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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.
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"
then sue the crap out of everyone who produces something with wheels?
Ever seen a modern locomotive? Scaling power in an electric car is far, far easier than scaling it in a fossil-fuel equiv. vehicle.
You're special forces then? That's great! I just love your olympics!
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/
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.
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.
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 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.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
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
While I concur completely, your at-at provides a delightful mental image. Instead of people on the train tracks you'd hear:
"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."
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.
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?
In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
iron man, iron man, does whatever an iron can
(1.21 gigawatts) / (88 miles per hour) = 30 757 874 newtons
Creases pants, jeans and shirts,
Hold it right, else it hurts.
Look out, here comes the iron man!