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Elon Musk Will Usher In the Era of Electric Cars
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 to that slimebag Rockefeller, I'd shoot them.
I guess that's why Jobs came up with ipods.
clearly has editing privileges at slashdot.
So he's going to design really crappy electric cars for 10 years which will sell well with artists who are big on brand loyality and tollerate being abused.
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"
This Slashdot story sponsored by Kusm Nole Enterprises (TM)
"In the absence of the ability to establish the attribute of truth they tried to establish the noble attributes."
I liked Elon Musk before it was cool. Just thought you should know.
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.
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.
then sue the crap out of everyone who produces something with wheels?
Call me when electric cars are making the same power and torque as an 8/71 or 16/71 big block then I'll get excited. Electric super cars? Pfft.
Users... the only thing keeping 1st level support from being the bottom feeders.
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.
Look, the whole concept of cars is very OLD HAT, regardless of whether they're powered by gas or whether they're powered by electricity. Furthermore, they're the wrong solution to the real problem.
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.
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.
If Mr. Musk were thinking big, NEW HAT things like this, then he'd truly be a visionary. But all we get is him thinking OLD HAT ideas about cars and rockets. We need NEW HAT ideas, not OLD HAT ideas.
I've never heard of this guy until now, and the post is written like it's meant to glorify him as the third coming of Jesus -- implying, of course, that Steve Jobs was the second coming.
I wonder who got paid for this submission.
Space X is not "paradigm-shifting industry disruption. "
Not by any stretch of the imagination. It's certainly awesome and cool, but lets not get carried away.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
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?
PayPal is a shady corporation that definitely falls on the "evil" side of internet companies. Sadly, that precludes my ever being a fan of his, regardless of his other accomplishments.
Is he also ushering in an era of more nuclear power plants to ensure that there's power availability too? Or will people be paying 16c/KWH or higher once these things start banging away on the grid.
Om, nomnomnom...
Plus, he'll need to screw over all the people who worked with him, so that only he gets rich.
Elon Musk is not as much an ashhole as Steve Jobs was. One has to be ashholish to be the next Steve Jobs. Elon Musk is a geek who seems to speak positively and less arrogant than the usual bosses. I bet he is demanding, but in a polite way.
~ Best man at your service.
I completely agree: "bad" and an "ass".
I don't think you have to act like a complete jerk toward intelligent and accomplished people to get good results. Jobs and Musk just set a terrible example for everyone else in a leadership position and are probably jointly responsible for more human misery than most people, living or dead. What was/is the real cost of that iPod/iPhone/iPad? What will the cost to the environment be of Musk's electric supercars and rocket ships? And what tiny fraction of humanity will really benefit from them?
Can someone please find us an accomplished leader somewhere who doesn't act like a complete asshole towards those working for him?
The African Elon is an endangered species. Poachers are killing it for its valuable musk, used to power these electric vehicles.
I eat only the real part of complex carbohydrates.
If you want to worship him so much why don't you start a church and do it there rather then posting this crap to slashdot?
Ain't it funny where money and chutzpah will take you?
Three immediately-visible grammatical errors; 'forget' is one word, 'there' should be 'their' and beginning a sentence with 'And' is considered sloppy in most cases.
C-
On this site that's nearly trolling!
in the shape of a Bronco that can do 500mk on a charge on 35" tires and can go off reading.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
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.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Why his sedan, albeit much larger, can get so many more miles than the Volt (despite also being heavier by nature)?
I had the opportunity to buy a Volt, but when I started geeking out on the specs, I just couldn't bring myself to get something with such inferior batteries -- not just because it didn't sit well but I also didn't want to vote with my money toward those 35mile/charge things...
I mean we're looking at a minimum 7x improvement in range without a 7x improvement in battery volumn and that all after considering the massive weight difference between those vehicles.
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.
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.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
Steve Jobs did not build Apple with hundreds of millions of tax dollars from Obama
Tesla is subsidized with taxpayer money... has yet to make a real profit
Space-X is subsidized with taxpayer money... has yet to make a real profit
Like him or not, Jobs had a fantastic focus... musk seems to choose politically-favored "businesses" and dabbles in them while taxpayer money is being dangled; I'm still waiting to see if he sticks with any of these businesses when there are no tax dollars available, THEN we can consider whether he is worthy of some Steve Jobs comparison...
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.
Electric cars don't have oil to change.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
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.
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.
Most people on Slashdot are fucking idiots.
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
Is there any reason that we're discussing this now?
hype hype hype hype
Does Slashdot get paid for AWFUL pieces like this?
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.
I don't read AC A human right
... 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.
Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
So now we're using Vice Magazine as a source? Sure, they do some risky stuff, but isn't that one step from citing Hustler for the once in a blue moon article that they are the only one to cover?
Pure electric cars don't need gearboxes.
They don't need multi-speed gear boxes, but may still need a single-speed transmission to change the ratio of motor output RPM to desired axle RPM, and/or offset the shaft axes for mounting/layout reasons. They also still need differentials.
You don't necessarily need differentials, you can also have one motor per driven wheel.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
500 marks! See dick run!
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
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.
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
You just made two errors of your own: your first sentence is a sentence fragment, and you used a semicolon when you should have used a colon. Practice what you preach, haha.
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".
No.. moving parts? In an electric motor turning wheels? And what the hell are "breaks"?
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 for an additional $465 million of taxpayer funds.
Ostensibly this was a loan; realistically, with an anticipated total market of 1 million electric cars by 2015 (the DOE invested in 2009), even if every one of those came from Tesla, it would have to pay almost $500 from the sale of *every car* to pay this "loan" back. Hell, they finally made the FIRST payment on this loan this month after more than 3 years. How? Not from being profitable. Not even from being frugal. From a $200-million influx of investor cash, which investors are only putting up because they know it's all but secured by the US government (having seen how Washington says, "How high?" when Detroit says, "Jump.") -- in other words, if (rather, when) they don't pay that money back, you and I will.
Screw Elon Musk. I'll happily let the Brits get a head start on private-sector space travel if it means we don't have to reward the fetid values and practices on which Musk builds his vision.
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.
This is actually a much better design for passenger ergonomics, weight distribution, and traction/braking control as well.far more to
I was thinking more along the lines of fleecing the customers for a $100-$200 regular oil change every 3k miles on an electric car... but I'm sitting in my volcano stroking a bleach white cat with bloodshot eyes so...
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 Industries in Shenzhen. Apple used to be a manufacturer, but they had trouble running plants efficiently and gave up.
It's rarely worth replying to ACs, but here goes...
The Tesla Roadster needs the gearbox oil changed at every service. It's right there in the workshop manual.
The Nissan Leaf needs its gearbox oil changed every service interval. Again, right there in the service manual.
I'm sure all the other electric cars on the market are the same, but I'm just going by the manuals I have to hand.
what? you can change the oil? nobody does that, ever! make sure the oil is a closed system which can never be accessed in any way, makes it so much more efficient and consumes less space! - if the oil gets old and clogged, just buy a new car!
Find me at http://herbert.poul.at
Someone with a name like that, is bound to be awesome!
Religion is what happens when nature strikes and groupthink goes wrong.
...when I'll can pay online my ticket for the electric spaceship that will bring me to Mars.
Nuffsaid
________
Don't know about his cat, but Schroedinger is definitely dead.
"Like Jobs, he saved his beloved baby Tesla Motors from the brink of oblivion"
Really? It seems to me that the company is on as shaky ground today, just as much as in the past. Its continued survival appears to depend on cash infusions.
Nothing wrong with that, but it does not seem to me that the company is fully booted, and this statement is just a little too rah-rah.
"there" - LOL.
And previous poster "mabey"... LOL indeed!
I don't know out of Elon Musk and the submitter who's the biggest twat.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
This is less 'haha that's funny' than 'haha that's so true' than many would like to believe.
Who didn't have to rely on a bailout from taxpayers to save his company
Making electric vehicles out of reach of most people is not game changing or paradigm shifting. I don't really need to spend $80k+ to save the world, or at least I shouldn't have to.
Jobs designed products that are a stretch but at least not out of reach of the average consumer. Telsa makes flamboyant overpriced status symbols for the 1%..
Also hoarding technology the way Apple does is not going to change an industry, its doing to destroy it. If Telsa doesn't share and license its technology to companies that actually want to make relevant products for the everyday person then they will make the same mistake that seemingly is starting to drag Apple down today.
If Elon wants to be taken seriously create an everyday car that people will line up to want to buy otherwise he may as well start a company making flying space cars for the complete lack impact he has on the industry and environment.
Telsa (and Elon) is completely irrelevant until they create something that everybody not only wants, but can actually obtain.
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
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=
He is such a damn bad ass! He took nearly a half billion in government funding + millions more from other investors and turned it into a company that makes a product virtually no one knows anything about! This man is totally Tony Stark!
A major issue with electric vehicles was just made apparent. As you all, I'm sure, know, the northeast U.S. was hit with a hurricane last week. Millions were without power, and hundreds of thousands still are. Even with the gas shortage that occurred afterwards, these people were ultimately able to drive their vehicles and get to where they needed to go, though sometimes that meant waiting for 2 or 3 hours on a gas line.
If these people had electric vehicles, they'd be dead in the water. No way to charge them, therefore, no way to drive them.
Until the power infrastructure is more stable and reliable, electric vehicles, despite their other advantages, will have this major shortcoming.
Pricing
SpaceX offers open and fixed pricing for its launch services. Modest discounts are available for contractually committed, multi-launch purchases.
PAYLOAD PRICE
Up to 6.4 ton to GTO $83M*
Greater than 6.4 ton to GTO $128M*
*Paid in full standard launch prices for 2012. Please contact us for details at sales@spacex.com
btw, GTO = Geosynchronous Transfer Orbit
Hydraulic brakes likely won't go away soon
They will in electric cars. Friction brakes are wasteful. If each wheel has its own motor/generator you have regenerative braking, where the kinetic force of the car is transformed into electricty and fed back to the battery, rather than being transformed to heat which is wasted.
Free Martian Whores!
It's rarely worth replying to ACs, but here goes...
The Tesla Roadster needs the gearbox oil changed at every service. It's right there in the workshop manual.
The Nissan Leaf needs its gearbox oil changed every service interval. Again, right there in the service manual.
I'm sure all the other electric cars on the market are the same, but I'm just going by the manuals I have to hand.
I own a LEAF. You don't know what you're talking about.
Yes sure, you will do regenerative braking when you can. But you still need an emergency system, and the current hydraulic brakes work quite well. Most electric cars cannot apply 1g of deceleration from full speed using just the regenerative brakes, so they cannot do without . I doubt there are any production electric cars which can do that.
Brake pads should live a long time...
Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
It is not "freedom of worship", it is "freedom of religion".
"Freedom of worship" is what you have in Iran. Freedom of religion is what is recognized as a Universal Human Right.
Article 18.
Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.
Steve Jobs was a seriously overrated salesman.
If you want to admire computer people, then admire people who advanced the state of the art, such as John Bardeen/William Shockley/Walter Houser Brattain, John von Neumann, Alan Turing, Alonzo Church, Edsger W. Dijkstra, Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie. Maybe Linus Torvalds.