand, Steve Jobs was also not the nicest person you ever met - but that's not really relevant, unless Elon Musk's personality is being compared.
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From "Competition is a sin!" to nets catching workers as they drop
Influence (Score:2, Insightful)
things like "influence on the world"
Has it occurred to you that some people may not want to have influenced the world in the way Jobs did - I for one, would not like to be the individual responsible for the age of closed platforms and walled gardens we seem to be heading to.
Regardless, surely Henry Ford would be a better comparison, at least for the "influence on the world".
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Yes.
Re:If somebody compared me... (Score:5, Funny)
I guess if I had to pick the comparisons (Jobs Rockefeller, Hughes, or Stark)... I pick Stark.
Hughes wouldn't be that bad if the guy didn't have that "saving my pee" habit.
Re:If somebody compared me... (Score:5, Funny)
I guess if I had to pick the comparisons (Jobs Rockefeller, Hughes, or Stark)... I pick Stark.
So the first word used to describe your legacy would be "fictional", then?
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It's sad how people confuse fantasy with reality, isn't it?
I get tired of hearing people drool over how great guys like Jobs and Musk are supposed to be. The ones who make the world go around are the entrepreneurs who run the small businesses that comprise the bulk of the economy.
Re:If somebody compared me... (Score:5, Insightful)
The ones who make the world go around are the entrepreneurs who run the small businesses that comprise the bulk of the economy.
That's true, those people do make the world go around. But people like Jobs, Musk, Gates, etc are the people who make the world move forward.
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With the iOS walled garden, proprietary connectors, etc, Jobs did at least as much to more the world backward.
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There is more than one side to the "iOS walled garden"...Android has had far more security issues than iOS. There are things I don't like about Apple's policies, but they do seem to be slowly getting better.
As to "proprietary connectors"...really? Apple has driven adoption of many of its connectors (some built in collaboration with others) - USB, DisplayPort, Thunderbolt for instance. I wouldn't be surprised to see Lightning become a standard.
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There is nothing wrong with an iOS Walled Garden, as long as there are other options out there which provide the ability to break out of the garden.
Let's be honest, if the garden is well guarded, has a lot of apps, and is easy to use, it is plenty good enough for you if all you want to do is use your smartphone and use a few apps. That sort of concept is what pushes smartphones forward because you don't have to deal with any jagged edges while your general public becomes accustomed to your device and what
Re:If somebody compared me... (Score:4, Insightful)
Have no fear. History will moderate the story of Steve Jobs out. He was an interesting person who, in many ways, did promote the way our world works. Eventually, even the people who think he invented the wheel, will understand that he wasn't so much an inventor as a promoter and an integrator of other people's work.
However, I think that if we underestimate the value of promoters and integrators, we miss the big picture of why some things become big, despite being flawed, and other things that are less flawed toil in obscurity. If you are an engineering type who believes that your device or app or whatever will change the world, you might be right about its potential, but you'd probably be wrong if you thought that the device could speak for itself. Every advance needs to overcome some sort of initial obstacle that can be described as simple inertia. Cars are faster than horses, but everyone had horses and the world was built around thousands of years of horse riding. If you think it was enough to simply build a car for it to be adopted, I'd say that you'd probably have waited much longer without a Henry Ford.
People like Jobs and Edison deserve accolades, even if they didn't truly invent things. They just need to not receive more credit than they deserve, and I think that does moderate over time as historians go over the facts and present them.
Re:If somebody compared me... (Score:4, Interesting)
Small businesses no longer make up the majority of the economy [businessweek.com]. In boom times, they do very well. But during periods when expansion capital is hard to come by and sales are weak, they are much less competitive against larger companies who have significant cash/resources to fall back on. We've been in such a bad growth situation for small businesses for several years now, and there's no sign of it improving in the near future either.
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If someone compared me to that dick Jobs, I'd punch them in the face. And then in the nads.
Re:If somebody compared me... (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:If somebody compared me... (Score:4, Insightful)
If somebody compared me to an egomaniacal, ethics-free, self-righteous jerk whose only real talent was as a pitchman, I'd be really offended. "Visionary" my ass.
Re:If somebody compared me... (Score:4, Informative)
If somebody compared me to that slimebag Rockefeller, I'd shoot them.
The farmer bought the Standard product with the reasonable expectation that the oil lamp in his parlor would not explode when his wife when his wife put a match to the wick --- a very real possibility in the early wildcat days of the petroleum industry.
He bought the Standard product because it was sold unadulterated in honest weights and measures.
He bought the Standard product because it was cheap.
The retail price of kerosene down 50% in less then ten years .
When the Standard Oil trust was broken, customers remained loyal to the Standard's regional operating companies, each one very big, very strong and technically sophisticated competitors in their own right.
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And Mussolini made the trains run on time. Doing a few good things doesn't mean he didn't do a whole lot more bad ones.
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Can we, please, stop praising rich slimebags for their habit of throwing money into the crowd?
Re:Cars are old hat, and the wrong solution. (Score:4, Insightful)
The real solution is to build a proper high-speed rail network throughout North America. We aren't talking about mere 300 km/h trains like are commonly found in Europe. We need to be talking about trains going just under the speed of sound. 1200 km/h trains, if you will. A solid network connecting the major cities of America would render many cars useless.
And this is a real solution to the wrong problem. Most cars aren't used to get from city to city; they're used to get from home to work. So you'd be constructing an ultra-expensive rail system to transport...well, practically nobody. We have something similar to that now. It's called Amtrak, and ridership is so pathetic it can only survive with hefty government subsidies fleeced from overburdened taxpayers. But I hear it makes a nice jobs program with great benefits.
Then it is possible to address the next problems: suburban sprawl. Cities should be highly centralized, and built upwards. It is absolutely stupid to build suburbs. Those who want to live in a rural area should be doing so because they farm. Those who aren't farming should be living in dense cities, where public transit can be effectively used. Once that is achieved, cars will not be necessary for the vast majority of people.
So, at a stroke, you simply think people shouldn't be allowed to live outside a city unless they are farming. Heaven forbid that they might just not want to live cheek-by-jowl with seething masses of humanity in studio apartments. What a pity we have these things called "liberty" and "choice" which allow us to live where we choose regardless of whether it meets your authoritarian approval or not. Wouldn't the world just be a much nicer place if people would just do as they're told instead of, you know, exercising free will and stuff?
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Rail can be used for a lot of things besides people.
In the us it (still) makes economic sense to put things cross-country on a tractor trailer while in Europe trucks don't make sense until the last 50 miles.
Amtrak has it's problems because it's a weird hybrid between private sector for-profit exploitation and government funding of said profit. Amtrak is still in business even though gas and a rental car for the whole trip makes more economic sense than a one-way ticket with their once-a-day service.
The prob
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And this is a real solution to the wrong problem. Most cars aren't used to get from city to city; they're used to get from home to work.
Right, but you are looking at it backwards. People don't travel from city to city because there is no easy way to do so. You could spend hours driving or go for a quick sexual assault at the airport, but nothing is as easy as a train.
Rather than just trying to react to what is happening you need to start shaping it for the better.
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I've been in favor of high-speed rail for a very long time but 750 mph trains? Might as well construct lot of vacuum tunnels and get them moving at 2000 with the lower air-resistance.
Re:Cars are old hat, and the wrong solution. (Score:4, Insightful)
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Yes, let's use engineering to tackle social problems. That always works.
I don't tolerate CD players either (Score:5, Funny)
I guess that's why Jobs came up with ipods.
Next Steve jobs? (Score:5, Insightful)
Next he's going to download various open source hardware car parts off the internet, put some faux wood and faux leather interior, and sell it to suave hipsters who he can ply on their on white/yuppie guilt to sell trendy fads and make them feel better about themselves, and then ignore any and all complaints for the next 10 years, esentiallly selling what should have been a $10k smart car for $20k.
He'll then dictate what speakers, intake and exhaust you put on it, sue chevy for patent infringements on the volt, and get his crowd of loyal followers to cover up his mistakes.
Then we'll start talking about how much of an innovater he was, but the people who did most of the real innovation will die quiet deaths, unnoticed by the technology he made popular.
Or mabey we should stop using the term "The Next Steve Jobs" out of the context of meaning "the next George Pullman"
don't for get the $200 oil change at there dealer (Score:2)
don't for get the $200 oil change at there dealers.
And they will use DRM lock downs and sue the jiffy lubes that have a workaround.
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Plus, he'll need to screw over all the people who worked with him, so that only he gets rich.
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Speaking of screws, the one holding the car together will of course be non-standard and tamper resistant, so that if you get any work done at a non-official repair location you'll lose your warranty. You'll have to take them to the Tesla Virtuoso Station instead.
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Electric cars don't have oil to change.
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Electric cars don't have oil to change.
If you want to get really, really technical, there's going to be oil in the transmission gearbox, even if it's a single speed. $200 for changing that oil wouldn't be too bad, because it'd be like 500k mile maintenance.
Re:don't for get the $200 oil change at there deal (Score:4, Funny)
Electric cars don't use oil because there are no moving parts
... and the gearboxes are lubricated with unicorn tears, while the hydraulic systems use dragon's blood because of the higher boiling point.
Re:don't for get the $200 oil change at there deal (Score:5, Informative)
Hydraulic and transmission oil is changed far less frequently than engine oil.
Also all-electric cars don't have the same complex tranmissions since electric engines don't have the same narrow power band
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... and the gearboxes are lubricated with unicorn tears, while the hydraulic systems use dragon's blood because of the higher boiling point.
Pure electric cars don't need gearboxes. Hydraulic brakes likely won't go away soon, but electric power steering is rather popular.
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You don't necessarily need differentials, you can also have one motor per driven wheel.
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This is actually a much better design for passenger ergonomics, weight distribution, and traction/braking control as well.far more to
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The Nissan Leaf needs its gearbox oil changed every service interval. Again, right there in the service manual.
Really? What page? 'cause I got both the 2011 OEM manual and owner's service manual here and I can't find any reference to changing the gearbox oil as part of routine maintenance. Inspect, sure, but not change.
Can't speak for the Tesla Roadster but I'm willing to bet it's the same story. Electric cars need their gearbox oil changed as often as any rear-wheel-drive car needs the oil in the rear differential changed... which is essentially "never" except in a case of catastrophic failure.
=Smidge=
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Who says that's not what he's going to do? After all Steve started out as a hacker, hippie giving/selling blue boxes (to make FREE phone calls) into using free and open source software to make and launch his set of companies.
Sound familiar?
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Like they have always done. See Edison and Bell vs Marconi and Tesla
Sponsored by (Score:4)
Re:Sponsored by (Score:5, Funny)
"Suzy A., 16 was flattened today when she supposedly ignored the warnings and an A.B.C. Advanced Bipedals Car) stepped on her. This is the fourth flattening of a teenager this month, up from two over the last three months. Police believe this is linked to a social media meme where children attempt to use the A.B.C.s to smash walnuts with the word 'illiteracy' written on them, and upload the video. This is Sean Parsons with KDRT 42."
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As Star Wars inspired road designs go, I'd prefer highways managed by a Wampa system instead. All drivers who slow down traffic are beaten in the head and left hanging to die somewhere.
Anyway, as the article ends the reason for "why electric cars?" instead of the alternatives is laid down. The hope is that they'll be powered almost directly by solar energy. Both the battery manufacturing and the solar panels need to become sustainable things to manufacture and keep running for that dream to play out.
Celebrity CEOs (Score:3, Insightful)
So he's just another celebrity businessman who treats his employees like shit while taking the credit for designs he didn't come up with himself? You'll be comparing him to Thomas Edison next.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Eberhard
Musk basically ripped the company out from under him.
Presumably he'll also cure cancer, (Score:4, Interesting)
send us to Mars, usher in a new era of world peace, and while he's at it, make us all sandwiches?
How did this make it to the front page? It's not even a slashvertizement for a product; that might occasionally be useful. It's a slashvertizement for a person, that doesn't even have any useful information in it beyond "this person is awesome". It doesn't even make the slightest effort to argue the statement given in the title: I'd love to see an "era of electric cars" get ushered in.
He's going to patent lots of obvious stuff (Score:5, Funny)
then sue the crap out of everyone who produces something with wheels?
Re:He's going to patent lots of obvious stuff (Score:4, Funny)
Not everyone, only the ones that produce round wheels.
Re:He's going to patent lots of obvious stuff (Score:5, Funny)
then sue the crap out of everyone who produces something with wheels?
Only rounded wheels-be fair.
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Not to mention their souls. Yeah - it was a cheap shot at a dead guy. Honestly, I'm impressed by innovation - I just feel that if more time was spent innovating & less spent trying to cripple the competition, the world would be a much better place.
Seriously?? (Score:4, Interesting)
where's that slashdot article that came up a couple of days ago, about velomobiles being 80x more efficient than electric cars? didn't it have some quite obvious maths that showed that if all cars in the USA were converted to electric, it would require 7,000 GWh of electricity just to charge them every day? what that velomobiles article didn't also cover is that it's highly unlikely that the world has enough lithium and neodymium to go round to supply all those vehicles.
i've *done* the analysis and the designs (http://lkcl.net/ev) and if EVs are to be the success that people really really WANT them to be, then they have to be ultra-efficient (350kg) ultra-streamlined (Cd 0.15) parallel diesel hybrids with a 5kW (7HP) diesel motor and a 10kW (13HP) electric motor running off of a CVT (quadbike) gearbox.
perhaps this is some sort of spiritual test of my patience when people make these kinds of statements "elon musk will be the next steve jobs for recommending that the world's population use more of our planet's natural resources than its humans can actually get hold of", or am i missing something here?
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A hybrid is an okay compromise for now, but let's face it, gas guzzlers are ancient tech with too many parts to go wrong. Once the infrastructure is in place, everything will be electric. It's a bit like the comparison with SSD/HD hybrids and pure SSD drives. A compromise is okay for now, but we'll reach the future quicker by going for pure SSD.
As for you
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Re:Seriously?? (Score:5, Insightful)
didn't it have some quite obvious maths that showed that if all cars in the USA were converted to electric, it would require 7,000 GWh of electricity just to charge them every day?
I don't think anyone is suggesting that we immediately replace all gas-powered cars with electric cars overnight using our existing infrastructure and power grid. It's going to take a long time, and our energy sector is going to come with it. More solar energy is absorbed by the earth every hour than humans use in a year. It's completely feasible to have an all-solar energy grid that powers everything we need it to and then some, it will just take a lot of time and significant investment to get anywhere near that point. It's just the case right now that we have an infrastructure built on supporting gas-powered vehicles. That is what needs to change. It's also safe to say that we haven't found every source of natural resources [ceramics.org] that this planet has to offer, and we haven't even begun to look outside of our planet for additional resources. Not to mention manufacturing our own from available materials.
In short, not only is it possible, but Elon Musk is right for doing his part to help push people in that direction. His direction isn't the only feasible one though, so feel free to compete with him.
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You mean a SERIES hybrid. Parallel hybrids (e.g. Prius) are a dead-end, overcomplicated and unnecessary.
I largely agree with the discussion on the site you link. A personal 1-seater vehicle weighing under 500kg all-up with the sorts of power discussed there (15kW) is a ve
Save the Elons (Score:3)
Call me when you got a electric SUV (Score:2)
in the shape of a Bronco that can do 500mk on a charge on 35" tires and can go off reading.
Call me when you make an EV (Score:2)
500 marks! See dick run!
Jobs wasn't a serial entrepreneur (Score:2)
At least not in this sense: he stuck with things, not founding things to sell 'em to investors and move on. The first tech company Jobs founded was Apple, and that's the company he died leading.
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Yes, exactly! Elon Musk seems like a really great guy and all, but he does have a tendency to move on to new things before finishing up with the previous thing. The same can't be said of Steve Jobs.
PayPal was great but they really need to expand more outside of eBay. And also gain the trust of their users. You know you're doing it wrong when people say that you're less trustworthy than the banks!
Telsa and SpaceX are awesome companies, but both have serious hurdles ahead. His achievements to date don't warra
You forgot: (Score:2, Insightful)
They forgot one of the key things - both Tesla and SpaceX depend heavily on government money. He's got more in common with William Boeing than Steve Jobs.
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Tesla depends heavily on government guarantees, not money. Much in the same way that the vast majority of Americans depended on government guarantees when they purchased their first home.
As for SpaceX, do you seriously think Apple would exist today if it weren't for all the public schools which purchased their equipment?
Admittedly, any business which makes it without some kind of public subsidy deserves accolades. But we don't live in some Ayn Rand, private, capitalist dystopia/utopia. The "public sector" i
Re:You forgot: (Score:5, Informative)
I won't speak for Tesla, but SpaceX does not depend on government money. The Falcon 1 was created entirely with private funding, which includes capital investments to build their entire vertically integrated production facilities (they don't contract anything), some launch facilities, and design, construction, and multiple test flights of an entirely new design of rocket. The Falcon 9 was mostly NASA funding, but it built heavily on the Falcon 1 design, and was thus less expensive to design and test than the Falcon 1 (even without including the huge facilities investments mentioned before). Furthermore, SpaceX already had financing to develop Falcon 9 when they won the NASA contract. The contract allowed them to divert that money into the Dragon Capsule instead, the majority of which is thus privately funded.
So without government funding, they would be about where they are with Falcon 1/9, but just getting started with Dragon. Government money sped them up a bit, but they aren't even close to being dependent on that funding.
Be ashamed, /.ers (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm reminded of my favorite Teddy Roosevelt quote:
"It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat."
Can your cynicism. If you don't like the way Musk is building electric cars or space ships, get off your couch and go build your own goddamn spaceship. Oh wait, that would require drive, vision, and effort, and making snide comments on the internet (like I'm doing) is much easier.
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And not just another platform for mining your personal data to better push ads at you (google, Facebook),
Don't be so quick with that.
All Tesla cars come with cellular connectivity [teslamotors.com] and they definitely phone home. [engadget.com] i think that it would be naive to believe that Tesla is not looking to monetize as much of your driving information they can their hands on. I'd love to see proof otherwise, but I doubt it is out there given the way of the world nowadays.
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I think the reactions are mainly against the OTT fawning tone of the article and summary, spilling over into attacks on the man himself. I mean, I've nothing against Musk, but when I read
paradigm-shifting industry disruption... not just Steve Jobs but also John D. Rockefeller and Howard Hughes all wrapped in one... genius generalist with “huge steel balls”...
my gut reaction is oh FUCK OFF. However, I direct that at the writer rather than Musk. Musk could be a Jobs-level asshat for all I know or care -- I'm never likely to meet him -- but I heartily approve of what he's doing.
(aside to the writer: "all wrapped in one"? Wrapped in one what, cretin? Tarpaulin? XXL muumuu? Soft tac
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Not so much (Score:3)
The tax payers saved Tesla from the brink of oblivion, not Musk. Nearly half a billion dollars, at that.
Not to mention, the number of cars that Tesla has to sell in order to become profitable is a tall order for any company, not just one selling expensive boutique electrics to a very small niche.
Hope he's not the next Steve Jobs (Score:3)
Unlike Jobs, Elon Musk seems like a nice guy. With any luck he can show how to be a pioneering leader in the technology sphere without having to be a dick at the same time.
And unlike Steve Jobs... (Score:2)
Like Jobs, he saved his beloved baby Tesla Motors from the brink of oblivion.
And unlike Steve Jobs, he first put it there himself, and only "saved" it by pissing in his investors' and customers' pockets and telling them it was raining.
...Which might be forgivable, if he had put himself as far out on a limb as he put them. He didn't; through the process of milking his investors (big and small), he managed to hold on to almost every penny of his personal multi-billion-dollar fortune. And frankly, even THAT could have been forgivable, had he not also leveraged the Department of Energy
Good at manufacturing (Score:2)
What's impressive about Musk is that he's good at running manufacturing. Space-X designs and builds rockets and spacecraft in their own plants with their own employees. Same for Tesla. That's what impressed Automobile Magazine. The Tesla roadster was, in their opinion, just a Lotus Elise with an electric power plant. But the Tesla sedan is an all-new design and a well-executed one.
Apple is a design house and a marketing operation. The manufacturing is done by low-wage workers at Hon Hai Precision Indust
Re:Electric cars... yawn (Score:5, Insightful)
Ever seen a modern locomotive? Scaling power in an electric car is far, far easier than scaling it in a fossil-fuel equiv. vehicle.
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You're joking, right? Gasoline-driven engines don't produce anywhere near the torque or power that an electric motor is capable of, depending on the type of electric motor being used.
Gasoline/diesel didn't win out because they're more powerful than electric, they won out because you can fill a gas tank in minutes, and go hundreds of miles on it.
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You've had simulated sex with a BMW? That does sound like it would be terrible.
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I like lopey V8s, burbling boxers, and screaming 3 or 4 rotors as much as anyone, but the Killacycle sounds kind of like a rocket [youtube.com] when it takes off. It's not bad. Certainly not silent.
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Take a look at the tesla roadster. They literally had to limit the motor as the first prototypes could bend their own axle with the torque it produced. It still has faster acceleration than any non-electric car produced so far, even the fancy Italians
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In that case you'll be happy to know that Musk didn't really start PayPal. He started another company called X.com that eventually took over PayPal.
But Musk being Musk, he likes to take credit for things he didn't actually do.
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the greatest crime of our generation is our history books are written by mercenaries who will write down whomever will pay for the privledge of deeming themselves worthy, and the real heros and inovators to be left in the dustbin of history.
I only hope that sites like archive.org will save the mass reactions that people have, so when history is whitewashed, 200 years later people will learn the controversy of these figures, and perhaps have enough information to prompt them to ask que
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Confinity, the company that originally wrote PayPal, had the Palm Pilot and similar mobile units as their first target for deploying the software. That's either idiotic or visionary depending on how you look at it; in any case it wasn't going anywhere in 2000. Elon's company X.com was instead focusing on online banking. It's fair to say that the original PayPal business model was crap, and Elon refocusing the service to the web and promoting it [latimes.com] was important to it becoming successful. Inventing the busi
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Re:Slashvertisement? (Score:5, Informative)
You've seriously never heard of Elon Musk? What rock have you been living under?
He's the financier behind Tesla Motors, which has been talked about many times over the years on Slashdot. He also fincanced SpaceX, which got a lot of press during the X Prize coverage. He also founded PayPal, and got a lot of press through that. There've been documentaries about him, and about his companies, some of which are available on Netflix if you're so inclined (Revenge of the Electric Car has a *lot* of interview time with Musk, if you'd like to get an idea of what kind of person he really is). http://www.revengeoftheelectriccar.com/ [revengeoft...riccar.com]
Come to it, having seen that movie, and his interviews in the movie, he doesn't come off as anywhere near the kind of jackass that Jobs was.
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huh. I mostly remember him for once being married to Talulah Riley. How he managed to catch but not hold on to such a hottie will forever taint the guy as a loser in my eyes regardless of how successful he is in other areas of life.
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huh. I mostly remember him for once being married to Talulah Riley. How he managed to catch but not hold on to such a hottie will forever taint the guy as a loser in my eyes regardless of how successful he is in other areas of life.
However rich, attractive, clever or amusing you are, it takes two to make a relationship work. Unless you are a close friend you cannot possibly comment on the reasons either for their marriage or divorce.
This is irrespective of the ridiculously sexist idea that a woman is some sort of prize that you win for being good at something.
Re:oh stop it (Score:4, Interesting)
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The Universe won't be changed all that much; it's quite large.
Yeah, at least it will change our star system.
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Right, let me tell you how this has worked out in this place called Ontario. In a country called Canada, so far it's cost tax payers $20B, for those said solar panels. Because of a FiT program, or Feed in Tariff system. This puts Ontario on track to have the price at 16c/KWH by 2016. And because it's paid at a premium, to offset the cost the actual cost is passed along to consumers on their electric bill. Now let me tell you about Germany where this has also happened. Where the price per KWH is now cl
Re:Does anyone know... (Score:4, Informative)
The Volt battery pack is 40 miles because that's more than 75% of Americans drive on an average day, so GM sized it to keep costs down. I know that's true for me (I've been tracking my daily miles for almost a year now). Not sure where you're getting your numbers, but the battery volume is MUCH greater in the top-end Model S than it is in the Volt. The Volt has a 10kWh battery, while the Model S has an 80kWh battery, so the Model S get 250-300 miles on a charge instead of 35-50. The Model S is actually less efficient, possibly thanks to its weight, but has enough capacity to make up for it. Plus, weight isn't as much of an issue for electric cars as gas because regenerative braking recaptures some of that extra kinetic energy when you stop.
But I'm with you on you decision to not buy a Volt--I don't want my EV to go anywhere near a gas station. That's why I'm waiting for the 2013 LEAF to come out this spring.